The Official MovieSet Blog
The Dailies: After Comic Con
Monday, July 28, 2008
Hello once again and welcome to the Monday edition of “The Dailies”, where I get the opportunity to tell you about what’s cool or big in the movie biz…or I’ve been bought because the studio has sent me swag. But since no studio has bothered to send me swag then you know that my opinion is 100% unfiltered truth! Jeez, not even a Dark Knight sticker…I must suck.
…in case you hadn’t heard, the annual San Diego International Comic Con took place last week. I remember going to my first Comic Con back in 1996 when nary a filmmaker was there. Now Comic Con has grown and attracted the attention of Hollywood, becoming the place where nearly all of the major movie studios will unveil new trailers, bring down their A-list stars and start building the hype for next year’s summer releases. Among the big events that took place last weekend were an all-star panel featuring the cast and crew of Warner Bros. Watchmen; Hugh Jackman unveiling an early sneak preview of the trailer for X-Men Origins: Wolverine; director McG showing off a first look at his upcoming Terminator: Salvation; and Walt Disney Pictures with its debut of the trailer for Pixar’s Up and a major surprise, footage from a sequel to the 1982 cult hit Tron. According to early estimates around 125,000 fans went to the four-day con. The con organizers are at the limit for growth and unless San Diego expands their convention facilities the SDCC could wind up heading north to Los Angeles or across the desert to Las Vegas in a year or two.
…and while we’re still on the subject of comic books, The Dark Knight is still on top of the box office for a second straight week in a row. As it stands now TDK has grossed $314 million in ten days, setting a new record once again. There’s even talk that Dark Knight could have the legs to chase after the all-time box office champ, James Cameron’s Titanic, which earned $601 million back in 1997-98. Personally I can’t see Bats beating Titanic but I can see it trickle across the $500 million dollar mark around the start of the fall. One franchise that you probably won’t hear from again is The X-Files; the second film in the series, I Want to Believe, bombed big time and only grossed $10 million.
…George Lucas is threatening us with a fifth Indiana Jones movie. The Times Online broke the story which has the Star Wars creator say this about what might lay after Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: “If I can come up with another idea that they like, we’ll do another. Really, with the last one, Steven wasn’t that enthusiastic. I was trying to persuade him. But now Steve is more amenable to doing another one. Yet we still have the issues about the direction we’d like to take. I’m in the future;
Steven’s in the past. He’s trying to drag it back to the way they were, I’m
trying to push it to a whole different place. So, still we have a sort of
tension. This recent one came out of that. It’s kind of a hybrid of our own
two ideas, so we’ll see where we are able to take the next one.” Is it just me or does that sound like it’s George Lucas’ highway or no way? Spielberg is trying to “drag it back”? Wow. That sounds a little heavy-handed to me.
…and finally Ridley Scott’s Nottingham, in which the Sheriff of N. is role reveresed to become the good guy versus the evil Robin Hood, has been indefinitely delayed. The Hollywood Reporter is citing that “script concerns, location logistics and the current labor unrest” is putting the kebosh on the project, at least until next spring when the trees will be green again. So, if you’re a producer looking for a leading man to fill your hero’s role, here’s notice that Russell Crowe is now available.
See you tomorrow with more.
Posted at 9:13PM by admin
