Random Movie News

“From what I understand there will be a Purge 3 and it’s been, from what I understand – this is just rumor mill – it’s been greenlit and you can definitely look to see Frank Grillo and my character, our characters collide and come together and go after the real bad guys … as of right now don’t quote me, but that’s what I’ve been hearing.”

“No. [Laughs]  You know, as an actress, the thing I’ve always loved about acting is that you get to change.”

Tim, you’ve already done Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., but are there any types of roles that you’re looking to do?

DeKAY:  I’m trying to get a Christmas movie made that I would be directing.  I’ve also been talking to Fox Studios because they have some projects that they would like me to pursue with them for television, as an actor, which are very interesting.  There’s also a western that I will be shooting this spring, where I play a dark character.  I look forward to playing somebody dark.  He’s certainly not an FBI agent.  Far from it.  As an actor, you always look for something where the character or story is great, and some of these projects that I’ve got coming up are both.  So, while I will miss playing Peter greatly, I look forward to different kinds of roles.

Matt, what’s on your bucket list for the next couple of years?

BOMER:  Oh, goodness.  There are so many things I want to do.  I’d like to really make the Montgomery Clift biopic happen.  I’d like to get a chance to wear two different hats in the business.  I also think it would be really great to do an adaptation of a great novel.

"I don't really like the Hollywood blockbuster bandwagon that exists right now," Peter Jackson mused "The industry and the advent of all the technology, has kind of lost its way. It's become very franchise driven and superhero driven."

File it under we'll-believe-it-when-we-see-it, but it looks like Kevin Smith's much talked about, long developing hockey epic, "Hit Somebody," may finally be close to actually happening. The project was, at various times, conceived as a single movie, a two-part film, and six hour mini-series, and as far back as 2011, Smith had it all mapped out.

The Warren Zevon song-inspired, two-film version—"Hit Somebody: Home" (rated PG-13) and "Hit Somebody: Away" (rated R)—tells the story of a rising hockey player named Buddy McCracken, and spans three decades, from 1950 to 1980, tracking his rise through the ranks to become a professional hockey player. Smith even had it cast, with Michael Parks to play a French Canadian coach, John Goodman as Buddy’s first coach, Blue Jay Jennings, Melissa Leo in an unspecified part, Nicholas Braun a Buddy McCracken himself, and Kyle Gallner slated to make an appearance in the film as a Wayne Gretzky-like character. But for all the talk and chatter, the movie(s) never materialized. But it looks like it's headed back onto the ice.

Chatting with Slashfilm, Smith revealed that pieces are now coming together for the mini-series version of "Hit Somebody" to go in front of cameras next year. We'll let him explain in full, complete, lengthy, detail:

The beautiful thing about Tusk is that it opened a lot of doors in a weird way. I guess it was just maybe like ‘Oh he’s working again’ or some people were really attracted to the material. The folks at this company Star Stream at one point were thinking or toying with the notion of funding Tusk, but Demarest kind of swooped in and did it. So Kim Ledford, who runs Star Stream, loved Tusk and she was like ‘What are you doing next?’ I wanna do whatever you’re involved in. You seem to be in this weird place and I wanna work with you.

And so we were talking about doing the Krampus movie with her and Star Stream. And so, you know, the Yoga Hosers thing came together in post on Tusk and again, it came together very quickly. And when I reached out to Demarest and said, ‘Hey, man, I wanna make this Yoga Hosers movie, do you wanna go?’ They were like ‘We won’t be ready by the end of the year. We’re gonna have to wait till middle of next year.’ But again, I had a window. So I was like well, ‘Do you mind if I go finance someplace else?’ And they’re like ‘Yeah, totally, go ahead.’ And so Star Stream, I reached out to them and said, ‘I know we’re about to do this Krampus thing, but there’s this movie that kind of came out of nowhere and I wrote it, but I think we can pull it off since it’s not that expensive’ and blah, blah, blah. And it’s about two 15 year old girls. And that was the magic right there, man. Because they were like ‘You’re making a movie for an audience that voraciously goes to the movies? Like that’s really good.’ So they jumped on board with Yoga Hosers and we put Krampus on the back burner.

Kim was like ‘Look, you talked about this True North Trilogy, these three movies in Canada. You gotta make those in succession. So Krampus you can make anytime, but like keep making this ’cause you’ve already kind of set the tone.’ I was like ‘All right.’ So they jumped into Yoga Hosers because of that. While working on Yoga Hosers, Clerks III came up and Kim was like ‘Let me read that script.’ And suddenly she was like ‘Oh my God, we’re making this movie. Why didn’t you tell me about it sooner?’ I was like ‘Ah, we were working on this other thing.’ So boom, Clerks III was suddenly happened. Moose Jaws has already been pre-approved and we got our money for Moose Jaws. So once again, like Tusk just keeps it going.

So we were having this conversation about fake Canada that I keep setting the movies in now for this True North Trilogy. And Kim, her former boss, he used to work tangentially in the world of the NHL (National Hockey League). Howard Baldwin I believe was her former boss. So, you know, she knows a lot about the world of hockey, particularly the WHA (World Hockey Association). And I was like ‘Oh my Lord, I have written this mini-series that we were planning to do with CBC up in Canada. That, you know, I’ve been sitting on for a while.’ I said, ‘You would love to read it, just because it’s set in the world that you know very well.’ And then when I was all over, she was like ‘Wow, we’re making this right now.’ And so we have two meetings and we met with our Canadian counterparts, ’cause we’re gonna shoot up a lot of it up North and then some of it in Michigan as well. But we were able to kind of pull the budget together. So in the fall of 2015, we head up to it looks like Northern Ontario and start shooting Hit Somebody.

In short, Smith has about 5000 projects happening all at once, but within in a year, he'll shoot "Hit Somebody" in Canada. Again, we've heard this confident talk before, and we'll believe it when we see it, but at the very least, he definitely still wants to make "Hit Somebody." Will any of that previous cast come back or be available? Will this really happen? Your guess is as good as ours.

Rusty Cunt wrote:
Good. I'm a Smith fan. I'll watch anything he makes. As weird as shit as the True North trilogy sounds, it led to Clerks III, so all is good.

Besides, MooseJaws? It's Jaws, but with a Moose. How can someone not want to watch that?

Rusty Cunt wrote: Regardless of the events in the show, you'll notice that they're wearing the same clothes in the Podcast's for every episode of the season.

WyldeMan wrote:

Rusty Cunt wrote: Regardless of the events in the show, you'll notice that they're wearing the same clothes in the Podcast's for every episode of the season.

Kevin Smith owns four hockey jerseys in the exact same blue and orange layout but with a different center logo and that is all that bastard has worn for a decade now. Never use Kevin Smith as your gauge for this who's changing their clothes.

Rusty Cunt wrote:He's lost a lot of weight recently though, so maybe that'll change.

Rusty Cunt wrote:Last 2, maybe 3 months, he's lost about 30 pounds. Probably more by now.

He quit all processed sugar foods, soft drink, etc. Done him good. Talked about it a fair bit on his podcasts.

Rusty Cunt wrote:.... and he smokes a metric shit-tonne of weed. I'm sure you'd relate.

Rusty Cunt wrote:He doesn't even try and hide it. All you hear through his podcasts are his lighter. Talks about it frequently too, regarding his recent creative output.

ForeverBlu wrote:The 2008 film bought closure the franchise and titular character.

Loved seeing John finally go home, now Sly's about to shit all over it.

Rusty Cunt wrote:Wow, MC Ren gets no title in the trailer?

YOU CROSSED THE LINE MILLER. WE'RE DONE. YOU'RE CAREER IS OVER. YOU THINK I CAN'T DO IT. WATCH ME.
— Mark Schultz (@MarkSchultzy) December 31, 2014

YOU THINK I'M GOING TO SIT BACK AND WATCH YOU DESTROY MY NAME AND REPUTATION I SWEAT BLOOD FOR. YOU AINT' SEEN NOTHING YET DUDE.
— Mark Schultz (@MarkSchultzy) December 31, 2014

I BUILT THIS HOUSE AND I'LL TEAR IT DOWN. YOU THINK I CAN'T TAKE YOU DOWN COZ UR A DIRECTOR. WATCH ME BENNETT… http://t.co/wQSKgq9Pwz
— Mark Schultz (@MarkSchultzy) December 31, 2014

I CAN TOLERATE A LOT OF THINGS BUT I DON'T TOLERATE DISRESPECT. WE'RE DONE BENNETT.
— Mark Schultz (@MarkSchultzy) December 31, 2014

Everything I've ever said positive about the movie I take back. I hate it. i hate it. i hate it. I hate it. i hate it. i hate it. I hate it
— Mark Schultz (@MarkSchultzy) December 31, 2014

I HATE BENNETT MILLER.
— Mark Schultz (@MarkSchultzy) December 31, 2014

I HATE EVERYTHING THAT SCUM TOUCHES. EVERYTHING!!!
— Mark Schultz (@MarkSchultzy) December 31, 2014

Another star-studded bomb went off at the B.O. following last weekend’s Blackhat debacle: Johnny Depp’s $60M R-rated comedy Mortdecai flatlined with an estimated $1.6M on Friday at 2,648 theaters, on track for a horrendous $4.6M weekend in eighth place – far below the $10-$12M that distributor Lionsgate was expecting for the OddLot co-production. Among Depp’s wide releases, that bow is lower than his 2011 Hunter S. Thompson adaptation The Rum Diary, which posted $5.1M and was also overpriced ($45M) in relation to its final domestic cume ($13M). It’s Depp’s fourth flop domestically after Alcon/WB’s Transcendence ($100M budget, $23M domestic B.O.), The Lone Ranger ($215M budget, $89M domestic) and Rum Diary (This is outside his ensemble work in Disney’s Into the Woods which is looking to take tenth this weekend with a projected cume through Sunday of $121.29M).

Has Depp’s predilection for playing goofy, absurdist personalities alienated his fans? The answer is a resounding “Yes” as Mortdecai, in which Depp plays a posh, curly mustachioed Euro art dealer, got a C+ CinemaScore, not too far above Rum Diary’s C, and on par with Transcendence’s C+ (granted, Depp was playing more dramatic in that film, but his cyber-afterlife self was too mindboggling for the masses).



Mortdecai marks the second outing for both Depp and director David Koepp (who excelled at writing blockbuster scripts like Jurassic Park and Mission: Impossible) after 2004’s $40M Stephen King adaptation Secret Window. That one  also failed to send shockwaves through the B.O. with a final domestic of $48M. When Lionsgate and OddLot signed a co-financing deal in fall 2013, Mortdecai, based on Kyril Bonfiglioli’s 1970s novels, was trumpeted as one of the studio’s first projects. Depp made this bad decision after Lone Ranger opened in July 2013, and within weeks of wrapping Transcendence.


Three weeks before its opening, Mortdecai was showing tracking figures on par with Blackhat’s bottom dwelling figures. Both first choice and unaided awareness (when any person polled can cite any film title opening without being prodded by the pollster) were in the low single digits of 1-2%.  Translation: It was on no-one’s radar, despite a heavy media campaign that launched six weeks out. Some highlights: Marketing integrations and sponsorships across 14 networks with nearly 100 million impressions, and custom vignettes of the cast on Comedy Central, E!, Bravo and TBS (specifically during Conan). A Mortdecai Twitter handle @PartTimeRogue was created six months out in the voice of the character collecting 21K followers (as a measure, Disney’s Lone Ranger handle had 16K while a Johnny Depp News site has 74K).  Relish Mix, which measures celebrity social media marketing, showed Gwyneth Paltrow as the lead social driver for the film (1.1M FB, 2M TW) as well as actress Olivia Munn (600k TW). Munn’s Conan interview, in which she comically describes Depp grabbing her breast during production drew 4M Facebook video views. There was also a promo celebrating Mortdecai’s mustache on shopping website The Art of Shaving.

By January 16, none of this seemed to be persuading anybody with first choice and unaided awareness still at 2-4%. Definite Awareness remained in the low 30 percentile just like Blackhat. Critics didn’t help, giving Mortdecai a 13% Rotten Tomatoes score and a critical consensus summation of “aggressively strange and willfully unfunny.” Lionsgate tried to control critical word of mouth by nixing media screenings and shuttling select critics and media to the LA premiere on January 21, which one insider remarked “was an attempt to put them among a crowd that would deliver a positive response, hoping to sway their opinions.”

Tyger wrote:Not defending the movie, but it still blows my mind that a film can be labeled a bomb the day after it's released