AVATAR 2 Delayed Until 2017; Oscar Winner, Billion Dollar Gross Expected

 

In the world of film, no name is as revered and praised as the man, the myth, and the legend: James Cameron. So when James "Box Office Gold" Cameron decides to hold off on his films for quality control then one better respect that so that the world may see the next Terminator 2 or ALIENS. 

AP Caught up with James "Pandora on the Floor-a" Cameron who was in New Zealand (probably rewriting the Hobbit trilogy for a 2027 release) where he revealed that AVATAR 2, which would kick off a 3 year release of his super films, has been pushed to Christmas 2017 instead of it's late 2016 release.

"There's a layer of complexity in getting the story to work as a saga across three films that you don't get when you're making a stand-alone film," he said in Wellington, New Zealand, where he was helping promote the local film industry with other directors including Peter Jackson.

The last real bit of news to come out of Camp Neytiri was that Stephen Lang (Col. Quaritch) would be returning for the AVATAR 2-4 films; along with probably Sigourney Weaver.

Cameron said that the current plan is to have all three scripts finished by the end of the month:

 "We're writing three simultaneously. And we've done that so that everything tracks throughout the three films. We're not just going to do one and then make up another one and another one after that," he said. "And parallel with that, we're doing all the design. So we've designed all the creatures and the environments."

No plot details as of yet, obviously, but Cameron will continue to direct with different writers set for each of the upcoming installments, with Josh Friedman (War of the Worlds), Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver (Jurassic World, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes), and Shane Salerno (SAVAGES, Shaft) splitting up sequel-duties. 

AVATAR, released in 2009, became the highest grossing film in history- coming close to $3 bilion by the end of it's nearly 3 month box office reign.  

AVATAR 2 will take you back to Pandora in 2017. 

Selena Gomez Joins Ant-Man in Road-Trip Drama

 

If your dream has always been to see "Justin Bieber's girlfriend" join "the funny guy who's gonna be in that Marvel movie", you're in luck as Selena Gomez and Paul Rudd will be appearing together in The Revized Fundamentals of Caregiving. 

The film, which follows Paul Rudd  as "Ben, a caregiver looking after a frustrated teenager named Trevor who is in the advanced stages of Duchenne muscular dystrophy", is being written and directed Rob Burnett based on the 2013 novel by Jonathan Evison. 

Gomez will play the role of Dot, a sassy 17-year-old who hitches a ride with the pair during a road trip, and whose forwardness and lack of embarrassment about Trevor’s condition causes him to develop a crush on her.

Gomez is no stranger to indies, as she had just wrapped William H. Macey's Oklahoma-set Rudderless and stared in Harmony Korine's trippy crime-drama Springbreakers in 2013. 

The film begins shooting at the end of this month.  

Disney Gives GHOST IN THE SHELL A Release Date; Jungle Book'd

 

Mark your calendars if you're a fan of Scarlett Johansson pretending to be a cartoon character, as Disney has dated it's anime adaptation under it's Miramax banner, Ghost in the Shell, to April 14, 2017 which shockingly doesn't have a single Fast/Furious or comic book film opening that weekend.

The film follows a Section 9, a high-tech security division led by a beautiful and deadly cyborg commander (Johansson), as they track down a cyber-terrorist known as The Puppet Master, which draws them into a web of political corruption and intrigue.

If you're a fan of CGI animals though, John Favreau's The Jungle Book has been kicked from it's October 2015 slot, and will now open in April of 2015, Deadline reported earlier this evening. 

The film, which chronicles a young boy raised in the wilds of the Amazon with the help of a pack of wolves, a bear, and a black panther and stars  Bill Murray, Ben Kingsley, Idris Elba and Johansson (she's really busy).

Pete's Dragon, a remake of the 1970 film, will also open in August of 2016, and details the story of Pete, an orphan, and his best friend Elliot, an invisible green dragon in a whimsical journey through a small sea-side town.

All of these films will likely allow for billions of dollars to flow into the Disney money tank to fund at least 30 more years of Avengers and Star Wars. 

Stop Signing Worthless Petitions, Nerds: DREDD 2 is NOT Happening

 

Making the rounds for his smart sexy techno-noir thriller Ex Machina, screenwriter of the 2012 comic book remake of The Raid DREDD, Alex Garland, said that a sequel to the movie was unlikely, despite star Karl Urban giving fans the "Ron Pearlman/Guillermo Del Toro" treatment for the past two and a half years.

Courtesy of IGN:

And having his full and undivided attention, we asked Garland if Dredd 2 is still dead in the water.

“As far as I’m concerned? Yeah it is,” he explained. “My hope is, and I actually think this will happen – somebody else will do it. Not to be all coy and silly about it, but I think our film was better than the first one, right? Just to be blunt. And the job of the next people is to make their film better than ours. And then if they do that, then finally, maybe this character will break out in the way that it deserves to. But we’ll see.”

Garland, who comes across as kind of an asshole, does raise some valid points about annoying nerd-culture petitions for every single thing. (I myself signed quite a few to "Save" John Carter years ago) as he goes on to say:

“It makes me feel sad really. I feel grateful to the people who’ve attempted to get a sequel off the ground. And sorry that actually what happened was we let them down. Because the reality is that a film needs to acquit itself. It shouldn’t need a petition. And the truth is if it gets to the point where it needs a petition, it’s in big trouble anyway. That’s the cold hard reality of it. I feel a sense of residual guilt. It’s quite strong actually; it’s not that residual. Dredd was a very, very hard movie to work on, for all sorts of different reasons, and the reward would have been at the end of it that it all worked out. But it didn’t all work out. That’s the reality.”

Garland then discussed what would have happened to Dredd in future movies, which involves the 'Dark Judges' and other stuff that people will pretend to care about to get 'sympathy points'. 

DREDD released in 2012 to critical praise but only recouped $35 milllion of it's already miniscule $50 million production budget, and fan support has been unrelenting to get a sequel off the ground, even if comic book fans dont clearly understand how 'profit' seems to work.  

GONE GIRL Reunion Set for STRANGERS ON A TRAIN Remake

 

No rest for the wicked as they say, with news coming today that Ben Affleck, Gillian Flynn, and David Fincher of the acclaimed Gone Girl would be teaming up once again for a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's seminal 1951 adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's novel. 

Deadline reports:

This one might be best titled Strangers On A Plane, as Affleck will play a variation of the role played by Farley Granger of a tennis pro who is bored with his marriage and wants to get divorced, but instead gets entwined with a wealthy socialite psycho who proposes the notion of exchanging murders. The twist here is a compelling one. Affleck will play a movie star–in the middle of a campaign for an Oscar during awards season–whose private plane breaks down and is given a ride to LA on another plane by a wealthy stranger. In Fincher’s hands, who knows how that goes, but it sure does seem like fertile ground.

Certainly does seem right up Fincher's alley; but that would mean Affleck wouldn't get a dayoff for the next 10 years with Live By Night, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Justice League, and Strangers as well as the now dynamic duo of Flynn and Fincher, who are busy on their American spin of the British sci-fi thriller Utopia for HBO.

Either way, Hitchcock never really goes out of style, with films like Disturbia and programs like Bates Motel still in the public's eye.  

PURGE 3 Slashes Into Theaters July 1, 2016

 

It appears Universal has set the date for The Purge 3 and they apparently have some high hopes for the action-horror film, which will open against WB's TARZAN and Disney's The BFG an adaptation of the Ronald Dahl classic. 

What a weekend that will be. 
The Purge and The Purge: Anarchy were both made on microscopic budgets and far exceeded expectations, and can basically be mounted now as one of Universal's go-to franchises.
Anarchy released just this past summer and starred Frank Grillo, shooting it's way to more than $100 million world-wide.

The franchise is set in the not too distant future where, for one night only, all crime is legal including murder and follow a family or group of friends caught in the crossfire, with Anarchy stepping it up a notch with a New World Order/1% angle and look into the world of the Purge. 

The Pope Apparently Thought UNBROKEN Was Cool; Didn't See It.

 

Making her rounds promoting her inspiration World War II drama, Lara Croft met with Pope Francis after a Vatican screening of UNBROKEN which opens at the end of the month in Italian cinemas.

The Vatican said Jolie, accompanied by daughters Shiloh and Zahara and by Zamperini’s son, Luke Zamperini, attended the screening at the Pontifical Academy for Sciences for high-ranking Vatican prelates.

Among all religions, it can be said the Catholic Church has some of the most interesting tastes in film as released on their 'List of Films' from 1995, which can be read here  but should really be updated to include Man of Steel if we're being honest. 

Unfortunatley, Pope Francis did not see the film; but apparently thought it was a cool idea:

The Pontiff did not see the film, but met with Jolie in private shortly after the screening and was reportedly interested in the uplifting spiritual message of the pic in which Zamperini gets over post-traumatic stress thanks to his faith.

Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said the film shows “positive human and spiritual values, in particular forgiveness.”

Jolie also released a statement about the visit:

"Being invited with my film to the Vatican is an honor and a great tribute to the story that I have told in Unbroken. The story of the hero Louis a great example of strength and forgiveness."

UNBROKEN is now playing nationwide. 

Marco Beltrami to Score FANTASTIC FOUR

 

Academy Award nominated composer Marco Beltrami will be scoring 20th Century Fox's controversial Fantastic Four reboot, FIlm Music Reporter has learned. 

Beltrami, who has done the scores for Hellboy, Speed Racer, The Hurt Locker, 3:10 to Yuma, and the upcoming Hitman: Agent 47 has one of the craziest discographies in the business, and is often the go-to guy for a stylish and dark soundtrack,which would be in line with the tone Fantastic Four seems to be aiming at. 

The Marvel property seems to be the dark-horse of the upcoming 2015 year which includes Marvel's heavy hitter Avengers: Age of Ultron as well as ANT-MAN. 
The film stars Kate Mara, Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Bell, and Toby Kebbell and is set to release August 7th, 2015.

 The movie based on the Marvel Comics series centers on four young outsiders who teleport to an alternate and dangerous universe, which alters their physical form in shocking ways and who must learn to harness their daunting new abilities and work together to save Earth from a former friend turned enemy.

50 SHADES OF GREY Gets The 'R', Because of 'S'...And 'M'.

 

February is heating up despite the weather cooling down, as the first 'big' month for Hollywood in 2015 is set to kick off with the adaptation of E.L. James #1 Best-Seller, Fifty Shades of Grey premiering Valentine's Day weekend- and now with an R Rating attached.

Variety reports:

 The MPAA has deemed “the strong sexual content including dialogue, some unusual behavior and graphic nudity” worthy of an R rating

While some would argue that would damage the film's attendance, look no further than October's critically acclaimed Gone Girl which scored a bit north of $350 million off it's $60 mil budget, and spent almost an entire month in the Top 5. 
Grey has the distinct advantage of 'shock value' and 'see it just to see it' that will likely draw herds of housewives and girlfriends.

The unique thing about the film's rating is that this will be battling Kingsman: The Secret Service which was pushed from it's Fall 2014 release to battle Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele, a conflict which will see two big-name films, both with R ratings, and radically different content, battling for the top spot.

Sponge Bob, Jupiter Ascending, and Seventh Son premier the weekend before, so it's anyone's guess at this point how those will effect Grey if at all, given that the two fantasy movies have been pushed back almost an entire year from their original slate, and the fact Sponge Bob hasn't been culturally relevant since the early 2000's.  

Scarlett Johansson Will Be Your GHOST IN THE SHELL

 

The first bit of news to break from the Ghost in the Shell project- under the watchful eye of Steven Spielberg and Dreamworks- since Margot Robbie was in talks for the films lead, comes that the rumors are true and that LUCY and Captain America: The Winter Soldier actress Scarlett Johansson has signed on for the cyberpunk thriller.

Variety Reports with the Exclusive:

Johansson is set to star in DreamWorks’ adaptation of the popular anime pic “Ghost in the Shell.” Deadline Hollywood had reported that the actress had the offer to star but at the time she was still undecided about taking the role. Sources now say she has agreed to star in the pic.

This is slowly shaping up to be Hollywood's first major foray into the live action world of Anime adaptations since the long shelved AKIRA project at WB keeps bouncing around, and Tom Cruise's Edge of Tomorrow proved to be a critical darling; but didn't ignite a very profitable money machine.

Rupert Sanders (Snow White and the Huntsman) will be helming the actioner. 

Ghost in the Shell  was released in 1995 directed by Mamoru Oshii and based off of the manga of the same name which ran from 1989 to 1997 by Masamune Shirow and went on to spawn a sequel, an Anime series, an OVA, and 3 video-games.  

The film follows Section 9, a high-tech security division led by Motoko Kusanagi, as they track down a cyber-terrorist known as The Puppet Master, which draws them into a web of political corruption and intrigue.