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Last week, Disney and moviemaker George Lucas announced that the company had purchased Lucas' profitable LucasFilm Ltd. production company for $4.05 billion, While that affords Lucas a modest retirement from making movies (actually, he plans to donate most of the money to educational charities), Lucas also revealed that he had decided to hand over his Star Wars franchise to "a new generation of filmmakers," collectively blowing the minds of millions of Star Wars fans everywhere.
While creating Star Wars has given Lucas unparalleled respect amongst writers, directors, animators and movie audiences alike, it's been Lucas' "recreations" of those same movies, as well as work creating the prequel trilogy (that's Episodes I-III for you kids that watched them sequentially), that has made him the target of those same peoples' derision. Now that Disney holds the keys to Lucas' magic kingdom, we offer 10 things to expect from the new Star Wars trilogy.
read our 10 expectations then add your own >> Posted 11.04.12 by Ryan -
Thankfully, filmmaker Robert Rodriguez seems pretty unconcerned about photos and videos being taken on the set of his latest Troublemaker Studios production, Machete Kills. His seemingly lax set policy has afforded us the opportunity to to see candid photos of Jessica Alba and title star Danny Trejo goofing around with guns and Rodriguez getting a birthday serenade from an all-female mariachi band.
Rodriguez even allowed Manolo Gonzalez to capture behind-the-scenes footage of the shoot in progress for his video blog My Vida con Toty, which has afforded us a sneak peek at his smoking hot mother, actress Sofia Vergara, as Madame Desdemona, aka "La Come-Hombres" ("Maneater"). You have to suffer through Gonzalez's goofy, fanboy commentary, but the footage of Vergara is well worth it (plus, you can always mute the video).
watch the set video >> Posted 07.08.12 by BrentJS -
To announce the start of principal photography on Machete Kills — the sequel to his 2010 Mex-ploitation movie, Machete — director Robert Rodriguez tweeted a photo of himself with actress Jessica Alba on the set. Now, Alba has taken to Twitter herself, tweeting several more photos of herself and title star Danny Trejo goofing around on the set, as well as photos of a surprised Rodriguez being serenaded by an all-female mariachi band in celebration of his birthday.
see the fun set photos >> Posted 06.23.12 by BrentJS -
Charlie Sheen for president?! The man who brought us "Tiger Blood" and "High Priest Vatican Assassin Warlock" will soon be the leader of the free world...at least on the big screen.
Sheen is set to play the U.S. president in Robert Rodriguez's Machete sequel, Machete Kills. Rodriguez announced the casting on Twitter.
I just cast Charlie Sheen in #machetekills as the President of the United States! Who better? More soon...
Rodriguez also included a photo of himself with his new commander in chief. Sheen is not the first in his family with presidential aspirations. His father, Martin Sheen, played POTUS Jed Bartlet on The West Wing.
Machete Kills follows its title character (Danny Trejo) as he is recruited by the president for his next job. Sheen joins fellow headline-maker Mel Gibson, who plays a "Bond-style" villain in the movie. Sheen and Gibson on the same movie set? A press agent's nightmare.
As Rodriguez pointed out on Twitter, principal production on Machete Kills began on June 20. That day, Rodriguez tweeted a photo of himself with Jessica Alba on set. Machete Kills will open in theaters in 2013.
Posted 06.22.12 by Chris -
Director Robert Rodriguez (Desperado, Spy Kids) has a busy summer of sequels planned for this year, including the long-awaited sequel to 2005's Sin City, titled Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, and Machete Kills, the follow-up to Rodriguez's 2010 fake-trailer-turned-Grindhouse-homage Machete.
Still based on co-director Frank Miller's Sin City comic books (namely, A Dame to Kill For) the Sin City sequel was written by Miller and The Departed screenwriter William Monahan. At the Cannes Film Festival, Rodriguez told Empire that the sequel will continue the stylistic look of the original and could look even more like Miller's original comic book artwork.
I really held back the first time, because I didn’t know whether audiences would go for it. So it ended up looking like a real movie, but in black and white, with a few flourishes. This one is going to push way further towards the books. It’s going to shock and surprise people.
more about Sin City 2 casting and story >> Posted 05.21.12 by Ryan -
The release dates of two highly anticipated genre movies have finally been announced.
First up is Cloud Atlas, an adaptation of David Mitchell's award-winning 2004 sci-fi novel that was co-written and co-directed by Andy and Lana Wachowski, (The Matrix) and German filmmaker Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run). Warner Bros. (WB) initially passed on Cloud Atlas, feeling that it was unaffordable at $170 million, but the Wachowskis and Tykwer found foreign backers and ended up making it for $101 million — thanks, in part, to Tom Hanks taking a smaller fee for his participation — and WB picked up North American distribution rights at Cannes for "about $20 million" despite the movie's lengthy 2:44 running time exceeding the contractural running time of 2:30. According to IndieWire, producer Grant Hill revealed that WB "plans to open the movie stateside December 6" and may screen it at the Berlin International Film Festival to make it eligible for Oscar consideration.
more about Cloud Atlas and Sin City 2 >> Posted 05.18.12 by BrentJS -
Director Robert Rodriguez has long had an affinity for casting aging action stars no longer as prominent in the public eye. For example, Rodriguez helped Mickey Rourke spark a comeback by casting him as Marv in his 2005 adaptation of Sin City. In Rodriguez's 2010 fake-trailer-turned-movie Machete, he brought in Don Johnson and Steven Seagal for key roles. For that movie's sequel, Machete Kills, Rodriguez has wanted actor-writer-director and tabloid favorite Mel Gibson for a role. Now he has him.
Deadline reports that Gibson is in serious discussions for a supporting role in the sequel, which will follow its title character (Danny Trejo) as he is recruited by the US government to stop a Mexican drug cartel leader and a billionaire arms dealer. While the report doesn't specify which character Gibson will play, it's likely that it could be the arms dealer. The casting has to be a welcome distraction for Gibson, who has spent most of this month being involved in a "he said, he said" public dispute with screenwriter Joe Eszterhaus.
more about Machete kills >> Posted 04.24.12 by Ryan -
The sequel to Sin City, director Robert Rodriguez's bloody, stylized adaptation of Frank Miller's neo-noir comic book series, has been gestating for nearly seven years — with many predicting it would never happen — but we finally got the word last week that Sin City: A Dame to Kill For has been given the green light. Rodriguez's reluctance to move forward with the sequel before now has always been about the quality of the script, believing that the sequel needed to be "something truly exceptional" to meet the "epic expectations" of the fans, which was apparently accomplished after Academy Award–winning screenwriter William Monahan (The Departed) was hired to do some re-writes on Miller's script.
The next step is casting, which is expected to commence this week. Though many of the major roles will likely go to the actors who played the characters in the original movie, you simply never know in Hollywood — Terrence Howard being replaced by Don Cheadle as James Rhodes, aka War Machine, in Iron Man 2 springs to mind. In a recent interview with FlickDirect, Rodriguez confessed that he hasn't started casting yet and said that it may not even happen "in the next month." However, he did reveal that Mickey Rourke is "the first" of the original cast to return, which is great news because it's virtually inconceivable to envision anyone else portraying the "murder machine with a heart of gold" known as Marv. Rodriguez also said that Rosario Dawson is "pumped" to return as Gail.
what did rodriguez say about casting? >> Posted 04.24.12 by BrentJS -
A sequel has been teased ever since Sin City was released in 2005. In 2010 alone, director Robert Rodriguez discussed Sin City 2 several times, saying in March that the sequel could happen "very soon," then months later said it was just "a matter of when"... only to follow up that months later saying it was "slated to be next."
By 2011, fatigue was starting to wear on any hope that Sin City 2 was ever going to happen, even when Rodriguez said at Comic-Con that "if Sin City 2 happens, it'll happen this year." Then, something strange occurred: actual signs of progress. Departed screenwriter William Monahan was hired to rewrite the script, something Monahan actually confirmed months later. Then, at SXSW in March, Rodriguez said Sin City 2 would start shooting this summer after he finished Machete Kills. Turns out Rodriguez wasn't kidding around, as an official announcement for Sin City 2, now retitled Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, has been released.
more about the Sin City sequel >> Posted 04.13.12 by Ryan -
Robert Rodriguez has been talking about Sin City 2 for so long now that fans have a tough time believing it when he says things like "the time is finally coming" for Sin City 2, as he did last August. (Sequel talk has been ongoing since Sin City was released in 2005.)
Still, at the South By Southwest Festival, THR reports Rodriguez said Sin City 2 will start shooting over the summer, around the time Rodriguez is done working on Machete Kills, which starts shooting in April. Furthermore, Rodriguez told What's Trending (via SlashFilm) that there might even be some "overlap" between the two sequels.
rodriguez on both movies >> Posted 03.15.12 by Ryan