James Cameron recently said he is Avatar -bound and Sigourney Weaver said she will appear in what will be Avatar 2, 3, 4, confirming that the Titanic director is still on track with the franchise, which made over $2 billion worldwide in its first mammoth installment, which debuted back in December, 2009. Production will apparently begin on the back to back installments this fall, Weaver told Showbiz 411 . The actress has stints in USA Networks’ Political Animals followed by a short-run play at New York’s Lincoln Center and then dives in on Avatar 2 – 4 with Cameron. Weaver noted that she does not know the time frame for the sequels to the 3-D behemoth, “I just show up.” James Cameron made headlines in March for reaching the furthest depth of the ocean, the Mariana Trench, which is nearly seven miles below the surface of the Pacific near Guam. “I’ve divided my time over the last 16 years over deep ocean exploration and filmmaking. I’ve made two movies in 16 years, and I’ve done eight expeditions,” he told The New York Times in May. He also noted that he had closed his production company and is devoting the movie-side of his career to Avatar exclusively. “I’m not interested in developing anything. I’m in the “Avatar” business. Period. That’s it. I’m making Avatar 2, Avatar 3 , maybe Avatar 4 , and I’m not going to produce other people’s movies for them. I’m not interested in taking scripts.” He did note, however, he will also do documentaries about his deep-sea exploration, the first of which should be out next year.
It’s of course no secret that Jeremy Renner is the new face of the Bourne franchise, playing Aaron Cross, a new character in a parallel story to The Bourne Ultimatum . But could Matt Damon possibly team up with Renner in future installments of the story? Yes says the producer of Legacy . The Bourne Legacy producer told Empire that “all possibilities” are open. “You see there are several different programs in the movie with different skill sets,” said producer Frank Marshall. “All possibilities are open. My dream is that in the next one we see Matt and Jeremy team up.” EW notes that Damon reprising his Jason Bourne character could be complicated, however, because of his loyalty to Bourne director Paul Greengrass and the actor had a public spat with Bourne creator Tony Gilroy last December. [Source: Empire via EW ]
A community of survivors exists on the outskirts of a Louisiana levee, where a six-year-old girl with a boundless imagination and a deep connection to the world around her lives with her father. In Movieline’s exclusive clip, enter the world of Benh Zeitlin’s impressive feature debut/Sundance hit Beasts of the Southern Wild (in limited release this week), as seen through the eyes of the film’s pint-sized heroine, Hushpuppy (played with tremendous fearlessness by discovery of the year, Quvenzhané Wallis). Beasts of the Southern Wild debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January, where it won the Grand Jury Prize and the Cinematography Award before nabbing four honors at Cannes , including the FIPRESCI Prize and the Caméra d’Or. Zeitlin’s magical-realist fable is a deeply emotional experience, thanks in great part to Wallis’s central turn as the fierce Hushpuppy, whose relationship with her troubled father Wink (local chef/baker Dwight Howard, in his acting debut) anchors the film. Plucked from over 4,000 prospective actresses, Wallis, who was just five years old when she auditioned, commands the screen with an impressive intensity and naturalism. “When she first walked in, she was defiant towards me,” director Zeitlin told Movieline . “Most of the times you figure you can easily puppeteer a kid, but she was not like that at all. She was refusing to do this thing that I asked her to, because she didn’t it was right. I wanted her to throw something at somebody, and she said, ‘No, that’s not right to throw something at somebody you don’t know.’ Filmed on location in Louisiana, Beasts began principal photography on April 20, 2010 — the day of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the impact of which mirrored the plight of the residents of the Bathtub within the film. The story celebrates the resilience of a community in the face of disaster, highlighting the spirit of the people who remain. Beasts of the Southern Wild is in limited release today. Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Like the world of male stripping it inhabits, Steven Soderbergh ‘s Magic Mike is naughty in gaudy but sanctioned and unthreatening ways. It teases with the promise of outrageousness, but underneath the G-string it’s a practically minded coming-of-age story about a young man reaching the end of a years-long spiritual spring break. Choreographed stripteases and celebrity cast aside, the film has a lot in common with the director’s 2009 The Girlfriend Experience — both are set in corners of the sex industry, share an undercurrent of economic instability and deal with how their protagonists’ professions, the perception and the performative aspect of them, clank up against their personal lives. And both keep to a low-key, realistic tone that’s deliberately at odds with their subject matter, one that in Magic Mike makes the film feel curiously rudderless, its off-stage journey pale and enervated in contrast with the cheesy, ebullient dance numbers it makes room for. Like the call girl Christine/Chelsea, the main character in the earlier film played by Sasha Grey, Mike ( Channing Tatum ) is aware of himself as a commodity and is constantly hustling, struggling for more control over the business in which he’s being offered — “I want to own something,” he says, and there seems to be more passion in those words than in his long, flirty pursuit of his tough-minded love interest Brooke (Cody Horn). Mike doesn’t make nearly as much money as Chelsea does, but he has side benefits that wouldn’t interest her: Occasional clients who stick around to sleep with him after the show, camaraderie with his fellow dancers and the swagger that comes with publicly embracing his place as, in the words of manager/MC Dallas (Matthew McConaughey), one of the “cock-rocking Kings of Tampa.” Mike’s a great stripper, but it’s not what he wants to do with his life. He also runs small roofing, event and car-detailing businesses that amount to a series of odd jobs. He’s saving up to pursue his dream of starting his own custom furniture business, with dedication if no particular urgency — he speaks of waiting for the market to reach its sweet spot and being able to get a good bank loan rate in ways that sound abstract, though we later see he’s actually put work into his ideas and is deeply frustrated by the obstacles he’s encountered. He is, in short, looking for the next step that will likely provide a way out, though when we see him grinding on stage at Club Xquisite we can see why he’s not in a hurry: He sparks to life in front of a crowd — he belongs there, and his audience adores him, showering him with bills (alas, mostly ones). Magic Mike is set over a summer in which Mike meets aimless, muscly 19-year-old Adam (Alex Pettyfer), whom he nicknames “The Kid,” and Horn’s Brooke, the sister on whose couch Adam is crashing. The two push Mike to reconsider his life — in Adam he sees enough promise (and reminders of his younger himself) to recruit him as Xquisite’s newest performer, and in Brooke there’s the potential for something serious, though she pushes him away whenever he saunters too close. As critical as these two relationships are for the film, they’re unfortunately lackluster — Adam is a slack-jawed, half-formed stand-in for the unthinking pleasure-seeker Mike used to be, and beefcakeyness-aside, Pettyfer can’t bring out anything in the character that could show us what Mike glimpses in him. Horn, with her strong jawline and tomboyish air, is an enjoyably off-beat pick for a romantic lead, but Brooke’s forceful pragmatism gets expressed primarily through glowering. Rather than reflect a sense of mutual attraction, her interactions with Mike projects only genuine distrust of him as her kid brother’s sleazy pal, to the point where it’s a struggle to believe that her opinion could possibly be important to him. Speaking as someone who’s slowly come around to Tatum’s meatlike leading-man qualities, I’d say this represents a step forward for the actor. He may not have the most expressive of faces, but his bro-ish friendships with the other dancers (who include Matt Bomer, Joe Manganiello, Kevin Nash and Adam Rodriguez, all magnificently ripply) have a comfort and ease to them. His relationship with Dallas, his former mentor, is more compellingly complicated still. McConaughey plays the character like he’s Dazed and Confused ‘s David Wooderson all grown up and wearing a leather harness (complete with drawled “all right, all right”s), but he’s calculating underneath the preening, outsized showman persona. Dallas is setting himself up to be the business owner, and while he appreciates Mike’s ambition, he’d still rather have him as an employee than a partner — their maneuverings over a planned expansion and move to Miami grow steadily edgier under the familiar banter. And when Tatum’s on stage, he seems like a different performer entirely — one who’s startlingly physical. Magic Mike slyly offers up a look at the actor nude from behind in an early scene, as he gets out of bed with his ongoing casual hookup Joanna (Olivia Munn). But its not actually (just) the chance to gawp at his impeccable musculature that makes Tatum such an impressive spectacle in the film — it’s his dancing, the way he goes from hulking screen presence to a fluidly athletic being, aware in his movements. Before he launched his acting career, Tatum did work as a stripper for a few months, an experience that informed the film (Reid Carolin wrote the screenplay), and he has danced in a non-exotic fashion on-screen in music videos and in the 2006 Step Up . The divide between Tatum as performer and Tatum as actor gives the film an interesting unsteadiness. Set in a strip mall-filled Tampa that Soderbergh, who also served as cinematographer, tints a smoggy yellow, the movie carries the underlying message that it’s time for Mike to grow up and figure out what’s next. But that doesn’t quite line up with the grinding normalcy with which the film depicts “responsible” living. How’s that really suppose to compare with being up there in the spotlight, rolling around in money, adored? Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Those marketing gurus at Fox are going to make sure you keep talking about Ridley Scott’s Prometheus all summer, as a new viral video has been unveiled that highlights, testimonial-style, how awesome it is to work for the good folks at Weyland Corp. The way this scientist chick talks about Weyland’s envelope-pushing embracing of new technologies makes it sound like the best corporation to work at since Pixar, only with more semi-feeling anthropomorphic robots running around the place making sh*t happen. The viral teases a recruiting event at next months’ Comic-Con in San Diego and links out to ProjectPrometheus.com , though the site has yet to be updated with information. What could it mean? (Besides DVD/Blu-ray promotion for Prometheus ?)
Also in Wednesday afternoon’s round up news, iTunes heads to major Asian markets for music and movies. World’s oldest and biggest LGBT film festival announces its winners, the Directors Guild names awards dinner chair, while BAFTA announces its new chairman. CBGB film festival locks its program and Hayden Christensen can proceed with a lawsuit. iTunes Heads to More of Asia Apple launched the iTunes store in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan as well as Brunei, Cambodia, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Vietnam the online outfit said Wednesday. In addition to local and international music offerings, customers will also be able to rent or purchase movies, of course. The major studios should be happy with iTunes’ new reach. Winners Unveiled at World’s Oldest LGBT Film Festival San Francisco’s Frameline Film Festival awarded its Juried Outstanding First Feature to Facing Mirrors by Negar Azarbeyjani while Outstanding Documentary went to The Invisible Men by Yariv Mozer. Thom Fitzgerald’s Cloudburst took Best Feature Film in the Audience Award category, while Call Me Kuchu by Katherine Fairfax Wright and Malika Zouhali-Worrall took Best Documentary Film. Best short in the category went to Mitsuyo Miyazaki’s Tsuyako . For more winners and descriptions, see the Frameline website . Michael Stevens Named Chair of DGA Awards Michael Stevens will serve as the chair of the 65th Annual Directors Guild of America (DGA) Awards Dinner taking place at Hollywood and Highland in Los Angeles on February 2, 2013. Stevens is an Emmy Award-winning producer, director and writer of more than 30 prime-time event and concert specials. CBGB Film Festival Locks Slate The CBGB movie is being made but for those who need more, there’s the CBGB Film Festival. The world premiere of The Rise and Fall of The Clash is on tap as well as debuts of Bob and the Monster about Bob Forrest as well as What Did you Expect? The Archers of Loaf live at Cat’s Cradle /. The festival takes place at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema in New York July 5 – 8. See the site for more details. Around the ‘net… BAFTA Appoints John Willis its Chairman Willis replaces Tim Corrie as head of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. Willis is head of production company Mentorn Media and a 30 year-member of BAFTA, winning a BAFTA award for Best Factual Program in 1976 for Johnny Go Home , Deadline reports . Scarlett Johansson Hacker Must Pony up $66K to Actress Computer hacker Christopher Chaney of Jacksonville, FL circulated nude photos of Scarlett Johansson and Christina Aguilera after breaking into the email accounts of their mutual stylist. He received a 71 month prison sentence from federal prosecutors and ordered to pay $150K to his victims including $66,179.46 to Johansson, $7,500 to Aguilera and $76,767.35 to The Secret Life of an American Teenager actress Renee Olstead, Vanity Fair reports . Whoopi Goldberg Opens Kickstarter Campaign The View talk show host is hoping to raise $65K on the crowd-funding site for her documentary on stand-up comedian Moms Mabley who rose to national prominence in the ’60s. Indiewire speaks with Goldberg. Court OKs Hayden Christensen Lawsuit Star Wars actor Hayden Christensen and his brother Tove have been given the go-ahead to pursue a lawsuit against USA Networks an appeals court said Tuesday. The pair along with Forest Park Pictures claim the network’s show Royal Pains , about a doctor who makes house-calls to the rich and famous in the Hamptons is eerily similar to a pitch they made in 2005 about a doctor who makes house calls in Malibu, California, Reuters reports .
…and, um, there’s just one of him. Bear with me here: A slimmed-down Kevin James , who’s actually looking kind of handsome here (or am I crazy?), plays a high school teacher who enters the octagon to raise cash as a mixed martial arts fighter. He’s basically Joel Edgerton in last year’s MMA pic Warrior , only — lucky for us — he’s still Kevin James, so it’s a broad comedy and not a gut-wrenching drama and instead of Tom Hardy he’s got Salma Hayek to wrestle with. Sigh . The other depressing Here Comes the Boom – Warrior point of comparison: This is going to make so much more money than the under-seen and under-appreciated Warrior . At least there are no talking gorillas (that we know of). Here Comes the Boom (seriously, do people really use that phrase?) rolls into theaters on October 12 and is directed by Frank Coraci ( The Wedding Singer , Waterboy , Zookeeper ). [via Fandango ]
In Tuesday evening’s round up of news briefs, Emily Blunt teased she would consider the second Devil Wears Prada under one condition. Also, the Austin Film Festival added details on its October event while Outfest rounds out its upcoming edition next month. The Avengers passes a domestic high water mark and Catherine Keener is set for role opposite Mark Ruffalo. Austin Film Festival Unveils First Round of Panels D.C. vs. Marvel, Hollywood Horror Stories, Crowd Funding Your Indie Film and Writing for Video games are among the topics that will be discussed at the 19th Austin Film Festival taking place October 18 – 25. Among this year’s participants so far are Shane Black ( Iron Man 3), Paul Feig ( Bridesmaids ), Saca Gervasi ( Anvil: The Story of Anvil ), Michael Green ( The Green Lantern ), and Damon Lindelof ( Prometheus ). For more details, visit the festival’s website . Outfest 2012 Adds to its 30th Edititon Outfest, the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Film Festival will screen a never before seen episode of ABC’s comedy Happy Endings with cast members and creators present. Also added to the festival’s line up is Eytan Fox’s acclaimed Israeli film, Yossi , the sequel to the director’s hit Yossi and Jagger . Around the ‘net… Avengers Passes $600M in U.S. The mega-hit crossed the $600 million mark in the domestic box office. It is currently number three in the world in the box office and it has yet to open in Japan, Deadline reports . Catherine Keener Joins Mark Ruffalo in Can a song Save Your Life? Keener will play Mark Ruffalo’s estranged wife in the drama directed by Once filmmaker John Carney. She joins Keira Knightley, Mark Ruffalo, Hailee Steinfeld and Adam Levine on board the project, THR reports . Emily Blunt May Be In for Another Devil Wears Prada She said she “might be interested” in another go around playing Miranda Priestly’s spirited assistant Emily Charlton in the sequel to the comes-drama. She noted that Meryl Streep said she’d do it if she didn’t have to lose the “f***king weight,” and agreed. Huff Post reports . Prometheus and The Hunger Games Stars Set for Indie Son of the South Rafe Spall ( Prometheus ) and Jacqueline Emerson ( The Hunger Games ) will star in the new indie drama by Barry Alexander Brown with Spike Lee on board to executive produce. Based on Bob Zellner’s autobiography chronicling the author’s life in Alabama where he grew up as a son of a minister and a grandson of a KKK member before joining the Civil Rights movement, Variety reports .
