Random News of the Week (August 25 - August 31, 2008)

Alex Proyas (DARK CITY, THE CROW), the master behind DARK CITY (one of the most underrated films of all time) talked a little bit about his Dracula prequel called DRACULA YEAR ZERO. He says “it is sort of an origin tale that mixes the historical Prince Vlad of Transylvania with a sort of fictionalized Bram Stoker take.” He goes on to say, “The teeth are really important. I think Frank Langella in the 'Dracula' movie that was made in the 70s, I think he didn't want to have teeth in the movie. But, no, I like the teeth. I want to see girls with a lot of teeth.” "I think the garlic thing is kind of weird." Thus we'll just get "stakes and teeth...and lots and lots of blood."

Brett Ratner REALLY wants to do a Guitar Hero movie. Here was his pitch for the concept, “It could be about a kid from a small town who dreams of being a rock star and he wins the ‘Guitar Hero’ competition. One of these dreams-[come-true] kind of concepts.” Brett, ever heard of THE WIZARD?

Great news, Danny Elfman is going to score THE WOLFMAN!

A sequel to the Rob Zombie led HALLOWEEN last year but Zombie will not be involved. Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo who were doing the HELLRAISER remake are now attached to this. "Our vision will be done with the utmost respect, with a continuity to Zombie's work. But also a real evolution of the world he set in place."

John Woo wants his next film to be a sports movie. "I want real athletes to be my lead actors so that we can portray the athlete's spirit accurately."

BABYLON AD has opened to massively bad reviews (around 5% on the tomato meter) and even the director and Vin Diesel saying how the studio screwed the film over and how they hate it themselves! According to the director, "I never had a chance to do one scene the way it was written or the way I wanted it to be. The script wasn't respected. Bad producers, bad partners, it was a terrible experience."

Some interesting casting for TOY STORY 3 came out this week. Michael Keaton and Jodi Benson are doing voices. The film opens June 2010.
Co-writer Roberto Orci talked a little about TRANSFORMERS 2 this week. “The first movie is all about the mystery and reveal of the Transformers as a concept and a species, which means we had to hide them a lot in the first hour. In the second movie, now that everyone believes in the universe, we can jump right into the world of the Transformers. The first movie was meant to be somewhat of a mystery. For the sequel, we need an entirely different structure and paradigm for the movie, and we can't rely on it being the first."

Sadly, the PREACHER graphic novel series that was being developed for HBO got cancelled this week. According to the director, "We were budgeting and everything and it was getting really close to going. But the new head of HBO felt it was just too dark and too violent and too controversial. Which, of course, is kind of the point!" Probably, better left in print.

There was this ridiculous rumor that went out this week about Cher playing Catwoman in the next Batman film. It is of course unfounded, but it did get a lot of traction. Supposedly, she was going to be a “vamp in her twilight years.”

Jon Favreau has confirmed they are actively working on IRON MAN 2 and it will be released in 2010.

Great news, it sounds like things are going to possibly move forward with a Riddick sequel. Vin Diesel said in an interview this week, "David Twowy right now is writing the scripts. The only question is whether we take a page from the 'Lord of the Rings' guys and try to shoot the two chapters at the same time. There are two more in mind," he said of Riddick, the Furyan warrior first introduced in the 2000 film "Pitch Black."