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Which Movies Were Game Changers?
Hollywood has been mining literature for source material for years, often with excellent results — 11 literary adaptations were nominated for Academy Awards in 2012 alone — and comic books have inspired several of the most popular and successful movies in recent years. Video games, on the other hand, have proven to be difficult to successfully translate to film. Gamers are often more interested in a game's graphics or the ability to earn achievements than in its plot, so there is often little for the screenwriters to draw upon. As Corey May, co-founder of Sekretagent Productions explained to CNN, "It often comes down to money, as movie studios frequently choose to make films based on the franchises that sell the best, not those with the most cinematic potential."
Still, the success of the Resident Evil franchise — $893 million worldwide and counting— and the prospect of enticing the hundreds of millions of gamers around the world to turn out to see a movie based upon their favorite game keeps Hollywood going back to the video game well for more. Only days ago, it was announced that Ubisoft and New Regency's Assassin's Creed adaptation is moving forward with Michael Fassbender headlining, and there are dozens of other adaptations currently in development, which should be great news for movie fans and video game fans alike. Have there been some turkeys? Absolutely. More than a few, but, despite what CNN's video game expert may think, movies based on video games don't all "stink". In fact, some of them are downright badass. Help us select the video game movies that defied expectations by entertaining us instead of making us groan.
Rate the Top 10 Best Video Game Movie Adaptations >>
Posted 10.26.12 by BrentJS -
| Title | Weekend | Total | Analysis |
| Resident Evil: Retribution | $21.1M | $21.1M | The first Resident Evil not to do better than its predecessor |
| Finding Nemo in 3-D | $17.5M | $17.5M | Further proof that 3-D re-releases have limited appeal |
| The Possession | $5.8M | $41.2M | This small horror flick continues to scare audiences after three weeks |
| Lawless | $4.2M | $30.1M | Dropped a respectable 30% in its second weekend |
| ParaNorman | $3M | $49.3M | Managed to stay in the top five despite competition from Finding Nemo |
box office headlines and moreWeeknights after the movies
Posted 09.17.12 by reelz -
We're sticking with Alice.
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Ten years ago, supermodel-turned-actress Milla Jovovich was still struggling to find a place for herself in Hollywood. She wowed sci-fi fans as Leeloo in The Fifth Element (1997) while barely saying anything intelligible and got some laughs as Katinka Ingabogovinanana in Zoolander (2001), but it wouldn't be until the 2002 video game adaptation Resident Evil that Jovovich found her calling as a badass, post-apocalyptic zombie-killer. Ten years and five movies later — the fifth installment, Resident Evil: Retribution, opens Sept. 14th — Jovovich has usurped the "queen of action movies" title from Sigourney Weaver, who previously wore the crown for her four-movie run as Ripley in the Alien series. Click the video above and join us as we look back on Jovovich's ten years in the Resident Evil franchise.
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September's Resident Evil: Retribution marks the fifth installment in the Resident Evil movie franchise, but for those that haven't been keeping up, a new featurette will fill you in on what Alice (Milla Jovovich) has been up to during the other four movies.
Not to play spoiler, but, so far, the Retribution promotional has emphasized "evil going global" in posters and trailers, and, to that end, writer-director Paul W.S. Anderson told the Hall H crowd at last month's Comic-Con that Retribution would be the "first truly, post-apocalyptic epic film" and a "global event," with locations including the Red Square in Moscow, Tokyo, and Washington D.C. With that said, we don't want to say that Retribution is simply another attempt by Alice to bring down the evil Umbrella corporation, so instead we'll point out that the featurette includes new Retribution footage!
watch the video >> Posted 08.03.12 by Ryan -
When Resident Evil: Retribution hits theaters this September, it will be franchise star Milla Jovovich's fifth movie as amnesic zombie killer Alice, propelling her past Sigourney Weaver's four-movie run as Ripley in the Alien franchise to become the new queen of sci-fi/action movies. While Jovovich is aware that "it's a big deal" for Resident Evil to be a successful "female driven" franchise, she doesn't rest on her laurels, continually striving to satisfy the fans by doing as many of the stunts required of her butt-kicking character as possible. But, even when the car she is in is set on fire or she's hung from the ceiling by cables to give her an extra boost during fight scenes, Jovovich finds that it's hard to think of portraying Alice as "work" because she's "hanging out with people that are really wonderful" and she's "having so much fun."
During a recent roundtable interview session to promote Resident Evil: Retribution, Jovovich helped to pull back the curtain on the "corridor of light" sequence (pictured), revealing that stickers were used for some of the blood spatter on the walls and how the set was rigged to allow her to do her stunts. Jovovich also explained why she and her husband, writer-director Paul W.S. Anderson, don't take message boards very seriously and advised young actresses who are told that they can't be action heroes to not "listen to naysayers."
what did jovovich say? >> Posted 07.22.12 by BrentJS -
Israel-born actor Oded Fehr has played many different types of roles in his 14-year career — a member of an ancient group of holy warriors in The Mummy, a male prostitute in Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, a terrorist in the Showtime series Sleeper Cell — but he admits that he's often offered the role of the villain: "I can't help it. I have a deep voice and I look like a bad guy. People think I'm a bad guy." Being typecast as a villain doesn't really bother Fehr, however, because he finds the role of a villain offers him more "opportunity" to "bring so many colors to the character."
Fehr will get the chance to play both hero and villain in his latest movie, Resident Evil: Extinction, his third movie in the 5-movie franchise based on the Capcom video game series. Fans of the series know that his character, Carlos Olivera, died in Resident Evil: Extinction, but just as actress Michelle Rodriguez's deceased character, Rain Ocampo, will return as "Good Rain and...Bad Rain", so too will Fehr get to play good and bad cloned versions of Carlos Olivera in Retribution. In a recent roundtable interview in support of the movie, Fehr discussed his "really nice death scene" in Extinction, his preference for playing villains, and once again working with the "kid", writer-director Paul W.S. Anderson.
what did Fehr say? >> Posted 07.16.12 by BrentJS -
Actress Michelle Rodriguez first broke onto the scene as a troubled young woman who channels her anger and aggression into training to be a boxer in the 2000 indie drama Girlfight. The role won her several awards and nominations and launched her career as an actress, but it was also somewhat prophetic as Rodriguez would end up battling all through the '00s, continually dogged by legal troubles, relationship woes and invasive inquiries about her sexuality.
Now in her second decade as an actress, Rodriguez has emerged as one of the go-to actresses in the action movie genre, with a resume that includes such hits as Avatar, Machete, Fast Five and Battle: Los Angeles. Rodriguez will next appear in Resident Evil: Retribution, the lastest installment in the movie franchise based on the Capcom video game series that she helped to launch with Resident Evil in 2002. In a recent roundtable interview in support of the movie held during the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con, Rodriguez revealed that she is "really psyched" for the new movie, but that she was just as surprised as most fans that she was asked to return as Rain Ocampo, especially considering the character took a bullet to the head in the first movie. Rodriguez also dished about her reputation as a "c*nty bitch" and about how female actresses "can be sexy and be strong at the same time."
what did rodriguez say? >> Posted 07.16.12 by BrentJS -
Sony Pictures' panel at the San Diego Comic-Con was preceded by subsidiary Sony Screen Gems' panel for Resident Evil: Retribution, the fifth installment in the Resident Evil franchise. Writer-director Paul W.S. Anderson was joined by cast members Mika Nakashima, Boris Kodjoe, Oded Fehr, Michelle Rodriguez and, of course, Milla Jovovich. Before bringing out the cast, Anderson came out first and talked about what to expect in Retribution.
We really wanted to blow out the franchise and make it much bigger for fans that have been sticking with us. It's been a long journey for us so far, and we really feel that this franchise is reaching a climax and we really wanted to make this an epic movie. I wanted to try and make this first truly, post-apocalyptic epic film and, to that end, we went all around the world to make this global event. We shot in Red Square in Moscow, we shot the center of Tokyo, we shot in Washington D.C., we destroyed the White House — not for real, but we did build a post-apocalyptic version of it — we shot in Times Square in New York City. So this movie really goes above and beyond any of the Resident Evil movies so far.
We tried to make the movie as big as possible in terms of scale and action, but then also (we made) it as small as possible and as intimate as possible in terms of the Milla character and I think you'll see a side of the character in the movie that you've never seen. You'll see that she has a child, she has a husband, and so Milla gets to play that kind of real, suburban character that you've never seen in the Resident Evil franchise. That gave me the opportunity to really deliver some of the best and the most terrifying scares in the franchise. Because she's not super-powered, she has no training, she has no machine guns; it's just her versus the horror.
more of our panel coverage >> Posted 07.16.12 by Ryan -
On Wednesday more than 120,000 fan(atics) will be in San Diego for this year's Comic-Con and ReelzChannel will be amongst them. We're sending several correspondents to cover everything movie-related. Reelz will have coverage daily online at Reelz.com/comiccon2012 and on TV on Hollywood Dailies. Also, don't forget to check out our Comic-Con special, airing Saturday, July 21 at 7:30p ET and 4:30p PT.
From the mysterious project Elysium, to Quentin Taratino's Django Unchained, to Peter Jackson's The Hobbit, Reelz will be reporting all the details. Here's a tentative list of what we'll be covering at Comic-Con:
Reelz's Comic-Con Coverage >> Posted 07.11.12 by Chris