Whovians, rejoice! A Doctor Who movie is in the works, reports the BBC, commissioned to celebrate the long-running sci-fi series in time for its 50th anniversary. Entitled An Adventure in Space and Time , the 90-minute drama will travel back through the decades to revisit the history of the beloved show and its creation in the early 1960s. “This is the story of how an unlikely set of brilliant people created a true television original,” said writer Mark Gatiss of the TV film, which is slated to arrive next year. Two Doctor Who movies were made in the ’60s — Doctor Who and the Daleks (1965) and Doctor Who: Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. (1966) — while a few years back frequent Harry Potter helmer David Yates was developing his own take on the franchise intended for the big screen. This one-off 50th anniversary Doctor Who movie is more an ode to the franchise itself. “The story of Doctor Who is the story of television — so it’s fitting in the anniversary year that we make our most important journey back in time to see how the TARDIS was launched,” said series exec producer Steven Moffat. An air date has not been announced, but the very first episode of Doctor Who debuted on November 23, 1963 so I’d imagine we’re looking at a similar fall timeframe for the film’s debut. Set your TARDIS accordingly. [ BBC ]
Kristen Stewart has been in the news a lot lately, but less so for her movies. But the latest international trailer for On the Road is out, so perhaps a small diversion is due. The film is the first real attempt to bring Jack Kerouac’s legendary novel of the same title to screen, over 30 years after Francis Ford Coppola bought the rights to the book. Walter Salles directs the film, which had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May . On the Road stars Stewart, Garrett Hedlund, Kirsten Dunst and Sam Riley. The film features Riley (ControL) as Sal, who falls under the spell of the intoxicatingly charming Dean Moriarty (Hedlund), who himself chases around America for freedom and an elusive “It.” Standing in as surrogates for Kerouac and Beat poet Neal Cassady, respectively, Sal and Dean travel around the country indulging in drink, drugs, sex, fast driving and the whims of youth hellbent on not conforming to post-WWII America. “I like pushing and watching a genuine experience on screen,” Stewart said in Cannes. “The reason I wanted to do the job was to be provoked as much as possible and then to do it and take it further. We were just going forth, and as long as you’re being honest there’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
Back in 2006 Mike Judge ‘s satire Idiocracy was legendarily screwed over upon release by Fox, who quietly dumped the underrated comedy with virtually no promotion and in just seven cities resulting in a paltry $444,093 domestic total. But the cautionary tale of an average Joe (Luke Wilson) who wakes up in an America populated by idiots went on to earn a cult following, featuring a scene-stealing turn by Terry Crews as five-time Ultimate Smackdown champion and porn superstar President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho — and as Crews tells Movieline, President Camacho may soon be returning in a long-awaited Idiocracy spin-off. Crews, who spoke with Movieline over the weekend while promoting Expendables 2 , has for years expressed a desire to revisit the Camacho character in a follow-up to no avail. Said Crews back in 2007 : “You know, it was a hard go the way Fox treated him and all that. It’s hard. But I would love, in any way shape or form, to play Camacho again. Believe me, that’s something I’m definitely going to talk about with him again. I’m just going to badger him and badger him until I can bring Camacho back in some form.” Well, Idiocracy fans, it looks like the badgering worked. Crews said Saturday that he’s had recent talks with Judge and Fox to bring President Camacho back in a new project. “Me and Mike [Judge] are talking right now with Fox about some Camacho stuff,” he told Movieline. “We literally met with Fox a week ago. It’s so cool.” This iteration of an Idiocracy spin-off will apparently be web-based, according to Crews. “We’re going to see what it becomes, but we got approval from Fox to do some stuff,” he said. “We’re going to start off on the internet and do some small interstitials with Camacho.” Crews is clearly excited to bring one of his best-loved characters back, though he and Judge will most certainly need those closeted Idiocracy fans to come out of the woodwork to voice their support. “We’ll see! We’ve just got to gauge the interest and Fox wants to start slow… you’ve got to let it take off.” So crack open a case of celebratory Brawndo (it’s got electrolytes) and raise a toast, and keep your fingers crossed that President Camacho’s return goes off as planned. Who knows, with enough fan support we might finally get that President Camacho prequel Crews had been hoping for … Who’s up for more President Camacho? Chime in below! Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
After perusing former New York Post reporter Mandy Stadtmiller’s must-read post for XOJane.com about how she inspired a character on Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom , I had to find out if the show’s creator responded to her after her story hit the ‘net. He did, although his response was not what I expected. See, a long time ago, in a galaxy far away, I was a Post reporter, too — at the tabloid’s famous gossip column Page Six — and though I never dated a celebrity, I do have some experience with famous fair-weather friends. There’s a breed of celebrity that’s brilliant at seducing reporters into believing that some sort of real bond exists when really that bond is only as strong as the positive press that flows in the direction of said famous person. I’ve fallen for it more times than I’d like to admit. (And let’s just leave it at that.) I loved Stadtmiller’s post because she did the unexpected. Instead of going all predictably tabloid on Sorkin and revealing the gories about their dates, she did something much harder: She turned the magnifying glass on herself. As she explains in her post, she inspired the character of gossip columnist Nina Howard (played by Hope Davis) after dating Sorkin around the release of The Social Network. Although initially thrilled about becoming a character in a blue-chip HBO TV show, Stadtmiller wrote after watching Davis’ debut in episode four of the series, “I will tell you that I fully cried, totally humiliated at the wreckage of what happens when you are a scheming little manipulating starfucker such as myself. Maybe it bothered me so much because I realized how close to the character I really was.” Despite the fact that Stadtmiller was essentially eviscerating herself instead of Sorkin, I guessed that an alpha-dog like him would be unhappy about the post because, in Hollywood, the more powerful you are, the more control you tend to imagine you can exert over the world, especially when it comes to how you are perceived by the people who consume your product. I was wrong. When I reached Stadtmiller, she said that Sorkin had indeed reached out to her since her tale blew up on the web. She declined to share with me the specifics of his response because, she explained, “I don’t want to be sending out press releases on everything the poor kid says to me,” but she did note that Sorkin’s reply had been “nice and kind.” “He said that he felt bad that I felt sad when I watched the episode,” she explained. That is unexpected, and — surprise, surprise — makes me want to know more. Just a suggestion, Ms. Stadtmiller and Mr. Sorkin, but why not turn this art-imitates-life debate into a dialogue? I’m confident I’m not the only one out there who would love to read it. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Also in Monday morning’s round-up of news briefs, a slew of stars and moguls expected in an Obama fundraiser. Celeste and Jesse Forever triumphs at the specialty box office and a rom-com heads to Phase 4 Films. Harvey Weinstein, Aaron Sorkin and Anne Hathaway to co-Host Obama Fundraiser Weinstein’s Westport, CT home will be the site for the $35,800 per ticket fundraiser, billed as an intimate dinner for 50 people including Hathaway, Paul Newman’s widow Joanne Woodward, Deadline reports . Natalie Portman Marries Benjamin Millepied The couple married in a nighttime ceremony along the California Central Coast are of Big Sur following a 14 month engagement. They have a son, Aleph. The couple met in the fall of 2009 while prepping for their 2010 film, Black Swan , which made $329 million worldwide and earned Portman an Oscar, THR reports . Specialty Box Office: Celeste and Jesse Forever Hot in Debut; Killer Joe Solid in 2nd Weekend Most specialty newcomers had a rough go in their rollouts over the weekend, but one film Celeste and Jesse Forever managed a spectacular debut. Magnolia Pictures’ 360 also enjoyed a respectable opening, while others failed to gain traction, Deadline reports . Marvel Studios Sued over Avengers Briefcase German company Rimowa GmbH apparently gave its permission for the Disney-owned film studio to use its Topas briefcase in the film. However, the company claims Marvel took the look of its design for a plastic replica case that is due to be sold as part of a forthcoming Blu-ray box set, The Guardian reports . Phase 4 Films Nabs Miss Dial The company picked up U.S. and Canadian rights to David H. Steinberg’s romantic comedy Miss Dial . The pic is the feature directorial debut of Puss in Boots writer Steinberg and stars Robinne Lee and Sam Jaeger, Variety reports .
Late last week, the box office prognosticators speculated whether The Dark Knight Rises would eek out a triumph over newcomer Total Recall . The pendulum would swing in either direction as the weekend approached, but in the end TDKR easily beat out Total by every measure. In fact, the film only really managed to measure-up to its original, but in 2012 dollars 1. The Dark Knight Rises Gross: $36,440,000 (Cume: $354,638,000) Screens: 4,242 (PSA: $8,590) Weeks: 3 (Change: – 41%) Speculation ran rampant in among box office watchers if The Dark Knight Rises would hold number one with the debut of Total Recall , but in the end Batman won and actually quite handily. TDKR took the top spot for the third weekend in a row. The feature dropped 162 screens compared to the previous weekend and its $8,590 per-screen average compares to $14,549 last weekend. Internationally, the pic has grossed well over $378 million. 2. Total Recall Gross: $26 million Screens: 3,601 (PSA: $7,220) Week 1 The original opened with just over $25.5 million when it debuted in 1990 in 2,060 theaters for a $12,395 average, so the re-make is in quite in the shadow of its original especially when factoring inflation. Abroad, Total Recall grossed $6.2 million in 12 markets, but will be heading to larger territories in the coming weeks. 3. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days Gross: $14.7 million Screens: 3,391 (PSA: $4,335) Week: 1 The pic also grossed an additional $2.77 million overseas, so within ear-shot of its $22 million production budget, but it did not measure up to last year’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules in its bow. The previous installment of the series grossed $23.75 million from 3,167 theaters for a $7,500 average back in March of 2011. It went on to gross nearly $52.7 million domestically 4. Ice Age: Continental Drift (3-D, Animation) Gross: $8.4 million (Cume: $131,862,859) Screens: 3,542 (PSA: $2,372) Week: 4 (Change: – 37%) The animated feature held decently one month out and should surpass the previous installment Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs , which grossed just under $200 million domestically. 5. The Watch Gross: $6.35 million (Cume: $25,363,203) Screens: 3,168 (PSA: $2,004) Weeks: 2 (Change: -50%) The pic struggled to connect with audiences with a drop of 50% despite no change in screen count. 6. Ted Gross: $5,478,660 (Cume: $203,413,895) Screens: 2,767 (PSA: $1,980) Weeks: 6 (Change: -25%) The stuffed bear continues to be a summer hit internationally as well. The comedy grossed $32 million at 2,380 locations in 20 territories for an international total coming in at $77.3 million. Domestically, the feature played 362 theaters compared to the previous weekend. 7. Step Up: Revolution (3-D) Gross: $5.3 million (Cume: $23,097,149) Screens: 2,606 (PSA: $2,034) Weeks: 2 (Change: – 55%) The feature had a pretty steep drop, though it did have a slight up-tick in showings compared to its opening weekend. Still, the drop suggests the pic is not grabbing audience attention as it expands. 8. The Amazing Spider-Man Gross: $4.3 million (Cume $250.64 million) Screens: 2,425 (PSA: $1,773) Weeks: 5 (Change: -36%) One of the summer’s biggest hits, the feature is now totaling just under $678 million worldwide. 9. Brave (3-D, Animation) Gross: $2.89 million (Cume: $223,324,000) Screens: 2,110 (PSA: $1,370) Weeks: 7 (Change: -33%) The Disney animation has cumed $118 million for a global total coming in at $341.3 million. Brave has comfortably surpassed the summer’s other animated success, Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted , which has cumed just over $210.8 million in 9 weeks of release. 10. Magic Mike Gross: $1.38 million (Cume: $110,894,000) Screens: 1,202 (PSA: $1,148) Weeks: 6 (Change: – 47%) A success by any measure, the feature has likely come close to its domestic peak. The Steven Soderbergh directed film added 349 theaters in its sixth weekend out. Still its $1,148 average compares to $1,626 last week. And overall, certainly a stripping success for a $7 million budget.
“Why don’t people send this stuff to me?!” Bryan Singer cries through laughter, watching YouTube parodies of his films, including X-Men , The Usual Suspects , and Jack the Giant Killer . It’s kind of adorable. Welcome to the internet, Bryan Singer! (Fun, but I do wonder why the folks at What’s Trending don’t show Singer any Superman Returns and Valkryie parodies. Because, oh yes, they do exist.) [ What’s Trending ]
Also in Friday afternoon’s round-up of news briefs, Will Ferrell joins a new comedy. WWE champ gets back in front of the camera and a court in Beijing sends a group of execs from a VOD site to prison in one of the harshest sentences ever. Ted Beats The Dark Knight Rises Abroad The foul-mouthed creation by Seth MacFarlane and starring Mark Wahlberg is open in 10 overseas territories and scored number one in almost all of them. It’s international cume is $54.5 million in 20 territories and it’s still set to debut in 38 more, Deadline reports . Will Ferrell Gets an Internship He joins Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn and Rose Byrne in the project directed by Shawn Levy and written by Vaughn. The story revolves around two men in their early 40s who are layer off and try to reinvent themselves as interns at an Internet company that is run by managers in their 20s. Variety reports . Randy Orton Back in the Ring for 12 Rounds: Reloaded The three-time WWE World Heavyweight champion will star in the follow-up of the action franchise. He’ll play an emergency medical technician who’s being pursued by a vigilante threatening his family, Deadline reports . WWII Pic About Epic Battle In the Works A film about the battle for Monte Cassino – one of the most bitterly-fought land campaigns of World War II – is being made to coincide with the battle’s 70th anniversary. 200,000 soldiers participated from 30 countries with 55,000 allied troops and 20,000 German troops injured or killed. John Irvin will direct, BBC reports . Beijing Court Send 6 VOD Execs to Prison China has issued its harshest penalties for online streaming of copyright infringed material on execs from OpenV.com, which attracted daily traffic of more than 55 million page views, 40 million video view and 8 million unique visitors. A large chunk of what it offered involved copyright infringed content, Screen Daily reports .
French-Canadian director Jean-Marc Valée won multiple festival nods for his 2005 feature C.R.A.Z.Y. and followed it up in 2009 with The Young Victoria , also taking home prizes and his latest Café de Flore also scored around the festival circuit. Adopt Films will release the romantic-drama Stateside in November and released a second U.S. trailer. Seemingly disconnected by both time and geography, Café de Flore nevertheless unites a young mother with a disabled son living in 1960s Paris and Antoine, a recently divorced and successful DJ in contemporary Montreal. The new trailer follows below the plot below… Plot synopsis: In 1960s Paris, a working class woman gives birth to her first child, Laurent – a Down Syndrome son. Undaunted she embraces the challenge of raising her beloved offspring as normally as one would any other child. Her husband abandons them both. She bravely brushes this additional hiccup aside as Laurent replaces her spouse as the perfect man of her dreams. As Laurent approaches school age Jacqueline’s aplomb becomes obsessive and cloying. Her increasingly self-destructive attachment to her son is raised to a fever pitch when, at the age of seven, he meets a Down Syndrome girl (Véronique) and experiences his first crush. His sudden desire for independence, and his attraction to Véra, are the catalysts that transform Jacqueline from a loving mother into something resembling a lover scorned. What emerges is a love triangle of potentially tragic proportions. In 21st century Montreal, a forty year old divorcee, Carole, is trying to restart her life after her divorce, two years earlier, from Antoine, a devastatingly handsome, successful touring DJ. Soul mates who’ve been a couple since the age of fifteen, their divorce is a schism that might prove impossible for either of them to put in the past. Making the transition even more difficult for Carole is the fact that her two daughters, one teen, one tween, are about to gain a stepmother, a stunningly beautiful, heartbreaking blonde, a woman about to “steal” away the perfect man of her dreams. The young girls are being cruelly pulled in two different directions, Antoine’s father, a recovering alcoholic, seems to side with his ex-daughter-in-law, and Carole is succumbing to fits of depression and potentially dangerous bouts of sleepwalking. What emerges is a love triangle of potentially tragic proportions. “Café de Flore” Official US Trailer #2, directed by Jean-Marc Vallée from Adopt Films on Vimeo .
With the world in the thrall of another Olympiad, it’s time to dig up an appropriately athletic title from the vaults. And given the disastrous performance of U.S men’s gymnastics team in London, I will be doing my part to salve that psychic wound by drawing attention to an even bigger acrobatic disaster: the 1985 film Gymkata . The late, legendary Wide World of Sports anchor Jim McKay was renowned for bringing us what he called “the human drama of athletic competition,” and in that arena, the Olympics rarely disappoint. Gymkata , on the other hand, fails spectacularly. The drama is non-existent. The athletic display is jackhammered into the storyline, and the performances can be said to be many things, but human is not one of them. This is a gold-plated disaster, and it is one worthy of display. What exactly is Gymkata? The movie’s tag line describes it as “The skill of gymnastics. The kill of karate.” In reality, it was MGM’s unintentionally hilarious attempt to cash in on the excitement behind the gold-medal-winning U.S. Olympic Men’s gymnastics team of 1984 by building a clunky action/adventure movie around a buff gymnast and a fictional form of martial arts. To those ends, the studio cast a once-promising athlete Kurt Thomas, to star in the picture. Thomas had been expected to win gold at the 1980 games in Moscow, but the United States’ boycott of those games scuttled those chances. I’d love to know what Thomas considers more disappointing: being denied his Olympic dream or his appearance in this movie. Handsome athlete in hand, MGM grafted on the action/adventure angle by optioning a pulpy 1957 novel, The Terrible Game , by Dan Tyler Moore, hiring an unproven TV writer Charles Robert Carner to script it and a chop-sockey film director, Robert Clouse, to helm it. All that was left was to slap an action mullet on Thomas and yell, “Action!” The movie begins with slow-mo footage of Jonathon Cabot (Thomas) performing on the horizontal bar, intercut with shots of stampeding horsemen pursuing a lone individual. This man is chased to a ravine and as he tries to cross by suspended rope he is shot with an arrow and plunges to his death. We learn that this was Cabot’s father, and soon Jonathon is being recruited by the U.S. government to join a new fighting corps because he’s needed to infiltrate the country of Parmistan — an Eastern-bloc nation, possibly known for its hard cheese — where the government wants to establish our satellite defense shield. Jonathon is told that once he infiltrates Parmistan, he needs to compete in a centuries-old contest called “The Game”, where the winner is rewarded with his life, and one request. His training is overseen by Princess Rubali, who is said to be an expert at The Game. This designation is dubious at best given that nobody has won The Game in 900 years. Cabot’s training is even more unconvincing, although highly entertaining. Walking up staircases on his hands turns out to be a key form of training, if only so that the camera can linger on Thomas’ crotch as he repeatedly practices this skill. Predictably, Cabot and the mostly mute Princess hook up and once he’s fully trained, then head to Parmistan, where faster than you can say “freshly grated,” they encounter trouble. The Princess is kidnapped, and Cabot engages in the first of numerous skirmishes using his newfound Gymkata skills. Thomas is also given plenty of opportunities to elude danger using a combination of vaulting, floor exercises and other gymnastic skills. And yes, things get even more ri-damned-diculous: In one scene, Cabot uses a crude pommel horse that he just happens to come across to dispatch a crowd of attackers as they come at hi in take-a-number fashion. Once, the Game portion of this train wreck gets underway, Gymkata becomes even more incoherent and contradictory. Despite repeated claims that there are strict rules to the Game, they are repeatedly ignored. And, at one point, Thomas undercuts his stoic leading-man aura by whining about how other contestants are cheating. Late in picture, Cabot learns that his father did not die from the arrow that found him at the beginning of the movie — only to see his pops take another shaft. “Just win,” father tells son before he drops for a second time. A climactic battle follows where Jonathon eventually snaps his opponent’s neck with his thighs of steel. The victorious Cabot rides into town with his still-breathing father, who apparently is harder to kill than the dismembered Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail . Jonny wins the Game, gets the girl and is reunited with his now sieve-like father, but the filmmakers can’t leave well enough alone. A title card then states the Ronald Reaganesque reason that the ending is truly happy: “In 1985 The First Early Warning Earth Station Was Placed in Parmistan For The U.S. Star Wars Defense Program.” If watching athletes who are more fit, skilled and graceful than you’ll ever be leaves you with a feeling of inferiority, then Gymkata is your remedy. If the flailings of a onetime Olympic hopeful trapped in a hapless, incompetent production don’t make you feel superior, they will at least make you laugh like a champion. Follow Movieline on Twitte r.
