Sci-Fi Storm

Perhaps not very surprising, after the huge success at the box office for Star Wars: The Force Awakens with the December holiday debut (the first time a Star Wars film opened outside the traditional “Summer Blockbuster” period), Disney and Lucasfilm pushed the next film in the saga story to open on December 15th, 2017, rather than the previously scheduled May 26th, 2017 date, presumably to once again capture the rich holiday box office it gained last time. This also provides some more room for Guardians of the Galaxy 2 to shine, which was originally only going to have three weeks before its sibling studio’s Jedi Juggernaut, opening on May 5th.

However, it does put it up directly against Dreamworks’ Ready Player One, and just 10 days later Avatar 2, which could make for a very interesting box office…

After 5 weeks, Star Wars: The Force Awakens has passed the $1 billion mark in the international box office, as it closes in on $1.9 billion globally. This marks the first Disney movie to pass the $1B mark internationally.

This also places it 5th in the all time international list, and should in fact move to fourth past Jurassic World within a day or two. Globally it’s in third place behind Titanic and number one Avatar, with about $317 million left to move into second place.

The Force may be with Rey and Finn, but the Academy isn’t. Star Wars: The Force Awakens was left out of the “big six” awards when the nominations came out this morning, although Mad Max: Fury Road (who led all nominations with 10) and The Martian snagged Best Picture nods, with Mad Max also getting the nod for Directing for George Miller, and The Martian a Best Actor nomination for Matt Damon. The Martian director Ridley Scott was left off the list.

Star Wars did pick up nominations for Film Editing (Maryann Brandon and Mary Jo Markey), Original Score (John Williams), Visual Effects (Roger Guyett, Patrick Tubach, Neal Scanlan and Chris Corbould), Sound Editing (Matthew Wood and David Acord), and Sound Mixing (Andy Nelson, Christopher Scarabosio and Stuart Wilson).

Mad Max: Fury Road also received Film Editing (Margaret Sixel), Production Design (Production Design: Colin Gibson; Set Decoration: Lisa Thompson), Visual Effects (Andrew Jackson, Tom Wood, Dan Oliver and Andy Williams), Cinematography (John Seale), Costume Design (Jenny Beavan), Makeup and Hairstyling (Lesley Vanderwalt, Elka Wardega and Damian Martin), Sound Editing (Mark Mangini and David White), and Sound Mixing (Chris Jenkins, Gregg Rudloff and Ben Osmo).

The Martian also received Production Design (Production Design: Arthur Max; Set Decoration: Celia Bobak), Visual Effects (Richard Stammers, Anders Langlands, Chris Lawrence and Steven Warner), Adapted Screenplay (Drew Goddard), Sound Editing (Oliver Tarney) and Sound Mixing (Paul Massey, Mark Taylor and Mac Ruth).

Actor Alan Rickman, most known for his role of enigmatic Professor Severus Snape across the 8 movies of the Harry Potter franchise, passed away early this morning at the age of 69 after a bout with cancer, his family confirms.

Rickman created many memorable roles after arriving in Hollywood – and I mean RIGHT after. Two days after coming to Los Angeles, he was offered his first film role as the criminal mastermind Hans Gruber opposite Bruce Willis in 1998’s Die Hard, and forever made his mark off the bat. But he wasn’t an inexperienced actor, being well known in London’s West End, originating the role of Vicomte de Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses in 1985 and carried that role to Broadway in 1987. Theater still remained his “first love”.

He followed up Gruber with another villainous role as the Sheriff of Nottingham against Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves with such an amazing “love to hate” character performance – something that he seemed to excel at. His portrayal as the Sheriff was even parodied in the slapstick comedy Robin Hood: Men In Tights by Roger Rees.

Other roles that we remember him and his distinctive voice most for were Metatron in Dogma, Dr. Lazarus/Alexander Dane in Galaxy Quest, and Harry, the husband who makes a mistake in Love Actually opposite Emma Thompson, whom he worked with many times and directed The Winter Guest, and they were good friends. Thompson was apparently with him and his family when he died.
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Over at Collider they had a chance to talk to producer Mark Gordon, who has taken on the rights to the Chronicles Of Narnia franchise through The Mark Gordon Company, which acquired the rights in 2013. The film has not yet received a green light for production, but they hope to start soon.

But what he said is certain to raise some eyebrows. When asked if any of the original cast would reprise their roles, his response was, “No, it’s all going to be a brand new franchise. All original. All original characters, different directors, and an entire new team that this is coming from.”

First, it was clarified that “All original characters” means from Narnia, not that they are necessarily creating characters to avoid association with the prior Walden Media-produced films. But there are actually only three main characters that have previously appeared in the films – Aslan, of course, who was voiced by Liam Neeson; now-King Caspian, previously played by Ben Barnes; and Eustace Scrubb (previously played by Will Poulter), the cousin of the Pevensies.

Recasting Caspian is easy, considering 30 Narnian years have passed since The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, so he’d be much older. Less so for Eustace, for whom only a year has passed – but at least 6 years will have passed for Will Poulter who’s definitely grown up, appearing most recently in The Revenant. And the voice of Aslan might easily be replaced, but not hearing Neeson will be a shock. So while the actors can be replaced, it would seem odd to replace the characters themselves, so I’m just assuming that he did not mean those three would not appear.

New characters include Jill Pole, a classmate of Eustace who joins him in Narnia; Puddleglum, A Marsh-wiggle who helps them; and Prince Rilian, the kidnapped son of Caspian. By the way, in the 1990 BBC miniseries of The Silver Chair, Puddleglum was played by none other than Tom Baker…

But calling this a reboot is odd – in typical Hollywood parlance, a reboot would be a retelling of a story…but The Silver Chair is simply the next logical story following the previous films. Thinking of it as a reboot of the franchise – getting the movies made after Disney and Fox (the previous studios) and Walden Media had passed on further movies – seems more correct.

This is a movie we’d really like to see done again (although we are often against remakes), but it has been over a DECADE that James Cameron has been trying to get a new adaptation of Fantastic Voyage off the ground – we first reported about it in 2002 – and though directors have come and gone over the years, Cameron apparently still wants it to happen. The latest report by THR is that Guillermo del Toro, who is apparently available with Pacific Rim 2 not likely to get made any time soon, in talks to take this project over. This would reteam del Toro with David Goyer, who wrote the treatment for the project and wrote Blade 2 for del Toro.

The original movie, written by Otto Klement and Jerome Bixby (and novelized by Isaac Asimov) was set during the Cold War, and follows the adventure of a group of doctors and crew who are shrunk down to microscopic size in a specially built submarine and injected into the body of an important scientist who was critically injured in an assassination attempt while attempting to defect to the U.S., hoping to repair damage to his brain from the inside to save his life. Why? Because while both the U.S. and Soviet Union have this miniaturization technology, it only lasts a short amount of time – but this scientist knows how to make it last indefinitely, and the military implications are significant.

No spoilers! No spoilers!

Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which opened in “previews” nationwide yesterday evening, has already destroyed the Thursday preview records with $57 million, is looking at somewhere between $130-$150 million for an opening day mark (which includes Thursday), and could top a quarter of a billion dollars by the end of the weekend!

I got to be one of those record setters last night, and just wanted to say (NO SPOILERS! Even though I want to talk to people about it!) that the movie was awesome – it puts all three prequels to shame. Visually stunning – location shooting just seemed more real than any of the prior movies. Cheers rang out when each of the classic characters arrived. It also felt like it had more humor than any of the past movies – in a really really good way. Some nitpicky things too…but I’ll leave those for later.

Update 12/21: It’s official – Star Wars: The Force Awakens now has the biggest opening weekend ever, both domestically and globally. The reportedly final numbers, after a late boost from the domestic box office, are $247.97 million domestically, and about $529 million globally. That’s half a billion dollars folks – in a weekend. And it is still expected to do brisk business with upcoming releases this weekend not expected to compete for #1, and lots of people still waiting to see it and others watching it multiple times. I’ll be seeing it again on New Years weekend, but this time in Laser IMAX3D…

It’s time to go back to the wizarding world…in theaters November 2016!

After the international trailer leaked online for Star Trek Beyond, Paramount released the full trailer early!

No ship, no crew…

WAIT! No SHIP?!?

See it on July 22nd, 2016.

Since the dawn of civilization, he was worshipped as a god. Apocalypse, the first and most powerful mutant from Marvel’s X-Men universe, amassed the powers of many other mutants, becoming immortal and invincible. Upon awakening after thousands of years, he is disillusioned with the world as he finds it and recruits a team of powerful mutants, including a disheartened Magneto (Michael Fassbender), to cleanse mankind and create a new world order, over which he will reign. As the fate of the Earth hangs in the balance, Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) with the help of Professor X (James McAvoy) must lead a team of young X-Men to stop their greatest nemesis and save mankind from complete destruction.

X-Men: Apocalypse is in theaters May 27th, 2016