More and more and more

[lithera]

People are really pushing to get thigns locked down and/or produced before the strike.

Terry Gilliam is busy with preproduction on his new picture, "The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus". He has assembled a cast including Heath Ledger, Christopher Plummer and Tom Waits. I'm hoping this doesn't get bogged down.

Speaking of which, go check out the trailer for Southland Tales. I wasn't impressed with Donny Darko too much but this one has managed to get hooks into me. It has a sort of Gilliam feel to it. (And I'm such a sucker for The Rock.)

Warner Bros. has nabbed the rights to Halcyon's relaunch/resurrection of the Terminator franchise. It's slated to roll in early 2008, and is called Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins. McG is still the favorite to be the director and it looks like this is going to be full on SkyNet vs Humans warfare. Sounds like a McG sort of movie.

Jerry O'Flaherty (a man who is the art director on many video games including Gears of War and Unreal Tournament 3) will be directing... wait for it... a CGI full length Thundercats movie. We will, apparently be focusing on Lion-O's coming of age.

On the Star Trek front Eric Bana has been cast as the bad guy "Nemo" and Chris Pine (only seen in Smoking Aces, really, though he'll be in White Jazz, which I'm interested in) is rumored to be heading toward being our new Captain Kirk.

On the Indy front - Harrison Ford is, in fact, doing most of this own stunts again, as is Shia LaBeouf. There were a bunch of people who got to talk to Spielberg on the set a day or so ago and they all got chills seeing Harrison in the get up. I can't help but be excited for this.

From that, Spielberg also says he wants to get Transformers 2 out before the strike would shut it down. So, I imagine we'll see news on that start to roll in any day now.

Speaking of which, there is an updated list of the movies that they're hoping will see completion before said strike. Some interesting notes on there.
- Magneto starting production in January? There's a movie that's been silent.
- Thoms Crown Affair 2 - Really?
- Creature from the Black Lagoon and the Wolfman? Universal's really digging deep, aren't they?

Land of the Lost is getting made with.... Will Ferrel. This sounds like a bad idea. I don't know. It could be hilarious but... Ehn.

Apparently The Mummy 3 involves a shapeshifting Jet Li. Ugh. I love Jet Li but I don't love him that much. I've only seen shapeshifting work out well once.

And don't expect to hear much from me on the Justice League movie. I'm probably going to be hard to convince on this one at all. I have one word for you: OMACs. There will be some of the good stuff but from what I've heard, they're going to have to change the ending and I think I know how it'll go. *sighs*

Comments

[lithera.livejournal.com]

Not really. Right now preventing a strike looks entirely unlikely for various reasons. The only reason that this strike dind't happen three years ago is the writer's guild decided that they wouldn't renegotiate their contract in order to avoid one.

There are few articles about it-
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/justice_league_of_america/news/1676485/
http://ktla.trb.com/news/local/ktla-wga-strike,0,3573394.story?coll=ktla-newslocal-1
http://www.chud.com/index.php?type=news&id=12075
http://abclocal.go.com/kfsn/story?section=local&id=5697363

[elsewhere7.livejournal.com]

I suppose. It just looks like, from the outside, a bunch of people sitting around in Hollywood going 'Yeah, s'gonna happen. It will cost people jobs and disrupt a lot of things. But,
Not gonna do anything about it, tho.'

[lithera.livejournal.com]

Well, from what I've gathered no one in Hollywood wants to do anything about it because of the deper undeyling problem. Above and beyond better medical benefits, the Writer's Guild wants a percentage of the DVD and Internet distribution profits. This means a change in how Hollywood keeps its books. Right now this is a process so amazingly labrynthine and likely shady in more than one way, that no one really wants to go in and poke at exactly who makes or loses how much money off of what.

Because it would change pretty much everything about the economics of how movies and TV are made.

So, no, no one wants to do much about this right now or at all, if they can manage it.

[leiden.livejournal.com]

It's less a matter of nobody wanting to do much about it and more about the amount of time that it needs to be done in. The studios want more time to study the market before they make a deal, undoubtedly so that they can find the most profitable option but with web content and everything being past our doorstep and chilling in the pool out back, the Writer's Guild quite understandably wants to get fucking paid. I also think that they're hoping to put pressure on the studios to force them into a more favorable deal on their side.

The result: much of hollywood is digging their proverbial squirrels' nests right now. It's gonna be a long winter.