While Disney is still playing coy
by not announcing who’ll helm Star Wars:
Episode VII, it seems though that Zack Synder, who helmed this summer’s
Superman reboot, Man of Steel, is
“developing” a live-action Star Wars
movie that will be loosely based on Akira Kurosawa‘s 1954 masterpiece, Seven Samurai. Information is sparse, but the web site
Vulture –which broke the story-, does say that the film would run parallel to
the new trilogy, even though it appears to set only a short time after Episode Vi: The Return of the Jedi. Seven Samurai tells the tale of a small
agrarian town in sixteenth-century Japan that’s routinely pillaged by bandits.
Fed up with the annual shakedown, its farmers retain the services of seven
master-less samurai to defend their harvest. George Lucas has cited the classic
as one of his favorites, telling the Telegraph in 2005 that “it’s a brilliant,
brilliant film, and every time I see it I can't believe the magic mixture of a
great story and great acting and humor and action and suspense — wonderful
cinema. The art of moving pictures is on every frame of this movie.” Since this
film will not be considered part of the next trilogy and thus a more
stand-alone film, it does give a glimpse into Disney’s plans for Lucasfilm and
the Star Wars universe, and it would
seem they truly are trying to broaden it more beyond trilogies, novels and
animated series. At the recent TCA’s, ABC Entertainment President Paul Lee
expects the Disney owned network to eventually produce a long-rumored
live-action series that Lucas and former Lucasfilm producer Rick McCallum have
been talking about for years. “We’d love to do something with Lucasfilm, we’re
not sure what yet. We haven’t even sat down with them. We’re going to look at
[the live-action series], we’re going to look at all of them, and see what’s
right. We weren’t able to discuss this with them until [the acquisition] closed
and it just closed. It’s definitely going to be part of the conversation.” Lee
makes no guarantees of the series going forward on ABC, though, and says it
would be tricky to juggle a television show and a feature film franchise set
within the same universe, “It’s going to be very much up to the Lucasfilm
brands how they want to play it,” he said. “We got to a point here with Marvel,
a very special point, where we’re in the Marvel universe, and very relevantly
so, but we’re not doing The Avengers.
But S.H.I.E.L.D. is part of The Avengers. So maybe something
oblique is the way to [approach the Star
Wars universe] rather than going straight head-on at it.”
Supervising producer Scott Gimple
has been named the new showrunner for AMC’s break-out hit series, The Walking Dead, replacing Glen
Mazzara, who is exiting the show “over a difference of opinion” regarding how
to approach season four -though rumors have suggested that Mazzara was butting
heads with comic book creator/executive producer Robert Kirkman. Gimple also
wrote two episodes this season, including Hounded
as well as the penultimate episode of season three coming up called This Sorrowful Life. Mazzara, who
replaced showrunner/creator of the TV series Frank Darabont midway through
season two, is credited for the quality of stories that have enhanced the show
since taking over. The question remains, as Gimple begins shepparding season
four, can the series maintain the momentum?
Disney has scheduled July 10,
2015 for Pirates of the Caribbean 5,
with Muppets 2 scheduled for March
21, 2014. Maleficent, their
re-telling of Sleeping Beauty, has
been pushed from March 14, 2014 to July 2. Meanwhile, Brad Bird’s second live
action film, 1952 with a script by
Damon Lindleof, will be released on December 19, 2014. 
Former Lost alumni Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje has two roles in the upcoming Thor: The Dark World, playing both Algrim
the Strong and Kurse. He told MTV News: “Thor
2; great movie, great opportunity. I’ve been a fan of the Marvel Comics and
I got a massive opportunity to play two characters in the movie: Algrim and
Kurse. You go in thinking, ‘Yeah this is great.’ But when you get in there,
you’re like whoa; six hours of makeup, prosthetics, all the physical [stuff].
But honestly, I loved it. It’s going to be such an epic. And both of the
characters; I have blonde hair, blue eyes, pointed ears, fangs, horns;
everything you could want as boy in an action hero movie. It’s amazing. The
fighting was really demanding. For instance, Kurse is the one that does all the
fighting. It’s forty pounds of extra weight and the good thing about it is that
it’s very flexible and elastic. I have a routine before I put it on: I stretch
and do all my pilates. You see this big creature doing pilates, it’s great. And
then we’d have to go fight. Me and Chris [Hemsworth] go toe-to-toe. It was
hardcore.” The actor also reports he’s in talks with Marvel to potentially play
another character within their universe, conceivably The Black Panther, a role the actor has made no secret that he would
like to play.
It had been guessed that the
reason Paramount pulled G.I. Joe: Retaliation
from the release schedule last May –almost six weeks before its release- was
because the film was in trouble. Paramount said it was just to do a 3D
conversion –which do extremely well in foreign markets- and maybe a few
reshoots to tighten the film up. As the weeks went on, more rumors surfaced
that not only was Retaliation more
than troubled, it needed to have Channing Tatum –who was in the first film and
who’s character is the catalyst for the titled (thus, Paramount revealing
secret plot of the movie) sequel was returning to film additional scenes. But according to producer Lorenzo di
Bonaventura, he told the press at the TCA’s that more Tatum was not the reason.
“No, it’s not,” Di Bonaventura says. “That is a complete rumor. I don’t know
where that started. Literally, Channing shot for - if I have it wrong, I’m off
by an hour - four hours, five hours? So it wasn’t really about that at all.”
And he says the current cut is not that much different from the one they
planned last summer. “It’s not much different,” Di Bonaventura says.
“Literally, we shot for three extra days. We just added sort of explanation in
what we did afterwards.” Still, historically, when a film is delayed, it
usually means the films narrative is in trouble. And while these type of films
are seen as more escapism than having any sort of internal logic, American audiences
are beginning to see that they are, at times, being lured not for the joy of a
film experience, but just to make sure they score as much money as they can
before the viewer’s catch on. As for the 3D, again, the oversea market does not
care how bad a film is here. They’ll see any American made film.
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