Disney is shifting some of its
releases for 2013. The Lone Ranger
starring Armie Hammer and Johnny Depp has secured a July 3, pushed from May 31.
Thor 2 will bow now on November 8,
two weeks earlier than originally announced. Finally, the Steven Spielberg
directed Robopocalypse (which will be a
co-production between Disney-Fox-DreamWorks) has vanished altogether from next years schedule and bounced to April 25, 2014.
20th Century Fox,
meanwhile, announced Independence Day
will be upgraded to 3D and re-released on July 3 of next year. Other 2013 dates
include Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters,
which is moving from March 15 to August 16. The animated film Epic (once known as Leafmen), which stars the voice
talent of Beyoncé Knowles, Josh Hutcherson, Amanda Seyfried, Johnny Knoxville,
Aziz Ansari, Jason Sudeikis, Steven Tyler, Blake Anderson and Judah Friedlander
will bow May 24. Fox also announced that their remake of fantasy classic The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,
starring Ben Stiller and Kristin Wiig (directed by Stiller) is set for
Christmas Day. For 2014, Fox announced that on May 23 they’ll release Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, the
sequel to the $483 million grossing Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Rupert
Wyatt, who helmed the 2011 smash, returns to direct. The untitled sequel to X Men: First Class will be released on
July 18. Matthew Vaughn will return to direct.
Veteran character
actor/playwright/director Steven Berkoff will guest star on Doctor Who for season seven. He’ll
appear in episode 4. English born, but has worked steadily in Hollywood,
playing mostly villains (Beverly Hills
Cop, Rambo: First Blood II, Ocotopussy, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo).
He also made an appearance in the Star
Trek: Deep Space Nine episode Business
as Usual. He’s often said he takes Hollywood roles only in order to
subsidize his theatre work. He regards many of the films he has appeared in as
lacking artistic merit.
In merging with Summit, Lionsgate
acquired a nice catalog of films. Wondering what to do with them, and knowing
that as publically traded company, they need to keep the shareholders happy,
are trying to franchise out Step Up, Red,
and The Expendables as TV series.
Yeah. Seriously. Honestly, The
Expendables might work if it’s sold as a 21st Century version of
The A Team. I’m sure there’s a bunch
of 1980’s actors –now old, but still kept in shape by the their 24 year-old
wives- like Lorenzo Lamas or Gerald McRaney or even David Hasselhoff who be
willing to work a silly premise for some money.
Speaking of Lionsgate, as I’ve
noted before, they’ve decided to reboot the Leprechaun franchise, which as far as I know, no one asked for in
the first place. They’ve hired Harris Wilkins to pen it. Some WWE wrestler
named Hornswoggle is starring in it, so you know that they’re not approaching
this with any sense of credibility. The original franchise’s only notable
aspect was the first one launched the career of Jennifer Aniston.
One guesses that with the success
of the rebooted The Muppets, it
should not be surprising that New Regency is looking at another Jim Henson Co.
series from the 1980’s to revive as a big screen film. Rango co-writer Jim Byrkit and Alex Manugian have been hired to
write a script for Fraggle Rock.
This is the latest attempt to reboot the franchise, as ideas in some form or
another have been bouncing around since 2006.
Steven Spielberg has said he
"lived to regret" the infamous changes he'd made to E.T. upon its 2002 re-release, where
he'd eliminated utterances of "penis breath" and replaced all guns
with CGI walkie-talkies in some odd attempt at cleaning up what did not need
cleaning up. He has decided for the 30th Anniversary Blu-ray edition
coming in October, he’ll return everything to way it looked in 1982. So beyond
cleaning up the film for its HD transfer, what all us remembered when we saw
the film 30 years ago is being retained, while the deleted scenes he added will
be part of an “extra” on the 2 disc set. He noted back in September of last
year “that what I had done was I had robbed the people who loved E.T. of their memories of E.T. And I regretted that.” One wonders
if Spielberg’s all-too-rare moment of clarity might have bled onto Star Wars nerd George Lucas. But I’m
thinking Lucas will probably want to use those abandoned walkie-talkies and put
them into Return of the Jedi, where
Ewokes will use them instead of rocks and clubs.
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