With each new day, there seems be more heartbreaking revelations about the last days of Corey Haim's troubled life.

The latest to speak out is one of the co-stars of Haim's last film, Decisions, actress Liana Mendoza.

She says:

"I knew something was up. Other castmembers were talking about it…People would say, 'Whoa, he is cracked out right now.' It was all love and hugs and kisses. Just talking all the time. I just thought he might not want to be alone or something. He would talk to everyone. He would be hanging out, seeing what everyone's doing. It seemed like he needed a lot of love. I don't know if was because something from the past…but I feel like he needed a lot of love. He was so full of it and wanted so much of it."

So unfortunate.

We guess it's true that sometimes the higher you climb, the harder you fall.

[Image via WENN.]

posted by GossipGander

Marvel Studios has zeroed in on Hugo Weaving to play the villainous Red Skull in “Captain America.”

Joe Johnston is directing the movie, which remains in search of the actor to play Steve Rogers, Captain America’s alter ego.

In the Marvel comics, Red Skull has been Captain America’s archenemy since 1941, when he engaged in espionage and sabotage as Hitler’s right-hand man. In his final battle with the superhero, he was buried under the rubble of a bombed building but — as would occur later with Captain America — fell into a state of suspended animation. Both were revived in modern times.

The character was the villain in the low-budget 1990 “Captain America” movie.

The dealmaking with Weaving is in a delicate stage that will play out in the next day or so. Agencies grouse that Marvel plays hardball in the negotiating process and also demands multi-movie commitments, though the latter usually applies to actors playing its heroes.

If a deal happens, it would reunite the actor with Johnston, with whom he worked in the recent horror thriller “The Wolfman.” The CAA-repped Weaving already is known to genre fans as bad guy Agent Smith of the “Matrix” movies and elf ruler Elrond of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

Source

I can actually see him fitting into the role rather well, tbh.

posted by GossipGander

According to Box Office Mojo the official release date for Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn in North America is December 23rd 2011, which also happens to be my birthday. Tintin will be released in countries such as Sweden, Netherlands and Germany in October 2011 as Tintin is rather popular in that part of the world. To date the graphic novel series has sold over 200 million copies worldwide and most of those sales were in Europe, so the studios (Sony/Paramount) have the right strategy even if the US has to wait an extra 2 months for it.

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn stars Daniel Craig, Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and will be using the same performance-capture technology James Cameron used for Avatar, so expect a visual treat.

Source

NGL I'm fucking excited to see this GQ cast, we needed some stills or a trailer yesterday...read an article that said that they were going to play a teaser at some French comic convention, but it seems nothing's surfaced on the internet if it's true.
And no that image was just attached to the source article, but it was lol-worthy so I included it.

posted by GossipGander

All right, all right, we agree that it was TOTALLY effed up, but nothing can be done now, so let's get off the press circuit and try to let it go, people!!

Friends of Farrah Fawcett are still up in arms about the late actress's Oscar snub this year and, despite a half-assed apology from Academy bosses, are still speaking out publicly about what they are calling "unforgivable!"

Alana Stewart Hamilton, a producer of the documentary Farrah's Story, says:

"I think they are saying they are sorry that family members and friends are upset. It is not just family members and friends. I said that to Mr. Davis, in all due respect, today. I said, it is millions of fans. The minute she was not part of that memorial, it started on Twitter. The emails I've gotten, people are outraged by it…I just want to make one point. In all due respect, Michael Jackson is a huge music icon, but I believe he only did one movie."

Candy Spelling - WTF? - is also not happy about the snub and says:

"I was very surprised. I also was surprised with Jean Barry and Bea Arthur. Bea Arthur was excluded. She was in at Annie Mame, with Lucille Ball, not the original one. She did another film or two. Because she was so well known as Maude and Golden Girls, they thought she was more television."

We honestly sympathize. But we think it's time to stop using this as an excuse to get press.

It sucks that they did it, but we think everyone just needs to go back to honoring Farrah's memory and eff the Academy.

What do U think?? Is it time to let Farrah's Oscar snub go??

[Image via WENN.]

posted by GossipGander

File under “two great tastes that taste great together”: Jason Segel and Ed Helms are set to co-star in an upcoming stoner comedy. Adding to my joy, Jeff Who Lives At Home is from writing/directing brothers Mark and Jay Duplass of The Puffy Chair and Baghead. (Mark also stars in the The League and was half the bromantic duo in Humpday.) My cup runneth over.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, “the pic chronicles a day in the life of two brothers, one a loser (Segel) who lives at home and the other (Helms) more together but overbearing.” So… no one’s playing against type. Judy Greer, who should totally be a bigger star, is “in talks” to play Helms’ wife.

The Duplass’s films are very talky and low-key, and Helms and Segel, while fantastic, tend to play big, shouty, and ostentatiously goofy (Segel) or dorky (Helms) characters. I’m curious to see them scale back their broad styles for more of a lived-in, realistic vibe. And please oh please let there be some kind of musical number.

Are you excited for this comedy powerhouse, PopWatchers?

Source
This sounds amazing! Now if Paul Rudd could somehow join them, I'd be even happier.

posted by GossipGander \\ tags: casting / auditions

Six new photos have been released for the upcoming Warner Bros film, The Losers. It’s a live action adaptation of The DC/Vertigo comic of the same name and features an all star cast of badasses. As you can tell from the above photo, they’re not just pissed at the world, they’re also pissed at each other. The Losers is directed by Sylvain White, and stars Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the leader of a rag tag crew of military trained vigilanties.

The Losers are a special black-ops team whose members originated from several different branches of the military. In their own units, each one of them at some point or another lost a soldier under their command, hence they dubbed themselves “The Losers.” Morgan plays Sargent Clay, Idris Elba is Roque, Chris Evans is Jensen, Columbus Short is Pooch, Zoe Saldana is Aisha, and Oscar Jaenada is Cougar.

In the latest photos from the film, we see Morgan and Saldana getting too close for comfort, while Clay struggles to stay alive in the presence of Elba. Evans tries his hand at using a crossbow, while Saldana’s Aisha uses a heavy automatic gun as her weapon of choice. The Losers is scheduled to hit theaters on April 23, 2010.





Chris Evans as Jensen



Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Clay



Idris Elba as Roque



Zoe Saldana as Aisha



Soldiers at War



Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Zoe Saldana







SRC.

posted by GossipGander

We all know that the events in Iron Man (and possibly Iron Man 2) take place before The Incredible Hulk. How does Thor fit into this time-line?
In terms of time-line, Thor is set after The Incredible Hulk. In the script we make mention of gamma radiation and one of the scientist characters, I think Stellan Skarsgard's Professor Ford recalls, “There was brilliant scientist (Bruce Banner). He was a genius with gamma radiation and somehow S.H.I.E.L.D. made him disappear.” So Thor's story would take place after The Incredible Hulk.



How does Thor figure into The Avengers? Does he become a full-fledged member of the team?
Basically, at the end of the movie, Thor makes mention to Clark Gregg's character Agent Coulson that his kingdom of Asgard and S.H.I.E.L.D. are on the same side and whenever they need his help, he will be there to assist them in battle. It does leave it open, with Thor basically saying “When you need me and you want to assemble a team, I’m down.” So, this is obviously pre-Avengers, post-Incredible Hulk.



So at this point are the Avengers already “assembled” like when Tony Stark told General Ross (William Hurt) at the Incredible Hulk's conclusion: “We're putting a team together.”?
At this point, Nick Fury and Tony Stark would have already started amassing people.



How is an actor and director as deeply rooted in the world of Shakespeare like Kenneth Branagh handling comic book material like Thor?
Branagh is fantastic. The guy is a passionate director. He makes everything and everyone important, no matter how small their role in the production is. He's keeping the material very close to the comic. The tone is – even the way the stuff looks – is darker. So it’s cool. Iron Man was cool because it was light, but not too light like the Batman movies that Tim Burton made and it was not as heavy as say, Chris Nolan's The Dark Knight. Iron Man was the perfect comic book movie because it was the light and the dark sides sort of mixed together. Thor balances the same things as well. It plays the light side with the stuff on Earth and then the heavier side with what happens up in Asgard and the battle that occurs. Marvel has done a really good job of trying to blend what they need to have a successful movie and what they need to keep all the fan boys happy. They're doing an excellent job.



Chris Hemsworth in the lead role of Thor.
He’s not only f*ing great, but a cool guy and about as normal a guy that you’ll ever meet. I know everyone is saying that. Chris had auditioned for another movie, but failed to win the part, yet he was very open and self-deprecating about it. He even said “Yeah, yeah. I auditioned for that. But apparently I was pretty terrible.” He’ll have that sort of attitude about it and kind of make fun of himself. “Yeah, I pretty much stunk the joint up when I went in and auditioned for that.” He’s got that kind of self deprecating humor. Very, very cool dude. He is a perfect Thor. The guy’s a physical specimen. He’s 6’4’’/6’5’’ and he’s built like a brick house. He looks like he came down off that Rainbow Bridge and was ready to rock.



What about the look of Thor's costume and the iconic hammer?
Surprisingly, the costume looks amazing. We could tell early on from the production sketches of costumes and sets that this was going to be something good. It’s just beautiful and the designers really took it to heart. If you look at some of the more recent Thor comics that are out now, the tone and the costuming is that. It’s basically, the way you read the comics now, they’re updated the way they are now and that’s how the costumes are. I think everyone is going to be very, very happy. Nothing looks cheesy or cheap. Everything looks like it’s real. Everything looks like it came from that period. And everything looks right on all the actors. Nothing looks stupid. I guess that’s the best word. It's just jaw-dropping even to the Marvel executives.


SOURCE

posted by GossipGander

Kristen Stewart on the set of her new movie The Runaways talking about Joan Jett, her set experience and the band The Runaways.



Source

Oh why hello haters

posted by GossipGander

Like its Spanish counterpart, Rec, Screen Gems' Quarantine left the door wide open for a sequel. Sure enough, Sony's specialty division that dabbles often in the horror field is moving ahead on Quarantine 2.

After combing Hollywood for pitches, Screen Gems has hired John Pogue to write and direct.

Pogue penned U.S. Marshals, the 1998 follow-up to The Fugitive, and all three entries in The Skulls series for Universal. Dark Castle tapped him to write Ghost Ship which opened in 2002.

Word is, Pogue is taking Quarantine out of the doomed tenement stricken with a vicious virus and setting the sequel in an airport. So, yes, it will be a departure from Rec 2 which picked up minutes after the events in Rec.

Quarantine 2 is being geared for direct-to-DVD, but as they say, anything can happen. Perhaps it will wind up theatrical. Quarantine grossed $41 million worldwide when it opened in 2008.

SOURCE

Has anyone else seen Rec 2...it was horrible.

posted by GossipGander

The topic at the Batcave on Monday night was the future of that other superhero — you, know, the one from Metropolis. “It’s very exciting, we have a fantastic story,” Christopher Nolan said while sipping tea in the sleek editing suite that fills the converted garage adjacent to his Hollywood home. “And we feel we can do it right. We know the milieu, if you will, we know the genre and how to get it done right.”


Nolan was standing next to his wife, producer Emma Thomas, his partner in all of his films — including “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight,” the grim franchise that pulled in more than $1.3 billion at theaters worldwide — and he was explaining their plan to take on a challenge that has frustrated Hollywood for two decades: Getting another Superman film franchise off the ground.

Nolan, speaking about the Superman project for the first time, is pleased with the excitement stirred but, like the magicians in his 2006 film “The Prestige,” sees no value in revealing all of his tricks before the curtain goes up. Still, he wanted to answer some of the early questions about his plans for Superman — as well as his third visit to Gotham City.

There was a spasm of fan excitement when word leaked last month that Nolan, who is now viewed as the Hitchcock of superhero cinema after his two Batman films, would be the “godfather” for a reboot of the Man of Steel, acting as producer and mentor to an as-yet-unnamed-director who will be making a movie based on a story by Nolan and frequent collaborator David S. Goyer.

The Internet flurry that included reports that, according to Thomas, might be better described as fan fiction. The dispatches revealing that the film will be called “Man of Steel” ? and feature Lex Luthor and Brainiac? Or the one about it being a period piece with something like a low-fi version of the hero?



“I don’t know where this stuff comes from,” Thomas said with a chuckle, although, as with any good poker player, it’s hard to say where the bluff starts and ends.

This much is certain: The couple are completely focused on the movie-of-the-moment, which is “Inception,” which opens July 19 and stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a dream thief of sorts in what may be Hollywood’s first metaphysical heist film. The movie is the most complicated undertaking of Nolan’s career — it was shot in six countries and tells a tale that flips between reality and three levels of dream-time — and, well, all things considered, he’d rather Superman stay in his Fortress of Solitude and off the front page for a while longer since that project is a matter for 2012 or 2013 at best.

But, of course, Superman, first superhero of them all, is an American pop culture icon on par with Mickey Mouse and Elvis. But after the close of the Christopher Reeve era with “Superman IV: The Quest for Peace” in 1987, the property became one of the most frustrating in Hollywood. A dozen different reboots were started through the years with names attached such as Nicolas Cage, Kevin Smith, J.J. Abrams, McG and Brett Ratner and plans were trotted out to kill Superman, strip him of his powers or pit him in battle against Batman.

Finally, director Bryan Singer, who had earned credibility with comic book fans with his two “X-Men” films for Fox, delivered with “Superman Returns” in 2006 starring Brandon Routh. But the finished product was viewed as oddly lifeless by many critics. The $200-million film finished its theatrical run with a respectable $391 million worldwide but it wasn’t heroic enough to earn a sequel.

Nolan said that he admired Singer’s film, especially the way it connected in to director Richard Donner’s version of Superman and the first two movies starring Reeve. Nolan added, though, that this new movie will stand on its own.



“A lot of people have approached Superman in a lot of different ways. I only know the way that has worked for us that’s what I know how to do,” Nolan said, emphasizing the idea that Batman exists in a world where he is the only superhero and a similar approach to the Man of Steel would assure the integrity needed for the film. “Each serves to the internal logic of the story. They have nothing to do with each other.”

Still, it was a frustrating moment in the Batman franchise that led to this new Superman revival. Nolan and Goyer, a key collaborator on both Batman films, were at a story impasse on the third Batman film (which is now picking up steam as well) when, as a distraction, Goyer gave the filmmaker a daydream version of how he would tackle a story about the last son of Krypton.

“He basically told me, ‘I have this thought about how you would approach Superman,’” Nolan recalled. “I immediately got it, loved it and thought: That is a way of approaching the story I’ve never seen before that makes it incredibly exciting. I wanted to get Emma and I involved in shepherding the project right away and getting it to the studio and getting it going in an exciting way.”

Goyer is now writing the screenplay and Nolan is keeping it close to the vest.

It’s interesting where inspirations originate. Nolan put together an especially deep cast for his Batman films — the first one, for instance, featured Morgan Freeman, Liam Neeson, Gary Oldman and Tom Wilkinson in supporting roles. That, he said, was an idea imported from Metropolis.

“I went to the studio with the analogy of ‘I want to cast the way they did in 1978 with “Superman, where they had Brando and Glenn Ford and Ned Beatty and all these fantastic actors in even small parts, which was an exotic idea for a superhero movie at the time. It really paid off, too., As a kid watching ‘Superman’ it seemed enormous and I realized later by looking at it that a lot of that was actually the casting, just having these incredibly talented people and these characterizations. And Marlon Brando is the first guy up playing Superman’s dad. It’s incredible.”



Superman, created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, was an instant success when he arrived on the publishing scene in June 1938 and he more or less created the American comic book and its signature concept, the superhero. Superman made the leap to radio in 1940 and then to the silver screen in 1948 when Kirk Alyn became the first of many actors to wear the cape. George Reeve was the face of Superman on television for 104 episodes in the 1950s Reeve may be the definitive version of the hero for most people today, but young fans have a view of the hero shaped more by the award-winning animated series in recent years and “Smalllvile,” the CW series that just got re-upped for a tenth season, making star Tom Welling the Clark Kent with the longest tenure.

Nolan, for the record, also won’t confirm that he is actually directing the third Batman film but, well, or course he is, but “Inception” isn’t in the can yet and it’s against his code. He can’t be easily tricked, either. Asked if Superman as a franchise has to overcome a deficiency of truly great villains, unlike, say, Spider-Man and Batman, he won’t bite. “That’s a very sly way of asking a question I’m not going to answer.”



Nolan says he has no idea who will direct the Superman film (there has been conjecture that it may be his brother and frequent collaborator, Jonathan Nolan) but his role appears to be comparable Peter Jackson with “District 9,” which was directed by newcomer Neill Blomkamp but benefited greatly from imprimatur of the “The Lord of the Rings” auteur. Jackson is also stepping into a similar role in Middle-earth as Guillermo del Toro takes over as director for “The Hobbit” films.

Nolan established himself as a bold and cerebral filmmaker in 2000 with “Memento,” has made a specialty of rooting stories of the fantastic in a gritty reality with psychological undertones and emphasis on using practical effects and stunt work as opposed to the magical painting brushes of CG era. All of that made him an ideal filmmaker for fight-time in the brutal gutters of Gotham but it doesn’t make the filmmaker the first obvious choice for flight-time amid the gleaming citadels of Metropolis. Warner Bros executives seem confident that he is -- and they need him to be the right man with the "Harry Potter" franchise -- and perhaps Batman -- nearing an expiration date.

Sitting in his edit bay, which is decorated with posters of Ledger as the Joker and has a skylight that rolls shut with mechanical screeching that adds to the Batcave ambiance, Nolan said he knows about storytelling and it’s difficult to dissect his work beyond that.



“We’re approaching it in a not dissimilar way in terms of trying to find an incredible story in a way that audiences can engage with it the way they engage with contemporary action films,” Nolan continued. “I think David’s approach is a very good way of doing just that.”

And that third Batman film? Jonathan Nolan is “now doing the hard work” of writing the script based on the story by his sibling Goyer. “My brother is writing a script for me and we’ll wait to see how it turns out...he’s struggling to put it together into the epic story that you want it to be.”

“Batman Begins” was the origin and back story of the hero, while “The Dark Knight” found the hero reeling as his Manichean, good vs. evil world view was upended by a new villain, the Joker, who was a wild-card agent of chaos going up against order, be it a police department or the mob. The second film ends, literally, with Batman on the run, a fugitive.

So what happens next?

“Without getting into specifics, the key thing that makes the third film an great possibility for us is that we want to finish our story,” he said. “And in viewing it as the finishing of a story rather than infinitely blowing up the balloon and expanding the story.”

Nolan said the key characters from the two first films and the actors who that play them will be back. “We have a great ensemble, that’s one of the attractions of doing another film, since we’ve been having a great time for years.”



Perhaps. But the great challenge is to find a villain (or villains) who that can not only match up with the Caped Crusader but also with Heath Ledger’s Academy Award-winning portrayal of the scabby, demented Joker. Fans have churned up the rumor mill for months now (Johnny Depp as the Riddler? Angelina Jolie as Catwoman? Philip Seymour Hoffman as the Penguin? Ben Kingsley as Hugo Strange?). But Nolan, no fan of letting cats out of the bag, declined to play along.

His villain choices to date have steered cleared of strongly supernatural or super-science characters (no Man-Bat, Mr. Freeze or Poison Ivy, for instance) but he shook his head when asked if that was trajectory he would continue. He did however concede one tidbit: “It won’t be," he said, "Mr. Freeze.”

Batman has been throwing punches in the pages of DC Comics since 1939 and as the decades passed, much of the core of the character stayed the same even as Bruce Wayne’s sideburns or the profile of the Batmobile changed. Not so with film.

“I’m very excited about the end of the film, the conclusion, and what we’ve done with the characters,” Nolan said.“My brother has come up with some pretty exciting stuff. Unlike the comics, these thing don’t go on forever in film and viewing it as a story with an end is useful. Viewing it as an ending, that sets you very much on the right track about the appropriate conclusion and the essence of what tale we’re telling. And it hearkens back to that priority of trying to find the reality in these fantastic stories. That’s what we do.”

SOURCE

posted by GossipGander