Also in Thursday’s quick round up of film news, ARC Entertainment is bringing Fat Kid to the States, Meryl Streep gives her two cents on big studio flops, and audiences just are not heading to theaters frequently like they used to. Fat Kid to Hit North America ARC Entertainment has picked up North American rights to director Matthew Lillard’s Fat Kid Rules the World . Starring Jacob Wysocki ( Terri ), Matt O’Leary ( Natural Selection ) and Billy Campbell ( The Killing ), the film won the Narrative Feature Audience Award at the 2012 SXSW Film Festival. The film revolves around two guys who form a strong friendship after one saves the other from suicide. Around the ‘net… Meryl Streep Has Words for Studio Tentpole Failures The actress had advice for studio execs behind big budget box office flops like Battleship and John Carter : “Listen to the ladies.” THR reports . Waiting for the Avengers Directors Cut Following in the footsteps of other high stakes box office titles, Joss Whedon is rumored to be reinstating footage into a three-hour version of the blockbuster that has taken in billions worldwide, The Guardian reports . Only 3% Rate Moviegoing as Frequent Form of Entertainment Only two years ago, 28% of U.S. consumers said “cinema/movies” were a frequent source of entertainment, according to PR outfit Edelman which released the statistics, Deadline reports . LA Film Festival Lures Woody Allen to Opener The director is, not publicly anyway, a frequent visitor in Los Angeles, but LAFF managed to get the filmmaker to its opening night. THR talks to the festival’s head programmer on how they made it happen. Follow Brian Brooks on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Also in Thursday’s quick round up of film news, ARC Entertainment is bringing Fat Kid to the States, Meryl Streep gives her two cents on big studio flops, and audiences just are not heading to theaters frequently like they used to. Fat Kid to Hit North America ARC Entertainment has picked up North American rights to director Matthew Lillard’s Fat Kid Rules the World . Starring Jacob Wysocki ( Terri ), Matt O’Leary ( Natural Selection ) and Billy Campbell ( The Killing ), the film won the Narrative Feature Audience Award at the 2012 SXSW Film Festival. The film revolves around two guys who form a strong friendship after one saves the other from suicide. Around the ‘net… Meryl Streep Has Words for Studio Tentpole Failures The actress had advice for studio execs behind big budget box office flops like Battleship and John Carter : “Listen to the ladies.” THR reports . Waiting for the Avengers Directors Cut Following in the footsteps of other high stakes box office titles, Joss Whedon is rumored to be reinstating footage into a three-hour version of the blockbuster that has taken in billions worldwide, The Guardian reports . Only 3% Rate Moviegoing as Frequent Form of Entertainment Only two years ago, 28% of U.S. consumers said “cinema/movies” were a frequent source of entertainment, according to PR outfit Edelman which released the statistics, Deadline reports . LA Film Festival Lures Woody Allen to Opener The director is, not publicly anyway, a frequent visitor in Los Angeles, but LAFF managed to get the filmmaker to its opening night. THR talks to the festival’s head programmer on how they made it happen. Follow Brian Brooks on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
With his Sundance conversation-starter Red Hook Summer set for an August theatrical/VOD release, Spike Lee sat down with GQ and gave a rundown of which projects are happening for him, and which are not. Among the Spike Lee joints lost by the wayside due to funding struggles, etc.: His Jackie Robinson biopic, LA riots film, and Wesley Snipes-as-James Brown flick. Surprisingly, Lee admits he’s still awaiting the green light on Oldboy — but in the meantime Lee’s plotting to direct Mike Tyson on Broadway and has already interviewed the likes of Justin Bieber for a Michael Jackson doc celebrating the 25th anniversary of Bad , so there’s that… [ GQ ]
Was Disney’s John Carter the victim of our increasing cultural overstimulation? IndieWire’s Matt Singer considers the tentpole’s reception — and suggests parallels with Kenneth Lonergan’s troubled production-cum-critical darling, Margaret : “[As] perpetual sneak preview culture becomes normalized, audiences are being conditioned to weigh in on a movie before it even comes out. They’re trained not only to trust their expectations, but to express them constantly. ‘I knew this movie was going to be bad from the first trailer,’ is a commonly expressed opinion online. At a certain point, it begins to feel like people want a movie to fail, if only to prove their expectations right.” [ IndieWire ]
Rounding out Wednesday morning’s mostly film news briefs, Tribeca Film takes rights to one of its winners, Focus Forward heads to LA Film Festival with prizes ready to hand out, Amazon teams with MGM titles and CBGB movie picks up another actor to play a singer Tribeca Film Nabs War Witch U.S. rights to Kim Nguyen’s Berlin and Tribeca Film Festival prize-winner War Witch have been picked up by Tribeca Film, the distribution unit of Tribeca Enterprises. The film, which won the ‘Founders Award’ at the Tribeca Film Festival, centers on Komona who is swept up in an African war at an early age and has the uncanny ability to see gray ghosts that warn her of approaching enemies. Tribeca Film plans an early 2013 release. Focus Forward Heads to LA Film Festival with $200K Filmmaker Challenge The initiative announced during the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year is a series of 30 three-minute nonfiction films, inspired by a “vision of innovative people being the catalyst for world change.” Focus Forward will travel to LAFF to inspire filmmakers to submit their work and cash prizes will be given to the top five entries and $100K eventually going to the top prize winner. More information can be found here . Around the ‘net… Whoah! Johnny Depp’s Lone Ranger Lassoes $250M Budget Depp, director Gore Verbinski and producer Jerry Bruckheimer had cut out some action sequences to mosey costs down to a more manageable $215M, but the dollar figure is stampeding upward again, THR reports . Amazon to Stream MGM Movies and Series Amazon Prime customers will have access to MGM television and movie titles under a new licensing agreement. Late ’80s shows like thirtysomething and film titles such as Baby Boom (1987) are among those available under the new arrangement that will last for an undisclosed amount of time, Deadline reports . CBGB Pic Tags Justin Bartha The Hangover star will portray Dead Boys lead singer Stiv Bators. Randall Miller is directing the film about the now defunct club in Manhattan’s Bowery that is credited with spawning punk in the U.S. The film begins shooting next month in Savannah, GA., Deadline reports . Meryl Streep Fetes Viola Davis at Women in Film Event Streep took Best Actress for her portrayal of Margaret Thatcher over Davis in The Help , but Streep lavished praise on her colleague Tuesday at Women in Film’s annual Crystal + Lucy Awards, EW reports via AP.
Oh hey, remember Twilight ? That book that was a movie that spawned a gazillion-dollar franchise before The Hunger Games and Fifty Shades of Grey made you momentarily forget about sparkly vampires? Well, it’s back, and the latest EW cover serves to remind us all that Breaking Dawn – Part 2 — the franchise ender, due in November — is just on the horizon. Forthwith, your first look at Vampire Bella, Daddy Edward, and, uh, Uncle Jacob with Breaking Dawn ‘s preternaturally mature baby Renesmee. EW teases their June 22 issue with family portraits of Bella ( Kristen Stewart ), Edward ( Robert Pattinson ), Jacob ( Taylor Lautner ), and little Renesmee, a new character introduced in Breaking Dawn – Part 2 . Per Stephenie Meyer’s final Twilight novel, Renesmee is the half-human, half-vampire baby whose birth pretty much kills Bella at the end of Breaking Dawn – Part 1 , necessitating Bella’s transformation into a vampire and kicking off the final chapter of zany events in the series. Among the stranger details of Breaking Dawn – Part 2 : Renesmee is a hybrid creature baby who grows at an accelerated rate, hence why she looks more like Siri Cruise than a normal infant. (Forget Twilight – let’s get to the untold story of Matt Leblanc, amirite?) Eleven-year-old newcomer Mackenzie Foy nabbed the role of Renesmee, and from the looks of EW’s preview she gets considerable face time with not only her vampire parents (and Jacob — more on that in a bit) but with the various assembled international vampires that gather to rally around the Cullen clan as the evil Volturi vamps head to America to wipe them out. EW’s Twilight issue hits stands June 15, along with new images from the film. Take a look at the Cullen brood… And the various global vampire clans that gather in Breaking Dawn – Part 2 : Of course, Dakota Fanning returns with the Volturi… …and Vampire Bella is strong enough to arm-wrestle Emmett… …but let’s talk about Jacob and Renesmee and the love that dare not speak its name: Imprinting. Scans of the EW cover story have already leaked, revealing bits of the cast and director interviews discussing the set, casting Foy (“Even our hands look similar,” marvels Stewart), etc. But let’s jump right over to the elephant in the room, shall we? Lautner addresses his Breaking Dawn challenge — making Jacob “imprint” on his soulmate, baby Renesmee, without making it feel, you know, creepy (via Nessie-Mackenzie.com ): …talking to Stephenie Meyer and diving back into the book got him more comfortable with the notion of being in love with a child. “Everyone likes to tease me about it,” he says. “Everyone thinks it’s so funny, and I laugh along with them, but it’s important for me to keep in my mind that it’s as simple as a lifelong bond. It’s not nearly as creepy as everybody likes to joke.” That “everybody” includes Pattinson, needless to say. “Oh, I can’t wait till he has to do live TV,” Pattinson says of Lautner with a gleeful cackle. “Did you ask him if his taste in women has changed? The first scene I saw them together, I literally could not stop laughing. I wouldn’t have been able to do it.” Well, good luck to Lautner. I don’t care if Stewart had to wear uncomfortable contact lenses, he’s officially got the hardest job of anyone on Twilight . Look for more in EW’s June 22 issue. [ EW ]
So says Marvel superproducer Avi Arad , describing the spark between the on- (and rumored off-)screen Amazing Spider-Man couple: “On camera the chemistry is real. Those scenes are where Marc Webb really gets into his element. It’s the hardest thing to do and they do it. These two are like Hepburn-Tracy of modern time. It’s a war of brains that turns into attraction.” Does that make Spider-Man their Woman of the Year ? Discuss. [ ScreenCrush ]
HIGH Times has been a purveyor of – well – high times for years now and it’s high time, apparently, that one high-profile fan of the illegal-ish botanic blazon its cover with his famous image. Oliver Stone will grace the cover of the magazine in the August 2012 issue, just in time for the magazine’s new editor-in-chief to settle in at his new post – quite a coup! Always the classy guy, stone takes a toke dressed in his red carpet best tux and shares with HIGH Tmes about his new film Savages while also taking a dig at American foreign intervention and the ongoing global drug war. And the three-time Oscar winner is quite frank about his penchant for marijuana and tends to go for local product. “Certainly if you appreciate California weed, which I have for many years, you’ll realize that we’re somewhat close to the money when we say that, California has surpassed Thailand, Jamaica, South Sudan, and certainly Mexico as the king and queen of quality weed,” said Stone. He also joked – or maybe not? – that he might get into agriculture himself. ” I’m thinking myself of getting into the business, although I suspect there’d be a lot of stress with the Feds changing the rules all the time. Those bastards.” Savages was a chance for Stone to re-connect to his inner rebel, he told HIGH Times . Said the publication’s Chris Simunek: “We applaud Oliver Stone for showing the same sort of courage in his support for the marijuana cause that he’s shown with so many other issues, past and present. HIGH Times has always championed the rebel with a cause, and when people of Mr. Stone’s renown speak up — and smoke up — in the public sector, it exposes one more chink in the armor of idiocy that protects the status quo.” [Source: HIGH Times ] And what do you think of Stone’s HIGH Times cover shot?
Following a whirlwind rise to fame in his native Sweden, actor Joel Kinnaman is beginning to make his mark on American audiences thanks to a breakout turn as Detective Holder on AMC’s The Killing and his high-profile casting in the upcoming RoboCop remake . For the Stockholm-born 32-year-old, who breaks Greta Gerwig’s heart at the start of this week’s Lola Versus (but manages to remain sympathetic — a rarity in romantic comedies), setting out for Hollywood couldn’t have come at a better time. And according to him, taking risks — in work and beyond — is what living is all about: “Nothing is more important than the choices we make and the life we choose to live.” Over the course of a decade, the blond, strikingly handsome Kinnaman has emerged as one of Sweden’s most promising talents. Crossing over to Hollywood, he appeared in The Darkest Hour , The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo , and Safe House , while his 2010 Swedish crime thriller Snabba Cash — set to be remade in English with Zac Efron — will debut stateside this summer. In Daryl Wein and Zoe Lister Jones’s Lola Versus Kinnaman takes a slight detour from the “darkness and grittiness” he’s embraced for years, playing Luke, the NYC artist who gets cold feet and breaks his engagement to Greta Gerwig’s Lola, forcing her to re-examine herself and her fairytale expectations of life and love. Kinnaman rang Movieline from London for a wide-ranging conversation about living without regret, leaving Sweden in time to avoid waking up at 45 years old “doing auditions for the third swordsman on Game of Thrones ,” why he quit Twitter but can’t help Googling himself every now and then, and (of course!) our robot future. Hi there! Where are you calling from, by the way? I’m walking around in my robe in a hotel room in London. What are you doing in London? I’m shooting an H&M commercial. Aha! So, let me get this out of the way right off the bat: I got hooked on The Killing and watched all of the first season, on demand, in a matter of days. [Laughs] That’s the way I like to watch stuff, too! Given that most folks here know you as Holder from The Killing , Lola Versus is an interesting project to come out for you now that you’re starting to cross-over from Swedish film and TV into Hollywood. Was it appealing, the variation? Well, yes — it was a very welcome light side step from all the darkness and grittiness that I’ve been involved with, pretty much throughout my whole career. I’m a pretty light and light-spirited person; I’m not a depressed guy. I think that in Sweden and a lot of European countries there’s this whole mythology of the wounded artist, that you can’t really do any great art unless you’re suffering. And I always thought that was bullshit, I thought it was out of not being able to trust yourself to dive into those deep waters, so you create this persona of a struggling person that in turn would make it believable that you could portray these characters. But I’ve usually been cast as these dark, complex, struggling people. Why do you think that is? I don’t know. Of course I have that in me, too, but that’s not what I nourish in life. I don’t think that anybody that is depressed wants to be depressed, and that’s often what you see from performances with actors like that; it’s a depressed character from the first step onstage or the first frame of a movie and it’s like [sighs] and there’s no real journey to it. Does this make you a sort of anti-method actor? Well, I’m not a method actor per se, but if I’m playing a character that at its core of its persona has experiences I don’t have, I try to search out and get firsthand experiences of similar sorts so I have something to fantasize about. I think my technique is always evolving, and I think every character has its technique, but the thread through the way I work is that I usually try to get myself real experience doing what the character does so I have something real to fantasize about. Along those lines, you did ride-alongs with police officers to prepare to play Holder on The Killing , so I’m assuming you’ll spend some time with robots for RoboCop … [Laughs] Yeah, I’m going to Japan and spending time with [real life robots]. Have you seen those? Pretty cool. I have, and it blows my mind that a RoboCop -like future may not be too far away. It’s not. Have you seen these Japanese hospital droids, or humanoids, or whatever they call it? They’ve perfected the skin, and the skin looks so real. They have these motors between the eyes for when they smile. It’s just mind-blowing. We’re pretty close already. You can find it on YouTube! It’s spooky. Lola Versus is a relationship movie, an alternative romantic dramedy, but it’s surprisingly balanced and complex as these movies go — your character is a character who in any average rom-com might be written as evil, so we can hate him off the bat for dumping Lola. But we can’t really do that here. Yeah, it feels more balanced and not so formulaic in that sense. And I like that it starts out where most rom-coms end. And the message of the movie was one of the things that drew me to it; this message of ‘freedom for solitude.’ But at its main core it says, don’t throw your life away by living your life by a formula, like how things are supposed to be done. I think that’s what freaks Luke out — he’s realizing that life is a precious thing and maybe he hasn’t given it everything he could. It’s like being a little bit of a coward. One of the things that came to mind when I read the script, and something I think about a lot, is I believe that this life is everything that we have, and nothing happens after it — nothing is more important than the choices we make and the life we choose to live. There was this, I think, Danish documentary where they did interviews with old people, in their 80s, all over the world, from different classes and histories of wealth, different ethnicities, different religious backgrounds. Interviewing them on life; how they looked upon life. And of course the answers were all across the board, because everyone has such a different outlook on life, because of where they’re from. But there was one question that had a much higher resonance of the quality of answers, all over the world, in different classes and ethnicities, and that was, “What is your biggest regret in life?” And the answer that was common was, “That I didn’t take more emotional risks.” I’m turning 31, and having been thinking about those kinds of questions lately, I’ll be honest with you — watching Lola Versus at times was a little too real for me. [Laughs] Those are the kinds of reality checks that we need! If you got that feeling, that’s the best thing that can happen to you. I think that being a coward within yourself and not exposing yourself to life, giving yourself an opportunity to be everything that you can be — giving yourself the opportunity to evolve fully, to the furthest extent of where you could come — that’s a crime to yourself. You have to be brave. Speaking of such things as bravery, the leap you made from Sweden to Hollywood seems like a challenging transition to make. You’ve talked about going out for auditions, having to deal with not having a big enough “name”… I got out of acting school in 2007, and I had two very intense years — I did nine features in 16 months, where I played the lead in all of them, and at the same time I was playing the lead, Raskolnikov, in Crime and Punishment . It was like a three hour and 45 minute play that was a big success in Sweden. So I had a very intense two first years after I got out of acting school, and it was after that whole period before those movies had come out, that I made the decision to move. It was a good choice, and I was aware of my situation, [thinking] it’s a good time to go now, because in three or four years I’ll be established in a way, in Sweden, where I’m going to be used to being treated in a certain way and that can be difficult to change. So it was very easy to come over to the State without having an ego about things like that. You were afraid that a few more years of success in Sweden and you’d be too famous? Maybe you get too used to not having to fight for stuff. It’s more difficult when you’ve been working as an established actor for 20 years and then as a 45-year-old, everyone respects you and knows your body of work, and then all of a sudden you come to the States and nobody knows who you are, and you’re doing auditions for the third swordsman on Game of Thrones . That can be humiliating, but… so it was a good time for me to come over. You’ve got The Killing and Lola Versus out and, soon, American audiences will see you in a Swedish film, Snabba Cash . And then, Robocop . When I spoke with Jose Padilha about his Elite Squad films, he shared his take on RoboCop and why it was compelling on a human level and it was really interesting to hear his philosophical approach. I mean, he’s a young master, and a very strong visionary. He wants to make something with a lot of substance. And if you’ve seen Elite Squad , you know that the action sequences are a walk in the park for him. He can portray action very realistically — and that’s how he wants to do this movie. It takes place in the future, and it’s RoboCop , but it’s still going to feel like a gritty, down to earth movie… with a lot of fireworks around it. You’ve described a difference in your acting approach to the character, that this RoboCop would be more of an “acting piece” than the original. How so, and why? It just comes from the realization of, as we were talking about robots earlier, our vision of a robot 30 years from now is very different from what a robot was in the future in 1987. That is the main thing, and then there are obviously some things in the script that lead into that that I can’t talk about. Lastly, you spoke about your fame in Sweden and there is certainly a wealth of admiration online for your work there. Now that you’re carving out a career here, do you go online and read what’s written about yourself? Are you tempted to be on Twitter, as some actors and filmmakers are? I did have a Twitter account, but five episodes into The Killing I terminated it. [Laughs] I felt that it’s enough of a struggle to keep my narcissism at bay, I don’t need to know what everybody’s saying about me. It’s just not healthy. But of course, I’ll Google my name time and again. But I try not to dive too deep into it. Of course, it’s always tempting, and it’s always there and it’s fascinating to hear what people say about you, but my experience of doing that is it’s like Russian roulette. You won’t stop looking until you find somebody saying something really nasty about you, and that’s the only way you’re satisfied. It doesn’t matter if there are 200 people saying great things, you’re only going to remember that one person that said something horrible about you, and there’s no point in that. Lola Versus is in select theaters today. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Total Film has the first look at Idris Elba in Guillermo del Toro’s alien invasion flick Pacific Rim , for which he built — and destroyed — replica sets, kaiju style. Elba stars alongside Charlie Hunnam , Ron Perlman, Charlie Day and Rinko Kikuchi in the mecha-epic, which pits robot-piloting humans in battle against interplanetary monsters. In the magazine’s latest issue, Del Toro spills about the process of destroying entire city blocks and rigging robot hydraulic rigs on the set: When we’re talking about the physicality of the fight, we ended up building several blocks of Hong Kong. And literally demolished them. We built a building and then we took down the buildings. We built command centres of the robots that were the size of the house. We started them on hydraulic rigs that shoot and elevated them and moved them round so you could really get a sense of the physical nature driving a robot like this. “The thing I love most in the world is monsters, and we are creating great monsters,” del Toro told Movieline last year , when he was just starting on the film. Pacific Rim is set for release on July 13, 2013. [ Total Film via Moviehole ]
