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Posts Tagged ‘batman’
The box office from 2008 was just a bit better than ‘07
Monday, January 05, 2009
Now that the holidays are over, the post-mortem for 2008’s box office is also being offered. The clear winner last year was Warner Bros. who had the runaway success of The Dark Knight behind them. With global ticket sales of $997 million dollars, Dark Knight didn’t just prove to be the biggest superhero movie of all-time, it also became the second highest-grossing film ever. Thanks to the Batman movie as well as Sex in the City and Four Christmases, WB enjoyed revenue of $1.77 billion dollars, the biggest haul of cash ever for a movie studio. Continue reading…
Posted at 11:13AM by Patrick
Watchmen video journal goes easter egg hunting
Monday, December 08, 2008
On the 6th of every month the people running the official Watchmen movie website release another behind-the-scenes video showing us another slice of how they made the movie. For December we have the opportunity to look at some of the film’s more important props as well as “easter eggs”, fleetingly short scenes or even solitary items positioned in a scene that fans of the Watchmen graphic novel will ID. Continue reading…
Posted at 2:14PM by Patrick
For your consideration: The Dark Knight for the Best Picture Oscar
Monday, November 24, 2008
Cinematical scanned in two ads that Warner Bros. placed in the pages of Variety to promote their behemoth Dark Knight movie for consideration for an Academy Award as Best Picture. There was also an ad for Heath Ledger under the Best Supporting Actor category, something that I’m sure will happen. But does The Dark Knight stand a chance of winning Best Picture? Ten years after Titanic became the highest grossing movie of all-time as well as winning Best Picture, is there still a stigma attached to rewarding blockbuster movies for Hollywood’s highest award? There hasn’t been a science fiction, action or superhero movie yet that has won a Best Picture Oscar but if there was to be a likely candidate that stood a good chance to nab that idol, The Dark Knight is it (I think it’s got a better chance than Star Wars did back in the 1977 Oscar race.)
Click through to see the two For Your Consideration ads. Continue reading…
Posted at 11:30AM by Patrick
Dark Knight on December 9?
Friday, October 10, 2008
Amazon.com is now taking pre-orders for The Dark Knight on DVD/Blu-ray and they’ve pegged the home video release date as December 9. While Warner Bros. hasn’t made an official announcement for when they plan on rolling out their superhero megahit on DVD, 12/9 seems like about the right time. Plus, when have you ever known Amazon to be wrong about major DVD release dates?
Amazon isn’t listing any specs for the 2-disc Dark Knight disc but rumor has it that there isn’t that much in the way of bonus material on the release besides a couple of featurettes, a documentary and six episodes of a fake Gotham City news show. My guess is that the director’s audio commentary et al will come our way in a year or so. Ah, the joys of double dipping.
Posted at 6:44PM by admin
Dark Knight to be re-released
Thursday, September 11, 2008
So word is Warner Bros. is going to do the right and smart thing and re-release The Dark Knight come January 2009. Lest you believe that the sole motivation by WB is so that they could try and make the box office tally of TDK soar past Titanic’s $600 million dollars, I actually believe that the Warner suits aren’t motivated by greed. Is there anyone out there that doesn’t think that the DVD/Blu-ray sales for The Dark Knight won’t be astronomical? No, I think that they’re gunning for the glory: for a superhero movie to win Oscars outside of the special effects/make-up/sound effects categories.
In the nearly 30 years since Christopher Reeve starred as Superman, superhero movies may have proved to be lucrative revenue generations and franchise creators but they haven’t earned the critical respect given to dramas or thrillers. Remember back to 1991 and how The Silence of the Lambs, which I remember being marketed as a horror, suddenly became a psychological thriller? Oscars went to the two lead stars, the director, the writer and the film won Best Picture for the year. Could The Dark Knight be poised to do for the superhero genre what Silence of the Lambs did for horror? Personally I can’t see TDK winning Best Picture but I could see the picture getting a nomination as well as Chris Nolan get ting one and possibly even win depending on how the fall/winter movie season’s line-up of films play out. Of all the Oscar categories, I’d consider Heath Ledger is a lock; depending upon how WB wants to submit his role, Ledger could stand more chance if he were considered for Best Supporting Actor and not Best Actor. Or — consider this my “go for broke” scenario — WB plays out Ledger for the Best Actor category and Aaron Eckhart could be marketed under the Supporting category. I’d also give the film a healthy point spread for an original screenwriting nomination, not counting the technical department noms. Best case scenario: it’s a weak awards season and The Dark Knight picks up 5 or 6 Oscar wins including ones for Ledger, Nolan, the writers, music, sound and something like costuming or editing. Likely case: TDK wins a few technical awards and Ledger or Nolan take home the night’s single non-technical Oscar. I think it’s going to go down that way.
Posted at 7:47PM by admin
Gremlins vs. The Exorcist, Batman, The Goonies and everyone else
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Check this awesome fan-made video out. Sacha Feiner is a filmmaker living in Brussels who really dug Gremlins 2 and wanted to see a sequel. Since Warner Bros. didn’t make a third movie, he made his own using a hand-crafted Gremlins model, a bluescreen and a lot of free time. The result is a short film that you’ve gotta see for yourself to believe:
And for those of you that enjoy the special bonus features on your DVDs, this is how Sacha made the film:
Posted at 7:17PM by admin
Speculation on the next Batman movie starts flying
Monday, August 25, 2008
With The Dark Knight about to cross the $500 million dollars in ticket sales across North America mark this week it’s no wonder people are speculating as to what direction the next sequel will take. Everyone associated with the movie are keeping tight lips about what form the next Batman movie will take (or even if there’s been any discussion about which characters will be in the movie.) Still, that hasn’t stopped one media source from leading the charge with rumors about who’s going to be cast in Dark Knight 2 (or Batman Begins 3, depending on how you want to look at the franchise.)
The news outlet that is reporting the first Batman 3 casting rumor is Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper, not known for its sterling reputation when it comes to being accurate with entertainment rumors. According to a source that the Telegraph claims is in the know, 62-year-old rocker Cher is supposedly director Christopher Nolan’s first choice to play Catwoman in the movie.
Of course I don’t believe this crap for one second.
The Telegraph also repeats a rumor that emerged from fan circles last month, that being Pirates of the Caribbean star Johnny Depp is out to play The Riddler in the next Batman movie. While I’m OK with the thought of an actor like Depp playing Riddler, I also don’t see it happening. Everyone knew that The Joker was going to be in The Dark Knight but Nolan didn’t go with a major star in the part, he went with a slightly lesser known star like Heath Ledger. Same thing goes for Aaron Eckhart who played Two-Face in the flick. I can’t see Nolan casting an actress substantially older for a character like Catwoman when she’s going to be a romantic interest for Batman…not that I have anything wrong with a cougar relationship for Bruce Wayne, but a Cher/Christian Bale hook-up borders on sci-fi.
But what really seals the deal for me on the Telegraph’s article being BS is that they also claim that the next Batman is going to film in Vancouver early next year. That’s absolutely 100% false. There’s no buzz amongst Vancouver’s film scene that the next Batman movie is filming up here. And not only that, why the hell would Nolan move his production from Chicago to Vancouver when the former city has served so well as the setting for Gotham City? It’s not like Warner Bros. needs to cut costs down on the next Batman movie when number two just made them a billion dollars and is the second biggest grossing movie of all-time.
This rumor is total junk!
Posted at 5:38PM by admin
Warner Bros. speaks clearly about the next Superman movie
Friday, August 22, 2008
In a candid interview with The Wall Street Journal, Warner Bros. President of Production Jeff Robinov speaks very clearly about the future plans of the superhero properties that the company has the rights to. Warner Bros. is the parent company of DC Comics, the publisher of such classic characters as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern and hundreds of others. The first decade of the 2000s has seen that superhero movies emerge as that most lucrative of studio assets, blockbuster film franchises. However, to the surprise of many (including myself), Warner Bros. hasn’t aggressively developed DC’s most well-known heroes into their own movie empires. Why has that happened?
After the stunning box office success of The Dark Knight (which is approaching $500 million in domestic ticket sales alone and is now the second-highest grossing movie of all time), why aren’t we expecting to see stand-alone versions of Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash and any other DC heroes? Why hasn’t a follow-up to Superman Returns been approved and being worked on? “Superman didn’t quite work as a film in the way that we wanted it to,” Robinov tells the paper. “It didn’t position the character the way he needed to be positioned…Had Superman worked in 2006, we would have had a movie for Christmas of this year or 2009.”
So Warner Bros. is planning on giving the Superman film franchise a reboot similar to what happened with Ang Lee’s Hulk movie versus this summer’s Incredible Hulk picture. I’m of the opinion that the 2006 Superman Returns movie was a failure on a couple of levels and not the direction that WB needed to make to return the Superman franchise back to relevancy amongst audiences. But will Warners only be setting themselves up for making a new mistake? In the Journal interview Robinov specifically cites the “dark” qualities of The Dark Knight as a direction for fashioning movies for Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and other DC heroes. “We’re going to try to go dark to the extent that the characters allow it,” Robinov said
The key to successfully making a good Green Lantern or Wonder Woman movie is in exactly what Robinov said…to a point. I’m all for making a superhero movie that approaches the subject matter in a serious and dramatic way, the way that The Dark Knight is much more similar to a crime movie than a straightforward superhero story. Chris Nolan understands what makes Batman work, and he’s working with writers that also understand what makes Batman successfully work. However, Robinov was also at WB when Bryan Singer was hired to make Superman Returns. Singer may have been the right guy at the right time to take Marvel’s X-Men and adapt them into a successful film series but he wasn’t the right guy to bring Superman back. For every detail that Singer nailed (making sure that John Williams memorable theme was used again, retaining the crystalline look of Krypton’s technology) there were misfires that should have been never executed (having Lex Luthor being the film’s primary villain, introducing the Super-kid of Lois and Clark.) My fear is that Warners makes a decision to hire a director or his/her team to bring a Green Lantern or Atom hero to the silver screen because they’re the flavor of the month. I know that the short list for finding the right person to successfully execute a Green Lantern movie is pretty damn short (and as much as I know that I’m the right guy to do it, who the hell am I to Warner Bros.?) but when it works like it did in the case of Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr. for Iron Man, the difference can be several hundred dollars more in the bank for the studio with the smarts to hire the right people for the job.
I’ve followed DC heroes for a good part of my life and I’d love to see brilliantly done Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Animal Man, Doom Patrol and Sgt. Rock movies. And now that the proof is here that these kind of films — done right — can make half a billion dollars or more per picture (and that’s before DVD or TV revenue), the stakes for screwing it up have also been significantly raised. Warners needs to look very closely at the nearly 70 years of comic books that DC Comics has published to see what works and what doesn’t for these heroes. Everyone familiar with reading Batman comics since the mid-1980s knew what the perfect Batman movie was but it still took until 2005 before Batman Begins got it right. And Begins tilled the scorched earth that 1997’s Batman & Robin left in its wake, setting the stage for Dark Knight’s huge box office success. The potential for Warners to make billions of dollars and launch a half-dozen new superhero movie franchises is within the grasp of the company…if the people running the studio know what the right moves are to make.
Posted at 9:41PM by admin
The Dailies: Hollywood actors preparing to strike? Not yet.
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Welcome to the Wednesday edition of “The Dailies”, MovieSet’s take on what’s happening in show biz. As America prepares to get jiggy with Will Smith once again with the release of his latest summertime popcorn flick this coming fourth of July weekend, Canadians are just getting back into the grind after celebrating their country’s birthday on the first of the month. No matter which side of the border you live on this is one of the biggest weeks for going to the movies — and wouldn’t you just know it, there now exists the possibility of yet another creative slowdown as the American actors guild members mull over whether to strike.
…one day after the actors guild contract expired with the producers union, Variety’s take on the situation is that the negative vibe isn’t hovering around the town as it was when the writers guild was in a position to go on strike. “The sentiment is that people who are working don’t want to go out. If there hadn’t been a writers strike, there might be more support for (a SAG strike),” says an anonymous television agent to the trade. “Right now, there’s too many people who are just desperate to get something going.” This is a good thing because it means that both sides are probably still willing to entertain negotiations and try to get something tabled sooner rather than later.
…the big V is also running a story that the Brits aren’t going to see as many movies as they did last year. According to figures compiled for May, ticket sales at the British box office were down a whopping 19% over the stats for May ‘07. Studio suits are saying that it’s still too early to say the summer 2008 movie season is going to be a disaster and that late May openings for tentpole releases like the new “Indiana Jones” and “Sex in the City” probably have unfavorably skewed the pattern. Those that prefer to look at their glasses as half-empty are saying it’s the effects of a weakened British economy and a bout of beautiful weather that’s keeping the crown citizens out of theaters.
…and one film that has used a heavy campaign of viral marketing to is advantage has been this summer’s new Batman flick, “The Dark Knight”. After staging secret missions asking fans in dozens of North American cities to scour their bergs looking for hidden clues left by Batman and The Joker, now comes perhaps the strangest twist in the film’s marketing: would you believe a Batman pizza? Domino’s is offering a limited time specialty pizza that will be delivered to your house in a unique “Gotham City Pizza” box. In addition to getting your pie the purchasers of the Dark Knight Pizza will also get access to exclusive digital content like a movie trailer cut for Domino customers, wallpaper and the chance to enter contests to win “Dark Knight” swag.
Here’s one:
Want to see more photos of the tricked out black ‘za boxes? Those sure beat the standard Happy Meal boxes, don’t they? I wonder if Batman gets his delivered to the Batcave or to the front door of Wayne Manor?
Posted at 11:41PM by admin
