MNN (Trailer for Shark Thriller 47 Meters Down; Joe Johnston to Direct Narnia: The Silver Chair)

Johnny Depp Will Play Grindelwald in FANTASTIC BEASTS Sequel; More Details

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Last week, news broke that Johnny Depp had joined the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them films. Soon after his involvement was confirmed, Potterheads began speculating that Depp was cast as the dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald in Fantastic Beasts.

And, now, fans have gotten alleged confirmation of the rumor from director David Yates and producer David Heyman. The Leaky Cauldron sat down with the crew members for a round table interview and learned that Depp were surprised that Depp’s work as Grindelwald hadn’t been outed sooner.

“We filmed early,” they explained before Heyman added, “I was amazed. It was completely bonkers. I was convinced it [would be leaked] you can keep very few secrets nowadays, especially something like that! When he came to Leavesden and we filmed for two days...and it didn’t come out. That’s mad.”

The duo also confirmed that the sequel to Fantastic Beasts would focus more intently on Grindelwald’s growing revolution and less on the franchise’s magical creatures. Yates told the site that, “ the beasts feature slightly less in the second film, and Grindelwald takes more of a foreground. Currently. But we love the beasts so much.”

Yates also confirmed that Dumbledore will be back in the sequel. “In the second movie Dumbledore comes back… no it’s not going to be Michael Gambon. No, we need a younger Dumbledore.”

They also reveal that Fantastic Beasts 2 will return the wizarding world action to Europe after the America-set first film: “We do go back to the U.K. in the second film as well–it’s U.K. and Paris. I’m not sure where Jo is setting the rest of the movies, but they’ll be European-centric. I think it will be difficult to ignore America, but the next one is predominately Europe.”

And finally, Yates teased that Ezra Miller’s character Credence plays a pivotal role in the follow-up: “Credence, we follow Credence further. He becomes quite pivotal actually, Credence is quite crucial.”

Johnny Depp Will Play Grindelwald in 'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them' Sequel; More Details Revealed
 
Sacha Baron Kohen to Star in Danish Comedy Remake KLOWN

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Sacha Baron Cohen is set to take the lead in Klown, with Megan Ellison's Annapurna having won the race for sales and English-language remake rights to the hit R-rated Danish comedy.

Ellison will produce alongside Baron Cohen and Todd Schulman for their Four by Two banner. Scott Stuber will also produce the film, arguably AFM's most commercial offering so far.

The 2010 original, which is the highest-grossing local film in Danish history, was directed by Mikkel Norgaard following his successful TV series of the same name, and follows a man who attempts to prove his fatherhood potential to his pregnant girlfriend by kidnapping her 12-year-old nephew and tagging along on his best friend's debauched weekend canoe trip. A sequel, Klown Forever, was released last year.

AFM: Sacha Baron Cohen Plans 'Klown' Remake With Annapurna
 
Margot Robbie and Warner Bros. to Adapt BEAUTIFUL THINGS

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Warner Bros., Margot Robbie's LuckyChap Entertainment and producer Denise Di Novi are teaming up to adapt Beautiful Things, a novel by Gin Phillips.

Warners has picked up movie rights to the thriller, which LuckyChap will produce along with Di Novi and Di Novi Pictures' Alison Greenspan.

The book option is the first move for LuckyChap since it signed a first look deal with Warner Bros. in September, on the heels of Robbie forging a strong relationship with the studio thanks to such movies as Suicide Squad and The Legend of Tarzan.

Phillips’ novel sold to Viking in the run-up to October’s Frankfurt Book Fair for a reported $850,000. The hook is compelling: The story is set over three hours and tells of a mother and son who are trapped in a zoo with a gunman on the loose.

LuckyChap is comprised of Robbie, Tom Ackerley, Josey McNamara and Sophia Kerr. It is unclear at this stage if Robbie will star in the adaptation.

Margot Robbie, Warner Bros. to Adapt Thriller Novel 'Beautiful Things' (Exclusive)
 
Thanks for bringing back the MNN! Great stuff! Ghost in the shell already looks really promising!
 
This thread is probably the only reason I still come back to sherdog...

*no pressure DL
 
First Trailer for VALERIAN AND THE CITY OF A THOUSAND PLANETS

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EurapaCorp has released the first trailer for the epic sci-fi adventure Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Rooted in the classic graphic novel series, Valerian and Laureline- visionary writer/director Luc Besson advances this iconic source material into a contemporary, unique and epic science fiction saga.

Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Laureline (Cara Delevingne) are special operatives for the government of the human territories charged with maintaining order throughout the universe. Under directive from their Commander (Clive Owen), Valerian and Laureline embark on a mission to the breathtaking intergalactic city of Alpha, an ever-expanding metropolis comprised of thousands of different species from all four corners of the universe. Alpha’s seventeen million inhabitants have converged over time- uniting their talents, technology and resources for the betterment of all. Unfortunately, not everyone on Alpha shares in these same objectives; in fact, unseen forces are at work, placing our race in great danger.

The film also stars Rihanna, Ethan Hawke, John Goodman, Herbie Hancock, and Kris Wu. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets opens in theaters on July 21, 2017.

 
I'm actually looking forward to Collateral Beauty. That movie looks great.

Universal Developing VOLTRON Live-Action Movie with David Hayter Scripting

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While Universal Pictures is sorting through the development and production projects it received in the DreamWorks Animation deal, it also inherited a live-action picture that had started quietly being developed when Jeffrey Katzenberg ran the animation factory.

Universal now has a live-action Voltron film that is being scripted by David Hayter, the X-Men and Watchmen scribe who is also dialed into the fanboy set as the voice of Solid Snake in the English versions of the Metal Gear Solid franchise.

Deadline has confirmed Hayter is writing the live-action project that started at DWA, which is also generating the animated series Voltron: Legendary Defender for Netflix. The property is about a corps of astronauts that pilot a giant super robot.

Universal Inherits DWA Live-Action ‘Voltron’ Film; David Hayter Scripting (Exclusive)

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First Good Look at Kong from KONG: SKULL ISLAND

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The gargantuan ape returns in Kong: Skull Island, which arrives in theaters March 10 and stars Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, and John Goodman. And while fans have been eager to catch a glimpse of the reimagined Kong, he hasn’t been too eager to be seen. After all, just look at the welcome he gives the explorers in the 1970s-set film, led by Hiddleston as a British Special Forces vet and Larson as a war photographer who unwittingly stumble into his home turf.

Here, director Jordan Vogt-Roberts (The Kings of Summer) unpacks that momentous scene as well as the look of the imposing figure, addressing his vision artistic vision, similarities and differences with previous versions, conveying emotion through eyes and facial expressions, playing with scale and the ultimate reveal, and much more. The beast, certainly, roars again in this upcoming monster-movie reboot, so all hail the new king of the jungle…

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What was your artistic vision with this beast going into the film, and what was the process like of bringing him to life?

JORDAN VOGT-ROBERTS:
With Kong, there’s been obviously so many different versions of him in the past and ours needed to feel unique to our film. I had a mandate that I wanted a kid to be able to doodle him on the back of a piece of homework and for his shapes to be simple and hopefully iconic enough that, like, a third grader could draw that shape and you would know what it is. A big part of our Kong was I wanted to make something that gave the impression that he was a lonely God, he was a morose figure, lumbering around this island.

We sort of went back to the 1933 version in the sense that he’s a bipedal creature that walks in an upright position, as opposed to the anthropomorphic, anatomically correct silverback gorilla that walks on all fours. Our Kong was intended to say, like, this isn’t just a big gorilla or a big monkey. This is something that is its own species. It has its own set of rules, so we can do what we want and we really wanted to pay homage to what came before…and yet do something completely different.

There’s subtle nods. [The ’33 film] was black and white, so it’s really easy to assume that the fur on the monkey is black, but there’s actually a lot of forums and things that you read and there’s some real poster artwork where Kong’s fur skews more brownish, so we actually pushed his fur in more of a brown as opposed to the traditional black. It really was trying to create this feeling so that when these humans look up at him, they hopefully have a visceral response, saying to themselves, ‘That’s a God, I’m looking at a God.’

Can you expand on the loneliness about him, how you made him this isolated figure through his appearance?

Kong’s always been a little bit tragic. You can’t tell exactly from the still, but the way that he walks on the island, the way that he goes from place to place, I wanted to communicate something about his headspace and about the way that, in certain ways, he’s the protector of this island and then in other ways he’s killing time. The way he lumbers, the way that he drags himself from place to place, there’s an exhaustion to him. There’s obviously a huge power to him, but there’s a sadness contained within his animation. The way that he walks and his facial capture fused with this very energetic, young Kong at the same time.

You mentioned the color of the fur and this Kong is one of the biggest to appear on screen. Can you speak to the similarities and differences beyond those, in terms of the look of your Kong compared to previous versions?

If anything, our Kong is meant to be a throwback to the ’33 version. I don’t think there’s much similarity at all between our version and Peter [Jackson]’s Kong. That version is very much a scaled-up silverback gorilla, and ours is something that is slightly more exaggerated. A big mandate for us was, How do we make this feel like a classic movie monster?

[Kong] was a movie monster, so we worked really hard to take some of the elements of the ’33 version, some of those exaggerated features, some of those cartoonish and iconic qualities, and then make them their own…We created something that to some degree served as a throwback to the inspiration for what started all of this, but then also [had] it be a fully unique and different creature that — I would like to think — is fully contained and identifiable as the 2017 version of King Kong. I think there are very modern elements to him, yet hopefully he feels very timeless at the same time.

How did you convey emotion through Kong’s facial expressions and eyes, in particular?
The eyes are hugely important, not just with a creature, but with a human. The eyes are obviously the window to the soul. When you watch any actor, half the time…you’re watching their eyes as opposed to anything else, so that was incredibly important and also we’re playing a tricky game with Kong where you have a tragic hero and you have to slowly pull the rug out in terms of who this person is.

The other thing with our Kong is, much like the ’33 version, right away he is not necessarily seen as a protector. He’s got a job on this island and at first he might be perceived as a negative or villainous force, and then you need those eyes to guide the audience and take them on a journey where you slowly pull the rug out and develop empathy for this being, for the plight and the day-to-day struggle of what it is to be this [thing]. We actually have a lot of extreme close ups in this movie of Kong and his eyes to sort of plant the audience in his headspace.

Speaking of, what’s going on in this first-look image? Is that people perceiving him to not be this protector, like you were just saying?

That sequence comes from a point in the movie where you’re not quite sure who Kong is, what his purpose is, how people should be perceiving him. Through the folly of man, where our initial instinct is to attack anything that is not a known quantity, both sides jump the gun, Kong and the humans, and it kicks off a relatively messy engagement. At first, of course you’re going to perceive something like that as a terrible threat and monster — the physicality of him alone.

A huge part of the movie was designing him and creating the creature so that when you did see him it sort of short circuited your brain and was divisive to people, where certain people immediately say ‘That’s a threat,’ certain people immediately say, ‘That’s a God,’ certain people immediately say, ‘That’s a savior.’ Visually and instantly, what happens when you see this thing towering over you and what is your sort of emotional and intellectual response?

With this Kong being one of the biggest, how did you play with scale and the reveal of his impressive size?

Well, the reveal you can wait for in the film itself, but you’ll see, I shot this on anamorphic lenses, which a lot of people said, ‘You’re crazy, you’re taking away more space to show how big he is!’…It seemed like a bigger challenge to communicate scale in that way. We’re also fundamentally not playing the same game that Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla did and most monster movies do, which I’m sort of sick of the notion that a monster movie needs to wait an hour or 40 minutes until the creature shows up. Kong traditionally does not show up in these movies until very, very late, and the monster traditionally does not show up until very, very late in a monster movie, so a lot of these movies tend to have this structure that’s a bit of a slow burn. Something about this movie made me want to reject that and play a very, very different game.

It was honestly a great and interesting challenge, trying to find scale cues for something that big. How do you frame him in the sun? How do you frame him in mountains? How do you find low enough angles that communicate the scale next to these people without just shooting into a blank sky? It was important that you understood the dichotomy between the scale of him and the majesty of him, and yet the horror and fear associated with something that big. That fine line between looking up and saying, ‘This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, and I might be looking at a God’ and also ‘I’m absolutely terrified right now, I may have pissed my pants, and I think that thing’s going to kill me.’ What is that threshold and that fine line? So finding ways to shoot him and the island and all the creatures in a way where it’s slightly more reflective and the scale makes you hopefully think everything in between those two ideas.

Kong has remained a huge presence in pop culture. Why do you think this is a story that continues to be told and continues to resonate, and why is this something that you personally wanted to pursue?

Kong is a very tragic and relatable figure, like Kong just goes to A) The idea of being misunderstood, which everyone can relate to, and B) That humans have a fascination with apes and where we came from and things that we don’t understand. The reason that I was particularly interested in taking on this story is not only those elements of Kong and the fact that he is film history, but in particular in this instance, in our time period which is 1973, I was really interested in exploring the idea of the need for myths — why we need myths, why myths exist in our life. Right now, in our modern society, we are destroying myths through all of our technology and we have access to everything with our cell phones, which is amazing and it’s also taken away some of the wonder of the world.

I wanted to tell a movie about what happens when people are re-confronted with myths and put back into the food chain and how that makes them react and behave and I think that Kong is a myth that we have been telling now, so if you’re going to re-engage with that myth I think it’s important on a larger scale, but also on a franchise scale that you make it [a new myth]. Every other Kong movie for the most part has essentially been — yeah, there’s been Son of Kong and King Kong Lives and things like that — but the main sort of Kong stories throughout time have been remakes of the same beauty and the beast story, and this movie is not the beauty and the beast story. It’s sort of fundamentally a new telling within some of the mythos of this world and some of the imagery and ideas within this world.

In the same way, I think that we as people need new stories throughout time. If you’re going to engage with Kong, you need to do the same thing — you can’t keep telling the same story. As someone who grew up loving early creature features and movie monsters and things like that, one of the things that attracted me to it beyond telling a story that’s also about people and how a place makes them react to the otherworldly and around God-like creatures it’s, What happens when they’re presented with things that should not exist? What does that do to people? How does it make them behave? Who breaks? Who becomes stronger because of it? Who rallies together? What individual journeys do each people go on?

Is there anything else about the look of Kong that we didn’t talk about that you want to mention, either about your process or the final results?

It was a very, very long design process. Before we had a script, before we had a production designer or a visual effects team or much of anyone, we immediately dove into the look of Kong, which we knew was going to take a long, long, long time to finalize. I liked the idea of, you get the sense that he’s simultaneously very young, yet very old. Like I said, there is a lumbering quality to him and I wanted to find that threshold of having him feel aspirational, like ‘Ah man, wouldn’t it be great to be him?’ and also really tap into the underlying plight and sadness that his life contains.

From a design perspective…you go in one direction and end up with the Hulk and you go in another direction and you end up with Planet of the Apes, and then Peter obviously did such a good job with his version, so you’re left with a very narrow target of how you create something that pays homage to what came before it. With the 1933 film, which was important to me because I love that design, I love the fact that he feels like a movie monster and not just a big gorilla. So how do you make something that feels real, yet also is a throwback to movie monsters, and then takes on that very larger-than-life, God-like quality, and then be able to pull back the layers from it and peel the onion to throughout the film find out more and more and more about him and his backstory, and hopefully kind of lock you into his emotional state and invest you with him?

It was a really great process and a fun process, but it was a long process, finding ways to show the daily life and struggle that he goes through. I think there’s a lot in the movie that hopefully almost feels a bit Planet Earth at times in terms of…this is the struggle that this guy goes through, this is what his daily life is, and some of it’s great and exciting and some of it’s bad and hard and this is what he is and who he is.

Kong: Skull Island Unleashes Exclusive First Look at the Movie Monster

If you haven't seen the trailer for Kong: Skull Island, click HERE.
 
New Theatrical Poster for Disney's BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

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Jessica Chastain to Star in and Produce PAINKILLER JANE

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Jessica Chastain is set to star in and produce Painkiller Jane, from the self-titled graphic novel series written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Joe Quesada.

Chastain, no stranger to playing tough female roles, will play Jane Vasko, a New York City street cop who gets recruited by the FBI to infiltrate a major NYC drug and human trafficking ring. In a near death experience, Jane develops exceptional regenerative abilities that give her a unique indestructible advantage. With nothing to live for and no way to die, Painkiller Jane becomes an unstoppable force of nature seeking revenge to those who destroyed her life as she leaves a path of death and destruction in her wake.

Lotus Entertainment’s Lenny Beckerman will produce along with Solipsist Films’ Stephen L’Heureux (Sin City: A Dame To Kill For) and Chastain through her Freckle Films banner.

Jessica Chastain Boards ‘Painkiller Jane’ For Lotus Entertainment & Solipsist Films
 
Anime Director Mamoru Oshii Praises GHOST IN THE SHELL Movie

In this behind-the-scenes video of Paramount's Ghost in the Shell film, 1995 anime film director Mamoru Oshii says Scarlett Johansson "has gone above and beyond my expectations for the role" of the Major.

 
Anime Director Mamoru Oshii Praises GHOST IN THE SHELL Movie

In this behind-the-scenes video of Paramount's Ghost in the Shell film, 1995 anime film director Mamoru Oshii says Scarlett Johansson "has gone above and beyond my expectations for the role" of the Major.



I wonder how this will go over.

*Makes way to GITS thread*
 
Jessica Chastain to Star in and Produce PAINKILLER JANE

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Jessica Chastain is set to star in and produce Painkiller Jane, from the self-titled graphic novel series written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Joe Quesada.

Chastain, no stranger to playing tough female roles, will play Jane Vasko, a New York City street cop who gets recruited by the FBI to infiltrate a major NYC drug and human trafficking ring. In a near death experience, Jane develops exceptional regenerative abilities that give her a unique indestructible advantage. With nothing to live for and no way to die, Painkiller Jane becomes an unstoppable force of nature seeking revenge to those who destroyed her life as she leaves a path of death and destruction in her wake.

Lotus Entertainment’s Lenny Beckerman will produce along with Solipsist Films’ Stephen L’Heureux (Sin City: A Dame To Kill For) and Chastain through her Freckle Films banner.

Jessica Chastain Boards ‘Painkiller Jane’ For Lotus Entertainment & Solipsist Films
I've never read the comic but the TV series adaption suuuuuucked.
 
Tom Holland to Join Benedict Cumberbatch in THE CURRENT WAR

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Spider-Man: Homecoming star Tom Holland is in early talks to join the high-wattage cast of period drama The Current War. Alfonso Gomez-Rejon (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl) is directing the project, which was penned by playwright-screenwriter Michael Mitnick.

Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Shannon, Nicholas Hoult and Katherine Waterston already are attached to the story about infamous feud between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse.

The Current War takes place in the late 1880s and follows Edison (Cumberbatch), who championed direct current (DC) for electric-power distribution over alternating current (AC), which was backed by several European companies and Westinghouse Electric. Shannon is playing Westinghouse.

If a deal is made, Holland would play Edison’s assistant. Hoult is playing Nikola Tesla, the famous Serbian engineer who worked for both Edison and Westinghouse, while Waterston is playing Westinghouse’s wife.

'Spider-Man' Actor Tom Holland in Talks to Join Benedict Cumberbatch in 'Current War'
 
Michael Pena Joins the Cast of A WRINKLE IN TIME

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Michael Pena has joined the cast of Disney's A Wrinkle in Time. Pena joins Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, Mindy Kaling, Gugu Mbatha-Raw and, most recently, Chris Pine, 'Moonlight' star Andre Holland and Levi Miller in a star-studded cast.

The live-action sci-fi film is about a young girl who suffers the traumatic loss of her father, a scientist (Pine), and ends up in another realm that places her and her younger brother on the journey to find him, with the help of supernatural characters Whatsit (Witherspoon), Mrs. Who (Kaling) and Mrs. Which (Winfrey).

The film, which began shooting on Wednesday, is being adapted from the children's book with Ava DuVernay at the helm.

Pena was recently cast in Horse Soldiers alongside Chris Hemsworth and Michael Shannon, the film is based on the true story of U.S. Special Forces who are tasked with eradicating the Taliban after the 9/11 attacks.

Michael Pena Joins the Cast of Ava DuVernay's 'A Wrinkle in Time'
 
Fox Animation Adapting MOMOTARO: XANDER AND THE ISLAND OF LOST MONSTERS

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Fox Animation has picked up the rights to children's book Momotaro: Xander and the Island of Lost Monsters.

Margaret Dilloway, best known for chick lit fare, such as How to Be an American Housewife, tapped into her Japanese heritage to pen the book, which is partially based on a Japanese folktale. The studio is now on the hunt for a writer.

The story tells of a sixth grader named Xander Miyamoto who hopes to spend spring break with his best friend. But when his father disappears, he and his pal go on a journey rife with monsters and demons from Japanese myths.

Fox Animation Nabs Rights to Children's Fantasy 'Momotaro: Xander and the Island of Lost Monsters' (Exclusive)
 
2nd Trailer for COLLATERAL BEAUTY Starring Will Smith

When a successful New York advertising executive (Will Smith) suffers a great tragedy he retreats from life. While his concerned friends try desperately to reconnect with him, he seeks answers from the universe by writing letters to Love, Time and Death. But it’s not until his notes bring unexpected personal responses that he begins to understand how these constants interlock in a life fully lived, and how even the deepest loss can reveal moments of meaning and beauty.

This December, experience the miracle. Will Smith, Edward Norton, Kiera Knightley, Michael Peña, Naomie Harris, Jacob Latimore, Kate Winslet and Helen Mirren star in Collateral Beauty, in theaters December 16.

 
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