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 ]
With a year to go before Pacific Rim hits theaters, Guillermo del Toro ( Hellboy , Pan’s Labyrinth ) hit Comic-Con with stars Charlie Hunnam , Ron Perlman , Rinko Kikuchi and Charlie Day to preview the giant robot-monster movie, inspired by the Japanese sci-fi pics he watched as a kid. His vision for the film? Dirty, epic, and realistic — so much so that Del Toro and his crew built functioning, practical robots and entire sets with hydraulics (“a huge engineering feat!”), putting his actors in the thick of the action rather than go the CG route. Del Toro called the experience “the best I’ve had on any film set in all my life.” Day remembered it slightly differently: “You tortured the f*** out of us!” Developed with writer Travis Beacham, Pacific Rim is set years into a war between humans, piloting massive robots called Jaegers, and giant monsters from the sea that threaten to wipe out civilization. When his passion project At the Mountains of Madness folded, Del Toro turned his attentions to Pacific Rim , channeling an outsized amount of energy into making it his most ambitious project to date. Given the Japanese sci-fi flicks that inspired the film — not to mention the upcoming Godzilla reboot bringing kaiju culture back into the mainstream — it’s easy to guess that genre aficionado Del Toro has crafted in Pacific Rim a love letter to said films. That love is abundant, but he insists that the pic will be forging its own path rather than referencing what’s come before. “I wouldn’t compare it to a Godzilla film,” said Del Toro. “[I told my crew] we should not reference other movies. We should not go and re-watch Gamera or re-watch Gojira or War of the Gargantuans because we love them, right? So we said, let’s create the world that we’re doing. We should not be doing a referential film.” So what should you know about Pacific Rim ? Del Toro and his cast shared the essentials of the characters and robots vs. monsters universe of the film. THE CHARACTERS Hunnam plays Raleigh Antrobus, a former soldier called back into action who partners with Rinko Kikuchi’s Mako Mori to co-pilot an obsolete Jaeger. “When you meet me in the beginning of the story I’ve suffered a giant loss, and not only has it killed my sense of self-worth, it’s also killed my will to fight and keep on going,” Hunnam explained. “Rinko and a couple of people bring me out of retirement to try to help in this grand push. And I think that journey is a very relatable one; I think everybody in their life has fallen down and not felt like getting back up, but you have to no matter how difficult it is.” Kikuchi, who earned an Oscar nomination for Babel and appeared in Rian Johnson’s Brothers Bloom , plays a newbie pilot who, like Raleigh, has also suffered great loss in her life. “The idea is that two people that are really, really hurt, can become one,” Del Toro said of the partnership between the two characters. “Both in the robot metaphorically, and in life. They meet when they’re two empty pieces and connect almost like a puzzle.” Making the leap to big screen action is Day ( It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia ), as Newt Gotlieb. “You need big tough guys and strong guys and the people that you believe could fight and save the world,” said Day, “and then in the case of my guy, you think, how does the sort of everyman who you’d think couldn’t fight his way out of a paper bag — how’s that guy going to contribute? What I think people will latch onto with my character is how flawed he is in his attempts to help save the world.” Rounding out the cast is Del Toro regular Perlman, whose Hannibal Chow is a black marketeer specializing in the illicit monster trade. “I have a relationship with the powers that be whereby I have the right to sell all these fallen monsters on the black market to rich people who have way too much money and are looking to collect rare and exotic, strange shit. So I have no moral compass, I have no scruples whatsoever — I’m just a profiteer, and in this case a war profiteer. But the war is not amongst countries, it’s a war against time for all of humanity.” THE SETS In his pursuit for realism, Del Toro approximated faux-oil-splattered lenses and imperfect camera work to add believability to the visual experience. That desire for verisimilitude extended to his sets — some of which were outfitted with their own systems of shocks to make real the sort of effects that might otherwise be achieved with CG. “We built a lot of things that were oversize and difficult in order to bring that tactile effect,” Del Toro explained. “We built a whole street of Tokyo and we rigged it with pneumatic shocks, so every time the monster took a step the whole street would vibrate and the cars would jump and the walls would shake and the lampposts would shake and the air conditioning units would fall.” THE ROBOTS With names like Crimson Typhoon and Cherno Alpha, the Jaegers of Pacific Rim are as tall as buildings and operate between two human pilots, connected by a neural link. “I wanted each robot to have a personality and for you to feel when the robot gets hurt, or when the robot wins,” said Del Toro. “I want to make the audience feel for those machines as much as they feel for the humans — and also, frankly, for the kaiju.” Del Toro and his team designed the robots with real world mechanics in mind, with parts that served practical functions. And when it came time to film, he called on his cast to jump into their rigs for the aforementioned “torture.” “The cockpit of the robot which is in the head, is almost three stories high,” described Del Toro. “And we mounted it on hydraulic shakers so in battle every time they got hit, it would really hit. And I wanted to do it with the actors, I didn’t want to do it with the doubles.” “The first time they were in,” he recalled, “Charlie came to visit the first group of actors — I won’t say who they were — and said, ‘Crybabies!’ This machine, which is the interface between the robots and them, flows with their bodies. It was a huge engineering feat. It was real. We could have done it CG, but why do that? [Laughs]” “Every guy broke. The only one that never complained was Rinko.” Stay tuned for Movieline’s chat with Rinko Kikuchi and read more from Comic-Con 2012 here . Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Although Emily Blunt came close to being cast in two different Marvel superhero movies, it’s not until later this year that she gets her first action-type role in Rian Johnson’s time travel thriller Looper . But her turn as a gun-toting farm girl is just the beginning for Blunt: She’s currently in intense training to play a lethal soldier in Doug Liman ’s futuristic sci-fi All You Need Is Kill , opposite Tom Cruise . Set against the backdrop of an alien war, All You Need Is Kill (based on Hiroshi Sakurazaka and Yoshitoshi Abe’s Japanese graphic novel) revolves around a soldier who dies in battle only to wake up to re-live the same day over and over again – think Groundhog Day with aliens and Tom Cruise. Blunt will play Valkryie One, a highly-decorated special forces fighter who Cruise encounters while trapped in his time loop. Blunt is currently training stateside before going to London to learn fight choreography for a month ahead of an October filming date. Speaking with Movieline over the weekend at Comic-Con, where she, Johnson, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt presented footage from Looper , Blunt described her regimen for what she describes as “the most ass-kicking role I’ll probably do.” “I basically do ten workouts a week,” she said. “Two a day, five days a week – it’s hell! And I’ve cut out drinking wine, which is really sad! That’s the thing I miss most.” “But I’m going to build these guns out,” she added, flexing her biceps. “They’re coming, right? I’m like that in the mirror. I’m just flexing over and over, and John [Krasinski]’s like, ‘Holy shit!’” Why action, and why now? “Really, it’s about timing and about the right part, the right moment and the right crew of people. It’s never been that I’ve turned my nose up at doing that. This really felt like the right time to do it, and you can’t ask for a better team than Tom and Doug – Doug is such a visionary and Tom is the most accomplished action guy you can find. We sat down a few times, we had a table read and character development talks, and he’s really fantastic in the room with that stuff; he’s very collaborative and very, very professional. And he’s fun.” Audiences who are used to seeing Blunt in films like The Devil Wears Prada and The Young Victoria might not expect to see her tear through battlefields and mow down aliens alongside Cruise – and that might make the shift all the more impressive. “Doug Liman said to me, ‘I wanted to cast you because I don’t think people expect it, and there’s something a bit more lethal about that,’” Blunt recalled. Will we get to see Blunt use her newfound lethal skills Cruise at least once or twice during their time looped adventure? “I can’t say! Maybe there’s a little bit of that… maybe,” she hinted with a smile. “I’m learning martial arts now, so hopefully I have a few scenes where I can take him out.” Read more from Comic-Con 2012 and stay tuned for our Looper chat with Blunt. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
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! Adrianne Curry has once again found herself as a center of attention for the attendees of Comic-Con in San Diego. Last year Adrianne was banned from the Con by organizers for her Aeon Flux outfit. This year she’s back and causing even more ruckus, but she’s covered up just enough that they let her in. 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! F0458FC5
Breaking Bad got the Comic-Con treatment ahead of tonight’s ultra-anticipated season premiere, with stars Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul, Anna Gunn and others joining series creator Vince Gilligan in San Diego to talk over all things Walter White — including how television has usurped movies’ standing as the home for serious storytelling for adults. But what of the oft-discussed feature-film treatment that might be in the offing as the two-part final season commences? Movieline pal Grace Randolph was there to talk it over with the Breaking Bad team; click through for her video report. Read more of Movieline’s Comic-Con 2012 coverage here .
After bringing 12 minutes of The Hobbit to Comic-Con — where Peter Jackson purposefully did not present footage in the 48 frames per second/3-D presentation that perplexed audiences at CinemaCon — the Lord of the Rings filmmaker spoke further about his desire to explore even more ground in the fantasy universe created by J.R.R. Tolkien. One possibility may be a third Hobbit film culled from Tolkien’s expansive LOTR notes and appendices, though Jackson admitted that the author’s posthumously published Silmarillion might present more of a challenge. Familiar faces filled the screen in the Hobbit preview, which gave Comic-Con fans glimpses of Cate Blanchett’s Galadriel, Ian McKellan’s Gandalf, Orlando Bloom’s Legolas, and new cast member Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins in the two-parter, which will hit screens in December 2012 and 2013. Speaking with press, Jackson acknowledged his choice to present the footage in 2-D rather than the 48 fps that earned mixed-to-negative buzz at CinemaCon. “We have to try to figure out ways to make this cinematic experience much more spectacular, more immersive,” he said. “But you know, Hall H isn’t the place to do it.” Neither is showing just ten minutes of footage in 48 fps an adequate way to introduce the format to thousands of uninitiated fans who may not even be used to big screen 3-D, he insisted. CinemaCon seems to have also taught Jackson not to let 48 fps overshadow the actual film at hand. “I didn’t want to repeat the CinemaCon experience where literally people see this reel and all they write about is 48 frames a second. That doesn’t do us any good. It doesn’t do 48 fps any good. To accurately judge that, you really need to sit down and watch the entire film.” Meanwhile, Jackson and collaborators Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh are in the early stages of looking at a potential third Hobbit film based on the vast 125-page appendices in Tolkien’s Return of the King , some of which was used to flesh out The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and The Hobbit: There and Back Again . “Philippa and Fran and I have been talking to the studio about the other things we haven’t been able to shoot and seeing if we can possibly persuade them to do a few more weeks of shooting — possibly more than a few weeks, actually — a bit of additional shooting next year,” Jackson said. “There are other parts of the story that we’d like to tell that we haven’t had the chance to tell yet.” Jackson looked to the additional Tolkien notes to fill in certain character backstories and events missing from the primary texts. “For instance, in The Hobbit where Gandalf mysteriously disappears for chapters on end and it’s not really explained in any detail where he’s gone, much later Tolkien fleshed those out in these appendices,” he explained. “It was altogether a lot more dark and more serious than what was written in The Hobbit . And I do want to make a series of movies that run together so if any crazy lunatic wants to watch them all together in a row, there will be a consistency of tone.” A completist’s cinematic tour of the LOTR world might include Tolkien’s Silmarillion , a collection of universe-building mythology edited and posthumously published by Tolkien’s son Christopher in 1977. The problem, Jackson says, is in who controls the rights to the work. “ The Silmarillion is the big volume, but that’s owned by the Tolkien estate,” he said. “It’s not owned by Warner Bros. or MGM — and I don’t think the Tolkien estate are very fond of these movies, so I wouldn’t expect to see The Silmarillion any time soon.” Read more from Comic-Con 2012 here. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
After bringing 12 minutes of The Hobbit to Comic-Con — where Peter Jackson purposefully did not present footage in the 48 frames per second/3-D presentation that perplexed audiences at CinemaCon — the Lord of the Rings filmmaker spoke further about his desire to explore even more ground in the fantasy universe created by J.R.R. Tolkien. One possibility may be a third Hobbit film culled from Tolkien’s expansive LOTR notes and appendices, though Jackson admitted that the author’s posthumously published Silmarillion might present more of a challenge. Familiar faces filled the screen in the Hobbit preview, which gave Comic-Con fans glimpses of Cate Blanchett’s Galadriel, Ian McKellan’s Gandalf, Orlando Bloom’s Legolas, and new cast member Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins in the two-parter, which will hit screens in December 2012 and 2013. Speaking with press, Jackson acknowledged his choice to present the footage in 2-D rather than the 48 fps that earned mixed-to-negative buzz at CinemaCon. “We have to try to figure out ways to make this cinematic experience much more spectacular, more immersive,” he said. “But you know, Hall H isn’t the place to do it.” Neither is showing just ten minutes of footage in 48 fps an adequate way to introduce the format to thousands of uninitiated fans who may not even be used to big screen 3-D, he insisted. CinemaCon seems to have also taught Jackson not to let 48 fps overshadow the actual film at hand. “I didn’t want to repeat the CinemaCon experience where literally people see this reel and all they write about is 48 frames a second. That doesn’t do us any good. It doesn’t do 48 fps any good. To accurately judge that, you really need to sit down and watch the entire film.” Meanwhile, Jackson and collaborators Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh are in the early stages of looking at a potential third Hobbit film based on the vast 125-page appendices in Tolkien’s Return of the King , some of which was used to flesh out The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and The Hobbit: There and Back Again . “Philippa and Fran and I have been talking to the studio about the other things we haven’t been able to shoot and seeing if we can possibly persuade them to do a few more weeks of shooting — possibly more than a few weeks, actually — a bit of additional shooting next year,” Jackson said. “There are other parts of the story that we’d like to tell that we haven’t had the chance to tell yet.” Jackson looked to the additional Tolkien notes to fill in certain character backstories and events missing from the primary texts. “For instance, in The Hobbit where Gandalf mysteriously disappears for chapters on end and it’s not really explained in any detail where he’s gone, much later Tolkien fleshed those out in these appendices,” he explained. “It was altogether a lot more dark and more serious than what was written in The Hobbit . And I do want to make a series of movies that run together so if any crazy lunatic wants to watch them all together in a row, there will be a consistency of tone.” A completist’s cinematic tour of the LOTR world might include Tolkien’s Silmarillion , a collection of universe-building mythology edited and posthumously published by Tolkien’s son Christopher in 1977. The problem, Jackson says, is in who controls the rights to the work. “ The Silmarillion is the big volume, but that’s owned by the Tolkien estate,” he said. “It’s not owned by Warner Bros. or MGM — and I don’t think the Tolkien estate are very fond of these movies, so I wouldn’t expect to see The Silmarillion any time soon.” Read more from Comic-Con 2012 here. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Saturday at Comic-Con Robert Downey Jr. and Co. charmed the crowd with glimpses of Iron Man 3 , but Marvel Studios had bigger aces up its sleeve, firming up their upcoming slate with announcements and sneak peeks at sequels Captain America: Winter Soldier and Thor: The Dark World as well as Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man . In other news, looks like Ant-Man ‘s actually being made! Probably. Oh, and Ben Kingsley is The Mandarin. Your Marvel news blast after the jump. Thor 2: The Dark World will hit on November 8, 2013. Captain America 2 got a release date (April 4, 2013) and full title that highlights the villain you can expect to see duking it out with Steve Rogers: Winter Soldier. Somewhere out there Sebastian Stan is sipping on the celebratory champagne. Winter Soldier writer Ed Brubaker, meanwhile, Tweeted his elated surprise once the news hit: @ devincf Tell Kevin I said “thanks for the surprise” if you can. I pretty much shit my pants.—
The other day at the weapons check table, where costumed attendees must have their (mostly) fake light sabers and guns and knives inspected and tagged, a Comic-Con security officer summed up cosplay culture during the Con to me: Folks don their costumes at home thinking they’ll stand out in the crowd, only to arrive at the Convention Center and see that uniqueness is almost pedestrian here in San Diego — if only for this one wondrous weekend in July. So what’s the secret to crafting a truly Tweet-worthy, next-level costume? You’ve got your easy jokes on a familiar theme (Retired Batman is lounging outside the Convention Center in a lawn chair as we speak, while a Sad Storm Trooper was spotted holding a sign that read “Need hug. Death Star destroyed.”) but let’s be real: if you’ve been to one Con, you’ve seen most of it all. So, a few humble observations from Comic-Con 2012: Over the past few years Slave Leia has become one of the most overdone costumes at Comic-Con. They’re everywhere. They look the same. Yawn. So props to the guy who made me pause on the street to take this Leia pic: It ain’t Slave Leia, but it works. (Also kinda works as a nod to the stunt double scene in Spaceballs .) Meanwhile, subversive takes on Disney princesses have spawned their own meme category on the interwebs, and Sexy Fill-in-the-Blanks are a staple of any gathering of geek culture. (It’s like Halloween for geeks. Walking down the street in a thong in broad daylight is a fanboy/girl prerogative!) Now, Hot Disney Princess is not a new concept in the cosplay world but this trio pretty much stopped traffic while walking toward the Convention Center the other day. And while they politely declined requests from the random dudes with cameras swarming them on the street, I watched them stop to take a photo with a kid. THE EPITOME OF THE DISNEY PRINCESS SPIRIT! And yet the best cosplay I’ve seen all Comic-Con was one that you kinda had to be here to truly appreciate: The group of youngsters who, with just a few pieces of cardboard, a marker, and a sense of humor, parodied the Christian evangelists who’ve been clogging the crowded walkway between the Convention Center and downtown San Diego shouting about Jesus on soapboxes to disinterested Con-goers just trying to cross the damn railroad tracks: Well played, dudes. By today a band of paid marketers pimping some Stan Lee event were already biting your style, to far less compelling effect. Read more from Comic-Con 2012 here. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Thousands Joss Whedon ites gathered at Comic-Con Friday to witness the ten-year reunion of Firefly , Whedon’s short-lived space Western cult series that spawned a 2005 feature film and an unusually fervent fan following. The show, Whedon announced, will get a new forthcoming Dark Horse comics continuation that will pick up after the events of previous Firefly / Serenity lore. As for fans of his other genre adaptation… well, he’s not quite set on leaping back into the Avengers ‘ director’s chair. “I have not come to a decision on directing Avengers 2 yet,” he said. “I am having too much fun with this now.” [ Deadline ]
