Month: March 2024

david leitch, kelly mccormick, with love

Last week, Ke Huy Quan’s upcoming action film With Love announced that it has set a release date for February 7, 2025. The movie comes from Universal and 87North Productions. While the plot details have yet to be revealed, it has been announced that With Love is written by Luke Passmore and was based on an original script by Josh Stoddard & Matthew Murray. Former stunt performer and coordinator Jonathan Eusebio steps up as the director after having done second-unit directing on films like Violent Night, Deadpool 2, Black Panther, John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, and Obi-Wan Kenobi

87North’s David Leitch and Kelly McCormick are currently promoting The Fall Guy, which stars Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, and the film is getting massive praise. The producing couple spoke with Collider recently to talk about their latest project as well as their excitement about working on With Love with Quan. When inquired about what it’s like to work with the Everything Everywhere All at Once star, McCormick shared, “I’m obsessed. I think he’s so cool. He’s so classy. He’s so fun and sweet and wide-eyed in this way that’s like sort of like, ‘Bring me anything. Let’s just go for it. What do you think?’ As long as he’s been in the business and as much as he’s achieved, he still has like a real joy to vote for it. You know, like a real openness and like, enthusiasm that’s just still discovering. That is just really, really fun every day.” Leitch adds, “It’s infectious. It’s infectious when you have a lead actor that’s that way with the crew and with his director and all his other creatives. It all sort of trickles down. Everyone’s excited because the joy that he has. He’s ready to go. It’s going to be awesome.”

While Quan showed off some old-school Jackie Chan-esque prop fighting in Everything Everywhere All at Once, Leitch was impressed with his ability to do the action scenes for the new movie. He explains, “What was a lot of discovery for us, he has some action chops because he’d worked with Corey Yuen’s team for a while in the past. He’s done quite a bit of fight action, obviously even before Everything Everywhere All at Once. It was really about like, there was an assessment phase with the guys, and they were all just like, ‘Oh my God, this is amazing.’ The aptitude’s already here, so let’s take it to the next level. I think it was just sort of like tweaking him to the next level and really finding the character in the action. That’s what they were unpacking.” McCormick then shares, “He also has a really amazing glasses move that I can’t really tell you about [Kelly and David laugh] where his spectacles like fly and then land. He does it naturally in like IRL, and we’re gonna take advantage of that superpower.”

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Brandon Routh Superman Returns

Joseph Kahn primarily works as a music video director, having collaborated with the likes of Taylor Swift, Backstreet Boys, Rob Zombie, Mariah Carey, Britney Spears, U2, Aerosmith, Lady Gaga, Kelly Clarkson, Eminem, Maroon 5, Shakira, and many more – but he has also made a few feature films over the years. He made his feature debut with the 2004 action comedy Torque, and has followed that up with the comedy Bodied and the horror film Detention – which we’ve covered for both Awfully Good and Best Horror Movie You Never Saw. Now, Variety reports that Kahn is making a creature feature called Ick, and Brandon Routh (Superman Returns) and Mena Suvari (American Beauty) have signed on to star in the film.

Ick is coming our way from Interstellar Entertainment and producer Steven Schneider. The film aims to “evoke the timeless creature features of the 1980s with an ambitious arsenal of scares and comedy.” Routh is taking on the role of Hank, a high school science teacher who still pines for his childhood sweetheart, played by Suvari. While discovering he may have a teenage daughter, Hank must grapple with a terrifying alien anomaly (the titular “Ick”) invading their small town.

The teenager who might be Hank’s daughter is being played by Malina Weissman of Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events.

Kahn, who also wrote the screenplay with Sam Laskey and Dan Koontz, provided the following statement: “Ick is a movie that evokes primal fears about the world today, and best of all, it introduces a unique mysterious monster. I am thrilled that Interstellar has aligned to produce this modern creature feature that is challenging and escapist fun.

Interstellar’s Udaya Sharma added, “Embedded within Ick are universal themes of bravery, self-sacrifice and the eternal human quest to face the unknown. Our goal is to not just captivate our audience but to also invoke deep introspection about confronting the unimaginable, while also being incredible pop entertainment for all ages.

The Variety article notes that the creature effects in Ick will be brought to the screen through a combination of old school prosthetics and state of the art visual effects.

How does Ick sound to you? Are you interested in a Joseph Kahn / Brandon Routh / Mena Suvari / Malina Weissman creature feature? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

Mena Suvari

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The Wolf Man

Blumhouse Productions and The Invisible Man (2020) director Leigh Whannell are bringing us another reboot of a classic Universal Pictures property with Wolf Man, which is set to reach theatres on October 25th – and yesterday, producer Jason Blum took to social media to confirm that Wolf Man is now filming! Blum shared a picture of Whannell on set, holding a clapperboard, and you can check that out at the bottom of this article.

When this project was first announced in 2020, Ryan Gosling was set to star in it – and in fact, it got rolling when Gosling pitched this take on the concept of The Wolf Man to Universal, and his idea was then fleshed out into a screenplay by Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo, a writing duo that previously worked on Orange Is the New Black. (Blum also happens to be married to Blumhouse founder Jason Blum.) At the time, it was said the story was “believed to be set in present times and in the vein of Jake Gyllenhaal’s thriller Nightcrawler with an obvious supernatural twist.” The final version of the script is credited to Blum and Angelo, as well as Whannell and his wife Corbett Tuck.

Whannell first signed on to direct the film in 2020, but dropped out the following year. That’s when Gosling’s Blue Valentine and Place Beyond the Pines director Derek Cianfrance came on board. Gosling and Cianfrance both stepped away from Wolf Man early last year… and then Whannell came back.

The leads of the film are Christopher Abbott and Julia Garner, both of whom were in the 2011 film Martha Marcy May Marlene. Abbott is taking on the role of a man whose family is being terrorized by a lethal predator. Garner must be playing his wife, because her character is described as being a mother whose family is being terrorized by a lethal predator. Their characters seem to have a 10 year old daughter named Ginger, as a casting call for that character was sent out a while back.

A collaboration between Blumhouse and Motel Movies, Wolf Man is being produced by Jason Blum. Gosling receives an executive producer credit alongside Ken Kao, Bea Sequeira, Mel Turner, and Whannell.

Are you looking forward to seeing what Blumhouse and Whannell do with Wolf Man? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

The post Wolf Man reboot from Blumhouse and Leigh Whannell is now filming! appeared first on JoBlo.

william shatner, star trek V, the final frontier

William Shatner is at the point in his life where he can look back at all the things he’s done with perspective. The legendary actor is the subject of a new documentary, You Can Call Me Bill, which chronicles his career. As one would assume, a big part of the retrospective is about his time on Star Trek. Many stories have been shared about his run in the Captain’s chair. And now, Shatner himself would be reflecting on certain parts of his career involving the famous sci-fi property. One thing he would look back on in particular was his attempt to helm a Star Trek movie with the sequel, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Shatner would come up with the story as well as direct the film.

The Hollywood Reporter got to sit down with Shatner as he discussed different phases of his career, including T.J. Hooker and Boston Legal. When it came to the topic of Star Trek V, Shatner gets candid about what overwhelmed him about the experience. THR acknowledges that the movie has its fans now but then would ask if Shatner intended to expand Trek by filming around the world. Shatner replied, “I wish that I’d had the backing and the courage to do the things I felt I needed to do. My concept was, ‘Star Trek goes in search of God,’ and management said, ‘Well, who’s God? We’ll alienate the nonbeliever, so, no, we can’t do God.’ And then somebody said, ‘What about an alien who thinks they’re God?’ Then it was a series of my inabilities to deal with the management and the budget. I failed. In my mind, I failed horribly. When I’m asked, ‘What do you regret the most?,’ I regret not being equipped emotionally to deal with a large motion picture. So in the absence of my power, the power vacuum filled with people that didn’t make the decisions I would’ve made.”

THR asked how much the budget played a part in the hindrance to realizing his vision. Shatner responded, “It is on me. [In the finale,] I wanted granite [rock creatures] to explode out of the mountain. The special effects guy said, ‘I can build you a suit that’s on fire and smoke comes out.’ I said, ‘Great, how much will that cost?’ They said, ‘$250,000 a suit.’ Can you make 10 suits? He said, ‘Yeah.’ That’s $2.5 million. You’ve got a $30 million budget. You sure you want to spend [it on that]? Those are the practical decisions. Well, wait a minute, what about one suit? And I’ll photograph it everywhere [to look like 10]. (Editor’s note: The plan to use one suit famously did not work well onscreen and was ultimately abandoned.)”

You Can Call Me Bill is set to release on March 22.

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Tourist Trap

I’ve always felt that the 1979 horror film Tourist Trap (watch it HERE) deserves a lot more respect and attention than it gets – and that star Chuck Connors (best known for The Rifleman) deserved the “genre icon” career he was aiming for when he signed on for the movie. Barbara Crampton is someone who did achieve a genre icon career, and she clearly believes there was something great going on with Tourist Trap, because our friends at Bloody Disgusting have learned that she is producing a remake of the film!

Crampton is the Vice President of Production & Development at Alliance Media Partners, and the company has just acquired the rights to make a new version of Tourist Trap. Crampton will be producing the film alongside Bob Portal, who is AMP’s Managing Director & Head of Production.

Produced by Full Moon founder Charles Band, the original Tourist Trap stars Connors as Mr. Slausen, a telekinetic psychopath who lures a group of young people to his ramshackle roadside attraction, unleashing an army of psychically controlled mannequins and other monstrosities upon them. As the terrified youths fight for their lives, secrets are revealed and shock follows shock until the movie reaches its nightmarish, unforgettable finale.

Connor’s co-stars include Jocelyn Jones (The Enforcer), Tanya Roberts (The Beastmaster), and Robin Sherwood (Death Wish II). Robert A. Burns of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes fame provided the art direction, and the film boasts a score by Pino Donaggio (Don’t Look Now, Carrie, Dressed to Kill). David Schmoeller – who would go on to helm Puppet Master – directed Tourist Trap from a screenplay he wrote with J. Larry Carroll, who had worked as an editor on both The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes.

Are you a fan of Tourist Trap? What do you think of the film getting a remake from producer Barbara Crampton? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

It could be argued that Tourist Trap has already received an unofficial remake, because the 2005 version of House of Wax had a lot more in common with Schmoeller’s film than it did with the movie it took its title from.

Tourist Trap

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