After scoring a book deal, selling several TV pilots, and making her name 140 characters at a time on Twitter, microblogging mom and Canadian wit Kelly Oxford has sold her first screenplay to Hollywood. Warner Bros. acquired her spec Son of a Bitch for a reported low- to mid-six figures; the story concerns a pothead party girl who tries to keep her image intact despite discovering she's pregnant. The ringing sound you just heard is Anna Faris's agent's phone. [Deadline]
Unveiling 10 minutes of Hobbit footage in 3-D at the revolutionary frame rate of 48 frames per second (vs. the standard 24 fps), as Warner Bros. did Tuesday at CinemaCon, should have been the first big buzz moment for Peter Jackson's return to Middle Earth. The immediate reaction to the presentation, however, was anything but good news for the studio or for proponents of the kind of cutting-edge high frame rate cinema technology Jackson and folks like James Cameron and Douglas Trumbull have been championing as the future of film. Instead, it left members of the blogger corps. calling it "jarring," "non-cinematic," and "like a made for television BBC movie," predicting that audiences will be split in embracing the brave new advance.
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I hesitate to even pass along word of the luxury fashion purveyor's ongoing litigiousness lest this site land in its hungry crosshairs, but: Have you heard about the lengths to which Louis Vuitton is going to keep its brand safe from the grubby likes of The Hangover Part II? Or how another, recently resolved court victory has possibly shored up its case against the film's studio Warner Bros.? Memo to Hollywood: Either get your clearances up front or do not even think of messing with these guys.
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The thing I love about the ramped-up new Rock of Ages trailer is how unapologetically it states what this movie is: A bombastic, cheeky, kitschy, bright-eyed and utterly slick tribute to the decadence of '80s rock culture, based on the even slicker Broadway hit of the same name. Which of course you already know — but now, with Tom Cruise's brief singing showcase and pretty much everyone else warbling adapted pop show tunes of their own, Warner Bros. and New Line's cards are on the table. There can be no ambiguity: You are either in or you are out. In this era of equivocation and overlapping quadrants and being everything to everyone, it's pretty ballsy when you think about it.
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Wrath of the Titans actor Toby Kebbell (Control, RocknRolla) was once up for the part of Tetsuo in Warner Bros.' live-action adaptation of Katsuhiro Otomo's cyberpunk manga and anime Akira -- but with the project stalled, he unleashed some real talk on the direction the studio intended on taking the big-budget franchise. Among WB's plans: They wanted to adapt the anime and not the richer source material of the mangas, and planned on taking certain liberties with key character relationships to boot. “I was like, ‘The point is that Tetsuo can’t comprehend how someone who isn’t his brother could love him so much — and that’s where his wrath and his rage come from. Do you not see that? Why have you made them brothers? What the fuck are you doing?’” [IFC via Collider]
Two teen-oriented comedies this season share much in common, from a gleeful embracing of the spirit of youthful recklessness to the idea that geeks will indeed inherit the earth. One is among the better comedies we’re likely to see this year; the other is by far, on its face, the sleaziest. Both were penned by the same actor-turned-screenwriter, Michael Bacall, who also captured the slings and arrows of slacker youth heroism in 2010’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. So why are Project X and 21 Jump Street so diametrically opposed when it comes to depicting the youth of today?
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You've been hearing about it for years, and at last, the fabled Hugh Hefner biopic that will never get made has moved from Universal to Warner Bros. The one and only Jerry Weintraub will produce, at least until he won't. "While Universal had filmmakers like Brett Ratner attached at one time or another and actors like Robert Downey Jr. and Hugh Jackman mentioned as possibles to play Hef, the project languished," Mike Fleming writes at ML's sister site Deadline. "Wentraub would not disclose what part of Hefner’s life he will cover, and he denied that Harry Potter scribe Steve Kloves is being talked to as a potential screenwriter." Finally! We're getting somewhere. [Deadline]
The reviews are in for the Todd Phillips-produced uber-party comedy Project X, and three out of four critics agree: It is the douchiest, most mean-spirited debauch of the year. (To date, anyway; we'll see what kind of revisionist zest Steven Spielberg and co. bring to Lincoln.) Hop aboard Movieline's scorched-earth golf cart and let's go for a spin...
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Film journalist and biographer David Hughes has long written with authority on subjects from Stanley Kubrick to David Lynch. But few writers know more about the vicissitudes of that uniquely Hollywood phenomenon known as "development hell." Hence the updated, revised edition of Hughes's book Tales From Development Hell, which arrives in store and online today. And Movieline has an exclusive excerpt that you can browse now.
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"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]
Quick quiz: If you were made to wait two months in order to rent say, Final Destination 5, are you going to be more likely to purchase the DVD, or is it more likely you will forget it was on the saturated home-video market? An easy enough answer, maybe, but not for some of Hollywood's major studios. They continue banking on the former scenario, despite your continued insistence on renting movies at affordable rates. As it turns out, a number of Hollywood’s companies are trying to revitalize their revenues and expand their scope -- but those plans are getting screwed up by your viewing and spending habits.
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Warner Bros. has shaken up its 2012-13 release slate a bit, with Bryan Singer's fantasy Jack the Giant Killer getting pushed from this June all the way to next March. Rock of Ages, meanwhile, has moved back two weeks to Jack's original June 15 release date, and Jack has displaced Arthur & Lancelot, which now owns a less-than-encouraging TBD 2013 opening. Should have been you, Gatsby. [Deadline]
Congrats of some fashion are in order to William Brent Bell, whose universally reviled yet spectacularly successful The Devil Inside has today yielded news of his not-very-anticipated follow-up. Written by David Cohen, The Vatican is said to be a "conspiracy-driven thriller [...] that uses some found-footage techniques like The Devil Inside did"; Warner Bros. is reportedly fast-tracking the project. Good to know! I'll ready the riot police. [Deadline]
Big news from the swords-and-sandals prequel front! And by "big," I mean, "Warner Bros. spent roughly .00000005 of its budget on the follow-up to 300 registering a domain for a title that may or may not be final but Jesus Christ it is slow out there so let's talk about it anyway because it's got kind of a ring to it and in any case five is a lot of syllables for a 10-letter word, don't you think?"
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Fantastic news, west coast Potter fans! You can stop saving up for that pricey trip to Orlando because Universal is planning on opening a second Wizarding World of Harry Potter location at Universal Studios Hollywood. The question is: How long will you have to wait to sip your first novelty cup of butterbeer?
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