Eli Roth to Shoot Transformers/Cloverfield Scale Movie this Fall

“I’m nearly done with my new script,” says Eli Roth to MTV. “Yippee” says Brendon to the dog and an episode of Desperate Housewives which is only on by accessory. According to a new interview with the director, he’s planning to shoot n $80 million actioner this fall and then, in the immediate three weeks following, bash out a feature length version of Thanksgiving for $5 million. Those are, I’m sure, figures he just pulled out of the puff but they tell the story. We’ve heard of the sci-fi blockbuster before, when we learned that Roth envisioned it as “PG-13″ but with some extra stuff in standby to make for an unrated DVD, and when he first made the Transformers/Cloverfield comparison. The picture now has a working title, but Roth won’t reveal it yet. He was ready, however, to talk the film up somewhat. It’s going to be something that is really fun with lots of mass destruction. I wanted to do something along the lines of Transformers or Cloverfield that was a little more science fiction-based, and with lots of chaos and mass destruction. When asked what the villain, threat or monster in the film would be, he called on his inner Barnum once more: I don’t want to say what yet. Once it gets set up, I will let everyone know. It is not aliens or robots or a virus - it’s a little more grounded. But when people hear it they are going to be like ‘That is going to be insane!’. There’s no mention in the interview of Trailer Trash, Roth’s proposed compilation of fake movie trailers. He was patently planning to make most of them himself, with guest directors handling a fair handful and there was supposedly going to be a clever way of providing some kind of overall structure to the film. Previously, Roth said he wanted Trash to be his version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, referring to how totally painfully funny it would be. Studios who want to take on the actioner will also be expected to go for Thanksgiving, with Roth offering them only as an indivisible package. Who could turn down an Eli Roth movie for just $5 million? Especially after he’s described how over-the-top it will be: The sickest, bloodiest, most violent slasher movie. I want to make the highest body count slasher film I can. I think Roth has just found a brilliant way of tempting the suits into stumping up the relatively risky $80 million he’s looking to net in funds for the big, bad, slam-bam piece. Related Stories Cool Stuff: Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving T-Shirt and Poster 34 Minute Q&A with Hostel: Part II Director Eli Roth Inglourious Basterds Teaser Trailer Eli Roth Guest Directs Inglourious Basterds IngloUrious BastErds VOTD: Eli Roth on Rock N Roll High School

Dailies From Joel Schumacher’s Creek Show Up Online

Joel Schumacher’s Creek - which I thought was still called Town Creek, until Quiet Earth told me otherwise - is completed and ready to roll out, though I’m yet to see that any trailer or other marketing materials have been issued. Curiously, however, a series of dailies for the film have turned up online and been discovered by the aforementioned QE team. The most striking element is Darko Suvak’s cinematography, which continues Schumacher’s recent trend of collaborating with exiting directors of photography from John Mathieson to Matthew Libatique. While the shots are edited together in some sense, this could in no way be seen as a polished congregation. It certainly makes the film look a whole lot more appealing than I’d ever have imagined - see for yourself after the break. Here’s over 3:00 minutes of the film which, unsurprisingly, contains some spoiler material. Now, this isn’t a leak on a par with Wolverine but I don’t think things like this are really supposed to find their way onto the internet. On the other hand, this could be one of the best viral campaigns in recent times - it certainly creates intrigue for a Joel Schumacher picture which isn’t the easiest thing in the world. Here’s a plot summary for the film, in case you’ve never even heard of it: A man and his brother on a mission of revenge become trapped in a harrowing occult experiment dating back to the Third Reich. I want to know more. Incidentally, screenwriter David Kajganich is the man scripting the in-development new film of Stephen King’s It. You may have recognised Dominic Purcell, Henry Cavill or Michael Fassbender in the clip (well done, Joel - that reads like a real promising set of leads) but probably didn’t recognise Emma Booth. That was her at the window, I believe. Amusingly, she’s also taken on the role of Germaine Greer for Hippie Hippie Shake. Man, I love to see actors pretending to be real life public figures. What does that say nearly me? Related Stories Kiefer Sutherland Talks Lost Boys Prequel, Tells The Tribe to FO The Number 23 Movie Review Joel Schumacher eyes Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman

The End of Terminator Salvation will Divide Audiences

When a fourth Terminator film was first announced, it was revealed that the film would be the first of a planned three-film story arc, or trilogy. Halcyon has already announced the development of Terminator 5. All that is needed before they get the official green light is a nice opening weekend box office, which at this point, is pretty much expected. There has been a lot of internet chatter hither the ending of Terminator Salvation. An early internet leak of the film’s finale angered fans enough to warrant a rewrite. But how does the film end? Obviously the war is far from over by the time the credits role. So does the movie end on a high-note like A New Hope, or more of a dark cliffhanger like Empire Strikes Back? “The ending is indeed elliptical,” McG tells MTV . “And it challenges the audience. It’s not a happy little bow of an ending at all. The ending is tough and requires reflection, and in some degrees it bifurcates the audience. You walk back to the car and one person thinks it means this, and the other person thinks it means that.” One thing is for sure, this is not the ending that Sarah Connor told us connected with. Related Stories McG Wants Robert Patrick for Terminator 5 McG is Developing Terminator 5 Terminator Salvation is Rated PG-13? Internet Leak Leads To Radical Repairs to McG’s Terminator Arnold Schwarzenegger Still Reluctant To Appear in Terminator Salvation Terminator Salvation Movie

Chris Cunningham’s Gucci Commercial

Why hasn’t Chris Cunningham made a feature film yet? The UK special effects artist turned music video and short film director creates some incredible work . He was once fastened to a big screen conversion of William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer, but rumor has it that he clashed with the Hollywood system. Apparently Chris is now doing commercial work, and last year shot this beautiful commercial for Flora, a new Gucci fragrance. Starring Australian model Abbey Lee, the commercial was shot over four days in Latvia using a field of more than 20,000 fake flowers. You can read more with regard to the commercial on DazedDigital or watch it after the jump. Related Stories No Related Post

Set Visit: The Crazies

Remakes get a bad rap amongst filmgoers, and understandably so. Instead of attempting to fulfill the potential hinted at in failed or dated movie projects, Hollywood has proven time and time again that the sole purpose of most remakes is to cash in on the success of the near faultless original films. Occasionally though, there’s a glimmer of hope. A quick glance at two of the best horror films the genre has to offer—The Thing and The Fly—clearly demonstrates that technological advances in filmmaking can be used to more effectively convey an older film’s story. While those films were remakes of ’50s cinema, we’ve also seen a vast of array of ’70s remakes—Dawn of the Dead, The Hills Have Eyes, The Last House on the Left—that have proven to be worthy modern takes on dated (albeit classic) material. The Crazies, due out September 25, is the latest remake to try on to join the ranks of those films. Based on the cult classic directed and co-written by George Romero, the film tells the story of a small town struck by insanity when an unknown toxin starts turning its happy, law-abiding citizens into mindless killing machines. Trying desperately to survive both the infected populace and the subsequent military response, the town’s Sherrif (Timothy Olyphant), his pregnant wife (Radha Mitchell), his deputy (Joe Anderson), and an collaborator at the medical center (Danielle Panabaker) find themselves forced to band together if they ever intend on getting out of the town number the living. Last week I was granted the opportunity to visit the film’s set at Peach County High School in Georgia, where the crew was getting prepped for a lengthy night shoot. Once there, we first spent some time speaking to director Breck Eisner (Sahara), who explained his stance on remaking the film. Honestly, any time you do a remake or a reimagining, and this is definitely more of a reimagining than a remake, you want to have target aspects of the movie that they didn’t have access to when they first made it. My theory on remaking movies or reimagining movies is that there should be something that they weren’t proficient to do the first time far. That you can do differently. So it’s not like just redoing Psycho or redoing a perfect movie, it’s redoing something that had limitations. One of big limitations for [George] Romero was obviously budget. I think he had 200 grand or 275 grand to make the entire movie. We’re obviously spending more money than that—it’s not a big budget movie, but we have better assets so we can represent the government as the scale of the force that it needs to be in a movie like this that is oppressive and realistic for us. We spent the rest of the evening having the end of that comment proven to us, as we ventured next to a massive field on the outskirts of the high school. The ground was littered with dozens of identical white tents, black police cruisers with flashing lights, armored trucks, shining spotlights, military men wearing black gas masks, and best of all, numerous combat helicopters flying right overhead. The scene in question was clearly depicting one of the government’s attempts to contain the outbreak, as the masked soldiers were escorting many of the 300 odd film extras they had on set (comprised of nearly as many children as men and women) into various grated vehicles and fenced-in areas of the camp. One of the scenes we witnessed being filmed was a lengthy single-take tracking shot, which followed Timothy Olyphant and Radha Mitchell as they’re escorted off a bus, through one of the tents, and eventually ends with them being separated by the soldiers as Olyphant violently struggles to remain with Radha while she screams in the distance. In terms of scope, I think it’s safe to say that The Crazies won’t disappoint, but it’s still too early to tell if the film is capable of providing us with something we haven’t seen before. Helping to quell any remaining fears though, we return to Eisner, who also answered a number of questions I suspect horror buffs have been wondering ever since the project was first announced. Let’s start with the big one: Yes, the film will be R-rated. In terms of how violent the film will be, Eisner commented that, “It’s horrific and it’s certainly graphic,” but also explained that “It’s not a blood bath by any stretch of the imagination.” The focus here is on realism over excess gore, ever showing blood when aside but never going overboard. Another point of interest was some of the differences from the original, such as the look of the “crazies” themselves. Whereas in the original the infected were visually no different than anyone else, here there are 5 different stages of development—the first being before anything happens, and the fifth being death. The second stage involves noticeable psychological changes, but no physical alterations. After that, the effects become rather gruesome. Massive veins run from their neck up to their face, their eyes are blood-red, and nasty blemishes cover their disease-ridden faces. Eisner explained: The challenge for us was making them look interesting, making them look iconic, but not look like zombies, and not look so far over the top that you don’t believe that there could be a sickness that made this happen. You’ll see when at the very latest stages of the disease, it’s pretty pronounced. We just went through these really horrific books of diseases and started pulling from the best. Seeing what the “crazies” look like was a personal highlight of the set visit for me, since it also entailed examining make-up designer Rob Hall’s FX trailer. Inside we caught a glimpse of what Hall claimed was one of his favorite kills in the film, featuring the remains of a sleazy-looking overweight man that’s had his jaw ripped clean off. We also saw the dead body of, if I’m not mistaken, the town’s mayor, who’s had his rib cage ripped open. As brutal as both of those deaths looked though, I’m much more curious to see the events that lead to the prosthetic hand we found getting a knife stabbed through it, which Hall let slip belongs to Timothy Olyphant’s character. Clearly, the quality of gore is another ground in which the remake seeks to improve on the original, but the changes don’t end there. In the original film, Romero structured the narrative to focus the point of view from both the survivors and the military, whereas this time surrounding Eisner informed us that “There’s no military point of view at all.” Any time you go into the point of military, it goes away from horror and it goes to encounter and ‘Bourne Identity’ kind of tension and not ‘horror’ tension. So, to me it was much more interesting being in the point of view of our townsfolk and with the suppressive, nameless, faceless force, i.e. the military, in bio-containment suits wandering surrounding and being the force that’s putting them through the terror. That as well as the other infected crazies that are roaming the town. In besides to speaking with Breck Eisner, we also had a chance to talk with the film’s cast. But for the sake of brevity, I’ll simply talk some of the more interesting things they had to share. In our interview with Timothy Olyphant (Deadwood, Live Free or Die Hard), he discussed how he originally didn’t find the character in the script too appealing: “I felt like I had a cliche. We had a wife who was pregnant, we had that, but it wasn’t enough.” But after collaborating with Eisner, they were proficient to flesh him out in a way that really helps to strengthen the relationships in the film. [It's] this idea of being a guy whose father was the sheriff and whose father’s father was the sheriff and watching this unfold and him kind of trying to figure out if he took this job for the right reasons and if he’s the right guy for the job. And of course the fun of it is he doesn’t know why these things are happening. The audience is in on the joke that he’s not. Radha Mitchell (Silent Hill) had a very different type of roadblock to overcome, sharing with us the experience of one of her many physically-draining scenes where she had to bash in the head of a “crazy”. Joe Anderson (The Ruins), meanwhile, elaborated a bit on his character in the film: “Russell’s not a particularly bright guy, but I think he’s kind of driven. He’s a little more gung ho and a little more hot-headed than Dutton [Olyphant's character].” One of the more intriguing bits of info came from Danielle Panabaker (Friday the 13th), who hinted at what appears to be a very cool car wash sequence: “We pull into the car wash to hide from the helicopters. Things go very wrong.” Not particularly revealing, admittedly, but hopefully this early look at what The Crazies has in store for us is enough to tide you over until a trailer gets released in the months winning. And remember, you can check out the film in theaters this September. Related Stories First Look: Bruce Willis in Surrogates Breck Eisner’s Creature from the Black Lagoon Remake Moving Forward Henry Poole Is Here Movie Trailer Steve Zahn to Star in David Twohy’s The Perfect Getaway The Ruins Movie Poster Stop-Loss Movie Poster

Movie Trailer: Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker

The new trailer for Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker has debuted, and it is spectacular. For the uninitiated, Bigelow is a directorial goddess, a woman whose career has spanned classic function flicks (Point Break), mind-bending science fiction (Strange Days), and submarine thrillers (K-19: The Widowmaker). The Hurt Locker depicts the bomb-defusing adventures of Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner, in what may be a career-making role) in Iraq, and the psychological toll that his job takes on him and the men 'round him. The film has already screened at the SXSW film festival to some great reviews. It will go into limited release on June 26, 2009, and expand wide on July 17. Hit the trailer for the jump and let us know your thoughts in the comments. In my opinion, this newer trailer is infinitely more gripping and effective than the initial trailer, which I’m also embedding below for your reference. Related Stories The Hurt Locker Movie Poster Video Blog: ShoWest 2009 /Filmcast Ep. 43 - Duplicity (GUEST: Alison Willmore from IFC) GeekBomb: The Enduring Legacy of Point Break 28 Weeks Later Movie Trailer in HD

New Inglourious Basterds Footage and Behind the Scenes Clips

Nobody seems too happy in all directions from Quentin Tarantino being a guest mentor on American Idol last night, but me - I’m surely ecstatic. I’m not in The States, so I didn’t have to see the show but I can reap the rewards remotely. This morning, Film School Rejects have posted an Inglourious Basterds video that was supposed to tell on Idol last night and, sort of, did. A bit. Before getting cut off. Thanks to them, we have it for you below the break. The video contains new trailer-y shots, and the odd bit of behind the scenes footage. There’s more Brad Pitt, there’s more general Basterdry, there’s the first look at Mike Meyers in prosthetics-slash-character as Ed Fenech, a British General. You’ll see Tarantino and DP Robert Richardson before a shot is taken, and then afterward hear Tarantino leading the cast and crew in a bit of call and response. “Let’s do it one more time. Why?” he calls, and then they ‘all’ join in with a chorus of “Because we love making movies.” Hmmmm. If I tell you that the vigilant will see a major spoiler in this video then you’ll probably start staring at it especially hard, but then if I don’t, some eagle-eyed chuck is gonna be staring hard by default and get cross because I didn’t warn them. So, be warned. I’m 99% convinced that this film is going to be the best studi0 funded film of the year - at least as far as live exercise goes. The script was outstanding, Tarantino is a true poet in the language of cinema, and the trailers so far released - the teaser, and this thing - have both put me into rewind and replay frenzy. I’m now expecting a new, full trailer to be unveiled soon with this new footage incorporated. Related Stories Three Posters For Inglourious Basterds Unveiled Inglourious Basterds Teaser Trailer Sneak Preview: Inglourious Basterds Trailer Inglourious Basterds Teaser Trailer To Hit This Week? Is Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds a Summer Blockbuster? Inglourious Basterds Paris Set Photos