One cannot help feeling that there is something very special in the way Maria Elena Gutierrez has put together this festival: her cultivation of industry figures, her contacts with other festivals, and her warmth as a hostess. Or maybe it’s the chocolate.
Clint Eastwood is in talks to direct supernatural thriller HEREAFTER at DreamWorks, per VARIETY.
The film will be in the same vein as THE SIXTH SENSE, and is produced by Kathleen Kennedy from a script by FROST/NIXON writer Peter Morgan.
DreamWorks, led by Steven Spielberg and Stacey Snider, picked up the script in March when the company was still under Paramount. DreamWorks kept the project in the divorce, and has been courting Eastwood for months.
Spielberg produced Eastwood's FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS and LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA.
Paramount has hired QUANTUM OF SOLACE director Marc Forster to helm WORLD WAR Z, per VARIETY.
CHANGELING writer J. Michael Straczynski is penning the screenplay, based on Max Brooks' novel about a worldwide infestation of flesh-eating zombies. Brad Pitt's Plan B is producing.
Forster is unlikely to return for another James Bond film.
Animation is not just kids' stuff anymore, and Nexus Productions Ltd. is in the thick of the changing creative and business market for animated films of all kinds. The London-based company, founded 10 years ago to create creative, family animation for commercials, music videos and shorts, has recently doubled its size, secured new avenues of funding, and positioned itself to take advantage of a revolution in the field. In addition, two recent short films produced by Nexus, THIS WAY UP and DAMAGED GOODS, have qualified for the 2008 Academy Award for animated short.
Writer Colin Trevorrow has been hired by Disney to pen their upcoming action feature PET ROBOTS, per VARIETY.
PET ROBOTS, a graphic novel by Scott Christian Sava, is about four students who get lost on a field trip at a toy company and bond with military robots. The novel was published by Sava's Blue Dream Studios last year. Sava previously worked on SPIDER-MAN, CASPER THE FRIENDLY GHOST, ALIENS VS. PREDATORS and X-MEN as an illustrator, comic book artist, animator and videogame designer.
Well, I’m torn. Shall I go to the presentation on “Hair shells and bi-quad transition rig on Shrek the Halls and Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa” or to the “Humanizing virtual agents: the role of speech technology in effective human-machine interaction?” Maybe if they made a rule that titles had to be short, like “Beards and boundaries” and “Talk to me, Mac,” I would feel less anxiety about making these choices.
Steve Carell, who last voiced The Mayor of Whooville for Fox's DR. SEUSS' HORTON HEARS A WHO!, will voice the title character in Universal's upcoming 3-D CG-animated feature DESPICABLE ME.
The film is the first for the Universal-based Illumination Ent., a family film unit under Chris Meledandri.
Other lead voices for the film, set for a 2010 release, include Jason Segel, Kristen Wiig, Will Arnett, Danny McBride (TROPIC THUNDER), Russell Brand (FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL), Jemaine Clement (FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS), Jack McBrayer (30 ROCK) and Julie Andrews.
Academy Award-winning sound designer Ben Burtt discusses how he created the voice of WALL-E and M-O and how he came up with the sound and character voice designer for WALL-E.
QUESTION: You had just finished a stint on STAR WARS when you were offered WALL-E and I imagine the last thing you wanted to work on was robots?
Ridley Scott is officially attached to direct Hasbro-Universal's MONOPOLY adaptation, and Pamela Pettler will write the script, per THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER.
Scott has been attached as a producer for some time, and intends to give the game-turned-movie a futuristic bend, similar to his BLADE RUNNER.
Pettler wrote Tim Burton's CORPSE BRIDE, Gil Kenan's MONSTER HOUSE and the upcoming animated feature 9, produced by Burton and WANTED director Timur Bekmambetov.
Nu Image/Millennium Films and Lionsgate are in final negotiations with Brett Ratner (RUSH HOUR franchise, X MEN: THE LAST STAND) to direct CONAN. Based on Robert E. Howard's classic action/adventure novels about a mythical conquering hero, CONAN is a co-production between Nu Image's Millennium Films and Lionsgate.
Audiences eager to see more adventures of Alex the lion, Marty the zebra, Melman the giraffe and Gloria the hippo pushed the debut of MADAGASCAR: ESCAPE 2 AFRICA to the top spot on the weekend box office, earning $63.1M for Paramount/DreamWorks Animation.
That number is the best opening of the year so far for an animated film, beating Disney-Pixar's WALL-E by about $100,000. The opening is also the seventh-best for any animated film.
Marvel Studios has hired Joe Johnston to direct FIRST AVENGER: CAPTAIN AMERICA, reports THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER.
The studio is hearing pitches and is expected to hire a writer soon to adapt the classic comic book character. Kevin Feige with Marvel is producing.
Starting with IRON MAN, Marvel has set in motion a film path leading to a big AVENGERS film for 2011. THOR, the IRON MAN sequel and CAPTAIN AMERICA (set for May 6, 2011) all will lay the ground work.
DreamWorks is working to secure the rights to remake Chan Wook-park's OLDBOY for Steven Spielberg and Will Smith to collaborate on, per VARIETY.
The remake of the Korean film from 2003 would be distributed by Universal. In it, a man (to be played by Smith) is held in a cell for 15 years without explanation. He is suddenly released with money, a cell phone and clothing and sets out to discover who imprisoned him. Spielberg has been looking to work with Smith for awhile, and is currently looking for a writer to start the development process.
IMAX Corporation and Twentieth Century Fox have reached agreement on material terms to release the highly anticipated 3-D motion picture AVATAR in IMAX 3-D simultaneously with the motion picture's premiere in conventional 3-D theatres on December 18, 2009.
Alain Prost, who held the record for most Grand Prix victories from 1987-2001 and received the 1999 World Sports Award of the Century along such greats as Pele and Muhammad Ali, is conquering new heights as he voices the role of race car driver Raymond in the CGI animated feature film LOUIS LA CHANCE, directed by Phillipe LeClerc and Xavier Aliot. Joining LeClerc and Aliot in the director's chair will be Guillaume Ivernel (DRAGON HUNTERS).
Now in pre-production, a CG-animated adaptation of THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ will be directed by John Boorman, per VARIETY.
The $25 million film will be adapted from L. Frank Baum's original novel and will be Boorman's first animated film. Laurent Rodon and Claude Gorvsky at France's Films Actions are producing with Boorman's longtime associate Kieran Corrigan. OZ was written by Boorman, Ron Mita and Jim McClain (ROBOTS) and should come out in summer 2010.
Relativity Media is in the final stages of negotiating with actor Henry Cavill to star as Theseus in WAR OF THE GODS by director Tarsem Singh, per VARIETY.
Warner Bros., for their part, is talking to Sam Worthington to play Perseus in their Louis Leterrier-helmed CLASH OF THE TITANS.
While different in plot, the two films are both themed in Greek mythology and will use the greenscreen technique 300 used to great success, while keeping the respective budgets under $100 million.
Jack Black will play the title role in Twentieth Century Fox's adaptation of GULLIVER'S TRAVELS, per VARIETY.
SHARK TALE director Rob Letterman will direct the film about free-spirited travel writer Lemuel Gulliver, who washes ashore on an island of tiny people called Lilliputians while on assignment in the Bermuda Triangle. This new version would be a contemporary re-imagining of the classic 1726 tale from author Jonathan Swift.
Paul Pope's unreleased graphic novel BATTLING BOY will be turned into a film from Paramount and Brad Pitt's Plan B production shingle, per VARIETY.
Coming spring 2010 by First Second Books, the story follows the son of a god or superhero who comes down from the mountaintop to rid a city of monsters.
Pope is known for his HEAVY LIQUID and BATMAN: YEAR 100 comics series, and has won multiple Eisner Awards. Writing and illustrating his own work, he worked for years at Japanese manga publisher Kodansha.
Actor Steve Carell, who signed a three-year first look deal with Warner Bros. recently, is reportedly on board for a GET SMART sequel -- but would like a pay raise, says the NEW YORK DAILY NEWS.
Carell's deal with WB does not include a GET SMART follow-up, for which the studio earned $130 million domestically and $230 internationally on the original. Carell, who was paid in the range of $500,000 just three years ago, has a market worth of about $15 million now. "He would like more money to do the sequel," a studio insider told the DAILY NEWS.
Academy Award-winning digital production studio Digital Domain announced a number of major feature films that are currently in production at its studio:
--THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON, directed by David Fincher, releasing December 25, 2008 from Warner Bros. and Paramount Pictures.--TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN, directed by Michael Bay, releasing in June 2009 from DreamWorks and Paramount Pictures.--2012, from director Roland Emmerich, releasing in July 2009 from Columbia Pictures.
DreamWorks Animation's MADAGASCAR: ESCAPE 2 AFRICA will open domestically on November 7, 2008 in a record 130 IMAX theatres, including 35 new locations equipped with IMAX's digital projection system, in conjunction with the film's nationwide release. MADAGASCAR: ESCAPE 2 AFRICA is the second of five DreamWorks Animation films slated for release in IMAX theatres from June 2008 to May 2010.
SAW V's Exec Producer, Dan Heffner, hired Jon Campfens as the visual effects supervisor and his studio Switch VFX for the fifth installment of the highly successful franchise. Toronto-based Switch VFX has been involved in the SAW franchise since SAW III, creating all the visual effects for the last three films and the head title sequences for the last two films.
For SAW V, Switch VFX had to create 155 shots for the film and were also responsible for the opening title sequence as well. The majority of the visual effects worked on were invisible effects work.
Warner Bros. plans to become the first Hollywood studio to make its new release movies available digitally in China -- pioneering VOD (transactional VOD) in what is already one of the world's largest broadband markets. The joint announcement Tuesday was made by Marc Gareton, Exec VP, International, Warner Bros. Digital Distribution and Shao Yiding, CEO of Union Voole Technology in China.
Disney's HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 3: SENIOR YEAR did repeat business over the Halloween weekend with $15.3M. That's a drop of more than 64 percent, but easily good enough for first place. The film, made on a $11M budget, has done $62.03M in two weeks.
Newcomer ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO opened in second place with $10.07M for the Weinstein Company.
Third place went to horror holdover SAW V (Lionsgate, vfx by Switch VFX) with $9.74M and a two-week cume of $45.47M.
