Third 'Hobbit' film moved from July to December 2014

Back in July of last year, after Warner Bros, MGM and New Line Cinema decided to turn The Hobbit from two films to three, the studios (and maybe Peter Jackson) staked out summer 2014 for the third film, now subtitled with There and Back Again (which was to be the title of the second film). Of course back in July of 2012, no studio was thinking that far ahead, so no other film had been scheduled.

Then in September, with still no other film scheduled, the studios announced that the third film would debut on July, 18 2014, seven months after the second film bowed (The Desolation of Smaug is now set for December 13, 2013) in almost the same pattern as the two-part final Harry Potter movie. 

 

But in a surprise move now, Warner Bros announced The Hobbit: There and Back Again will vacate that summer date and move on down the road to December 17, 2014. The official reason is because Twentieth Century Fox has scheduled X-Men: Days of Future Past (and sequel to First Class) to open that day now as well. I was always leery of the summer release for the last Hobbit film, but based on how bad Bryan Singer's Jack the Giant Slayer is tracking, I'm curious if Warners is moving it because they believe Hobbit will do better in December (and as of now, the only film scheduled to open on December 17, but that will change) or that no matter what Jack does (it's set to become the first expensive bomb of 2013) Singer's X-Men will do better because its and X-Men film?

Are oversea tax-breaks destroying American-based effects companies

With digital visual effects used in almost everything, from commercials, to television, to movies, the effects companies created to produce them has grown here in the United States to meet the demand. Most are small, with some having less than 500 employees. But there is a huge problem in that the large media companies –in particular the studios- that need digital effects for their tentpole films help are farming out those effect work overseas in hopes of getting top quality visuals at a bargain price. So all of the financial troubles these small effects houses are having today is largely the result of competition from companies in countries where tax breaks, subsidies, lack of overtime pay, and state healthcare are giving them a competitive advantage over California-based effects houses.

Sadly, this is nothing new, as major businesses, which seemed more concerned with the bottom line and shareholder value, and have used catch all word of “economics” to justify their reasons for farming out the work overseas. They claim that this keeps costs down so Americans will see and buy the product when in reality, it seems to be really about is making sure the coffers of the studios, the top heavy executives offices, board members and shareholders all are paid highly for doing very little. 

Yes, as always, the frontline worker who does the lion share of the work, busting their hump for Daddy Warbucks, gets screwed. If there was one joke that Seth MacFarlane landed fairly accurately in his tepid act as presenter of the 2013 Oscar was talking about the studios record 2012 year in box office totals, and how “studio accountants have never had to work harder to prove nothing made a profit.”

International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees –I.A.T.S.E.- is the labor union that represents about 113,000 technicians, artisans and craftspersons in the entertainment industry, including live theatre, motion picture and television production, and trade shows. On Oscar night, labor organizer Steven Kaplan and about 200 demonstrators went to the streets of Hollywood and Vine to protest the way effects technicians are currently handled.  Kaplan told Variety that “he was concerned about the current fixed-bid business model, the movie industry's pursuit of government subsidies and the pressures on artists to migrate around the world in search of work.” He said that needs to change. "I hope that the world realizes that the visual effects industry is looking for change. I think that's all that can be accomplished today, that the world looks around and sees the visual effects industry is no longer quiet and accepting the conditions they're working under."

Of course, the whole irony of the current situation is that Rhythm and Hues, the effects house who has worked on numerous blockbuster films over its nearly 18 year history recently filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection, won an Oscar for their work on The Life Pi, the third they’ve picked up since winning in 1995 for Babe (and the German based VFX Group Pixomondo, an Oscar winner for its visual-effects work on Martin Scorcese's Hugo, just this week shut down its operations in London and Detroit, citing the need to cut costs –though the maintain that they’re still in business, as they’ll supply effects work for HBO’s A Game of Thrones). 

A protest over Twitter and Facebook erupted that Sunday night when Bill Westenhofer, accepting the award for Visual Effects for Pi, was cut off by music when he began speaking about Rhythm and Hues woes. Some conspiracy theorist claim it was designed to shut him down, while most likely it was due to the length of the acceptance speech. He did, however, get to tell his story to press after being escorted off stage. “What I was trying to say up there is that it’s at a time when visual effects movies are dominating the box office, but that visual effects companies are struggling. And I wanted to point out that we aren’t technicians. Visual effects is not just a commodity that’s being done by people pushing buttons. We’re artists, and if we don’t find a way to fix the business model, we start to lose the artistry. If anything, Life of Pi shows that we’re artists and not just technicians.”

Later, people started replacing their Twitter and Facebook avatars with a green box, symbolizing that without their artistic talent, effects heavy films are just a bunch of people standing in front of an empty green screen.

Whether this action at the Oscars or the protest on social media websites will change the studios attitudes on the way it spends and sends money to smaller effects houses is unknown at this time, but the battle seems to be just beginning.

Embry and Rioseco cast in 'The Dark Place'

Blue Seraph Productions announced the casting of Blaise Embry and Eduardo Rioseco for director J.T. Tepnapa’s follow up film to the indie hit Judas Kiss, the mystery-thriller, The Dark Place. Embry and Rioseco join already announced actors Sean Paul Lockhart and Timo Descamps (both in Judas Kiss) as well as Going Down in LA LA Land’s Allison Lane. 

Embry will play Keegan Dark, a troubled young man who returns home to reconcile with his estranged mother, who has been running the family winery estate all by herself. But all does not go as planned and Keegan and his boyfriend (Descamps) are soon caught up in a web of deceit and violence as his return unleashes a vast conspiracy that could see him as the prime suspect in a murder plot and the destruction of everything he holds dear. 

Embry is perhaps best known for his recurring role in Season 7 of Showtime’s hit series Weeds, along with guest appearances on The Office, Hawaii Five-O, CSI: New York, Pair of Kings and The Suite Life on Deck.

Meanwhile, Rioseco will play co-star, playing long-time friend of Keegan, lawyer Ernie Reyes -who is also has worked closely for Dark Wineries for years. Both share an intimate past with each other and Keegan’s return sparks a passionate remembrance for both of them. 

 

Rioseco credits include a guest appearance on The Cape as well as a recurring role on the NBC series Parenthood. He is also an accomplished stage actor, with roles in Fame, Mamma Mia, Wicked and Next To Normal.

The script is by award-winning writer Jody Wheeler, who produced Tepnapa’s Judas Kiss along with writer/producer Carlos Pedraza (who has shifted into producer role on The Dark Place, as well as finishing up the script for Blue Seraph’s other film this year, the adaptation of Jay Bell’s young adult novel Something Like Summer). Filming is scheduled to begin in the middle of April near Portland, OR. 

View the Kickstarter program designed to help get the camera they need to film both The Dark Place and Something Like Summer.

ABC mulls 'Once' spin-off; Smit-Mcphee scores 'Dawn' lead, Bay rehires Fox for 'Mutant'

Apparently “derivative material begets derivative material” as the saying goes as ABC is mulling a spin-off of their Sunday night hit Once Upon a Time. This one would focus on the Mad Hatter character, which has already appeared a half-dozen times on the series played by actor Sebastian Stan. The only problem is Stan is not available for a series commitment, as he’s currently in the play Picnic which then segues into working on Captain America: The Winter Soldier. This would mean, obviously, a recast. The problem I foresee is that viewers who enjoy Stan in the role as the Mad Hatter and maybe follow him if ABC did a spin-off would probably be a bit reluctant to watch it if Stan is not playing him.

The very busy 16 year-old Australian actor Kodi Smit-McPhee (ParaNorman, The Road), who starred in Matt Reeves Let Me In, has scored the lead in the Reeves helmed Dawn of the Planet of the Apes for Twentieth Century Fox. There is not much known about the sequels plot beyond that it’s set 15 years after Rise of the Planet of the Apes and involve “the group of human scientists who are struggling to survive alone in San Francisco.” Zero Dark Thirty‘s Jason Clark just joined the cast as well. Smit-McPhee has at least four films due out in the near future, including Ari Folman’s The Congress with Robin Wright, Paul Giamatti and Harvey Keitel, Michael J. Johnson’s The Wilderness Of James with Isabel Furman, Virginia Madsen, and Evan Ross; and has the lead role in A Birder’s Guide To Everything opposite Iron Man 3‘s Ben Kingsley. He’ll also appear as Benvolio in Carlo Carlei’s version of Romeo & Juliet (adapted by Downton Abbey‘s Julian Fellowes) with Hailee Steinfeld, Douglas Booth, Ed Westwick, and Paul Giamatti.

The supposed feud between Transformers actress Megan Fox, who once said his persona was close to Hitler, and the man who dumped her from the franchise, director Michael Bay, seems to have been mended as Bay has tapped her for the role of April O’Neil in Paramount Pictures reboot of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. Jonathan Liebsman is still directing the film, despite Paramount delaying then film due to script issues. The hiring of Fox indicates the film could be close to finally going before the cameras. 

Can 'Under the Dome' bring back the miniseries to broadcast TV?

While Great Britain can be credited with creating the miniseries format in the 1950s - though the term is North American in origin, as the British just called them “serials” - it was not until 1974 that the American networks began experimenting with the format. The idea was basic, though. Take a novel -the early ones were generally historical- give it a fairly large budget, with cast of well known and up and coming actors and air them over successive nights. QB VII, based on the Leon Uris novel, was ABC's first attempt at airing these limited series. At six and half hours, it proved very successful and earned thirteen Emmy nominations. Then in 1976, two miniseries -one historical and the other more modern- helped bring the format home. PBS had began airing I, Claudius on Masterpiece Theater, which was hugely successful in England, it replicated its success in the United States as well. Then ABC aired the 12 hour adaptation of Irwin Shaw's bestselling novel Rich Man, Poor Man in one or two hour episodes mostly on Monday nights over seven weeks. It's success lead to Rich Man, Poor Man Book II in the fall of 1976 -though this one ran as 21 one-hour episodes. But it was ABC's adaptation of Roots in early 1977 that launched the format into the stratosphere of ratings success. 

Then it was a race between the three networks then to air as many as possible, with 1978's Jesus of Nazareth being credited by TV Guide in 1987 as the best miniseries ever. Still, there was a bunch of successful ones, including Centennial, The Thorn Birds, Lonesome Dove, Shogun, North and South, and The Winds of War. The networks also tried their hand at bring science fiction and horror to the same format, with successful ones like 'Salem's Lot, The Stand, and V. But like any huge successful genre, there was also a few big budget miniseries that would flopped and would lead to its demise by the end of the 1980s, including North and South, Books II and III and Winds of War sequel, War and Remembrance and even Roots: The Next Generation proved not to be as successful as the original. While the 1990's and early 2000's produced some rare and terrific short-form shows, today's ones that get billed as "miniseries" are generally laughably bad two-night affairs.

Cable networks, however, like HBO, have had more success with the format over the last decade or so, including John Adams, Band of Brothers and Angels in America. Meanwhile basic cable has done the same, though as I pointed out, most are just just two-part movies -some good, some bad.

But the success of HBO’s Game of Thrones, adapted from George R. R. Martin's sprawling book series, may have given CBS the idea that adapting a novel as a television series can work in today's ever changing market place. What Thrones showed was that a novel can be turned into a episodic format instead of being shown over consecutive nights.

Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment brought Stephen King’s mega-best-selling novel Under the Dome to Showtime cable network in 2011 (Spielberg had acquired the rights to the book only a few weeks after its 2009 debut). Showtime entertainment president David Nevins liked the concept but in the end he felt it “was not right for Showtime.” So the project went into turnaround. Still, Spielberg believed in the book so much, he asked Showtime to release the book so it could be shopped to other networks. But in a surprise corporate synergy move, Nevins passed the project to his counterpart over at CBS, Nina Tassler, who was interested. 

Thus CBS will launch a 13 episode series of the book on June 24, to be teamed up with the returning procedural Unforgettable, which was cancelled last May, but was quickly renewed for a 13 episode season that CBS said would air in the summer of 2013. The series will be produced through Amblin Television Entertainment and CBS Television Studio. And like Thrones, word is that some of Dome’s story will be compressed for TV, along with a lot of characters and story-lines dropped or changed in favor of the main ones, which makes sense for the conservative TV budget consciousness of CBS. Still, it is a huge risk to air this expensive series over the summer, which is why, in an deal to off-set the cost of producing the serialized show during the off-season, CBS has made a deal with Amazon Prime to have their subscribers get access to Under the Dome and have unlimited streaming of all the series’ episodes four days after their initial broadcast on the Tiffany Network.

Mike Vogel (Pan Am) has been cast in the lead, as Dale "Barbie" Barbara and while Dean Norris (Breaking Bad) will play the “villain” James "Big Jim" Rennie, politician and owner of Jim Rennie's Used Cars, who seeks to use the dome as a way to gain control of Chester's Mill. Rachelle Lefevre (Twilight Saga, A Gifted Man) has been cast as the female lead, playing Julia, an investigative reporter who takes an interest in Barbie. Other cast members include Colin Ford (We Bought a Zoo), Natalie Martinez (2008 remake of Death Race), and Britt Robertson (Secret Circle). The drama is set in Chester’s Mill, a small New England town suddenly and inexplicably sealed off from the rest of the world by an enormous transparent dome. Under The Dome is exec produced by Neal Baer, King, Justin Falvey, Darryl Frank, Stacey Snider, Jack Bender and writer Brian K. Vaughan. Niels Arden Oplev, who directed the original version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (and who also helmed Unforgettable's pilot) will direct the first two episodes.

If the show succeeds, and CBS makes money, this could usher in a new renaissance for limited-run TV shows adapted for source materials like novels. And making deals with Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu and other could off-set their costs and allow viewers a chance to see all the episodes fairly quickly, which only helps these serialized shows.

Because while Netflix won't say how successful their adaptation of House of Cards is, word of mouth and water cooler conversations (i.e. social media) not heard since the miniseries' heyday indicate they hit a home run with it. Which helps their next series, the long delayed fourth season of the cult series Arrested Development.