If you’ve ever fantasized that Kristen Stewart invited you to bed by saying, “Hop in, water’s fine,” well, this is a trailer for your permanent collection. The actress and her Bohemian behavior in On The Road get prime placement — there’s even a quick glimpse of her talked-about double hand-job scene — along with co-stars Garrett Hedlund and Sam Riley , in this just-released trailer for Walter Salles adaptation of the Jack Kerouac novel. Although the trio appears to get the most screen time, the fast-paced clip does a good job of introducing most of the name cast members, including Kirsten Dunst , Viggo Mortensen, Amy Adams , Elisabeth Moss and Alice Braga. The film gets a limited released on Dec. 21 if the world doesn’t end along with the Mayan calendar. You can also head over to iTunes to download the trailer — for your permanent collection. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
The Wachowskis are about to shoot their first film in 3D, which, after the complexity of Cloud Atlas , almost sounds like a comedown. FilmStage.com reports that the cinema siblings will utilize 3D for the first time to make their next science-fiction film, Jupiter Ascending , which begins shooting early next year. The news is part of a Warner Bros . deal in which it plans to release up to 20 upcoming films, including Jupiter Ascending , in IMAX over the next three years. Last May, Vulture reported that Jupiter Ascending is set in a universe where humans are quite low in the evolutionary hierarchy. There, Mila Kunis plays an immigrant cleaning lady who is targeted for assassination by the Queen of the Universe because she possesses the same genetic make-up and therefore poses a threat to the Queen’s rule. Sounds like a very specific variation on the Engineers hatred of the human race in Prometheus , no? Word is Channing Tatum plays a bounty hunter sent to eliminate Kunis’ character, who instead falls in love with her. Just guessing here, but I bet that means more bounty hunters are dispatched to track down the lovebirds. [ FilmStage.com, Vulture ] Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
All four studio releases debuted with a whimper at best and tanked at worst. Ben Affleck ‘s Argo topped the box office in a disappointing weekend. It is hard to estimate the impact on the onslaught of Hurricane Sandy had on Sunday on the East Coast as residents scurried to get ready for the storm, but the weekend’s box office took a hit nevertheless. Strong word-of-mouth made Argo one of the lone stars of the weekend. 1. Argo Gross: $12,355,000 (Cume: $60,780,288) Screens: 2,855 (PSA: $4,327) Week: 3 (Change: – 24.9%) Argo finally made it to number one three weeks into its release. But it was mostly by default because its competition from newcomers failed to make the box office grade. Still, Argo showed bravado on its own, with only a small dip in its returns, despite losing 392 locations. Word of mouth is clearly propelling the Ben Affleck-directed political thriller that is a strong contender for awards this season. A $100 million gross is certainly not out of the question. 2. Hotel Transylvania Gross: $9.5 million (Cume: $130,434,000) Screens: 3,276 (PSA: $2,900) Week: 5 (Change: – 26.9%) The animated feature jumped from fourth place last week to second in its fifth round. The $130 million-plus cumulative makes it one of Sony Pictures Animation’s top animated-only pic. It will eventually overtake The Smurfs , which grossed $142.6 million. 3. Cloud Atlas Gross: $9.4 million Screens: 2,008 (PSA: $4,681) Week: 1 Six slightly connected stories told over two hours and forty-four minutes was bound to be a marketing challenge. The pic received a C+ CinemaScore, so it’s going to be a steep trek for this $100 million movie sees any profit. Its recognizable cast should help it as it heads overseas. While it’s the best of the weekend’s newcomers, it clearly didn’t connect with audiences at the level needed. 4. Paranormal Activity 4 Gross: $8,675,000 (Cume: $42,632,365) Screens: 3,412 (PSA: $2,542) Week: 2 (Change: – 70.1%) The pic fell a heavy 70% from its opening weekend when it opened at number one with a $30.2 million open and an $8,851 screen average. The drop was steeper than Paranormal Activity 3 ‘s 66 percent drop. The third installment had grossed about $10 million more than the current pic by this point in its release. 5. Silent Hill: Revelation (3-D) Gross: $8 million Screens: 2,933 ($2,728) Week: 1 A weak opening for the pic, which is off 60 percent from the first movie’s $20.15 million debut. Competition from Paranormal Activity 4 and Sinister likely weighed in in suppressing box office activity for the title. 6. Taken 2 Gross: $8 million (Cume $117,389,000) Screens: 2,995 (PSA: $2,671) Week: 4 (Change: – 39.7%) The title lost 494 theaters compared to its third weekend and essentially tied with newcomer Silent Hill: Revelation (3-D) in the overall box office chart. Taken 2 is holding solid, beating out the first installment by $22 million. 7. Here Comes the Boom Gross: $5.5 million (Cume: $30,610,472) Screens: 2,491 (PSA: $2,208) Week: 3 (Change: – 34.6%) The film remained in seventh place in the b.o. chart, dropping over 34% and losing 523 theaters. Last weekend it averaged $2,820 compared to $3,981 in its debut. 8. Sinister Gross: $5.07 million (Cume: $39,514,955) Screens: 2,347 (2,160) Week: 3 (Change: – 42.5%) The title dropped 195 theaters in its third round and dropped a fairly strong 42 percent plus. But with a production budget of only $3 million, the title is a clear success and its roll-out will continue. Last weekend it averaged $3,552. 9. Alex Cross Gross: $5.05 million (Cume: $19,368,691) Screens: 2,541 (PSA: $1,987) Week: 2 (Change: – 55.7%) The pic dropped nearly 56%, a steep one for the titles second round. It added two locations and its $1,987 average compares to $4,489 in its debut. The crime thriller’s $35 million production budget means it has a tough road given its slow momentum. 10. Fun Size Gross: $4.06 million Screens: 3,014 (PSA: $1,347) Week: 1 Ouch, one of the worst of the weekend’s new offerings, the film clearly tanked with audiences. —– 13. Chasing Mavericks Gross: $2.2 million Screens: 2,002 (PSA: $1,099) Week: 1 The worst of the newcomers, the film failed to make the top ten even though it opened wide. The debut is the ninth worst ever for a film opening in over 2,000 theaters.
Real-life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren will finally get their own movie with The Conjuring. The controversial ghost hunters, who found ed the New England Society for Psychic Research in 1952 and, most famously, were involved in the Amityville Horror case that led to the 1979 and 2005 movies of the same name, will be played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga. Saw filmmaker James Wan is directing. Wan, Wilson and Ron Livingston — who plays the father of a family the Warrens try to help — were all on hand at this month’s New York Comic-Con to talk up the spooky flick which Warner Bros will release in the summer of 2013. Check out the video below to learn how The Conjuring finally got made, and how Livingston feels about making his first horror movie! Follow Movieline on Twitter . Follow Grace on Twitter .
‘I always felt like I was in a scene with Superman,’ Cavill’s co-star Michael Shannon tells MTV News of his work on the Zack Snyder superhero flick. By Josh Wigler, with reporting by Kevin P. Sullivan Henry Cavill in “Man Of Steel” Photo: Warner Bros
Underground favorite and Queens native, Action Bronson, has found himself a label home at Warner Bros and VICE Records. Bronson announced the news via his Twitter account, which almost didn’t seem real at first… Continue
To paraphrase Clemenza from The Godfather : Move the picture. Keep the scene. Deadline Hollywood reported that Warner Bros. has decided to push the release date of Gangster Squad to January 11, 2013. The schedule shuffle took place as a result of the tragic mass shooting at a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colo. As you’re probably well aware by now, there’s a pivotal scene in the Ruben Fleischer-directed movie in which mobsters burst through a movie screen to spray a crowd of movie goers with machine-gun fire. Warner, which is part of a public company, is understandably postponing the release date to avoid appearing insensitive to the Colorado tragedy, especially given the eerie similarity between the Gangster Squad scene and what happened in Aurora. It’s a smart move, and now that the studio is putting some distance between Aurora and Gangster Squad , I think it should give serious consideration to leaving the theater scene intact. (As Deadline reported, plans are to substitute another murder spree that takes place in a different setting.) As others have pointed out, Fleischman’s movie was completed before the shooting in Aurora took place. (The studio was already reportedly screening the film.) Admittedly, it’s a sensitive and unfortunate situation. &mdash ; but it’s a situation that should be solved with the passage of time, not the alteration of a filmmaker’s work. Consider the point made by one Movieline reader when I wrote on Tuesday that the movie’s release would probably be delayed until next year. In the comments section, the reader, who goes by the handle “Elkabong,” noted that “Around 300 Americans were killed in automobiles last month,” adding: “I assume that Warner is going to cut out any future scenes which involve people driving cars.” A Warner spokeswoman confirmed that Gangster Squad would not be released on Sept. 7 but said that no new date had been set. Stay tuned. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter . Watch the video on YouTube.
Gangster Squad does not look like it will be coming to a theater near you any time soon. In the wake of the mass shooting at a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colo., an industry insider tells Movieline that Warner executives are expected to decide today whether to reschedule the release of the Ruben Fleischer-directed film about the L.A. police departments war against the organized crime in the 1940s and 50s. And the insider says odds the picture–which stars Ryan Gosling, Sean Penn and Josh Brolin–will keep its Sept.7 release date are pretty long. EW.com reported that the studio pulled the Gangster Squad trailer, which had played before some screenings of TKDR film and ordered it re-cut because of a scene in which mobsters fire machine guns at a crowd of moviegoers. The site also noted that the scene, which is pivotal to the plot, would either be cut or “at least extensively reworked.” That means script re-writes and re-shoots, and our insider says “a lot depends on the how quick the fix can be made.” Given that the film’s original release date is a little over a month away, the source says it’s looking increasingly likely that the release date will be moved.
It’s hard to imagine most folks will be eager to rush into cinemas this weekend following the tragedy out of Aurora, Colorado, even those who’ve been anticipating the release of The Dark Knight Rises for months. While Matt Patches over at Hollywood.com thoughtfully wonders if audiences will return swiftly to theaters, The Wrap reports that Warner Bros. are themselves scrambling to figure out how to balance their multi-million dollar Dark Knight Rises roll-out campaign with common decency and empathy for the victims, their families, and a shaken nation. It’s not that audiences might recoil from Batman, presuming some direct link between the comics or the character somehow incited suspect James Holmes to allegedly pre-meditate his attack on the dozens of men, women, and children at Aurora’s Century 16, despite unconfirmed reports that he may have had hair dyed in the style of The Joker; violence in media doesn’t “make” people kill, though access to guns and combat paraphernalia helps sick people do terrible things. And though fanboy ire this week had reached alarming levels with the hate-speech and death threats lobbied at critics of The Dark Knight Rises , any true Bat-fan knows that the DC hero not only fights to protect lives, he’s staunchly anti-gun. (A scene in TDKR highlights this.) So let’s not even start to blame the movies for what happened in Aurora. Besides: When tragedy strikes niche communities , it reminds us that we’re not so divided after all. Fandom is what made the Aurora victims sitting ducks for the gun man, who burst through the packed theater’s emergency exit doors just minutes after the film had begun. These were people who had anticipated TDKR so much many of them likely bought tickets in advance, wanting to be among the first to see the film. The shooter seemed to be preying on fans, not representing them, though his motives have yet to be revealed. Writing in The New Yorker, Anthony Lane proposes doing away with midnight movies for fear of copycats, though his secondary reason somewhat condescendingly critiques the practice of the midnight screening altogether: “…those screenings, starting when most people are in bed, often have a crazed and hallucinated air, which is all part of the game to those who enjoy them — anyone who has driven to a theatre to fetch teen-aged Harry Potter devotees, as they wander out in costume at three o’clock in the morning, can attest to that weary delirium — but which, right now, seems volatile, ominous, and redundant. Theaters around the country will be beefing up security this weekend, with police in NYC and elsewhere promising increased presences at TDKR screenings. But whether or not more officers and metal detectors and other security measures are enacted going forward, the fact remains that this was a lone gunman who entered through an emergency door and shot dozens of people in cold blood. How much can security help, except to encourage moviegoers to head to the multiplex, to not live in fear of tragedy striking again? Variety’s Josh Dickey reports ( via Twitter ) that WB is not considering pulling screenings, and given the financial investment and massive 4,400-theater release plans it’s hard to imagine they would. Cancelling a celebratory press event in Paris is one thing; letting audiences decide if they’re ready to head into theaters, with the unshakable specter of Aurora lingering in the hearts and minds of just about everyone, is another. Just a starting point for discussion, but sound off below as we keep the families and victims of Aurora in our thoughts. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
No, really — I’m asking: “Scalpers reportedly are re-selling The Dark Knight Rises ’ midnight IMAX tickets for $65-$100 apiece on both Craigslist and StubHub for NYC’s AMC Loews Lincoln Square 13 — higher even than for Avengers . Yet this may be my favorite Dark Knight Rises pre-release factoid so far: ‘All the major circuits have asked for more frequent pickups from their Brink’s Truck drivers to deposit the record amount of cash they are anticipating,’ a Warner Bros exec told me today.” [ Deadline ]
