The Internet had the time of its life bashing plans for a new Dirty Dancing when Lionsgate announced it would remake the ’80s classic earlier this week. Perhaps that teeth-gnashing was slightly premature; according to director Kenny Ortega, Dirty Dancing is likely to stay in the corner for quite a while before heading to theaters.
The Amazing Spider-Man doesn’t even come out until next July, but Sony is already so confident in its potential world-beating success that the studio has placed its sequel on the schedule. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 will hit on May 2, 2014 — assuming the world doesn’t end, Sony doesn’t go out of business, and/or interest in Spider-Man doesn’t wane to the point of nonentity. Mark your calendars! [ Deadline ]
Happy Friday! What are you up to? Lunch? Drinks? Supply-room tryst with the intern? Wait, what? You’re working? Pffft! I’ll totally pretend I didn’t hear that, instead referring you this artsy blast from the past featuring Terry Gilliam somewhere at or near the height of his Monty Python powers. Who is ready to make some cut-out animation?
“Watching LORDS OF SALEM SFX test footage. Holy fuck this is fucking sick shit. I hope everyone loves demented, perverted satanic movies.” Meanwhile, somewhere in Denmark, Lars von Trier yawns . [ @RWZombie ]
I keep eying the news of Jesse Eisenberg’s dual role in Richard Ayoade’s next movie The Double , based on Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novella, with excitement about people who aren’t even involved with the project. If The Double , about “a Russian government clerk whose life unravels after what he believes is a literal facsimile of himself — same appearance, same name, same hometown — begins working in his office,” is a hit, will it popularize the idea of other actors playing dual roles? And who would we want to see act against his/her own mirror image?
If Lauren Ambrose — the Six Feet Under star who was officially anointed Broadway’s new Funny Girl — didn’t seem as obvious a choice for the role of Fanny Brice as Lea Michele , now you can stop second-guessing: Footage of Ambrose on Star Search has surfaced, and Ed McMahon directly endorsed her stardom. Get ready for the growliest rendition of “Dancing in the Street” you’ve ever heard. Sweet music!
What do you do when your two middle-aged alcoholic neighbors — one, a raging homophobe and the other, a flamboyant gay man — scream insults at each other all day long? If you’re Eddie Lee Sausage and Mitchell D, and encountering this problem in San Francisco in the late ’80s, you start recording. Then, thirty years later, you splice the audio together with interviews to make a Tribeca Film documentary called Shut Up Little Man! Take a look at the trailer ahead.
When Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale met the press last week to preemptively thank Pittsburgh for letting The Dark Knight Rises have its run of the Steel City, they could really only anticipate the standard logistical headaches that accompany location filmmaking. You know: Traffic jams, parking shortages, detours, new brides wanting to check out the Batmobile… The usual.
Back in April of 2010 — the same day Paramount started looking for a writer to reboot Mighty Mouse (true) — it was announced that Samuel L. Jackson and Kellan Lutz would co-star in Deathgames , about a “young man (Lutz) who is kidnapped and forced into the savage world of a modern gladiator arena, where men fight to the death for entertainment of the online masses. Jackson orchestrates the games, overseeing them from his computer lair with the help of twin ladies who see to his every desire.” Sounds like Gamer . How did it turn out?