Jacob Hall
Steven Spielberg Set to Direct ‘Ready Player One’
Well, this was unexpected. After a few years of development, Warner Bros. is officially moving forward with a big screen adaptation of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One and they’re doing so with the director most likely to break the brains of the novel’s biggest fans: Steven Spielberg. Yes, Spielberg is going to direct a science fiction story powered by raw ‘80s nostalgia for the same studio where he produced Gremlins and The Goonies.
‘Star Trek 3’ Casts Idris Elba as the Mysterious New Villain
Man, the rebooted Star Trek movie series really has this whole “casting actors we really like” thing down. The latest report from Star Trek 3 has the great Idris Elba cast as the movie’s villain, whose identity remains, for the moment, a mystery.
How ‘Furious 7’ Created a Digital Paul Walker For His Unfinished Scenes
When Paul Walker tragically passed away midway through the production of Furious 7, Universal and director James Wan faced a difficult task. Do they scuttle the film or charge ahead, using rewrites and body doubles to finish Walker’s performance? They ultimately went with the latter option but refused to go into any details. Now, a new report confirms that a digitally recreated Walker appears in the film and that he was brought to life by the same company that made Gollum in The Lord of the Rings and Caesar in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.
This ‘Star Wars’ Anime Fan Film is Seriously Impressive
Every single fan film to ever surface on the internet has to answer one question: “Why?” Why would a creator spend so much time and energy playing in someone else’s sandbox? Why didn’t they create something original? Why should we watch a fan film when movies is and TV shows made by seasoned professionals exist? That brings us to Star Wars: TIE Fighter, an animated short that’s so impressively made that even those who roll their eyes at fan films will have to at least acknowledge the skill that went into crafting it.
New ‘Fantastic Four’ Poster Promises “Change is Coming”
In an age where audiences are inundated with superhero movies and superhero movie news, Josh Trank’s upcoming Fantastic Four reboot has distinguished itself from the pack by being the movie that no one knows anything about. Aside from that vague, Interstellar-inspired teaser trailer, most of what we know about this film comes from hearsay and gossip. Depending on who you talk to, the film is either coming along fine or it’s an incomprehensible disaster. Could the brand new poster for the film give us anything new to chew on?
Watch Tom Hanks Recreate All of His Movies in 8 Minutes on the ‘Late Late Show’
The Late Late Show With James Corden made its grand debut last night, with seemingly every celebrity in existence popping up to say hello. But for his first official guest, Corden snagged everyone’s favorite actor: the one and only Tom Hanks. More importantly, he got Tom Hanks to get really silly and there are few things better than Hanks throwing caution to the wind and embracing his inner comedian. In this case, he got the two-time Oscar winner to re-enact all of his movies in less than eight minutes.
Report: Marvel Has Already Cast Their ‘Captain Marvel’ Star
We heard rumors a while back that Captain Marvel would make her big screen debut in Avengers 2 before getting her own solo film in a few years, but then heard this was no longer the case. Now, according to a source who has been right about this kind of stuff before, Marvel has secretly cast their Carol Danvers and has plans to introduce her very soon.
Marvel Auditions ‘Weeds’ Star Mateus Ward for the New Spider-Man
When Sony finally put a bullet in the dying (suffering!) Amazing Spider-Man series and agreed to team up with Marvel Studios to bring Spidey into the Marvel cinematic universe, the internet rejoiced for about two seconds. And then it got all grumpy and weird and slightly racist, but that’s just the internet for you. Well, get ready for everything to grumpier and weirder and slightly more racist because Marvel is supposedly deep in their search for the new Peter Parker right now and one of the names on their list has been revealed.
Weekend Box Office Report: ‘Insurgent’ Can’t Beat ‘Divergent’ Opening
What does a movie studio want out of its sequels? Is a sequel a failure if it simply matches its predecessor or does it need to make more money? That’s the big question that’s swirling around Insurgent, which made almost exactly as much as Divergent did one year ago. Seriously: there’s only a $500,000 difference in their opening weekends. So is Insurgent a success or a disappointment?
‘Mission: Impossible 5’ Trailer: Tom Cruise Battles a Rogue Nation
The first Mission: Impossible 5 trailer has arrived and it contains all of the high-flying derring-do you’ve come to expect from this series. It also reveals the actual title of the movie: Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation, which is almost as good as Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol in the “awesomely silly spy title” category.
Weekend Box Office Report: ‘Cinderella’ Reigns Supreme as Liam Neeson Turns Into a Pumpkin
Suddenly, Disney’s upcoming live action version of Beauty and the Beast is looking like a very wise move. After all, their new take on Cinderella shook the box office out of the doldrums, launching with numbers that feel more at home with the summer than March. Yes, it even took down that might spring movie season titan Liam Neeson.
New ‘Fast and Furious 7’ Video Reveals How They Pulled Off That Insane Plane Stunt
The stunts in the Fast and Furious franchise have grown increasingly ridiculous over the years, with the heroes (and their cars) defying the laws of physics at every turn. While it’s obvious that the more ludicrous action scenes are created with the help of CGI, a new behind-the-scenes featurette has revealed that one of the most insane scenes from the Fast and Furious 7 trailer is real. Yes, they really did drop a fleet of parachute-equipped muscle cars out of an airplane.
Liam Neeson Says He’s Ready to Quit Action Movies
With Taken, Liam Neeson became an unlikely action star, with his quiet, solemn masculinity lending gravitas to even the silliest dialogue and story beats. But rather than use the success of that instantly meme-able film as an excuse to pursue more period dramas and British weepies, Neeson embraced his newfound action hero identity. Now, after seven years of snapping necks and gunning people down across several continents, it looks like he’s ready to retire from the action hero game for good.
20 New ‘Star Wars’ Books Will Bridge the Gap Between ‘The Force Awakens’ and ‘Return of the Jedi’
With Star Wars: Episode 7 less than a year away, Disney and Lucasfilm are facing a conundrum: just how many billions do they want to make from ancillary merchandise? Get ready for Star Wars bedsheets and Star Wars lunch boxes and, of course, countless new Star Wars action figures. You will be able to fight other adults in the toy aisle at Target like never before! However, Star Wars aficionados hoping to celebrate their fandom in a quieter way will also have their fair share of options, namely 20 new books bridging the 30-year gap between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens.
Celebrate Chuck Norris’ 75th Birthday With This Video of Him Kicking Everything
Long before he was an internet meme, Chuck Norris was a genuinely skilled martial artist whose ass-kicking abilities were put on display in dozens of action movies. Running the gamut from massively entertaining (The Delta Force) to totally baffling (The Octagon), Norris’ films all have one thing in common: each one sees him kicking a whole bunch of people. So, in honor of the man’s 75th birthday, let’s all take a moment to enjoy a video supercut of Norris kicking people and things.
Life-Size ‘Avengers 2’ Hulkbuster Statue Selling For Low Price of $21,500
Don’t fret, Marvel Movie Fan With An Unlimited Income And A Corner In His Home That Cries Out For A Conversation Piece, the movie prop replica company Beast Kingdom has got you covered. They have revealed a life-size statue of Tony Stark’s Avengers 2 “Hulkbuster” armor and it can be yours for the totally reasonable and not-at-all-crazy price of $21,500.
‘Avengers 2’ Trailer Breaks All-Time Record With 35 Million Views
If you’re like us, you’ve already watched the new trailer for Avengers 2 a dozen (or a hundred) times, breaking it down by shot-by-shot and creating gifs and everything. Well, it turns out that we are not alone in our borderline psychotic anticipation for Marvel’s next epic team-up movie. The trailer has shattered records, garnering more views in 24 hours than any other trailer in internet history.
Weekend Box Office Report: ‘Chappie’ Leads a Slow Weekend
With some of the year’s biggest movies only a month or two away, the box office seems to have entered a holding pattern. Some of the new releases are minor hits. Others crash and burn. Right now, Hollywood just seems to be crossing their fingers and hoping for the sweet, sweet summer movie season to come along and save them (or at least the April release of Furious 7). In other words, every new release underperformed this weekend.
SNL Gathers the Four Hemsworth Brothers Together to Answer Some Questions
Whenever SNL breaks out the “guest host answers audience questions” template for the opening monologue, it feels like a sign that the writers waited until the last possible moment to write this bit and couldn’t come up with anything better. And yet, when they use this formula for Chris Hemsworth, it works for one reason and one reason alone: their guest host has a couple of famous (and not-so-famous) brothers who can join him on stage.
SNL: Chris Hemsworth Falls in Love With a Chicken in Outer Space
It’s an SNL sketch premise so silly that it feels like it belongs in the early ’90s, not 2015. Taking place in the distant future, the scene asks us to believe that chickens have evolved to be more intelligent than humans and that a chicken could command a spaceship of human beings and, most importantly, that a crew member played by guest host Chris Hemsworth would fall in love with the chicken.