“Whiteout” stars Kate Beckinsale, Gabriel Macht, Columbus Short, and Tom Skerritt. The film was written by Jon Hoeber & Erich Hoeber and directed by Dominic Sena (“Swordfish”) and opens on September 11th, 2009. It is rated R.
Kate Beckinsale
Synopsis: “For U.S. Marshal Carrie Stetko, things are about to get even more dangerous. As the only law enforcement officer in this unforgiving territory, she has just been sent to investigate a body on the ice. Antarctica’s first homicide. A shocking discovery in itself, it will plunge her into an even more bizarre mystery and the revelation of secrets long-buried under the endless ice…secrets that someone believes are still worth killing for.
As Stetko races to find the killer before he finds her, winter is already closing in. In the deadly Antarctic whiteout, she won’t see him till he’s a breath away.”
Saw II, III and IV director Darren Lynn Bousman is prepping a remake of the 1980 cult horror film Mother’s Day.
Bousman has already assembled an array of cast members for his scary movie including Shawn Ashmore (Iceman from the X-Men films), Alexa Vega (Spy Kids), Briana Evigan (S. Darko), Deborah Ann Woll (True Blood), Matt O’Leary (Death Sentence) and Jaime King (Sin City). The first day of filming is scheduled to take place next month in Winnipeg, Canada.
The old Mother’s Day was a Lloyd Kaufman film from his Troma Company so it was ultra-low budget and tailored to grab as much attention for its shock value. Made when making slasher films that took place around a holiday were the fad, the ’80s Mother’s Day was a brutal story about three female friends who, while camping, are stalked and sexually assaulted
Alexa Vega
by two deranged brothers who have a misguided sense of family values. The new Mother’s Day is dropping the rape element and moving the action to the confines of a house. The new owners of the house will be terrorized by the former family that used to live there who are apparently a bunch of wackos.
“What we’re trying to do is elevate this outside of a genre movie,” Bousman is quoted as saying to THR. “I’ve done three Saw films, I’ve done Repo, and yes, this is horrific at times, but it’s much darker and deeper because of the focus on the characters.”
The filmmakers want to get their movie out in time around next year’s Mother’s Day in May.
Source(s) -The Hollywood Reporter, Corona Coming Attractions
The 20th annual AFI Latin American Film Festival, which runs from Sept. 23 to Oct. 12 at the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, Md., will kick off with the Mexican feature, “I’m Going to Explode” (Voy a explotar), directed by Gerardo Naranjo.
The fest, showing films from Spain and Portugal as well as Latin America, will screen more than 30 films.
The Brazilian/US co-production “Beyond Ipanema: Brazilian Waves in Global Music” (Beyond Ipanema: Ondas brasileiras na musica global), which had its world premiere in July at MoMA’s annual Premiere Brazil! will be the Centerpiece Presentation, screening on Oct. 2.
The fest’s Closing Night film on Oct. 9 is Berlin Panorama selection “Just Walking” (Solo quiero caminar), a co-production of Spain and Mexico.
There will be a free community screening of selected episodes from “Latin Music USA,” a four-part miniseries set to air on PBS later this fall on Sept. 27.
Kevin Tancharoen, who rebooted dance pic “Fame” for MGM, will helm sci-fi actioner “Arcana,” which Brett Ratner will produce at Universal Pictures.
The choreographer-turned-helmer will direct the project based on a script by John Ridley, who is penning WWII actioner “Red Tails,” about the Tuskegee Airmen, for George Lucas.
Tancharoen developed the original idea with actor Harry Shum Jr., a regular in Fox’s upcoming “Glee,” before selling it to Universal.
Details of “Arcana” are being kept under wraps, but it’s described as a live-action graphic novel influenced by “Blade Runner” that includes martial arts and uses production methods similar to Zack Snyder’s “300.”
Brett Ratner
Ridley is no stranger to comicbooks, having penned “The Authority” and “The American Way” for DC Comics.
Ratner and Jay Stern will produce through their Rat Entertainment shingle, with John Cheng overseeing the project.
The Lion bows “Fame,” Tancharoen’s first pic, on Sept. 25.
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter… They’re everywhere. However, while we might be inclined to knock any new film that tries to jump onto the pile, we can’t really fault any horror indies. Vamps have always thrived in that realm; it’s their home turf.
So you might remember that last year, I wrote about a little Canadian horror comedy called Suck and its interesting cast list — Jessica Pare, Malcolm McDowell, Dave Foley, Iggy Pop, Moby, Alice Cooper, Carol Pope, and Henry Rollins. The film has since wrapped, is heading to TIFF next month (hat tip to MTV), and you can check out a trailer for the bloodletting after the jump. The brainchild of Rob Stefaniuk (of Phil the Alien fame), Suck focuses on a struggling band who finally finds success when the leader’s (Stefaniuk) ex gf and bandmate Jennifer (Pare) becomes a vampire rife with “sexually charged charisma that drives the audiences wild.”
McDowell co-stars as Eddie Van Helsing — a one-eyed vamp hunter who’s afraid of the dark, while Foley plays their manager, Pop plays a music producer, Cooper plays a bartender, and Rollins plays “Rock’n Roger” — a radio dude with terrible hair. That alone has me sold. Heck,
Jessica Paré
McDowell with a flashlight to “keep the dark away” is gold just on its own. But just to sweeten the pot some more, the film’s full of songs like David Bowie’s “Here Come’s the Night” and The Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil.”
Make Up Department
Graham Chivers … dental technician
Cliona Furey… hair department head
Iantha Goldberg … assistant makeup artist
Colin Penman … assistant makeup department head
Jordan Samuel … makeup designer
Special Effects Department Graham Chivers … special effects technician
Steve Newburn … special effects technician
Ron Stefaniuk … special effects coordinator
Visual Effects Department
Tony Cybulski … digital compositor: C.O.R.E. Digital Pictures
Luke Groves … visual effects production manager: C.O.R.E. Digital Pictures
Mark Thomas-Stubbs … lead digital effects artist
Chris Wallace … digital intermediate colourist
The upcoming feature Devil from director M. Night “The Sixth Sense” Shyamalan is reportedly moving production out of Philadelphia to tax-friendly Toronto.
According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, officials with the state film office say the director’s planned move is due to uncertainty over whether Pennsylvania’s film tax credit will be approved in the state’s budget.
Shyamalan lives near the Philly suburb of Malvern, filming eight of his nine features in the region.
Filming begins today on the Roman epic adventure The Eagle of the Ninth, directed by Academy Award winner Kevin Macdonald and produced by Duncan Kenworthy. Shooting entirely on location in Hungary and Scotland, the film is co-financed by Film4 with Focus Features, which holds worldwide rights excluding U.K. free-TV.
The cast is headed by Channing Tatum (G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, the upcoming Dear John), Jamie Bell (Defiance, Jumper), two-time Golden Globe Award winner Donald Sutherland, and Mark Strong (the upcoming Sherlock Holmes and Robin Hood). Mr. Macdonald is reunited on the new film with Jeremy Brock, BAFTA Award-winning screenwriter of his 2006 film The Last King of Scotland, who has adapted the screenplay of The Eagle of the Ninth from Rosemary
Channing Tatum
Sutcliff’s classic novel of the same name.
Duncan Kenworthy, an Academy Award and Golden Globe Award nominee for Four Weddings and a Funeral, developed and is producing The Eagle of the Ninth through his Toledo Productions. Caroline Hewitt is co-producer. Focus senior vice president, European production Teresa Moneo – who with Focus Features International president of sales and distribution Alison Thompson brought the project into the company – is supervising the film’s production with Film4 head Tessa Ross.
The Eagle of the Ninth is set in the dangerous world of second-century Britain. In 140 AD, twenty years after the unexplained disappearance of the entire Ninth Legion in the mountains of Scotland, young centurion Marcus Aquila (played by Mr. Tatum) arrives from Rome to solve the mystery and restore the reputation of his father, the commander of the Ninth. Accompanied only by his British slave Esca (Mr. Bell), Marcus sets out across Hadrian’s Wall into the uncharted highlands of Caledonia – to confront its savage tribes, make peace with his father’s memory, and retrieve the lost legion’s golden emblem, the Eagle of the Ninth. Mr. Sutherland portrays Marcus’ uncle Aquila, who has retired in Britain; Mr. Strong is cast as Guern, an ex-soldier who holds crucial information about the Ninth.
Defendor is a superhero dramedy which premieres at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival. Written and directed by Peter Stebbings, and starring Woody Harrelson and Kat Dennings, the story centers around three characters: an everyday guy who comes to believe he’s a superhero, his psychiatrist, and the teenager he befriends.
Kat Dennings
Here is the official plot synopsis:
Reality intersects with delusion in the mind of Arthur Poppington (Woody Harrelson), a regular man who adopts a superhero persona known as Defendor, and combs the city streets at night in search of his arch-enemy, Captain Industry.
In his attempts to combat crime and bring down Captain Industry, a drug and weapons dealer who he mistakenly blames for the death of his mother, Defendor ends up befriending a young prostitute, Katerina Debrofkowitz (Kat Dennings). Armed with unconventional weapons of mass confusion, aided by his new friend, and putting his life on the line, Defendor proves that everyone is capable of making a difference.
Expect an October 23 release date for the upcoming film “The Vampire’s Assistant” aka Cirque Du Freak by director Paul Weitz stars John C. Reilly, Ken Watanabe, Chris Massoglia, Josh Hutcherson, Patrick Fugit, Ray Stevenson, Michael Cerveris, Frankie Faison, Jane Krakowski, Orlando Jones, Kristen Schaal and Salma Hayek.
Synopsis: Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant, based on the popular series of books by Darren Shan, is a fantasy-adventure about a teenager who unknowingly breaks a 200-year-old truce between two warring factions of vampires. Pulled into a fantastic life of misunderstood sideshow freaks and grotesque creatures of the night, one teen will vanish from the safety of a boring existence and fulfill his destiny in a place drawn from nightmares.
Salma Hayek in The Vampire’s Assistant
16-year-old Darren (Chris Massoglia) was like most kids in his suburban neighborhood. He hung out with his best friend Steve (Josh Hutcherson), got decent grades and usually stayed out of trouble. But when he and his buddy stumble upon a traveling freak show, things begin to change inside Darren. That’s the exact moment when a vampire named Larten Crepsley (John C. Reilly) turns him into something, well, bloodthirsty.
Newly undead, he joins the Cirque Du Freak, a touring sideshow filled with monstrous creatures from a snakeboy and a wolfman to a bearded lady (Salma Hayek) and a gigantic barker (Ken Watanabe). As Darren flexes his newfound powers in this dark world, he becomes a treasured pawn between the vampires and their deadlier counterparts. And while trying to survive, one boy will struggle to keep their brewing war from devouring what’s left of his humanity.
By Josh Tyler – CinemaBlend.com
Last week when director Peter Berg talked about Hancock 2, he didn’t sound as if he knew whether it would happen. Now here we are a few days later, and it definitely is.
The Hollywood Reporter says Columbia Pictures has hired Adam Fierro and Glen Mazzara to write the sequel. Neither of them had anything at all to do with the first film, which from my perspective, is a big point in their favor. From Columbia’s perspective it’s somewhat surprising that they didn’t bring back Vincent Ngo and Vincent Gilligan. They wrote the first movie and even though it didn’t play well in the Tyler household, it did earn them more than $600 million worldwide. Strange move by Sony but maybe good news for us if the new guys can come up with something better.
The original movie starred Will Smith as a boozy superhero with a penchant for destruction. Or rather that was supposed to be what it was about. Thirty minutes in it suddenly abandoned that premise and went with the far less interesting notion that Will Smith was some sort of demi-god with amnesia and a tragic, terribly romantic past. No confirmation on where they’ll go with the sequel, but Berg has talked about bringing in yet another god-superhero for Will’s John Hancock character to interact with.
