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July 7, 2001

Source: Arrow In The Head

An open Casting Call will be held for an Independent Film to be shot in the summer of 2002. They are interested in everybody that isn't a SAG member. The casting is for a movie that will combine elements of horror, thriller and comedy, with a little romance slapped in there for good measure. So all you aspiring actors can check it out here.
 

July 6, 2001

Source: Hollywood Reporter and Upcoming Movies

"Hearts in Atlantis" will have its North American premiere at the 26th Toronto Film Festival. The film, starring Anthony Hopkins, Anton Yelchin, Hope Davis, and David Morse, will be out in wide release in late September. The film is set in Harwich, CT in 1960, it tells the story of Bobby Garfield (Yelchin), a fatherless 11-year-old boy who is befriended by Ted Brautigan (Hopkins), a strange man boarding in the building Bobby lives in with his mother. Both Bobby and Ted are threatened by outside forces; Bobby by a gang of local bullies, Ted by men in yellow jackets he believes are out to get him... (Davis plays Bobby's mother). The book is actually an anthology of stories but the movie will focus primarily on this story.
 

July 6, 2001

Source: Really Scary

Really Scary reports that there will be two versions of the "Faust: Love of the Damned" movie. Apparently the first video and DVD, set for an Aug. 28 by Lions Gate and Trimark, will be R-rated. There will also be an uncut version. David Quinn, creator of the Faust comic strip (with Tim Vigil), was quoted as saying "The MPAA required certain things be cut, so the uncut version shows stuff the other doesn't". The film recently won awards for best film and special effects at the FantaFestival in Italy. Quinn wrote the script for the film, which was directed by Brian Yuzna. The cast includes Mark Frost, Andrew Divoff, Isabel Brooks and Jeffrey Combs. Read Arrow's FAUST review here.
 

July 5, 2001

Source: Diabolical Dominion

It's just a rumor, but such a cool one cannot be overlooked. Joe Dante is reportedly considering work on a third Gremlins project. Most likely Dante would only be helping out in a producing kinda way as the same rumors mention Donald Petrie as being set to direct. Other names attached to the rumor include Zach Galligan and Phoebe Cates, and possibly, could it be? Rob Lowe? I would say doubtful on that last one, but I'm sure Zach could use the work.
 

July 5, 2001

Source: Halloween

The official site reports that filming wrapped last Friday. Cast and crew involved with this aspect of the film have gone their separate ways. Post-production is in the works. That's all.
 

July 5, 2001

Source: Cinescape

Cinescape reports that Russell Crowe may be in the running for the title role in "The Prisoner". The project will be Simon West's attempt to adapt the story for the big screen. According to Chicago Sun-Times columnist, Cindy Pearlman, Crowe is the person being sought to take on the role of the eternally tense Number 6, who had originally been played by the program's creator, Patrick McGoohan. Personally, I didn't mind "Tomb Raider" as much as the next guy, but let's hope he does a MUCH better job with this project.       
             

July 5, 2001

Source: Dark Horizons

Despite Jon Voight's claims, Nicholas Cage has NOT signed on to the "Ghost Rider" project. Both Dave Goyer and the film's director Stephen Norrington have denied that Cage has officially linked himself to the project. I had figured by the time I reported this he would be confirmed, but no such luck. So the wait continues...
                    

July 4, 2001

Source: Coming Attractions

Coming Attractions has debunked the rumor about the "Queen of the Damned" movie going straight to video. They checked with Warner Brothers and were assured that the project is still slated for a theatrical release next year. The rumor that the film is headed straight-to-video is 100% false. You can all rest easy now. 
                   

July 4, 2001

Source: Creature Corner

Back to the report last week on the "John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars" trading cards, well Creature Corner has an image of what the most valuable of the bunch looks like. Check it out here.                   
 

July 4, 2001

Source: Dark Horizons

The site is up for Barrett J. Leigh and Thom Maurer's "Beyond the Wall of Sleep". Based on the H.P. Lovecraft story, the film is about a lost civilization of mountain people who live secretly at the will of an otherworldly force of evil. Their isolation, coupled with their pact with the dark forces, has led them to an unthinkable life of incest and cannibalism. Their isolation is soon broken, when one of their own is driven to madness and murder. He is eventually discovered by the authorities and placed in the county asylum for the criminally insane, a place where the well-to-do townspeople banish the misfits and the deranged. And well, there's some even weirder stuff going on in the asylum. Sounds cool? find out more at the official site here.
 

July 4, 2001

Source: Coming Attractions

In case you haven't heard, MGM has decided to move Rollerball from its August 17th opening to a release sometime in the beginning of 2002. MGM marketing and distribution chief Robert Levin stated that he was very pleased by the material he's seen from the show, and downplayed the notion that the move was dictated by several negative comments about the film's quality. A scooper at Coming Attractions reported: "The film just got pushed back to a tentative January-March release... 2002 John McTeirnan's screening of the final version of the film in New York flopped like a bootleg jello. He wants to go back and do a bunch of re-shoots. They are also reportedly putting 2 trailers together. One to put in front of a later summer movie release and one for a Christmas/Holiday movie release. Guess you'll have to check out "The Crimson Rivers" for your Jean Reno fix this year. And anyway, what's a "bootleg jello"?
                

July 3, 2001

Source: Aint-It-Cool

Finally some visuals of Bruce as the King! Quint at aint-it-cool had the opportunity to visit the set of Bruce Campbell's newest project "Bubba Ho-tep". The pics are great! Apparently Bruce had to spend at least 2 hours each morning in the makeup chair getting his old age Elvis makeup put on and about an hour each night getting it taken off. "Bubba Ho-tep" tells the true story of what really did become of Elvis Presley. The story finds Elvis (Bruce Campbell) as an elderly resident in an East Texas rest home. He switches identities with an Elvis impersonator years before his death, then misses his chance to switch back. Elvis teams up with Jack (Ossie Davis), a fellow nursing home resident who thinks that he is actually President John F. Kennedy. The two end up battling an evil Egyptian entity who has chosen their long-term care facility as his happy hunting grounds. Check out the pics and find out how Quint got on the set in the first place here.   
                 

July 3, 2001

Source: Empire Online

Well, what else can you say except that it's about time! Empire Online got the news from none other than Jon Voight so how wrong can it be? Interviewed for Empire magazine's regular Public Access section, Voight - who's one of the film's producers - confirmed Cage's involvement as follows: "It's very exciting - we've got the script and Nic Cage is going to do it. It's going to be quite terrific." To refresh your memories, the Ghost Rider is a motorbike stuntman who makes a pact with dark forces to save his girlfriend's life. When the pact falls apart - the stuntman becomes a demon whose life's work becomes tracking down the bad guys. Voight also suggests that he may appear in, as well as produce Ghost Rider.   
                 

July 3, 2001

Source: Creature Corner

Not sure how reliable this info is, especially in light of Craven's many other projects rumored to be on his plate at the moment. Apparently "Dark Wonderland", known to video gamers as American McGee’s Alice is on the verge of being adapted to the big screen. Craven has supposedly chosen this as his next project, and Natalie Portman is considering a role in the film. Dimension Films will be releasing the film and John August ("Minority Report") will be writing the adaptation. Dimension regular Marco Beltrami is also said to be scoring the film. August being confirmed as the writer on the project is the only solid thing about this. Craven hasn't actually signed on the dotted line.    
                

July 3, 2001

Source: Comics2film and Z Review

A feature film adaptation of Kevin Eastman and Simon Bisley's "Fistful of Blood" is reportedly in the works. The comic is described as a zombie western. Z provides this description of the concept: "Out of the blistering heat of the desert a mysterious stranger wanders into a grim, dusty, twisted border town with three names... It's a female...bruised, battered, and naked... who is quickly drawn into a vicious war between two rival gangs who prey on tourists. Redefining the term "femme fatale" and in a cold, calculated game, she switches allegiances to the highest bidder, which in the end turns out to be her own morality...." Eastman is currently adapting the concept as a movie. No word is given as to whether the project would be live action or animated.
                    

June 29, 2001

Source: Upcoming Movies

Next up from the very strange mind of Anne Rice (strange in a good way of course...) is the film "Ramses the Damned". The film has been in development since early 1996. "After drinking the Elixir of Life, the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses the Great becomes condemned to an eternal life, forever walking the Earth. Finally falling asleep over 1,000 years after his reign (during the time of the life of true love, Cleopatra), he is awakened 2,000 years later in 1914, by Lawrence Stafford, an archaeologist. Eventually brought to Stafford's mansion in England, Ramses falls in love with Stafford's daughter, Julie, setting out on a plan to use her to bring Cleopatra back to life. What this leads to, however, is more than Ramses had ever bargained for..." No casting announced yet. Thanks to Greg!   
                

June 29, 2001

Source: Dark Horizons

Vin Diesel appeared on "The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborne" last night and was asked about the rumoured "Pitch Black" sequel. He responded that the script is currently being written by the writer of "X-Men" (David Hayter), will begin pre-production this August and is currently being called "The Chronicles of Riddick". Well, this isn't anything we didn't already know, but the re-confirmation is always a good thing. With regards to his other projects, reportedly (a big "reportedly") the action/crime/thriller "El Diablo" was looking to head straight to video but now with the success of "The Fast & The Furious" it seems to be headed for a theatrical release after all. My own sources hadn't mentioned the stv thing, as far as I know New Line has already hired the film's screenwriters on to write the sequel. Filming on "El Diablo" started in December 2000 with locations including Los Angeles and New Mexico, and wrapped in early March, 2001.    
               

June 29, 2001

Source: Hollywood Reporter

News from the Hollywood Reporter tells us that ABC has "snagged" the broadcast TV rights to "Scary Movie 2" and "Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams" from Miramax's Dimension Films. Kinda weird since neither movie has been released yet. Apparently the licensing fee negotiated for multiple runs of both sequels is the standard 15% of each film's box-office with a cap. The network also has an option to sublicense the films to other outlets. "Scary 2" opens July 4 and will be available for broadcast by ABC in the first quarter of 2004. "Spy Kids 2" is still in development and is tentatively scheduled for release in August 2002, this means ABC could get first crack at the movie as early as April 2005.    
               

June 28, 2001

Source: Dark Horizons

Dark Horizons reports that "Soft for Digging" an ultra-low budget (aka indie) horror is apparently getting rave reaction. The supernatural thriller is about an old man living alone in a rural wooded area. He sets out one morning after his runaway cat and witnesses an unspeakable crime. The police are called in and after extensive searches, can uncover no body, or any evidence of any kind but the old man will not let the matter rest. He slowly unravels the mystery and finds to his horror that what is seemingly apparent is not always the reality. The 74 minute film has barely a dozen lines of dialogue, and cost a mere $6,000 but at the moment no details of a potential distribution or further airings have yet to be made. 
                   

June 28, 2001

Source: Creature Corner

Screen Gems has created two series of original collector's trading cards for its new film release "John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars." There are two series of the cards featuring exclusive artwork from the film (which opens nationwide August 17). The first series is available now, the second series will premiere at the COMICON convention in San Diego on July 21. Both series will be available only at select conventions (such as COMIC CON, WIZARD CON and FANGORIA), special giveaways and comic collector's stores. There are 60,000 sets of each series of 6 cards, featuring all the characters in the film: Desolation Williams (Ice Cube), Lt. Melanie Ballard (Natasha Henstirdge), Commander Helena Braddock (Pam Grier), Jericho Butler (Jason Statham ), Bashira (Clea Duvall), Professor Whitlock (Joanna Cassidy ), and Big Daddy Mars (Richard Cetrone). In addition, there are 12 personally autographed John Carpenter cards randomly inserted in one of every 10,000 packs.       
             

June 28, 2001

Source: Really Scary

Author Douglas Clegg ("You Come When I Call You" & "The Halloween Man") is giving his fans a chance to actually be (briefly) in one of his books. On his official site, Douglas is running a contest to win the opportunity to be killed in his upcoming novel "The Hour Before Dark". The winner would actually be featured as a character that gets murdered in the book. Clegg will also randomly select someone from the entries to receive an inscribed, autographed copy of his new hardcover novel "The Infinite", due out this fall. Check out all the details here.
             

June 28, 2001

Source: Coming Attractions

By now we've all heard about Benicio Del Toro's injury to his wrist while shooting "The Hunted". Well, here's the lowdown from a scooper at Coming Attractions on what happened: "While Benicio and Tommy Lee, known as Fatty on the set, were rehearsing the big knife fight, Fatty took a tumble landing on Benicio's arm, breaking his wrist just above the hand. Later in the day Benicio had a chartered jet fly him to Los Angeles for, what seems, will be a long recovery. Tendons may be severed as well." Now, Tommy Lee Jones is off to film " MIB 2" for the next few months. "Filming may resume on "The Hunted" in September or October. Benicio is to remain in the same physical condition, hair, weight, etc. until the end of filming, as per his contract. The opening scene, Benicio stalking through a war torn Sarajevo, and the knife fight, have yet to be filmed." Any additional filming will have to be delayed until next spring. That's an incredibly long time to wait until Del Toro's broken wrist is fully healed, but due to previous commitments by the actors and directors, it's the next available opening that everyone involved has to complete filming the picture.
       

June 26, 2001

Source: Dark Horizons

No mention of this on the official Halloween site, but Dark Horizons is reporting that the ending of the upcoming eighth "Halloween" film is undergoing a re-shoot as the original cut includes shots that require FX which are apparently "too expensive".    
                

June 26, 2001

Source: Nationl Post

The Canadian newspaper the National Post has a great article about the next Halloween film. The article includes interviews with stars of the film: Sean Patrick Thomas and Thomas Ian Nicholas, stuntman Brad Loree, and Director Rick Rosenthal. Thomas and Nicholas both discuss their newfound appreciation for the series. The article also reveals Rosenthal's feelings on how this particular installment takes on a tribute-like form to the original "Halloween". Rosenthal says that he saw the 1st one, did the 2nd one but hasn't seen any of the others. He viewed Jamie Lee Curtis using an axe to cut off the head of Michael Myers (in "H2O") as a "technicality" and that he wasn't surprised the franchise would continue. Check out the full article here.  
                 

June 26, 2001

Source: Rotten Tomatoes

Artisan Entertainment, most known for "The Blair Witch Project", is reportedly in talks to acquire the Canadian indie company Lion's Gate Entertainment. The deal is reportedly worth between $100 million and $150 million. Lion's Gate most recent offerings include "Frailty" and "Monster's Ball".    
               

June 26, 2001

Source: Hollywood Reporter

Oscar-winning screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie ("The Usual Suspects") has come aboard to direct Warner Brothers' "Chimera" for Joel Silver and Robert Zemeckis' Dark Castle Entertainment. McQuarrie will supervise the latest draft of the script, which is being rewritten by Mark Hanlon. The project is about a group of boat salvagers who after discovering a passenger ship missing since 1953 floating adrift on the Bering Sea, claim the vessel as their own. Once they begin towing the ghost ship towards harbor, a series of bizarre occurrences happen. This is the first original project for Silver and Zemeckis' Dark Castle after remaking two William Castle movies, 1999's "House on Haunted Hill" and the upcoming "13 Ghosts".  
                  

June 26, 2001

Source: National Post

Bruce Campbell stops for an interview with Detroit Free Press. Claims that he wrote his book so he'd have something to sign at fan conventions? hmmm...maybe Bruce was feeling a little silly during this interview, describing himself as a "schlep" as opposed to a movie star. Well, actually Campbell spent the past four years writing his book "If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor" because he wanted to "rip the lid off Hollywood's dirty secret: Most people in the movie business are working schleps", just like him. Interesting enough Campbell mentions how his "Bubba-Hotep" project has yet to find a distribution deal...very sad news since I'm looking forward to seeing it. He plays a 68-year-old Elvis, hidden away in an East Texas retirement home, who teams up with a fellow resident who's convinced he is JFK, to do battle with the evil Egyptian entity Bubba-Hotep. Campbell says "I read this script, and it was so weird and so cool and so original, it was the sort of thing they would have thrown you out of Universal if you had come in with it. I thought, 'Oh, yeah, that's for me.' " Check out the full article here.   
                 

June 25, 2001

Source: Upcoming Movies

Vin Diesel is apparently in talks to take the title role in the project "Triple X" (or possibly "XXX"). This film would re-team Diesel with Rob Cohen & Neil Moritz ("The Fast & the Furious"). Rob Cohen ("Dragonheart", "The Skulls") will be directing once again, with Moritz producing. The story is about a charismatic extreme sports competitor, Triple X, who is recruited by the government to infiltrate a crime ring. This project has no relation to the Dark Horse comic book series of the same title. Production is scheduled to start in late 2001. Diesel's next project "El Diablo" is due out later this year.   
               

June 25, 2001

Source: Coming Attractions

Production continues on the Al Pacino, Hilary Swank, and Robin Williams feature "Insomnia". Christopher Nolan ("Memento") is directing. The film is about a detective (Pacino) who is compromised during a murder investigation in an Alaskan small town when he winds up accidentally killing his partner and being blackmailed by the person he originally came there to investigate (Williams). Coming Attractions reports that "The Insomnia crew has made their way to the northern B.C. town of Stewart. With a population of less than 800, the production has been big news for the community. With over 150 cast and crew in town for the shoot, this represents almost a quarter of the total population!" Shooting is expected to take four days.      
              

June 25, 2001

Source: Cinescape

The newly back in action Cinescape has some new "Ghost of Mars" pictures up. Some cool shots of Natasha Henstridge looking pretty slick with the heavy artillery. Check'em out here.