Oh, God, here we go again : “‘Katniss’s act of self-sacrifice [volunteering to take her sister’s place in the games] is a trigger for an entire revolution. She draws an ethical line that she won’t cross over and it serves as such a beautiful example for people,’ [director Gary] Ross said. ‘That assertion of her own individual ethics ultimately triggers a revolution just as it was one Tunisian flower vendor that led to the revolt that rifled through the Middle East last year. Or Rosa Parks refusing to sit in the back of the bus. It usually comes down to an act of individual ethics that can trigger something like that.'” [ LAT ]
Forget comparisons to Twilight — will Lionsgate’s The Hunger Games hit Dark Knight -level opening weekend success? So sayeth some experts who peg the PG-13 action pic’s tracking in the $85 million – $115 million range on par with Iron Man , Spider-Man , and franchise sequels usually featuring wizards or robots. What’s more, The Hollywood Reporter cites “insiders” who think those figures are conservative and say the Suzanne Collins YA adaptation could even bank as much as $140 million thanks to its four-quadrant appeal, which would propel it not only ahead of all but one Twilight sequel in the record books, but into the Top 5 weekend openings of all time . [ THR ]
Monday we unveiled the American poster for the Tribeca-bound import Death of a Superhero , and now it’s time for a first look at the film’s trailer. It’s got it all: Live-action, animation, death-defying stunts, the irresistible Aisling Loftus on a scooter, and no less than Andy Serkis demanding to see young star Thomas Brodie-Sangster’s war face. Rahhhr! Read on and have a look. As noted yesterday , Superhero debuts April 17 on cable VOD, iTunes, Amazon and Vudu, then splashes down at the Tribeca Film Festival before a limited theatrical roll-out commences May 4 in Seattle. [Photo credit: Allen Kelly] Follow S.T. VanAirsdale on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
“Callista Gingrich. Karen Santorum. Ann Romney. Now do you really think our country is ready for a white first lady?” Zing! Still a true master . Related: Irrelevant blob Newt Gingrich is upset. [ TPM via @raypride ]
It’s probably one of the best ways to work through your failed celebrity marriage: Air all your dirty laundry in a thinly veiled dance-pop ditty from your hawt new album! Which is what Madonna seemingly does in her new song, “I Don’t Give A,” which Guy Ritchie is listening to somewhere, shaking his head. Sample lyrics: “You were so mad at me / Who’s got custody / Lawyers / Suck it up / Didn’t have a prenup.” OUCH. Let the divorce therapy rip! More lyrics: “Wake up ex wife / This is your life / Children / On your own / Turning on the telephone” “Messages / managers / no time for a manicure / work it out / shake my ass / I know how to multi-task” “I tried to be a good girl / I tried to be your wife / Diminished myself / and I swallowed my light” Eh, I give Madge points for getting Nicki Minaj on her track, even if her best lines are about rejecting shoes from Aldo and co-opting Jay-Z’s “business, man” bit. The song itself is a little to Desperate Ex-Housewives for my tastes. Whatever happened to singing about lucky stars and sex and Black Jesus and stuff? Prenups? Custody? Yawn. [ Huffington Post ]
Per mogul Richard Branson : “Great news today news from our Astronaut Relations team at Virgin Galactic: our 500th future astronaut customer has just signed up! Even better news is that number 500 is Ashton Kutcher. I gave Ashton a quick call to congratulate and welcome him. He is as thrilled as we are at the prospect of being among the first to cross the final frontier (and back!) with us and to experience the magic of space for himself.” And you don’t have to pay a dime! According to reports , Kutcher covered the $200,000 cost himself. Coulda (shoulda?) been you, Charlie Sheen! [ Virgin ]
With Lionsgate’s big screen adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ teen-centric sci-fi survival-adventure The Hunger Games hitting screens this week, it’s kind of impossible not to draw comparisons to that other YA juggernaut series, which concludes its billion-dollar run on pop culture this fall. So how does The Hunger Games measure up to Twilight ? Some spoilers follow. THE BOOKS Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight , first published in 2005, spawned a total of four books (and one spin-off novella) that were adapted into five movies ( Breaking Dawn Part 2 hits screens this November), with over 116 million copies in print. Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games , first published in 2008, spawned a total of three books set to be adapted into four movies, with over 26 million copies in print. Advantage: Twilight THE HEROINE Twilight : Bella Swan is a 17-year-old girl who moves to gloomy Forks, Washington and falls in love with a vampire. Unassuming and average, she finds her inner strength after four novels’ worth of being imperiled by embracing her destiny and starting a family. Hunger Games : Katniss Everdeen is a 16-year-old girl who lives in gloomy District 12 in the fascist future world of Panem and must fight for her life in a televised battle royale. A skilled huntress, she finds her inner heroine after three novels’ worth of being a pawn in the Capitol’s games by embracing her destiny and becoming a symbol of the resistance. Advantage: Hunger Games SUPER POWERS (AND SUPER WEAKNESSES) Twilight : Left at the mercies of other people’s protection, Bella’s the lame duck for most of the saga, until she discovers that her secret power is, literally, the ability to protect her loved ones. Seriously. Meanwhile, her love for Edward keeps threatening to ruin everything – prom, her sex life, the future of all vampirekind. Hunger Games : Empowered at an early age thanks to her father’s untimely death, Katniss is the provider in her family for most of her life, until she enters the Games and discovers that compassion for others, and the newfound ability to trust in Peeta, is the key to survival. Her only weakness, it could be said, is that her personal drive to survive is so strong she has trouble seeing the big picture, and her place in it. Advantage: Hunger Games THE LOVE TRIANGLE Twilight : Bella must choose between two suitors – Edward Cullen, the sparkly vampire, and Jacob Black, her werewolf BFF. Heated tent scenes, make-out sessions, and torrid glances ensue. Hunger Games : Katniss must choose between two suitors – Peeta, the golden baker’s son (and her fellow Tribute in the Hunger Games), and Gale, her earthy BFF. Play-acted cave scenes, tender kisses, and internal struggles ensue – that is, when Katniss isn’t busy, you know, fighting for her life. Advantage: Twilight THE THEMES Twilight : Love, lust, abstinence, teen pregnancy, motherhood, sexuality vs. sin. Hunger Games : Fighting injustice, taking a stand, trusting others, personal responsibility. Advantage: Hunger Games. THE ONSCREEN PG-13 ACTION Twilight : Speed-ramped vampire running, bad wirework, CG werewolf-vampire melees, non-gory limb-shattering/ripping/beheadings, and one vivid, suggestive C-section by vampire scene. Hunger Games : Training exercises, arrow-shooting, hand-to-hand combat, bladed weapons, Tracker Jacker (i.e. hallucination-inducing poison bee) attacks, and one vivid, suggestive shaky-cam Cornucopia melee. Advantage: Hunger Games FILM PEDIGREE Twilight : Installments directed by Catherine Hardwicke ( Twilight ), Chris Weitz ( New Moon ), David Slade ( Eclipse ), and Oscar-winner Bill Condon ( Breaking Dawn Parts 1 & 2 ). Top Rotten Tomatoes score: Eclipse , at 49%. Hunger Games : The Hunger Games directed by Oscar-nominee Gary Ross, who is set to direct the next sequel, Catching Fire . Current Rotten Tomatoes score: 100% (with 17 reviews in). Advantage: Hunger Games — Seems like The Hunger Games has the edge over Twilight by most of the above criteria, stemming from its more complex and stirring lead character, story, and themes. That said, Twilight fandom outpaces Hunger Games fandom by the millions, circulation-wise. Will solid critical reviews and stellar pre-release ticket sales help bump The Hunger Games to Twilight -level box office returns — and convince non-fans to give it a shot? Sound off below, Movieliners!
Biggest . Bust . Ever : “In light of the theatrical performance of John Carter ($184 million global box office), we expect the film to generate an operating loss of approximately $200 million during our second fiscal quarter ending March 31. As a result, our current expectation is that the Studio segment will have an operating loss of between $80 and $120 million for the second quarter. As we look forward to the second half of the year, we are excited about the upcoming releases of The Avengers and Brave , which we believe have tremendous potential to drive value for the Studio and the rest of the company.” [Disney via Deadline ]
This fall you’ll see Joseph Gordon-Levitt as you’ve never seen him before: As Bruce Willis . In the sci-fi time-travel action pic Looper , from Brick director Rian Johnson , Gordon-Levitt plays Joe, an assassin who ties up loose ends for the mob by killing targets as they’re sent back in time from the future — until one day his own future self (played by Willis) comes through for extermination. Previewing a teaser for the September release at WonderCon , Johnson and Gordon-Levitt discussed the trickiness of transforming Gordon-Levitt into a young Willis, pulled off with the aid of prosthetics, and why it’s particularly difficult to talk about their time travel thriller. With Willis playing the older version of Gordon-Levitt, the younger actor had to transform in two ways to better resemble his onscreen future self. The first trick: Three hours of prosthetics each day, which lent Gordon-Levitt more of a physical likeness. “We basically had to figure out a way to sell Joe as a young Bruce Willis,” Johnson explained, giving much of the credit Gordon-Levitt’s performance, which he described as “this incredible high wire act of acting, where Joe is doing Bruce but at the same time he’s creating a unique character who has the Bruce voice.” “It’s kind of amazing to watch. It’s his own character that he created but at the same time you see that character and you believe in the movie that could be a younger version of the Bruce you’re seeing onscreen.” Gordon-Levitt adopted Willis’s mannerisms by studying how he delivered lines in previous films, and by observing the old-fashioned way: In the flesh. “I watched all of his movies and took the audio out of his movies and put them on my iPod so I could listen to them over and over again,” he said, “but by far the most productive part of the preparation process was just hanging out, shooting the shit, having dinner, taking about music — getting to know him.” The world of Looper is more grounded in a gritty reality than in a fantasy atmosphere, with the time-travel element serving as a tool rather than the film’s focus — a choice Johnson says was somewhat borne of necessity due to the inherent difficulties of tackling a time-travel story to begin with. “Any time time travel is part of a story it’s kind of this beast,” Johnson said. “From a writing standpoint it’s a problem because time travel never makes sense. Unless you’re Shane Carruth, who I think actually knows how time travel works, the best you can do is this magic trick where you distract the audience narratively from the fact that it actually doesn’t make sense.” Johnson turned to James Cameron’s Terminator as a model on how to use the time-travel element. “For me that was a really fun challenge: How do you have time travel be an element in the movie but convince the audience not to think about it so deeply that they’re ignoring the movie thinking, ‘But wait, this’ – or ‘But wait, that?’ The approach we took is that these guys are assassins who use time travel as part of their job. We’re just going to be with them, and they don’t know how this stuff works – they don’t know the science, they don’t care about grandfather paradoxes and all the complexities of message board comments on the i09 site about how it works and how it doesn’t. They’re showing up every day, a guy is appearing from the future and they’re shooting him – that’s their job.” Nathan Johnson, cousin to the director and composer on both Brick and The Brothers Bloom , came up with an inventive concept for the score to match. “He took this tape recorder out to New Orleans where we were shooting the movie and found all these sounds, sampled them, slowed them down 3000 percent,” explained Rian Johnson, “and basically using all these unconventional sounds built up a score that has the size of an orchestra. It’s this huge action movie score but the sounds that you’re hearing are just foreign to your ear.” All that said, Johnson and Gordon-Levitt found themselves choosing their words wisely talking up Looper . Johnson explained: “A big part of what’s fun about the movie is figuring out what it is, and figuring out what it’s going to be by the end of it.” Looper hits theaters on September 28. Get more from WonderCon 2012 here. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Friday in Washington D.C., Secret Service agents arrested protesters gathered at the Sudanese Embassy to draw attention to the ongoing humanitarian and food crisis in the North African nation. Among those charged: Members of Congress, Martin Luther King III, the president of the NAACP, journalist Nick Clooney, and his son, George Clooney , whose star power lent the protest an elevated media platform. Ol’ George has long been vocal in his political activism, using his celebrity to help shed light on humanitarian concerns, and as evidenced by these 9 most handsomely stoic of Clooney shots from today, he makes social activism look darn good. I’m partly jesting, of course. The suffering of the Sudanese people is far more significant an issue than pictures of a movie star stumping for on his day off. But to many, Clooney’s paparazzi-captured arrest is the first they’ll hear of the conditions in Sudan — or the culpability, as the protesters decried, of the Sudanese government in its own people’s suffering. Here’s a case in which celebrity power can be used to raise awareness on real issues and not, say, Kim Kardashian’s divorce. And it’s shots like these that sometimes get the world’s attention. So shall we take a cue from Clooney? Click for images . Before his arrest, Clooney spoke to journalists gathered outside the Sudanese Embassy. CNN — who identifies Nick Clooney as “Father of George Clooney” in their video coverage, incidentally — reports : “We are here really to ask two very simple questions,” Clooney said moments before his arrest. “The first question is something immediate — and immediately, we need humanitarian aid to be allowed into the Sudan before it becomes the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.” The second thing, he said, “is for the government in Khartoum to stop randomly killing its own innocent men, women and children. Stop raping them and stop starving them. That’s all we ask.” [Photos via Getty Images] [ THR , CNN ]
