Bazooka Joe Begins

After exploiting old television shows, movies, comic books, action figures and board games, Hollywood is moving on to the next logical property: gum.

Michael Eisner and his Tornante Co. have tapped newcomer Mark Hammer to pen a feature adaptation of “Bazooka Joe,” the comic strip that comes with Bazooka bubble gum.

Hammer, who this weekend is attending the graduation ceremony at Orange County’s Chapman University, where he studied film, wrote a spec titled “Sonny Takes to Peru,” which made the studio rounds but ultimately did not sell.

That spec, however, turned into a strong writing sample that got him into meetings as well as representation at management outfit the Safran Co. Execs at Tornante, seeking to fill their open writing assignment,liked the spec and brought in Hammer, who gave them his winning take.

“Bazooka Joe” has been a comic strip used as an advertising device for the gum since the 1950s. Joe, who wears an eye patch for reasons never explained, has child-friendly misadventures, sometime joined by a host of friends with the names Pesty, Mort (always with a turtleneck sweater pulled up over his mouth), Toughie, Hungry Herman, love interest Jane and a dog named Walkie Talkie.

Bazooka, the gum and the comic, are part of trading card company Topps’ stable. Eisner purchased the company in 2007 for $380 million with a mandate to rejuvenate the brand.

For too long: this important pop culture icon has been hampered by poor story telling in the form of unfunny two-panel comic inserts. Here’s hoping they take the character back-to-basics with a complex, realistic, “darker” origin story in the vein of Nolan’s Batman films.

Since this is likely signaling a new trend, please pitch your own product-turned-movie in comments.

My personal dream casting is Dwayne Johnson for a Mr. Clean movie.  I’m just sure he can capture the essence of the character: a vaguely ethnic, chrome-domed lothario who charms lonely housewives with his washboard abs and nearly-debilitating obsessive compulsive disorder.

Previously: Larry Clark’s ‘Candy Land’

Robert Rodriguez to direct ‘Predator’ remake

The hellish zombie form of once-promising director Robert Rodriguez (Spy Kids 3-D, Sharkboy and LavaGirl, Shorts) will produce and direct Predators, a remake of 1987′s Predator for FOX.  No start date has been announced, but it’s probably safe to assume it will be a tentpole for the studio in 2011 or 2012.

In the mid 90′s, Rodriguez actually penned a sequel to the original franchise also using the plural Predators title. Of the hundreds of screenplays I’ve read in my lifetime, it would be among the worst.

The director also announced a whole bunch of other films at a press conference today including: Machete, Nerveracker, Sin City 2 and The Jetsons. Rose McGowan or whatever opportunistic, homewrecking coke partner he’s hooked up with at the time will star in all.

Lamest Gone Elsewhere Exclusive® ever: MGM prepping ‘Legally Blonde’ prequel

The Platinum Menace?

Following in the footsteps of other…things people have made…MGM is developing a prequel to the 2001 hit Legally Blonde, focusing on the teenage years of Reese Witherspoon’s Elle Woods.

April Blair (Gummo*) is the writer. Blair’s recent credits include the Jessica Simpson Iraq War drama, Major Movie Star.

The original Legally Blonde was a critical and commercial success, raking in nearly 100 million domestically.  Witherspoon returned two years later for a follow-up, but we’re going to pretend that didn’t happen.

The actress recently produced a second sequel called Legally Blondes (like Aliens, but scarier) that’s due for release this Summer.  That installment is directed by ‘Savage’ Steve Holland (One Crazy Summer, Better off Dead) from a script by Chad and Dara Creasey (Pushing Daises).

The original film also spawned a fairly successful musical that ran on Broadway for almost two years.  It’s currently touring nationwide.

Trivia: the working title of the film is Legally Blonde: Think Pink.  I believe there are, at minimum, seven adult features with the same name.  Expect lawsuits aplenty to emanate from the San Fernando Valley as this inches towards release.

* Ok, Blair was only a Post Production Assistant on Gummo but I had to credit her that way.

Netflix raising prices $3.00 for Blu-Ray owners

Given that their stock value has doubled in the last 5 months, I’m not sure why they feel the need to raises prices so dramatically in the middle of a recession.  I’ve had little to no complaints about the service over the past six years, but I can see this causing a backlash:

Only in Sweden

On April 2-3 the University of Dalarna will hold the annual Existential Film Festival, to discuss whether there is a rise in unhappy endings in modern cinema and its possible causes. The theme of this year’s festival will be “Collapse and Renewal”

Translated from the festival webpage. (Bold text mine)

We think we see a clear trend in which happy endings on the screen are increasingly overshadowed by a dark perspective; No Happy End. Is cinema in this manner reflecting a growing desorientation and confusion in the present, a lack of confidence and a sense of imminent collapse?

We see signs of disruptive forces in the western way of life. A growing climate crisis, a slow and inexorable threat to human civilization, demonstrated in such films as The Planet and WALL-E. A small, growing, super-rich elite, anxious and entrenched behind walls and a rising anger among those outside of La Zona or at The Edge of Heaven. Even films that affect human collapse where humanity and compassion is challenged, as in The Secret Life of Words or Young Freud in Gaza. And how do we respond to this? With inertia and apathy? Or with the mobilization and re-orientation?

Good to see my countrymen continuing to lift spirits after the death of Bergman.

‘Taken’ is a phenomenon

I remember questioning FOX’s decision to hold back Taken from September to January when the move was announced.  The film had already been released on DVD/Blu-Ray worldwide last summer and high-quality streams have been plastered all over the internet for well over 6 months. As such: further delays in getting the thing in front of the masses seemed like a fatal error at the time.

Then the campaign hit.  A fairly spiffy one-sheet, followed by a highly-effective trailer and series of commercials that managed to pique the interest of demographics all over the map.  From December-on: I lost count of how many folks asked me about, or expressed interest in seeing the film.

Late January came and Taken proved to be enormously successful: bringing in over 24m in it’s initial frame.   While no one could knock that number or the truly astounding job done by FOX’s marketing division (who have been struggling of late) it seemed like a typical front-loaded release that would drop 50%+ second weekend before going on to the greener pastures of home video.

Except it didn’t.

Weekend two saw a slight dip of 16.9% and another 20M+ weekend.   It was an amazing hold and concrete evidence that the flick was enjoying far better than expected word-of-mouth.

Which brings us to a near-historic weekend three:

As of Sunday night: estimates showed an 8% drop for the Fri-Sun frame.  Certainly nothing to sneeze at given the number of days since opening and the fact that they lost 75 screens last Friday.  But then the actuals came out yesterday…

Not only was Taken‘s gross underestimated, the film GAINED 8% in week 3.  Final gross is just two million shy of it’s OPENING WEEKEND NUMBER.  Astonishing.

As Brian pointed out in his review: the film’s success says a whole lot of things about us as a nation that I’m not exactly thrilled to see validated, but hats off to the studio for literally turning something that should have been a 30M grosser into the next big franchise.  Unless Neeson gets the call for Lincoln, I’m expecting we’ll see him back for Taken 2, 3, etc. as soon as next summer.

Christian Bale Verbal Tirade Remix

Revolucian

Oi, Lady, We Was Here First

http://goneelsewhere.blogspot.com/

She’s just gonna have to give it up.

Because Walking is So Hard

The Toyota Winglet, the new “Segway killer.”

Yeah, God hates you.

Following Warner Brother’s aggressive one-sheet campaign for The Dark Knight (during which new posters seemed to pop up daily) they’re now employing the same strategy for another eagerly-anticipated sequel: Ace Ventura Jr:

I’d assume the above will be littering multiplexes from coast to coast soon, although it’s still unclear whether AvJR is a theatrical or DTV release.  Here’s hoping for neither.

Source: filmz.ru

Because you demanded it: Larry Clark’s ‘Candy Land’

Fresh off the success of their Paramount GI Joe/Transformers deal, toy manufacturer Hasbro just signed a long-term agreement with Universal to develop more…stuff:

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Hasbro Inc on Wednesday said it signed a six-year deal with Universal Pictures for the film company to make at least four movies based on well-known games like Monopoly, Battleship, Candy Land and Ouija.

The first movie from the deal is to be released in either 2010 or 2011, with Universal releasing at least one film per year thereafter, the companies said.

Of the properties mentioned: I would agree that there’s certainly a story revolving around Ouija boards to be told, although I’m not sure if blowing the dough on a licensed Hasbro-branded version is worth it.

Update: According to Variety, Monopoly might be a Ridley Scott film. I don’t know what to say…

Aw, smurf no. It’s the smurfing smurfs

Hell freezes over.

Irritating modern movie trends – dragged out opening credit sequences

Last night I was watching the Ben Affleck/Samuel L. Jackson film ‘Changing Lanes’ and one thing that stood out for me the way the credits sequence ran; it began during some scenic shots of the town where the film was set but for some unknown reason, continued as the actual film began for  a good couple of minutes and it was quite distracting.

 I know it’s hardly the greatest problems facing movies today but I’ve found this trend over the past decade of films increasingly having TV-style showing of credits unnecessary and pointless. I first noticed it with director Betty Thomas; she directed ‘The Brady Bunch Movie’ and (to imitate the TV series) the credits were displayed over the first couple of minutes of the film. That was fine but then for her next film – the Eddie Murphy ‘Doctor Dolittle’ film – the credits were dispalyed in exactly the same way.

 The fact that Thomas came from TV is probably a clue as to why this trend has developed as I suspect it’s driven by increasing amounts of people crossing over from TV to making films; but that’s just a theory that may be baseless, perhaps there are other reasons. (am I right in presuming they have final say in how credits are shown btw?)

 On a broader level, why do we even need to see credit sequences at all (except for the title) at the beginning of films? Why can’t it all be left to the end of the film when those, who want to stay and look through them, can see who performed which role? I think it’s because people are so used to the way credits were almost always presented in films until in 1960s (all the main credits detailed out taking a couple of minutes) that they’ve found it hard to break away from.

As I said earlier this is a minor quibble but I will say this – any film with a shortened or inventive credit sequence is one that I’ll have increased hope for as a good film.