Universal's MONSTERS Universe- More 'Mash' Less 'Monsters'

 

What began as a whisper and took form this past October with the excellent gothic adventure Dracula Untold starring Luke Evans and Tywin Lannister, has taken some sort of shape at The Hollywood Reporter's Exectuve Roundtable where Universal Chairman Donna Langley spoke on fitting heavy-hitters of old like The Wolfman, The Creature, Dracula, Frankenstein and his Bride, and The Invisible Man into a contemporary megaplex landscape where only capes seem to fly.

Donna and Brad, how do you get into this game? Donna has said that Universal's monster movies are not competitive with the superheroes.

LANGLEY To Alan's point, we have to mine our resources. We don't have any capes [in our film library]. But what we do have is an incredible legacy and history with the monster characters. We've tried over the years to make monster movies — unsuccessfully, actually. So, we took a good, hard look at it, and we settled upon an idea, which is to take it out of the horror genre, put it more in the action-adventure genre and make it present day, bringing these incredibly rich and complex characters into present day and reimagine them and reintroduce them to a contemporary audience.

While some websites, and fans, have taken these comments with extreme venom, Mrs. Langley isn't exactly wrong.
Monsters, once a prized Saturday night fright of the 50s and 60s, gave way long ago to the more profitable slasher pictures and now have found themselves as the butt of cruel jokes in an era where thrills and chills are mostly felt from torture porn, found footage features, and possession stories.

Superheroes, on the other hand, are currently dominating the cinematic landscape and, as was apparent from Dracula Untold, sometimes these 'monsters' need to lose their teeth and take to the tights- even giving Vlad Teppes (Dracula) a custom set of badass armor and a trademark sword. 

While Universal recently tried to revitalize it's namesake with 2010's The Wolfman, intended to launch a universe with Hugo Weaving as the 'crossover' icon, that failed somewhat, leaving these cinema icons to stagnate. 
With the recent success of Showtime's Penny Dreadful, and shows like Grimm, Supernatural, and Once Upon a Time we know that spooks and ghouls still have a place in modern mythology- just tapping into them on the big screen might be a bit more tricky.

Dracula Untold, made on a $70 million budget, recouped about $200 million worldwide (72% of that earning came from overseas markets) so it was not a failure by any means- and ended with a modern day hook signaling the "Master Vampire" (Charles Dance) having bigger plans for Dracula...and the rest of the monsters as a whole.

James O'Baar Shares Insights; What to Expect from CROW Reboot

 

At Wizard World Tulsa Comic Con over the weekend from the plains of Tulsa, Oklahoma, amongst the stars of AMC's The Walking Dead and other icons of pop-culture, artist and writers James O'Barr spoke at his "Creating the Crow" Panel on Saturday night, before actually talking about the acclaimed comic, to share the chronicle of The Crow reboot, what fans should expect, and why he agreed to let Spanish director F. Javier Guiterrez take the helm. 

O'Baar remembers back in the early 2000s when the reboot idea came about and recounts getting together with the cast and crew of the Alex Proyas 1990s classic to 'boycott' the film:

"We got together and we did everything short of starting a petition to keep it from getting made and then it fell to the wayside then it would re-appear six months later with a new writer and a new actor- Jason Statham, frickin' Marky Mark, and Bradley Cooper - so after five years it was like well, it's Hollywood, they're just gonna piss away millions of dollars on something no one wants to see, and so everyone was so against I thought well it won't get made anyhow...and then Relativity Studio picked up the rights to it."

That's when O'Baar remembers  Guiterrez being brought on, saying he'd seen a few films from him and that he was a "very talented film maker".

 "Then out of the blue one week I got a call from him, from Spain, and he said- in his broken English- 'I want to come and talk to you about The Crow'- so I thought 'Perfect, i'll pick him up at the airport, lecture him for a fucking hour, then put him back on the plane', and I did, I said no one wants this, no one wants to see this, that movie is Brandon [Lee]'s legacy, every director that's been involved in a Crow sequel since the first one has never worked in America again, do you really want to commit career suicide with your first English speaking film?"

O'Barr said Guiterrez let him go on for about an hour before saying that he was right- the first movie was perfect- but he doesn't want to touch that, he wants to adapt the book.
"Okay," said O'Barr, "Now you have my interest."

The film, O'Baar said, is maybe 40% of the book. "It feels like the book, at heart it has all the right emotions in it; but it was a very low budget film," O'Barr then compared The Crow's relatively low shooting budget to "90 minutes of the Big Bang Theory".
"There's certain things they couldn't do," O'Baar said, "A lot of things had to be altered or removed."

O'Baar said he was very happy with the film and the late Brandon Lee's performance; but there was a lot of things he was sad didn't make it to the screen.

"I spent a few days with [Guiterrez] and we talked about a lot of things like our favorite films, what we would like to do with [The Crow] and then we went to Relativity and said 'Look, we want to do this together', and they were very open to it- so they approached this actor, Luke Evans, about playing Eric."

O'Barr then corrected himself about who picked Evans and why:

 

"Actually, it was [Guiterrez] and I who picked Luke- when [Guiterrez] first came to the U.S. he showed me all of the actors who had auditioned for the role, and I was a little suspect. I had his phone and here was [a picture of] the actor and here's the actor in the make-up and I was sliding through them, laughing hysterically, 'Oh look Bradley Cooper and a big clown face', some of them it wasn't what was so hilarious, you know, but I got to this one actor and he had this really intense look  and I went to the next shot where he did the make-up test and I thought 'this is the guy right here', I didn't even know who he was at the time, and I said 'This is the guy', and [Guiterrez] said 'I know, I absolutely agree , that's who I picked too, so we got to Relativity and it turns out that was Luke Evans, so they approached Evans and he flew to America to get my blessing before he would take the part, so that's another good sign right there."

O'Baar then praised Evans, saying he was just getting big in America with roles in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, Dracula: Untold, and Fast and the Furious 6. 

 With the director and star in place, O'Baar then told Relativity that he wasn't going to let them use his name to sell the film, and that if he was going to be attached to it he wanted what he had in the first film which was in on every decision regarding casting and "most importantly," control over the film's soundtrack. 

"It's set at such a very specific point in time and the music is so important to it," O'Baar said, "because it was important to me when I was writing it, and all those bands with the exception of the Cure were all friends of mine and fans of the book, so it wasn't so difficult to get them to do an original song."

Then O'Baar describe the film's tone:

"I have a lot of control over this. It's going to be closer to an art-house film than an action John Woo-styalized thing. Parts of it will be in black and white, parts will be in technicolor- the happy parts will be in technicolor- all the violent stuff will be shot on 1970's film stock so it'll be really gritty and grainy so it has that Taxi Driver look to it. I ived 35 years in Detroit. Violence is ugly and I want it to be ugly on screen. I don't want it to be heroic, and I do not want it to be stylized, so I'm actually excited about it."

O'Barr went on to say however that it's Hollywood so it could all fall apart; but at this point the studio has so much time and money invested into it that It would be "foolish" for them not to go forward with it.

O'Barr asked the crowd if "That sounds ok" to them, which received a very loud round of applause.

"I can't express how important it is that you realize this is not taking away anything from Brandon or Alex- that film is perfect as it is; but this is just a chance to explore all of the different themes, you can have talking trains and horses and all of the visual metaphors from my art that can actually be brought to the screen this time."

O'Baar ended, reciting his go to analogy of Bela Lugosi's Dracula and there's Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula- same source material; but they're two completely different films, and they're both valid." 

International Trailer for DRACULA UNTOLD

 

This October will be seeing the rebirth of one of the most timeless "monsters" ever created; but instead of a spooky old castle and a winding Gothic yarn, Universal is giving Dracula a tale more rooted in history and humanity than in nightmares and Horror movies.

Dracula Untold follows Romanian prince Vlad Dracul III, known as Vlad Tepes and the Impaler, played by Luke Evans (Fast and Furious 6, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug ) as he makes the ultimate sacrifice to an ancient evil (Game of Thrones' Charles Dance) to save his kingdom and his family against the Turkish invasion of Romania, lead by the villianous Mehmed (Dominic Cooper). 

The film is directed by Gary Shore and is the start of Universal's latest adventure to reboot their 'monster' films. 

Dracula Untold releases October 10, 2014.  

SHADOW OF THE COLOSSUS is Back on Track With MAMA Director

 

The Hollywood Reporter's Heat Vision set it's sights on the news that Mama director Andres Muschietti would be set to bring Sony's long gestating Shadow of the Colossus to life with Seth Lockhead who penned a dark fairy-tale of his own with 2011's HANNA. 

Muschietti’s sister and producing partner, Barbara Muschietti, is boarding the project and will produce alongside Kevin Misher, who produces through his Misher Films banner.

The film, which has been in development since 2009, got closest to coming to life after the announcement of Chronicle director Josh Trank as the diector, which ultimatley fell through after Trank was faced with tackling the Fantastic Four reboot over at 20th Fox. 

The game, which has sold over two million copies world-wide since it's release on the PlayStation 2 in 2005 to universal critical acclaim, follows the story of a young man named Wander who carries his love, Mono, into a mystical and cursed land where he must slay 16 giants to save her, all while being persued by mysterious tribesmen from his villiage who wish to stop him from tampering with fate itself.

Sony Pictures describes Shadow of the Colossus as "set in an epic-scale world filled with mythic giants and disembodied spirits." The studio says Muschietti is a fan of the game and "has a strong vision for the film and its characters, and seeks to translate the immersive game experience into a film that stays true to the human story of a young man attempting to save his lost love by accomplishing a seemingly impossible task ... the destruction of the colossi who roam the forbidden land."

The video-game has been a constant source in the compelling argument if video-games can be considered "art" or not, and has even made an appearence as a brilliant coping mechanism and back-ground meta plot in the Adam Sandler drama Reign Over Me.  

"We knew we had our director once we heard Andy's take on the material — it was genius," said Sony Pictures president of production Michael De Luca in a release. "The themes, characters and supernatural elements of the story have incredible international appeal with fans of the game in the millions."

All the pieces are now in place, and after the lack-luster returns of Sony's latest big-budget spectacle, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and their video-game cash-cow Resident Evil franchise drawing to a close, perhaps it's time for the studio to set it's sights on something broader. 
Played right, it's hard not to imagine Sony turning the game into a trilogy; if done carefully.

The project has the potential to be a mega hit, now to see where the casting department decides to go. 

Margot Robbie In Talks for GHOST IN THE SHELL

 

Things have been quiet on the front of Dreamwork's and Steven Spielberg's passion project, Ghost in the Shell since it was announced in late January that Snow White and the Huntsman director Rupert Sanders would be helming the cyber-punk live-action adaptation of the 1995 anime masterpiece.

Now, word from The Wrap, in an Exclusive, comes that Australian actress Margot Robbie, who took a star-making role in Scorcese's The Wolf of Wall Street just last year, is in talks to star as the film's lead- "Major" Motoko Kusanagi (although I can predict a name change, obviously.) 

Margot Robbie is in early talks to star in “Ghost in the Shell,” which Rupert Sanders is directing for DreamWorks, multiple individuals familiar with the project told TheWrap.

A live-action film based on the popular Japanese manga created by Masamune Shirow, the story follows the exploits of a member of a covert ops unit of the Japanese National Public Safety Commission that specializes in fighting technology-related crime.

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.

I've long speculated that if the comic-book bubble ever bursts, anime and manga will be the next hot commodity for Hollywood.  
What do you think of Robbie for Ghost in the Shell? 

GODZILLA 2 to Bring Mothra, King Ghidorah, and Rodan: Let Them Fight.

 

When your GODZILLA film makes a lot of money, the first thing you're gonna want is a sequel. 
In the case of Legendary's monster-sized epic that ended up grossing close to $200 million domestic and almost $500 million total off of a modest $160 budget- that sequel is a sure thing.

While Gareth Edwards is pretty busy about to start on an untitled Star Wars entry, he has confirmed after he gets back from a galaxy far, far away he will return to the world of Godzilla and of giant monsters smashing things.  

From MTV: 

Director Gareth Edwards, who is currently working on “Star Wars: Episode VII,” greeted fans with a video message shot in San Francisco, thanking them for the “okay” box office returns of the first movie and their support over the past two years. (The first announcement of “Godzilla” rocked Comic-Con in 2012.)

The fan enthusiasm, Edwards said — joking that he was supervising the reconstruction of the city after Godzilla’s destruction — “means we get to make another one. First, we genuinely need a break from all the pressure of doing a major franchise and all the fanboy opinions that go along with that.”

The concept footage then revealed silhouettes of Rodan, Mothra, and King Ghidorah with the words "CONFLICT INEVITABLE: Let The Fight" appearing signaling a colossal monster beat down for the anticipated sequel. 

Wonder Woman Revealed for BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE

 

After months of speculation, rumor, and false exclusives, cinematic visionary Zack Snyder brought Gal Gadot, Henry Cavill, and Ben Affleck on stage at Warner Brother's SDCC Panel today to show Wonder Woman to the world for the first time in all of her ass-kicking glory- as well as some footage from the film of Batman and Superman. 

The footage has been described in intimate detail- albiet brief.

It's pouring rain in Gotham City and Batman is atop a roof, he fires up the Bat signal, sporting the new Batman symbol. It shines through the rain but it's stopped by a floating object in the sky:

Superman.

His crosses his arms and looks to a fully armored Batman (think The Dark Knight Returns) with eyes glowing white. Superman's eyes begin to glow red, and Batman is unflinching

Cut to black. 

That was it; but it was enough to light up the internet with fanboy joy, rage, and speculation. 

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice in theaters May 2016.  

Legendary Will Journey to 'SKULL ISLAND' to Revisit Kong In 2016

 

It's been a day of stunning revelations as the biggest event in nerd-culture reaches is boiling point with San Diego Comic Con 2014.
This morning, during Legendary's panel after the teaser for Guillermo Del Toro's Crimson Peak and a tease of GODZILLA 2 Legendary showed a very brief surprise with Skull Island. 

From Collider:

 The Skull Island teaser was incredibly brief, but it opened with a pan over a violent, storm-entrenched ocean while an ominous passage was read through narration.  The camera then found an isolated island, also entrenched in storm, and as we crossed through the untouched trees, bypassed swinging monkeys, and flew with wild birds, we finally came upon Kong himself standing tall and pounding his chest.

Skull Island was last seen in Peter Jackson's 2005 remake King Kong and has yet to be fully explored past the KONG films. 
The film is described to explore the origins of King Kong, the last of his kind by the time the film ever reach him; but in the 2005 prequel novel, "Kong: Island of the Skull", the island and it's culture are explored in horrifying and intense detail, leading to believe this could find some inspiration from the novel. 

Also to note, in the same novel, the Skull Islanders speak the language of the Old Ones, from H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos- which Legendary will also be adapting in At the Mountains of Madness so could Kong, Godzilla, and Cthulhu find themselves in the same universe? Time will tell. 

Joruney to Skull Island  on November 4, 2016.

Gus Van Sant for Adaptation of DEATH NOTE?

 

From Shock Till You Drop by way of Tracking Board comes some interesting news regarding the big-screen American adaption of the best-selling franchise, Death Note in that PSYCHO and Milk director Gus Van Sant could be helming the supernatural thriller.

Dan Lin, Doug Davison, Roy Lee, and Brian Witten are producing through Vertigo Entertainment, Witten Pictures, and Lin Pictures. Vertigo and Lin Pictures were both involved with this year’s enormously popular “Lego Movie.” Lin also produced Guy Ritchie’s “Sherlock Holmes” and its sequel, and Lee is a producer on Vertigo and Prime Universe’s in-development adaptation of the “Thief” video game franchise.

The film was originally set to be tackled by Iron Man 3 director Shane Black, who left to go do the "sequel" to Predator. 
Either way, Van Sant is a two-time Oscar nominated director, and the source material- while crazy- might be easier to adapt than such Japanese inspired works as AKIRA that WB have been kicking around for years.

Death Note follows Light Yagami, a Japanese high-school student who accidentally comes into the possession of a "Death Note", a God of Death's notebook, which allows him to write down anyone he chooses in the notebook to die in any way or time that he writes.
His powers, that he uses to cut down crime drastically, are soon observed by the FBI and INTERPOL who recruit the mysterious "L" to hunt him, and the ultimate game of cat and mouse begins. 

Mark Wahlberg: THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN?

 

According to UK News site, The Mirror, Transformers: Age of Extinction star and all around American icon Mark Wahlberg could be starring in an adaption of the classic TV series The Six Million Dollar Man helmed by Peter Berg- who recently directed Wahlberg and other high-calibur talent to a $150 million tune in last year's Lone Survivor.

The 43-year-old actor is said to be in talks with Universal Pictures to take on the lead role in a big-screen adaptation of the 70s sci-fi TV series, The Tracking Board reports.

The story followed astronaut Steve Austin - who was played by Lee Majors in the original series - whose body is rebuilt with cybernetic technology after suffering traumatic injuries in an aircraft crash.

Battleship filmmaker Peter Berg is reportedly attached to produce and possibly direct if the project comes together, which would see him reunite with his Lone Survivor colleague Wahlberg.

Wahlberg is a hot commodity at the box office and at being a badass, so it wouldn't be too much of a shock if this goes through.
Berg also is in need of another hit for Universal after his 2012 venture Battleship "sunk" at the box office years ago. 
There have been 3 recent attempts to revive the series- none of which have gone through so much.