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Universal Pictures gained in prominence during the 1930s and 40s, in no small part due to their classic monster movies such as 1931's Dracula and 1941's The Wolf Man. With vampires and werewolves finding themselves in more romantic fare in current movies and TV shows, Universal still attempted a re-imagining of The Wolf Man last year, however, after becoming a disappointment at the box office, the movie didn't exactly kick-start a new movie franchise.
Or did it? Undaunted by the critical and financial failure of The Wolfman, the studio announced plans of a reboot in July, altering their plans of sequel into what appeared to be a direct-to-DVD second reboot titled Werewolf. Steven Bauer (Scarface) announced last month that he and several other actors had already been cast for the movie and that he was heading to Romania to shoot it in a few days". Bauer was maybe a few weeks off on the start date, but Universal has finally announced the start of production on what they are calling — get ready for it — Untitled Werewolf Thriller.
what will it be about? >> Posted 10.31.11 by Ryan -
Despite The Wolfman receiving scathing reviews and failing to earn back its production budget even when taking into account international ticket sales — meaning, it lost a ton of money because marketing costs are not figured into the production budget — Universal is not giving up hope that it can somehow capitalize on the furry-faced member of its "Classic Monsters Library."
more about Universal's monster >> Posted 07.08.11 by BrentJS -
It was a given that Jonah Hex was heading for a Razzie nomination after director Jimmy Hayward's adaptation of the DC comic book received scathing reviews and limped to a total of $10 million at the box office. Just when it couldn't get any worse, Jonah Hex star Josh Brolin even admitted in September that he wasn't a fan of the movie either. There could be a bright spot, however, because Jonah Hex could win an Academy Award nomination.
What?! How? >> Posted 01.14.11 by Ryan -
Director Joe Johnston seemed a curious choice to many fans when he was hired for Marvel Studios' adaptation of Captain America: The First Avenger in 2008. Fans of Rocketeer will point to the 1991 movie as proof that Johnston can handle a genre movie set in the past, but 2010's The Wolfman could be just as quickly pointed to as proof of the opposite. No one is more aware of The Wolfman's shortcomings than Johnston himself, who explained to ComicBookMovie why Captain America will be a different experience.
Captain America gets cosmic >> Posted 01.10.11 by Ryan -
The Golden Globe nominations are already out, and the Oscar nominations are forthcoming, but what about the Razzies — the awards show that celebrates the worst Hollywood has to offer? The LA Times reports that the nominating lists for the Razzies have been sent out and the shortlist for worst picture contains the following movies: The Bounty Hunter, Clash of the Titans, The Expendables, Grown Ups, Jonah Hex, Killers, The Last Airbender, Little Fockers, Sex and the City 2, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, Vampires Suck, and Yogi Bear. (Keep your fingers crossed When in Rome, The Back-Up Plan, and Gulliver's Travels, you might still make it!)
who else could "win"? >> Posted 01.05.11 by Ryan -
Over the past decade or so, Hugo Weaving has created two of the most memorable supporting characters in recent pop-culture. He oozed malice and evil as Agent Smith in The Matrix, and he found just the right blend of benevolence and regality as the elf lord Elrond in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. In both of those projects, Weaving seemed to have lots of fun diving into the roles.
But apparently, this wasn't the case when he voiced the villain Megatron for Michael Bay's Transformers movies. Weaving recently interviewed with The Age in his native Australia, and the idea of a sequel to Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen came up. Weaving's laughed and simply said: "Oh no. They're not making Transformers III, are they?"
Weaving went on to say that he actually knows very little about Bay's movies, and that the voiceover work was mainly just a paycheck for him.
Michael Bay talks to me on the phone. I've never methim. We were doing the voice for the second one and I still hadn't seen the first one. I still didn't really know who the chracters were and I didn't know what anything was. It's a voice job, for sure, and people assume I've spent my life working on it, but I really know so little about it.
Ouch. Well, Bay can refute the critics all he wants, but when Agent Smith-slash-Elrond says your movie isn't interesting, maybe it's true.
Weaving also stars in The Wolfman, which opened last Friday.
Posted 02.16.10 by reelz -
Turns out director Joe Johnston wasn't satisfied with the same ol' same ol' to explain why Benicio Del Toro is waxing all hairy and toothy in The Wolfman. Nope, no simple stroll-on-the-moors, random-wolf-bite, go-wild-at-moonrise for Toro's Lawrence Talbot. Instead, a family curse has been thrown into the mix, all the better to generate a piquant sense of doom even before Larry manifests an irrepressible urge to howl.
The curse that trips its way through the branches of a family tree is a great means to get to an audience's gut. We are, after all, consigned to what we're handed by our forebears, and whether such inheritances stem from genetics or upbringing, most of us have a vested interest in seeing if a protagonist can escape his/her own destiny. Pushing into the background our own concerns over those pentagram-shaped birthmarks on our hips, we started checking out all the ways that filmmakers have managed to bequeath their characters the gifts that keep on giving (and that rank as a bit more dire than thinning hairlines or thickening bellies).
Here, then, we offer up Family Be Damned: Top 10 Cursed Movie Characters. Warning: You might want to consider DNA screening afterward.
Posted 02.12.10 by reelz -
Despite the current onslaught of vampire and werewolf movies, The Wolfman, which opens this weekend, is a different breed thanthe teenage-romance of The Twilight Saga movies — more of a throwback to the classic werewolf movies of the black-and-white era. Sir Anthony Hopkins told New York Magazine that there's something to lycanthropy that appeals to everyone .
I think women particularly — but both genders — are fascinated by the Beauty and the Beast mythology. It goes back to Ovid's Metamorphosis, it goes back to classic mythology. In another way, it's like Sleeping Beauty. The woman who's been put into a spell of enchantment by the wicked witch and she has to wait there for generations for the Prince Charming to come. And those mythologies are so powerful in our subconscious mind that I think that's why people respond to Beauty and the Beast. The Beast, in its darkness, is attractive. It's threatening, it's sexy. It's the dark stranger that's in all of us. The bogeyman. Once you makefriends with it, it's very attractive. It's the beast that needs to be saved and brought out. In psychological terms, if it's denied and repressed, then it comes out in other forms: massive warfare, psychotic dictatorships, or people like Nazi Germany. So it has to be acknowledged.
To Hopkins, the difference between the older, classic horror movies that The Wolfman pays homage to is the technology.
The Frankenstein movie, the Bela Lugosi movies, King Kong. You could see the model of King Kong under the Empire State Building — you could see the fingerprints from the [animators] turning each muscle. And you think, well, that's what they did. The ingenuity of people, even with limited technology, is pretty impressive. Today they have the advantage of computer chips. They had a great team of experts there, the CGI and all that, on Benicio Del Toro. They'reextraordinary, those transformations. I don't know how the hell they do it, it's a mystery to me. That's the wonderful collective genius that's behind movies today. Like Avatar — the sheer science — it's something I find so baffling but exhilarating, in a way. And that's the advantage they have over the old movies, now.
The Wolfman is currently in theaters.
Posted 02.12.10 by Ryan -
The Wolfman was supposed to be released last fall, and delayed pics are almost always bad. So far, it sounds like this star-studded remake is the rule, not the exception.
"...makes a satisfactory date movie for Valentine's Day, which is more than can be said for Valentine's Day."
— Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
"Not bad enough to be considered a camp, guilty pleasure, it's more of a dull, defanged dirge with the reliably intriguing Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins turning in oddly disaffected performances."
— Michael Rechtshaffen, Hollywood Reporter
"...a high-toned, bloody but otherwise bloodless effort to resurrect one of Universal's venerable horror franchises for modern times."
— Todd McCarthy, Variety
"...bafflingly inert."
— Ernest Hardy, Village Voice
"...awkward and dumbfounding, for there's no joy to the way Johnston's dreary hack job clunkily dishes out exposition, gracelessly cobbles together its scenes, cheapily attempts to scare us, and lazily rests on the laurels of crude makeup and visual effect work that would have you believe there haven't been any advances in these crafts since Lon Cheney Jr. donned latex for the part of the wolfman he famously played in George Waggner's 1941 film of the same name."
— Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine
Posted 02.11.10 by reelz -
Despite The Wolfman's being filmed in the UK with a predominantly British cast, Academy Award–winning actor Sir Anthony Hopkins recently told Collider that the movie, Victorian trappings and all, is still very much an an American production.
Well, it's an American movie and it's an American subject.... So, it's an American movie, really, it's not a British subject. What's interesting about it is that it's an American gothic movie filmed in Britain, in real locations, which makes it, gives it another dimension, gives it another reality.
It's like a Western set in an English setting. I said it on the first day when I was on the set in the big house. With all the American machinery and sets and everything. There was a sort of real location, and I said to [director] Joe Johnston, I said, "This is a big American gothic," [and] he said, "Yeah." So that's it.
Even though Hopkins has been doing a lot of press for The Wolfman in anticipation of the movie's opening on Friday, he's also currently shooting scenes for Kenneth Branagh's Thor, in which he will play Odin, the Marvel Comics version of the mythological Norse god. In the comics on which the movie is based, Thor speaks with a Shakespearean accent, but comic book purists will be disppointed to learn that Thor won't be saying things like "I say thee nay!" before smiting his enemies with his mystical hammer, Mjolnir. Hopkins told MTV that "it's all modern language" in Thor, though he conceded that the movie would have a hint of the bard.
It's a superhero movie, but with a bit of Shakespeare thrown in. It's a big, big broad thing. [The Wolfman] is a bit of a Shakespeare movie as well, on a big scope.
Thor stars a predominantly young cast of actors, including relative newcomer Chris Hemsworth in the title role, which Hopkins said was just fine with him.
Oh, I love working with young actors. I don't have to do much work. I let them do all the work. I let them act ... and then I just stand back.
Posted 02.11.10 by BrentJS