When Hugh Laurie not so silently left the production of the new RoboCop last week, many of us had to wonder if this wasn’t a sign that something was rotten in the state of future Detroit.

Then there’s this: Fernando Mereilles, director of City of God and a friend of RoboCop director José Padilha, was promoting his latest film when, during an interview with a Portuguese news site, and he let it slip that Padilha is maybe not having such a great time on the film. Warning, the following was put through Google Translation, so it might not be Mereilles words exactly:

“I talked to José Padilha for a week by phone,” Mereilles said. “He will begin filming RoboCop. He is saying that it is the worst experience. For every 10 ideas he has, 9 are cut. Whatever he wants, he has to fight. ‘This is hell here,’ he told me. ‘The film will be good, but I never suffered so much and do not want to do it again.’ He is bitter, but it’s a fighter. “

So given Mereilles proposed ratio of every nine out of ten ideas cut we can either assume that gold like RoboCop basically being a Transformer and the ED-209 being deployed in the Middle East are either two of the ones, or not really Padilha’s ideas to begin with. Now stress from the studio isn’t necessarily bad for a director, for instance George Lucas made the original Star Wars under extreme duress from the studio, but the question is can Padilha make lemonade out of these lemons? And did these negative vibes contribute to Laurie’s decision to jump ship?

Time will tell.

Source: Blastr

No Comments

Disney’s The Lone Ranger had a rocky road through development as the studio insisted deep cuts to the budget before it was greenlit. The Gore Verbinski-directed film starring Armie Hammer as the titular hero and Johnny Depp as his sidekick Tonto finally got rolling earlier this year, but now it seems that there’s some cash flow issues for the troubled production as it moves forward in New Mexico.

The Hollywood Reporter is saying that once again The Lone Ranger is facing production trouble. Principal photography began on February 28th but the shoot is dragging on because of severe wind and dust storms that keeping hitting the outdoor sets. Now weeks behind schedule, the film’s budget is ratcheting back up to the $250 million mark, the plateau that Disney balked at when Ranger was in pre-production.

Now the film’s backers are forcing Verbinksi to make more cuts and do on-set rewrites to attempt to bring the budget back under control. The situation is rather financially dire as shooting is expected to continue until August, and then the rush will be on to make sure that the film makes its July 3rd, 2013 release date.

But despite that, once advertising and publicity costs are factored in, the total budget will likely exceed $300 million, meaning that the film will have to make in excess of $800 million at the box office to be successful. Considering that we’re talking about a classic cowboy tale like The Lone Ranger, will the film be able to make that much back? Doubtful, but who would have thought that Verbinski could have turned a series of Pirate movies into a billion dollar franchise?

More news as it develops.

Source: Cinema Blend

No Comments

With tonight’s release of the 3-D upsell of Titanic, it’s only natural that the two men behind that hit, writer/director James Cameron and producer Jon Landau, be talking a bit more about their next hit, the untitled sequel to Avatar.

While talking to Bleeding Cool’s Brendon Connelly, at an event about the 3-D conversion of Titanic, Cameron and Landau discussed the work being done right now on the film, and the nature of the progress being made to get Avatar 2 to the big screen.

“Most of the work that’s being done right now is foundational,” Cameron said. “It’s rewriting the code and building the software tools, it’s not the creative work with the cast. That doesn’t start until later this year.

“We kind of reinvented the wheel with Avatar,” he continued “Now it’s more refining the process. The story will be completely new and fresh with new characters and environments and creatures, but the actual methodology will be the same.”

Landau added that some of that work has to do specifically with the much-talked about underwater scenes in the next film. “We have already made a commitment that the Avatar sequels will have underwater sequences, inspired as much by time Jim has spent scuba diving as his expedition to the Mariana Trench,” said Landau. “And we’re working on a way to do performance capture underwater right now. We have some really good people working on that. We set the problems, bring in people and say ‘Attack it. Here’s what we want to do, and we believe you can do it,’ and then we just have to get them to believe they can do it too.

You can read more from the pair, including how environmentally friendly the production’s being, and what the future marketing of Avatar might look like by clicking over to Bleeding Cool here.

In other news, following up on recent statements from Landau about how Avatar 2 was at least four years away, the producer is again inferring that the sequel may not make its previously established December 2014 release date.

We’re not really naming dates on that, but I think 2014 will be a tough date for us to make. To us it’s about getting it right. Titanic was supposed to be a summer movie; it was a December movie. The first Avatar was supposed to be 2008; it was 2009. Movies make release dates; release dates don’t make movies. We want to get it right.

We’ve started already. WETA are already working and we have our core team, (animation supervisor) Richie Baneham and (digital effects supervisor) Nolan Murtha, working with us… They are working on environments, they are working on…some of the movie is going to be underwater, how do we do performance capture underwater.

Learn more from the horses mouth in this video from Empire:

Source: /Film

Comment (1)

I know, we all hate the very idea that some Hollywood types think that they’re sharp enough and talented enough to remake Akira as a live-action, American-made film.

Chill. The. F***. Out.

Still, you’ve got to find these interesting. They’re a pair of storyboards from the production of a live-action Akira circa 2008. In this phase, Irish short film director Ruairi Robinson was attached to direct a script by Book of Eli writer Gary Whitta and produced by Leonard DiCaprio. The below storyboards were drawn up by Sylvain Despretz, who’s worked previously worked on nerd-friendly fair like Gladiator and Alien: Resurrection.

So let’s take a look, shall we?

It’s probably hard to get a read from a handful of storyboards just what the tone and look for the film was going to be, but they sure look nice. Right?

Source: Blastr

Comment (1)