Moby is offering non-profit filmmakers his entire catalog of music, for free.
Back in the ’70s and ’80s, novelist Stephen King started doing something similar, giving budding filmmakers the rights to his short stories for a dollar. While most of the people who created films based on King’s short stories didn’t become famous, one did: Frank Darabont, the guy who directed the “The Shawshank Redemption” and “The Green Mile”—both films based on King stories. Oh, and Darabont created a little series you might have heard of called “The Walking Dead.”
Meanwhile, the only indication that Shyamalan, 42, is behind “After Earth” arrives in tiny font on the movie’s trailer credits and posters — a far cry from the “from writer-director M. Night Shyamalan” over-the-title marquee ID that accompanied several of his previous films. Though Shyamalan has written and directed nine films that have generated over $2.1 billion in ticket sales, a series of misfires have tarnished his once-sterling reputation in the industry.
Studio executives declined to answer questions about why they are marketing “After Earth” as a “two-hander” (industry parlance for a movie with two primary characters). In a statement, Jeff Blake, Sony’s worldwide marketing and distribution chairman, explained Shyamalan’s omission from promo materials was a joint decision.
“Night is, without a doubt, a world-class filmmaker who we were thrilled to team up with on this project,” Blake said. “Together, we decided to focus our campaign on both the action and Will and Jaden given that ‘After Earth’ is an adventure story of a father and son.”
That last quote is a nice way of saying, “let’s not piss off our director.” BTW, the marketing kind of hides this, but the star of the movie is really Jaden Smith—not Will.
Street Legal Batmobile: Team Galag, a group of racers who all hail from Saudi Arabia, will be entering their to-scale Batmobile (seen above) in this year’s Gumball 3000. A win seems virtually impossible, given the nature of the race and the Batmobile’s top speed of 100 mph, but that doesn’t seem to be making us any less jealous. source
The dinosaur sequel, being directed by Colin Trevorrow, was due to begin production June 24 for a release date of June 13, 2014.
But on Wednesday the studio put the brakes on the project, deciding it needed more time for development.
While we don’t have much of an opinion on this news, we imagine there are more than a few Jurassic Park fans out there thrilled to hear that JP4 won’t be rushed to the silver screen.
dglsplsblg said: yea haters. talk about a over simplification. then again, i shouldn’t expect any better from you guys.
hgprime said: I think people get mad when someone with a recognizable name does it because they probably have access to funds at their disposal via normal means while unknowns, who the sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo were meant for, do not.
» SFB says: You’re both misunderstanding why Braff got the money. He wasn’t taking away money from other projects—rather, he had a built-in audience that would spend money on his projects. As Seth Godin explained in a post on the matter last year, “Kickstarter appears to be a great way to find fans for your work. You put up a great video clip and a story and wait for people who will love it to find you. But that’s not what happens. What happens is that people who ALREADY have a tribe, like Amanda Palmer, use Kickstarter to organize and activate that tribe. Kickstarter is the last step, not the first one.” In other words, Braff didn’t take money away from other projects—he leveraged his own audience, who may or many not have had an interest in any other Kickstarter in the first place. That Braff is able to raise money with this audience doesn’t make him a bad person, and it doesn’t mean that other people won’t be able to get their Kickstarters funded. It simply makes him able to use different means to reach his audience.
Another point to be made here: Getting financing in the film industry is tough, and there are almost always strings attached. You like Paul Thomas Anderson movies, the way that they’re uncompromising with the source material? It seems like it takes him forever to make them, doesn’t it? Well, there’s a reason for that: Quite often, studios aren’t willing to play ball on certain kinds of productions. His last movie, “The Master,” only got made because he happened to get funding from Larry Ellison’s daughter, because the studio system would have forced him to compromise the film’s vision too much. That’s what Braff was trying to do here—he would have had to make a lot of compromises to make his movie other ways. The funding method allows him to keep his film’s integrity, no matter your opinion on said film’s integrity. Sure, he has a bigger tribe than most, but he was able to build it, so why shouldn’t he use it? — Ernie @ SFB
Tony Stark inherited his father’s brains, and eventually, heeded the call to heroism. Now, the man who put that Marvel character on the pop culture map is being beckoned toward fulfilling his own familial destiny.
Robert Downey Jr. keyed the rise of Marvel Studio’s empire of superhero franchise films, his first two turns as the title playboy in Iron Man leading to Captain America, Thor and The Avengers. With the third Iron Man film less than a month from release, the second Avengers already written and a small vault of gold a reward for his super efforts, Downey says that he’s looking toward exiting the mecha-armor for good — thanks in part to an ankle injury he suffered doing an on-set stunt.
Nothing lasts forever, but we imagine there will be more than a few Marvel/RDJ fans who are less than thrilled to hear the news. Do you think Marvel will move forward without Iron Man in future films, or simply replace the man that millions currently see as Tony Stark?
Ellen DeGeneres will reprise her role as Dory, the blue fish introduced in 2003’s Finding Nemo, and co-director Andrew Stanton will return to helm Finding Dory as well. We hope you’ve been practicing your Whale. source
Update: For all of those concerned about a possible April Fools’ prank, it’s worth noting that this story wasn’t posted until after the start of normal business hours on April 2. Oh, and Ellen confirmed the news on her show. — Scott @ SFB
I can’t add much to what’s already been (and will be) ...
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#FMMDI (at 30 Rockefeller Plaza)
Thanks. I guess my thoughts are as follows:
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- Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln
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More coverage: http://usat.ly/ZL8rRo
Christoph Waltz + Tarantino = Instant Oscar. Who do you think is gonna get snubbed?
The former presidential candidate John McCain is one of three US senators who have criticised the depiction of torture in Zero Dark Thirty,Kathryn Bigelow’s fact-based drama about the hunt for Osama bin Laden. The film suggests that waterboarding and coercive interrogation tactics were instrumental in gathering information ahead of the successful raid on Bin Laden’s compound in May 2011.
McCain, a Republican senator for the state of Arizona, joined two Democrats – Dianne Feinstein and Carl Levin – to write a public letter to Michael Lynton, the chairman and chief executive of Sony Pictures, which backed the picture. They claim that Zero Dark Thirty is “grossly inaccurate and misleading in its suggestion that torture resulted in information that led to the capture”.
We haven’t had a chance to see the movie yet, but its already been met with a fair amount of controversy thanks to the aforementioned “enhanced interrogation” depiction. Have you had a chance to see the movie yet? What did you think of Zero Dark Thirty?
You know what the real problem is? There is nothing interesting about this video game at all. The gameplay is nonexistent, and instead of having a controller to play it. You have to sit in a theater and watch a really long cutscene. This game lacks any gameplay whatsoever.The best user review of “Wreck-It Ralph” on Metacritic.
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