A recent Deadline article floated the possibility that Robert Downey Jr. may not be the only person getting a big payday from the upcoming The Avengers 2. Writer/director Joss Whedon, whom many credit at least a portion of the film’s success too, is supposedly going to make somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 million for the project. Not bad for the man that used to make his bread and butter at the WB.

But not so fast, says Whedon, I’m rich, but I’m not that rich. He went on his blog, Whedonesque, to explain:

Hi guys.

I was going to let it slide, but I’ve got this sour taste in my mouth. (Mmmm, lemonade!). Some facts are not facts. I’m not going to go into the whole thing, but jeepers, I’m not getting $100 mil on Avengers 2. If I were, I would come on this site and laugh and laugh and laugh. I’m not making Downey money. I’m making A LOT, which is exciting. I’m not pretending to be a poor farmer, an Everyman, an ANYman. But that number is nuts. A few other things about me that have been “reported” that people should take with a grain of salt:

That I throw wild Hollywood parties where everyone is naked and dancing and wild and I remember to serve enough snacks.

That I can get a movie greenlit by sighing and staring into the middle distance.

That I ate a unicorn and made it winter for three years.

That I “can write.”

Well, that’s a load off. Sorry to get so personal — the whole thing’s a bit tawdry. But honestly, it bugged me. I’m off for a nice juicy steak. There’s a place downtown that does it with rosemary butter, it tastes just like unico — like a steak.

BYE-ee! J.

Now you’ll notice that Whedon clarified that he’s not “getting $100 mil on Avengers 2,” when in actuality Deadline reported that Whedon’s services for that pay check included writing and directing Avengers 2, consulting on the wide field of Marvel movie projects, and developing and executive producing the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. series for ABC. That’s still a lot of scratch, but if it’s more multiple projects over three years, then it seems to make (a little) more sense. Either way, Whedon’s a rich man who even FOX would be hard pressed to treat like $#!% anymore. Way to go, Joss!

Source: Screen Rant

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The recent announcement that there was another Dungeons & Dragons movie in the works at Warner Bros was met with the usual enthusiasm by fans for the RPG franchise, but it seems that the usual Hollywood complications may be interfering with just how soon we see a finished film.

Confused yet? Well so is Hasbro. The toy company is claiming that they own the rights to any Dungeons & Dragons film since they bought D&D developers Wizards Of The Coast several years back. Hasbro, it turn, has a development deal with Universal Pictures, with whom they produced last year’s Battleship, also based on Hasbro-owned property. “Hasbro owns the intellectual property rights to Dungeons & Dragons, period, because of Hasbro’s acquisition of Wizards Of The Coast in 1998,” said Wayne Charness, a spokesperson for Hasbro.

However, Warner Bros. asserts that Courtney Solomon, director of the 2000 bomb called Dungeons & Dragons still has the rights to develop a D&D film, which he’s now doing at Warners as a producer with David Lee Johnson (Wrath of the Titans) now penning the screenplay. Meanwhile, Universal has producer Chris Morgan (five out of the six Fast & Furious movies) guiding its own adaptation of D&D.

This has all the makings of another Spider-Man or Hobbit years long legal battle over who owns the rights to what. I guess the point is don’t hold your breath for a new D&D movie for sometime in the near future.

More news as it develops.

Source: Blastr

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“Order 67?” “Wookie Hunters?” “Gungan Frontier?” Could these be some of the new Star Wars titles coming to a theater, TV screen or video game shelf near you soon? IGN seems to think it’s a possibility.

Now since the Walt Disney Company bought Lucasfilm, they have taken the cap off on all sorts of Star Wars related developments be they movies, TV series or video games. The full list of URLs is below. Now you can click on them, but they won’t tell you anything about the nature of the project behind the URL, but the various titles listed do offer some intriguing possibilities.

Here’s the list:

• gunganfrontier2.com
• gunganfrontier3.com
• gunganfrontier4.com
• order67.net
• starwarsalliance.com 
• starwarsrebels.com 
• starwarswolfpack.com 
• wolfpackadventures.net 
• wookieehunters.com

While it’s a bit disturbing that Lucasfilm is planning not just one, but four “Gungan Frontier” projects, “Wookie Hunters” sounds interesting, and is maybe a chance to highlight a little appreciated bit of Star Wars mythology. Meanwhile, “Rebels” and “Alliance” sounds a little broad, “Order 67″ sounds a little vague, and “Wolfpack” or “Wolfpack Adventures” sounds rather generic. I wouldn’t bet the bank that these are projects on the front burner, but they maybe kicking around the Lucasfilm offices regardless. I guess we’ll find out.

More news as it develops.

Source: Blastr

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Dead Space is a very popular video game franchise that obviously takes its inspiration from the haunted spaceship horror motif coined by Alien. So it would be a natural fit to have a horror movie director slip into the role and bring Dead Space to life in a live-action movie, right? But how about a horror movie legend like John Carpenter? Could you see the man behind Halloween, The Thing, Star Man and Assault on Precinct 13 directing a Dead Space movie?

Well, John Carpenter thinks he can? He told IGN that he was seriously interested in the possibility:

“I would love to make Dead Space [into a film], I’ll tell you that right now. That one is ready-made. You know it’s great. The first game was more – I guess it was like Alien – but not quite. It was a little different than that. I maintain that Dead Space would just make a great movie because you have these people coming onto an abandoned, shut-down space ship and they have to start it up and something’s on board. It’s just great stuff. I would love to make Dead Space [into a film], I’ll tell you that right now. That one is ready-made.”

Of course, Carpenter’s last trip into space, 2001′s Ghosts of Mars, didn’t turn out so well, but his last film, The Ward, I enjoyed a lot, so I wouldn’t mind seeing what Carpenter could do with an established brand like Dead Space.

What do you Bastards think?

Source: Comic Book Movie

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It looks like actor Craig Ferguson is going from good cop to bad news. The popular genre actor, best known for walking the beat as Sheriff Jack Carter for five years on Eureka, is joining the regular series cast of Haven for season four.

According to Deadline, the new season of Haven picks up six months after season three’s cliffhanger ending where the titular town was nearly destroyed by a meteor shower. Ferguson comes into the picture as William, a “handsome, mysterious stranger, whose secret agenda” involves Haven lead character Audrey Parker (Emily Rose).

It should prove interesting to see Ferguson play a darker character, as you may have inferred from his years on Eureka, Ferguson has a lot of comedic experience behind him as one of the founders of Second City Detroit and as a member of the Montreal improv group On The Spot. What will Ferguson bring to this world originally created by Stephen King? I guess you’ll have to wait for the new season of Haven to see.

Since Eureka wrapped Ferguson has guest starred on the series Happily Divorced and Primeval: New World. Meanwhile, filming of the fourth season of Haven got underway in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Source: Blastr

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Well that didn’t take long. It seems that Robert Redford may have let slip a bit of serious spoilage in regards to his role in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Poor guy. It’s worth noting that Redford doesn’t have a lot of experience on these big studio tentpoles in the age of internet journalism, so he didn’t know what he was in for. I mean, everyone knows that Butch and Sundance died in a shootout with the Bolivian military, right? RIGHT?!

We’ll get to Redford in a minute. In other Winter Soldier news, new cast member Anthony Mackie, AKA: Sam Wilson, AKA: The Falcon, talked about the size of role his character will play in the sequel. While talking to The Times-Picayune, Mackie said that he’s in about 60 per cent of the movie by his reckoning, but more than that, this thing is going to be so loaded with so many superheroes and super-stars, it’s going to feel like a sequel to another Marvel movie.

“Sam’s very involved. I’m in about 60 percent of the movie,” Mackie said. “Captain America, the Black Widow and The Falcon take down the Winter Solider together, and they solve the crime at hand and take down the Winter Soldier. So this movie, if you look at the cast, with everybody in (the fictional crime-fighting group) S.H.I.E.L.D. and (co-stars Robert) Redford and Sam Jackson and everybody who’s in the movie, it’s kind of turning into ‘The Avengers Part 2‘ because the cast is so big.”

Well, he just set the bar sky high.

As for Redford, he got caught spoiling by The Straits Time (then repeated by Here Be Geeks) with a potentially major reveal regarding his character Alexander Pierce, the head of S.H.I.E.L.D. “I like the idea of playing a villain,” he said. “I did that just because it’s a different thing for me to do.”

Fair enough, but was Redford speaking generally, or will Pierce turn out to be a double agent, perhaps even playing key Winter Soldier antagonist Soviet  General Aleksander Lukin, who, unless I’m mistaken, hasn’t been cast (or had his casting announced) yet.

More news as it develops.

Source: Comic Book Movie

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I know a lot of people are hopelessly beholden to the John Williams Superman theme from 1978, so much so that it prevents them from seeing the score being produced by Hans Zimmer for the upcoming Man of Steel with anything less than contempt. Understandable, the Williams score has been the “voice” of Superman for more than a generation, but a) Can’t we give Zimmer a chance? and b) Wasn’t Bryan Singer being overly respectful of the ’78 movie one of the prime sources of nerd rage in regards to Superman Returns?

Well, maybe this will change your mind. Click here to listen to a sample of Zimmer’s Steel score.

Come on, even you have to admit it sounds good. Unless I’m mistaken, this is the isolated score from the most recent Man of Steel trailer. It reminds me very much of Michael Giacchino’s score for J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek, it’s both a bold departure, yet somehow thematically faithful to the music used in previous movies. And with all the drums, I couldn’t help but think of Bear McCreary’s score for Battlestar Galactica, another case where an upstart composer had to follow-up a classic John Williams theme and create something sonically new. From my point of view, it’s another reason to get excited about Man of Steel, now a little over one month away from release.

You can pre-order the album now before its June 11th release.

What do you Bastards think of the new sound of Superman?

Source: Cinema Blend

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I saw Iron Man 3 in 3-D and I have to say that I’d much rather have seen it in 2-D. It seems to be the rare movie that’s able to make the jump to that third screen dimension, but Hollywood will be damned rather than stop trying so here we go again, this time with X-Men: Days of Future Past.

X-Men director Bryan Singer had this to Tweet earlier today, “Shooting native 3D and Simul-cam. Looks like friggin mission control.”

He also Tweeted this picture.

Huh, it does look like mission control. Hopefully, it’s all for not and the 3-D looks awesome. I won’t hold my breathe though.

Days of Future Past, based on the classic comic by Chris Claremont and John Bryne, and starring Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Michael Fassbender, Anna Paquin, Ellen Page, Shawn Ashmore, and Peter Dinklage is scheduled to be released on July 18, 2014.

More news as it develops.

Source: Coming Soon

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With the success of the Veronica Mars Kickstarter campaign, it seems that everyone and their brother wants to save their pet project. SMGO.tv had that thought anyway, when they wanted to save the recently cancelled animated series Young Justice and Green Lantern: The Animated Series. Warner Bros, DC Comics and Cartoon Network pulled the plug on these shows, but the producers at SMGO.tv wouldn’t go quietly into that good night, and decided to raise the money themselves through Kickstarter. Bold move, but sadly it was not meant to be.

Here’s the official statement from SMGO on the matter.

“Hey all, I’ve been trying (all day) to come up with a slightly better way to say this, but I’m just going to give it to you straight. Warner said no – they don’t think we can reach our goals – do you believe that?”

I do believe that, actually. I admire their noble ambition, but it’s no easy feat to fund an animated series indie-style, let alone two. “A” for effort, but it was never going to be practical I’m afraid.

In the meantime, you can enjoy Cartoon Network’s new DC-based series Beware the Batman and Teen Titans Go! So there’s that.

Source: Blastr

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“Iron What?” Now that Iron Man 3 has gobbled up all your allowance money for the month, let’s look forward to June 14 with another TV spot for Zack Snyder‘s Man of Steel.

In case you’ve forgotten, the film was produced by Dark Knight auteur Christopher Nolan, and written by David S. Goyer. Starring Henry Cavill as Superman, Amy Adams as Lois Lane, Michael Shannon as General Zod, Russell Crowe as Jor-El and Kevin Costner and Diane Lane as Pa and Ma Kent, Man of Steel retells and updates the origins of the Last Son of Krypton, how he came to Earth and how he embraced his destiny as the world’s greatest hero. It comes out June 14th in the theaters everywhere.

Here’s the action-packed new TV spot.

Source: Coming Soon

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