Superman. Michelangelo. Kobe Bryant. Where could you possibly see them all in the same movie? Well since the title of the article already spoiled it for you, I don’t have to leave you in suspense before revealing The LEGO Movie as the answer. Chris Pratt will lead an ensemble cast including Morgan Freeman as Vitruvius, an old mystic, and Liam Neeson taking the role as Bad Cop. As you’ll see in the teaser below, The LEGO Movie is far from your typical film.
In a world where continuity barely exists, tons of LEGO licenses are brought together in what may be considered an ultimate mashup style movie. Similar to the vein of Toy Story where the setting explains why this variety of characters would be together, The LEGO Movie has Pratt’s character Emmet who mistakenly finds his way into a fellowship of Master Builders including Freeman’s Vitruvius, Batman, Superman and the like.
They will be taking on Neeson and Will Farrell (who upgraded from President to Lord Business) in this CG movie. Interestingly enough, the movie is presented in a stop motion fashion even though it is obviously CG. Even more interesting is that there are collections of YouTube creators out there making actually stop motion that looks smoother than that of the trailer.
Yes, we were supposed to get a Steve Jobs biopic featuring Ashton Kutcher as the iconic Apple frontman, but who knows what happened to that. We hear it’s not that great (putting it nicely) and will likely end up on video very soon.
However, even with the Kutcher movie coming out eventually, that hasn’t stopped the gang at Funny or Die from making a Jobs biopic of their own. This one features Justin Long as Jobs, who you may recall played opposite John Hodgman in Apple’s popular “Get a Mac” ad campaign. The hour-long movie, called iSteve, will make its debut on April 15th on the Funny or Die website.
To promote it, Funny or Die released a trailer, as you might expect. Watching the trailer, which isn’t much more than a collection of words and audio with one shot of Long as Jobs, we already think it’s going to be better than the Kutcher version. Well, at the very least, it will be intentionally funny.
There is some good, some awesome, some sad and some well excepted news in this weeks box office results.
Coming in at number one for the weekend, 21 Jump Street makes a splash with $35 million, and it’s very good news. To see a successful TV adaptation that proves you can be R-rated, have a completely unexpected tone and still work is a wonderful trend starter for the industry.
Hollywood is a copy cat industry and if remakes and reboots have to happen, the only way you can maintain some artistic credibly is to bring something fresh to the table. Hopefully this success can grease the wheels with other creative folks and deliver something unexpected with these name brands. It will be interesting to see how the zany Dark Shadows is received in the wake of this win.
The well expected news comes in the form of our second place finisher, The Lorax. This Suess adaptation is performing well above initial expectations and is proving to have strong legs as it fell another soft 40ish percent to nearly $23 million. The Lorax will take a hit next week, but is well on it’s way to crossing the $200 million bar.
Kenny Powers is back mofos and he’s ready for action. That’s right, Season Dos of Eastbound and Down is ready and this time around Kenny and company will be heading down to Mexico for what promises to be more foul mouthed fun.
To get you excited for the new season, we’ve got the first full trailer for it to share with you today. In it, you see that not that much has changed and that Kenny still remains a crude, yet lovable, slob with delusions of grandeur.
In case you’re not familiar with the show, it features Danny McBride as Kenny Powers, a has-been professional baseball player who is constantly getting himself in trouble. The first season ended with Kenny leaving his girlfriend at a gas station as he goes off to Mexico to play baseball. The second season is sure to be filled with even more hijinks and crass stunts perpetrated by Kenny.
Check out the trailer for Eastbound and Down Season Dos after the jump. It returns to HBO on September 26 at 10:30/9:30C.
The fourth offering from the comedy team of Will Farrell (star) and Adam McKay (director, writer), The Other Guys doesn’t reach the zany heights of their earlier hits Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, but still gives Farrell plenty of opportunities for the inspired silliness and extended surreal bits that are his strengths.
Will Farrell plays Allen Gamble, a police forensic accountant with a hidden dark past, now partnered with Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg), a disgraced detective who has been relegated to a desk job after making a catastrophic error.
The movie opens with the hot shots of the department, played with patented swagger and bombast by Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson, but when they unexpectedly leave the force, so to speak, Hoitz jumps at the chance to get back on real cases. The only hitch is that he has to convince the reluctant, conscientious and safety-loving Gamble to join him.
Meanwhile, Gamble’s painstaking forensic accounting and obsession with unpaid scaffolding permits has actually turned up a real case, a financier (Steve Coogan) about to pull off a $32 Billion heist. It’s classic bumbling cops versus cool, efficient and ruthless mastermind criminals with MBAs and meat-head body guards, but the sometimes creaky plot does its job—that is, set up lots of hilarity involving Priuses, hot Broadway shows, the pitfalls of hyperbole and more.
When Eva Mendes, Will Farrell, Adam McKay and Mark Wahlberg sit down for an interview, you can expect results to be anything but ordinary. Based on the camaraderie that was clearly present during a recent Q&A during SDCC, fans of the upcoming movie can expect a good time when the movie premiers later this summer.
Since this movie stars Will Farrell, one of the most obvious questions would be how much of the script was actually written, and how much was McKay allowing his actors to ad-lib and run with it. It turns out, McKay is so well prepared for this, he brings in a professional.
“For our bond company, we actually have to give them the exact percentages,” explained McKay. “So we brought in an actuary to break it down and this movie was 14.3789% was improvised and then the rest was scripted.”
A quick thinking Farrell noted, “that would be 86-85% scripted, if you round up.”
“It’s about 15-20% that is improvised, because we goof around in the scenes,” said McKay. “But the overall story structure obviously stays the same.”
Being a Buddy-Cop flick, comedic timing and approach are in the cards for both actors. Since Wahlberg isn’t a name that immediately springs to mind when you think summer comedy, how much did he end up learning from Farrell in the course of filming the movie?
Ben Stiller and Robert Downey Jr. seemed to strike gold when they had actor Justin Theroux co-write Tropic Thunder. The film got rave reviews from the critics and even took in a large chunk of change at the box office. To repay him, Downey decided to step up to the plate for Theroux by having him pen the script for the soon-to-be released Iron Man 2 for Paramount.
Now it seems that Stiller is taking interest in the young actor/writer/director by having him write anddirect the sequel to 2001 comedy Zoolander, also with Paramount. From Deadline Hollywood:
I’ve learned that Ben and Justin are working on the script together, and Theroux is going to Fashion Week in Paris to “immerse himself on what is current in fashion”. “It’s got momentum,” a studio source just told me. Everyone’s hoping Owen Wilson co-stars again but no deal is set. The villain likely will be Jonah Hill who’s in negotiations.
No word yet on who or what else they have planned for the sequel, but with names like Will Farrell, Billy Zane, Jon Voight, Milla Jovovich, David Duchovny, and dozens of others in the first film, you can expect to see some of Stiller’s new on-screen companions such as Jack Black, Tom Cruise, and Matthew McConaughey pop up in between glances of Blue Steel.
Or, more precisely, he’ll be making a movie about a man on the long-running game show. The story, written by William Wheeler (who also penned The Hoax), is based on a true story called “Prisoners of Trebek.” The plot is supposedly about Maguire’s character who spends time trying to master Jeopardy, falls in love, and experiences some “Charlie Kaufman-esque elements.”
Maguire’s production company, Maguire Entertainment, is producing along with Mark Gordon (who has produced films such as 2012 and Saving Private Ryan). The production is still looking for a director, and with the schedule Maguire currently has — soon to be shooting Spider-Man 4, The Details and Gary Ross’ The Crusaders — it might be some time before he can fit this film in so they probably have time to find a director.
One comment I read recently about this film mentioned something I thought would be hilarious casting: Will Ferrell as Alex Trebek. Probably not very likely, unless that’s part of the “Kaufman-esque” elements they’re talking about, but very funny nonetheless.
I’m still not sure how I feel about the Land of the Lost feature film. Sure, I’ve always wanted to see a big screen treatment for one of my favorite shows about Marshall, Will and Holly on a routine expedition who encountered a great earthquake and were plunged a thousand feet below to The Land of the Lost. But in my mind I guess I always assumed (I know, never assume) that the movie would be an action piece and not a comedy.
Oh well, I guess I was wrong because instead of action drama, we’ve got Will Farrell in a comedy — which isn’t necessareily a bad thing. He is, after all, pretty darn funny. As for the movie? I guess we’ll see when it opens later this year. Until then, here’s the latest clip from the film to hit the Interwebs, courtesy of the folks over at MTV’s Movies blog.
Sometimes, in the case of movies like Batman Begins, X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Star Trek, you can understand why it was necessary to make them and/or reboot the franchises. But then there’s those movies that make you wonder why, or how, they ever got made. In this case I’m talking about the big screen adaptation of TV’s Land of The Lost featuring Wil Farrell, Danny McBride and Anna Friel.
I’m a fan of the original show and I’m not sure why this time around the filmmakers thought it would be a good idea to make it a comedy. The film would have been better served if it had been done more seriously as it was in the original series. It could still have humor (which is a big thing for me and comes up in my review of Star Trek earlier today) and it could still have action, suspense and cool looking Sleestaks.
Love it or hate it, this movie is coming out later this year . Until then, over at Rope of Silicon they have some new photos from the film as well as a new trailer curtesy of Universal Pictures. Whatever your opinion, these new pics and trailer do peak my curiousity and actually make me somewhat interested to see the movie. I know, I’m as surprised as you are. Watch the trailer below and check out more photos after the jump.