Steven Spielberg will screen his Oscar contender in the U.S. Senate. Also in Thursday’s round-up of news, Casey Affleck is eyeing a crime thriller; Tron is making another return; records were released surrounding TDKR Colorado shooter James Holmes; and Glenn Beck & Vince Vaughn are developing a documentary filmmaker competition. Lincoln Invited to Screen U.S. Senate Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has invited Steven Spielberg to screen Lincoln in the Senate chamber later this month. The film screened by invitation of President Obama at the White House on November 15th, Deadline reports . Casey Affleck Eyes Boston Strangler Pic Affleck hopes to star in the thriller about the desperate search to find the mass murderer who gripped Boston in fear in the early ’60s. Warner Bros. picked up the thriller, Deadline reports . New Tron Back in Development A Tron 3 sequel to 2010 reboot Tron: Legacy is back on track. Plot details are being kept secret, but Joseph Kosiniski, who directed Legacy is attached to direct the new pic, THR reports . TDKR Shooter’s Records Released as Theater Is Set to Re-open The documents reveal a romantic relationship accused killer James Holmes had and one of his professors feared for her students’ safety. The theater where the shooting occurred is set to reopen January 17th during a ceremony that will be attended by Colorado’s governor, THR reports . Glenn Beck and Vince Vaughn Teaming for Documentary Filmmaker Competition Show The conservative personality is working to start a reality show called Pursuit of the Truth with Vince Vaughn in which 20 documentarians will compete for financing and distribution of their films and is accepting “filmmakers of all walks of life,” Indiewire reports .
There’s nothing like a good bit of alternate “What if?” casting to make you appreciate a movie whose stars’ chemistry works, so picture what might have been if David O. Russell had made his Oscar contender Silver Linings Playbook a few years back… with Vince Vaughn and Zooey Deschanel . “I wrote this five years ago and I rewrote it 20 times,” Russell told The Huffington Post . “And I thought I was going to make it with Vince Vaughn and Zooey Deschanel before The Fighter . And then it didn’t happen, for any number of reasons that were out of my hands.” Head here to read the full Silver Linings chat, in which Russell big ups stars Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence and offers little hope that we’ll ever see the infamously stalled Nailed . Meanwhile, as awards pundit Anne Thompson notes , Silver Linings is flagging in the crowded Oscar race after enjoying a burst of momentum in previous weeks. Maybe a celebrity endorsement from Oscar-winner Charlize Theron will help? Here’s Theron waxing enthusiastic over Lawrence in EW’s Entertainers of the Year cover story: “How is it that she can just stand there, not saying a word, and make us feel so much? Her talent is undeniable, and she is a force to be reckoned with.” Theron should know; she starred as the older version of a pre-fame, pre- Hunger Games Lawrence (or vice versa — Lawrence starred as the young Theron, opposite Revolution ‘s J.D. Pardo) in 2008’s The Burning Plain . [ Huffington Post , EW , Thompson on Hollywood ]
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 .
Joined by series star Rupert Grint at the British Embassy’s Creative Content Summit, Harry Potter series producer David Heyman looked back on 2001’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone , the first film in the lucrative J.K. Rowling boy wizard franchise, and revealed which parts now make him “want to cringe.” “The visual effects industry developed substantially over the 11 to 12 years of making the films. I look at some of the first film [made in 2001] and want to cringe,” he said, adding that later films in the series marked vast improvements on the screen and in the franchise’s behind the scenes technical infrastructure. Heyman also had issues with Warner Bros.’ merchandising campaign tied to the first film, reports Wired: He went on to say that for the first film there was so much merchandising that it was “shocking.” He said that he knew that Warner Bros. had gone “too far” when he saw Harry Potter toilet paper. However, since then, Warner Bros. has reined it in and produced a “really elevated, high-range program.” At least the studio didn’t go for Americanizing the very British tale — so British, Voldemort and Rowling made it into the Olympic Opening Ceremony — which Heyman says the suits wanted to do at one point: “Heyman was thankful that the movie franchise retained the Britishness of the books, after some movie execs initially considered moving the story to the United States with ‘cheerleaders and the likes’ but he said ‘that never rang true.'” [ Wired via Movie City News ]
The story of a man named Brady and his irritatingly chipper blended family is as much a part of ’70s pop culture as shag rugs and free love, maybe more; neither of those dated phenomena lived on in the popular consciousness as tenaciously, and exhaustively, as The Brady Bunch . The series already enjoyed five seasons, an afterlife in syndication, many lesser spin-offs, and — the true marker of any Hollywood institution — an E! True Hollywood Story . So who really thinks we need another Brady Bunch reboot? Vince Vaughn , that’s who! THR confirms that executive producer Vaughn and CBS are developing a rebooted version of the series that continues the cycle of marriage, divorce, and re-marriage centered around Mike Brady’s youngest kid, Bobby Brady, who’s now grown and building his own modern family. “The CBS effort would include Bobby and his new bride’s exes and, like the original, feature their kids from previous marriages, along with the couple’s shared child,” THR reports. Fine, fine. I can come to terms with a tenuously connected contemporary Brady Bunch spin-off made for the CBS primetime audience as long as nobody gets any funny ideas about making more movies. That said, I can’t say I don’t still chuckle at the sight of an airplane full of normal, sane people (read: AUDIENCE SURROGATES) telling the singing brood to STFU. [ THR ]
New comedy starring Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn and Jonah Hill ‘is as agreeable as it is disposable,’ critics say. By Kara Warner Jonah Hill, Ben Stiller, Richard Ayoade and Vince Vaughn in “The Watch” Photo: Fox
Walking out of The Watch , Saturday Night Live writer Akiva Schaffer’s garrulous but indistinctive directing debut, a young woman in front of me complained to her friend. “What do you even say about that?” he’d asked. “I have no idea,” she said. She only had to write up a list of the movie’s pros and cons, and even then she could think of but one item for the former column. It’s not that The Watch is terrible – it’s not not terrible, but there are sufficient diversions and more punitive ways to spend your evening – but that it’s one of those smoke bomb comedies that seems to disappear even while you’re watching, leaving no trace of itself behind. A studio gumbo of proven quantities – here’s Vince Vaughn doing his flirty, towel-snapping thing, Ben Stiller playing a tightly wound Citizen Costco, um, rabid aliens, beer- and pot-sealed enshrinement of male bonding – The Watch leaves very little to say because, despite the near-constant jabber, it says, and aspires to, so very little. There is a concept, of course, and it’s high enough to track with those non-native Apatowians (Seth Rogen co-wrote the script with Jared Stern and his longtime writing partner Evan Goldberg) sadly unable to keep up with the movie’s urban thesaurus worth of masturbation references. Home team-loving Evan (Stiller) is what Max Fischer might be like if he grew up to manage a Costco and moved to Middle America. Trying to prop up his flagging self-image with extra credit community work, Evan is also trying (and failing) to have a child with his adorable wife (Rosemarie DeWitt). When his overnight security guard is found in a pile of viscera and green goo, Evan responds the only way he knows how: By deputizing himself as the leader of yet another organization, a neighborhood watch. I saw the trailer for The Watch back when it was still called Neighborhood Watch , just as the February murder of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin by a patrolling neighborhood watch volunteer was coming to national attention. No doubt a couple of 20 th Century Fox executives had a couple of sleepless nights, wondering if their lewd little genre mash-up would be found guilty by association. They did what studios do in these dismally self-interested situations – a shell game currently being played by Warner Bros. with their Gangster Squad , whose release has been postponed until next year in the wake of the Aurora shootings: They changed the title. It’s all about optics and the bottom line, and between those two imperatives less and less to do with (moral and other kinds of) substance in storytelling and image making seems to survive. With the exception of the character of Franklin (Jonah Hill), one of Evan’s three compatriots (including Vaughn’s bored dad and Richard Ayoade as a deceptively well-bred Brit looking to blend in), and a funny scene in which Stiller and Vaughn vie to get the last bullet into an alien corpse, The Watch is too clearly about cartoon battles and puerile riffing to inspire queasiness. Police Academy reject Franklin is keen to whip some neighborhood ass; he slings a blade around, refers to their club as a “militia,” and has an arsenal of automatic weapons hidden under his childhood bed. He’s really a pussycat, of course, and when it falls on the quartet to save their town from alien invasion (Will Forte is brilliant as usual playing one of the town’s handful of ineffectual cops; a creepy Billy Crudup is also welcome in a small part) and a divide forms between the two alpha males, Stiller and Vaughn vie for his loyalty. The Watch received an R-rating, which mostly means that the usual complement of dick jokes have room to flower into a full-blown penile fixation – to grow taller, bloom fatter, scatter more potent seeds, etc, etc. Some of it’s funny; most of it’s a flat-out grind. (Least clever is the movie’s nod to its own preoccupation with everything phallic and fluid; like I tell my landlord, acknowledging the problem is not the same as fixing it.) Back in March, the Watch trailer preceded a showing of 21 Jump Street , a movie that should not have worked if ever a movie were doomed from the start (or by its title), and yet it restored my faith in the studio comedy; side by side the two movies are a study in the difference between inspired silliness and what is merely and persistently slight. The Watch is in wide release Friday. Follow Michelle Orange on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill and Richard Ayoade tell MTV News about an eating contest gone awry. By Kara Warner Jonah Hill, Ben Stiller, Richard Ayoade and Vince Vaughn in “The Watch” Photo: Fox
Hollywood.TV is your source for all the latest celebrity news, gossip and videos of your favorite stars! bit.ly – Click to Subscribe! Facebook.com – Become a Fan! Twitter.com – Follow Us! : Hollywood.TV was on the red carpet to cover the premiere of ‘The Watch’ Starring Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn. On the red carpet, we caught interviews with Doug Jones, Jen Lilley, and Kendra Wilkinson. Kendra reveals that she herself has had a real-life alien encounter, and that’s why she’s interested in the film! Hollywood.TV is the global leader in capturing celebrity breaking news as it happens. We cover all the major Hollywood events including The Golden Globes, The Oscars, The Screen Actors Guild Awards, The Grammy’s, The Emmy’s and the American Music Awards, as well as all the red carpet movie premiers in Los Angeles and New York. HTV is on the streets 24/7, at all the industry events and invited by the stars to cover their every move in Hollywood, New York and Miami. Hollywood.TV is currently the third most viewed reporter channel on www.youtube.com YouTube with almost 400 million views, and our footage is seen worldwide! Tune in daily for all the latest Hollywood news on www.hollywood.tv and http like us on Facebook!
Hollywood.TV is your source for all the latest celebrity news, gossip and videos of your favorite stars! bit.ly – Click to Subscribe! Facebook.com – Become a Fan! Twitter.com – Follow Us! Vince Vaughn and Justin Timberlake were spotted at ArcLight Hollywood Cinemas in Hollywood. Vince Vaughn seemed to be bothered by the attention he was getting from the paparazzi and quickly walked to his car and ignored the paparazzi flashes. While, Justin Timberlake was spotted in his car paying the parking attendant and also ignored all the paparazzi and their questions! Wonder what’s wrong with Vince and Justin? Maybe, they didn’t enjoy their movie? Hollywood.TV is the global leader in capturing celebrity breaking news as it happens. We cover all the major Hollywood events including The Golden Globes, The Oscars, The Screen Actors Guild Awards, The Grammy’s, The Emmy’s and the American Music Awards, as well as all the red carpet movie premiers in Los Angeles and New York. HTV is on the streets 24/7, at all the industry events and invited by the stars to cover their every move in Hollywood, New York and Miami. Hollywood.TV is currently the third most viewed reporter channel on www.youtube.com YouTube with almost 400 million views, and our footage is seen worldwide! Tune in daily for all the latest Hollywood news on www.hollywood.tv and http like us on Facebook! 15233382
