Zach Galifianakis looks more like Hagrid than Harry Potter in this new poster for The Hangover Part III, but you've got to love the references to The Deathly Hallows: Part 2. With Ken Jeong in the Valdemort slot, the image seems to bolster reports that this final film in Todd Phillips comedy trilogy will depart from the formula that the first two films followed. more »
The unveiling of the 2013 Sundance Film Festival line-up has begun! (Get the first wave of titles in the U.S. and World dramatic and documentary slate, plus the NEXT selections here.) Here are ten intriguing, surprising, and promising figures and filmmakers to look forward to following around Park City as their films vie among the 16 dramatic and 16 documentary films in competition this year — including a certain Twilight maven, everyone's favorite boy wizard, and two kinds of Bries.
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Perhaps she's taking a cue from her Harry Potter co-star Daniel Radcliffe, but Emma Watson has taken a shine for musical theater after performing some numbers from The Rocky Horror Picture Show in her latest film, The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
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They're both behemoth British authors, but that does not necessarily translate into desire to pick up the other's books for a read. On the eve of J.K. Rowling's first post-Harry Potter series roll-out The Casual Vacancy, the mega-selling author of the fantasy series, which spawned a mega-multiple movie franchise said she hasn't read fellow author E.L. James' 50 Shades of Grey and probably won't.
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Also in Friday afternoon's round-up of news briefs, The New York Times Company's new CEO will make considerably less than his predecessor, and IGN President Roy Bahat steps down via email. more »
Joined by series star Rupert Grint at the British Embassy’s Creative Content Summit, Harry Potter series producer David Heyman looked back on 2001's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, the first film in the lucrative J.K. Rowling boy wizard franchise, and revealed which parts now make him "want to cringe."
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Daniel Craig was at Her Majesty's Service for the opening ceremony of the London Olympics. The James Bond franchise's latest 007 appeared with Queen Elizabeth and her Corgis in a pre-recorded skit that had the secret agent and the queen meeting in Buckingham Palace. more »
Also in Wednesday afternoon's Biz Break: A Taken star takes on another thriller in L.A., Logan Marshall Green gets set to play Tennessee Williams, and Matthew McConaughey and Cuba Gooding, Jr. take a look at White House historical drama.
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The annual pageant of youth, taste and class hardware bacchanal known as the MTV Movie Awards has announced its nominations for 2012, with this year's most formidable blockbuster to date, The Hunger Games, doing battle against the most formidable blockbusters of last year's calendar, including Bridesmaids, Breaking Dawn: Part I, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, The Help, and others. And Drive loyalists rejoice! Your favorite head-shattering action-drama of 2011 has been honored with three nominations as well. Read on for the full list of contenders who will go at it in a fully-product placement-optimized Gibson Amphitheater on June 3.
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Suzanne Collins can start her victory lap now. The film version of her first Hunger Games novel is on the brink of blowing up box-office records – and critics and fans like it, too. Other young-adult fantasy authors haven’t been quite so successful in dealing with Hollywood. Some of Collins’s success was luck and good timing: her first Hunger Games book was released a month after Stephenie Meyer’s final Twilight novel appeared, sending publishers and studios alike scrambling for the next young-adult franchise. But Collins also skillfully played the game with and for the filmmakers, making deliberate choices about how she wrote the novels and how she helped market them to the books’ fierce fans. Forget teenage love triangles or wizards vs. werewolves; here's a far more practical list of dos and don'ts for when your popular young-adult fantasy book is being adapted by Hollywood. (Spoilers for lesser movies ahead.)
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The 2nd Annual YouReviewers Movie Awards aired on YouTube this past weekend, and we've got to say, it was quite a show! This year, our friends at ENTV played host as YouTube heavy hitters Jeremy Jahns, The Schmoes, and a host of other notables from the ever-opinionated YouTube film community presented their favorite films, performances and trailers (because, after all, this is YouTube) of 2011.
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"What the box office success of the re-released Special Editions told Hollywood is that the only way to create another global phenomenon is to make a new STAR WARS movie. 1997 was the start of the modern-day fanboy/geek culture that now runs Hollywood. Fanboy culture (Comic-Con, Harry Potter, Twilight, The Hunger Games, The Lord of the Rings, J.J. Abrams, Joss Whedon, Marvel comics, Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, Glee, Aint-It-Cool-News, Attack of the Show) is a groupthink mentality that claims to be democratic, what with its we-know-what’s-best-because-we’re-fans ethic, but is really pop culture fascism. And it’s the fans’ demand (remember, fan is short for fanatic), that led to Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace — the most hyped (and possibly most reviled) blockbuster in movie history." [Some Came Running]
"Over the past several days Warner Bros.' California headquarters has received nearly 400 individual sheets of paper adding up to the more than 16,000 signatures the Harry Potter Alliance (HPA) collected in 2010 and 2011 to make all Harry Potter chocolate Fair Trade. The pages were sent by more than 200 members of the HPA from across the country, as a part of the 'Not in Harry’s Name Campaign,' to show WB how important Fair Trade chocolate is to fans of the Harry Potter series." From the "Muggle Howlers" to the Fair Trade chocolate frogs, it gets better. [HPA]
The much-anticipated Daniel Radcliffe ghost-story thriller The Woman in Black opens Feb. 3. This calls for a giveaway! But considering what you stand to win (including an iPod Nano and a signed WIB poster), we're going to make you work for it. (Sort of.) Welcome to Movieline's Daniel Radcliffe Mini Fan Fiction Sweepstakes! [UPDATE 2/2: Contest is now closed -- thanks to all who participated! Scroll down for the winning submission.]
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What, ya didn't know rapper/personality Ed Lover was a closet cinephile-slash-Oscar pundit? To borrow from the man himself: "C'mon, son!" In a searing video rant over at NextMovie, he reacts to this year's batch of Oscar nominees and glaring snubs (what, no Drive, Harry Potter, or "Dame Julie Dench?") and pretty much takes the words out of my mouth. "They had the Academy Award nominations the other day at like 7 o'clock in the damn morning... C'mon, son!"
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