First look into the forthcoming supernatural film “Season of the Witch” has come out in the form of a teaser trailer. Brought forth by IGN, the sneak peek is less than a minute long and mostly centers its attention at some of the film’s cast ensemble, Nicolas Cage, Ron Perlman and Claire Foy.
Cage stars as a 14th century crusader who returns home with his comrade and finds their land is left devastated by the Black Plague. As church blames sorcery as the cause of the plague, the two knights are sent on a mission to transport an accused witch to a remote abbey, where monks will perform a ritual in hopes of ending the pestilence.
On the journey troubled by mythically hostile wilderness and fierce contention over the fate of the girl, they are joined by a priest, a grieving knight, an itinerant swindler, and a headstrong youth who can only dream of becoming a knight. But, a horrific discovery at the abbey jeopardizes their pledge to ensure the girl fair treatment and pits them against an inexplicably powerful and destructive force.
“Season of the Witch” has Dominic Sena, the helmer of “Gone in Sixty Seconds” and “Whiteout”, serving behind the lens. Stephen Campbell Moore, Ulrich Thomsen, Stephen Graham and Robert Sheehan are in supporting roles. Lionsgate eyes to distribute this supernatural thriller into theaters across the U.S. on March 19, 2010.
Spanish film officials have banned the latest gruesome Saw movie from cinemas by giving it the same rating as explicit porn films.
The new picture, the sixth in the Saw franchise, revives the hunt for gory serial killer Jigsaw and features scenes of graphic violence as the body count rises.
The gruesome scenes have disturbed bosses at the Spanish Culture Ministry’s Film Institute, who have made the unprecedented move of handing the film an ‘X’ rating. The classification means the picture will miss out on a nationwide release – as there are only eight theatres in the country which are licenced to show ‘pornographic’ material.
The decision has infuriated the movie’s distributors at Buena Vista, who have lodged an appeal against the rating.
The Saw franchise, which stars Tobin Bell, has been particularly successful in Spain, with the last two movies earning more than $6 million (£4 million) at the box office.
David Tennant has traveled through time to top a list of the U.K’s most popular Doctor Who stars in the sci-fi show’s 46 year history.
The Scottish actor has played the Time Lord in the cult BBC series since 2005, taking over from acclaimed star Christopher Ecclestone.
And his five-year run, which ends in 2010 when newcomer Matt Smith takes over, is the viewers’ favorite – he won almost 26 per cent of votes from readers of Doctor Who magazine.
Tennant says, “I am so proud of this.”
Other actors to have played the famous character include Tom Baker and Jon Pertwee. There have been 11 incarnations of the Doctor, including Smith, since the show first aired in 1963.
The draft written by director Stephen Norrington reportedly is ‘very well received’ by the Relativity Media that the attention is now turned to the casting.
“The Crow”, a relaunch of the franchise spawned by James O’Barr’s graphic novel, is inching closer to materialization. Comics2Film (C2F) at Mania reported that “a source close to the production” has claimed the latest draft for the film’s screenplay by director Stephen Norrington has been “very well received” by production company Relativity Media.
Beside breaking the story on the status of the screenplay, C2F also provided updates on what the filmmakers are planning to do next for the re-invention of the action thriller. Citing its source once again, the site noted “the project is moving forward” with the current attention being turned to the film’s casting.
This new “The Crow” allegedly won’t be the remake to Alex Proyas’ 1994 film. Instead, Norrington has been reported to plan on creating new character and storyline for this reboot. “Whereas Proyas’ original was gloriously gothic and stylized, the new movie will be realistic, hard-edged and mysterious, almost documentary-style,” the director described his vision.
“The Crow” is originally a comic book series created by James O’Barr. It revolves around a young man named Eric Draven who after being left for dead on the side of the road by a gang of street thugs, is resurrected by a Crow and seeks vengeance. The first film adapted from the comics stars the late Brandon Lee.
Chow yun-Fat has joined mainland Chinese actor Ge You in the cast of Jiang Wen’s action comedy Let The Bullets Fly.
The $18m film is currently in production and slated for release in autumn 2010. Hong Kong-based Emperor Motion Pictures (EMP) is co-producing with Jiang’s company, Beijing Buyilehu Film, and other partners.
Chow will play a visionary triad leader in the film, set in China during the 1920s, when the country was torn apart by feuding warlords. Jiang also stars in the film as a bandit who proclaims himself mayor of a remote provincial town.
“To us there is no one else more suitable for the role than Chow Yun-fat,” said the film’s producer Ma Ke. “He expressed his interest very early on and had reserved the second half of 2009 for the filming. It was a matter of working out the script to everyone’s satisfaction. We’re very happy that he’s finally on board.”
The script had undergone nine rewrites with 10 different endings before it was finalized on Monday.
EMP, which will start selling the film at the upcoming American Film Market (AFM), previously worked with Jiang on his 2007 Venice competition entry The Sun Also Rises
Not long after the announcement that Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins were cast in the lead roles in the upcoming adaptation of John Carter of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ series of novels, we found out the talented Willem Dafoe would be playing an important character in the film(s) as well.
At the time, we knew that Dafoe would be playing the role of Tars Tarkas, a big green Martian who eventually befriends the Kitsch’s John Carter, after an unfriendly beginning to their relationship. Tarkas is a warrior and leader of his people and a very unique one at that because he, against the laws and norms of his society, shows compassion and sympathy, and even had a child secretly with the woman he loved (child bearing is a major criminal offense of his people) – he actually believes war isn’t the answer for his kind.
Taylor Kitsch
Dafoe also confirmed that the movie will be a combination of live-action and heavy CGI, something that was already hinted at during the casting announcements.
The films are said to mesh live-action and computer-based animation together in a way similar to what James Cameron has done with his eagerly anticipated Avatar. With Disney and Pixar behind the project and the promise of a series of movies on the same scale of Pirates of the Caribbean, I have high hopes for John Carter of Mars and what it will eventually look like on screen.
Sam Raimi is at the top of his game. Coming off the commercial and critical success of horror film ‘Drag Me to Hell’ (now on DVD), the ‘Spider-Man’ maven is slowly but surely moving forward with his big-screen adaptation of ‘World of Warcraft,’ one of the biggest video games of all time.
According to a report at MTV, Raimi has asked ‘Saving Private Ryan’ writer Robert Rodat to take on ‘Warcraft’ and craft an original story based on the universe of the game, which has spawned books, comics, table top games, card sets and a massively multi-player online role-playing game with more than 11.5 million subscribers.
“We would choose … something that encompasses lands and characters and storylines, and we would be true to it. But our story may or may not be about one of those central characters,” Raimi said.
Raimi, who has a cinematic touch of gold in horror (the ‘Evil Dead’ series), Westerns (‘The Quick and the Dead’) and thrillers (‘A Simple Plan’), wants to be as faithful to ‘Warcraft’ as possible. He wants to serve the game’s fans as well as create a mass-market event film, using the incredible success of the ‘Spider-Man’ trilogy as a guide (Raimi is already working on the fourth in that series).
Sam Raimi
Rodat will draft “an original story within that world that feels like a ‘World of Warcraft’ adventure. Only obviously it’s very different ’cause it’s expanded and translated into the world of a motion picture,” Raimi said. Much like his work on ‘Spider-Man.’
With Raimi’s track record, we predict that ‘Warcraft,’ scheduled for 2011, will bring in hordes at the box office.
For a man who died almost five centuries ago, Leonardo Da Vinci is certainly hot right now – in North Melbourne, Peter Greenaway’s installation based on Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper is bringing in the crowds and at Southbank the world premiere of Anatomy to Robots has opened in a purpose-built pavilion.
More than three years in the making, Italian exhibition Anatomy to Robots features a collection of life-sized, three-dimensional models, interactive robotics and machines inspired by anatomy.
Da Vinci’s visions have been meticulously brought to life by model artist Danilo Carignola and his team from CreaFX, an Italian company who specialise in make-up and special effects for films – mostly horror films – and theatre.
Carignola and his team spent more than three years on the exhibition, working from Da Vinci’s original texts and drawings.
”We work with facial make-up effects and we are used to making things from prosthetics and masks with silicon and resin, but this was a difficult and challenging task,” the Florence-based artist told Melbourne Life.
”To create the models, we had to study anatomy so we could accurately show every muscle, bone and organ inside a body. This was hard for us as, having studied fine art, we didn’t know about human anatomy.”
After creating frighteningly life-like models of the heart and vascular system, the brain, the skeleton and many other body parts, Carignola and his team’s next horror film assignment should be a cinch.
The exhibition at Queensbridge Square, which runs until January 2010, also features machines and panels inspired by nature, optics, theatre and art, as well as artworks and frescoes.
Jason Statham as a professional hired killer who always gets the job done isn’t much of a stretch, but Ben Foster as the young buck who learns from the pro will be grand. Especially if you’ve seen “3:10 to Yuma” and has seen the original “The Mechanic”, then you know Foster is going to kill in all kinds of ways in this role.
The latest news on “The Mechanic” remake, which is set to star Statham in the Charles Bronson role, is that Foster will be playing a character name Steve McKenna (originally played by Jan-Michael Vincent), who becomes an apprentice to Statham’s seasoned hitman. Also joining the cast is Donald Sutherland, who will be playing Statham’s handler and McKenna’s father, Big Harry. Simon West (”Con Air”) will direct the remake, which is set to shoot on location in New Orleans in the coming weeks.
We already know that Adrien Brody and Topher Grace recently joined the cast of Robert Rodriguez’s Predators, rounding out an ensemble that includes Alice Braga as a tough female killer, Mahershalalhashbaz Ali as a man not afraid of death, Walt Goggins as a loose cannon, and UFC fighter Oleg Taktarov as an ex-Russian special ops agent. Oh, yeah, and Danny Trejo as Cuchillo, a Mexican drug cartel enforcer.
Over the weekend, actor Derek Mears (Jason Voorhees from the rebooted Friday the 13th feature) confirmed to DreadCentral that he has been cast as well. “People were talking for a couple of weeks, but I wasn’t able to confirm,” he said. “I kept assuring the filmmakers that I was not the leak. Now it’s out there, but I’m still not saying who I play.”
In the film, the group are all kidnapped by the Predators and taken to the creatures’ home world to be hunted for sport. Eventually, the human gang comes across an American, who has been hiding from the Predators for years and explains to the new “prey” what’s going on. It’s widely expected that this particular role is being reserved for Arnold Schwarzenegger, and that it is the role he played in the original Predator film, that of “Dutch”.
Predators is directed by Nimrod Antal (Vacancy) and scheduled to arrive in theaters on July 7, 2010.
From WENN.com
