Fan-Funded Nazi UFO Movie Has Raised $7.65 Million

You must have loved the trailer for that Nazi UFO movie we showed you last week, because thanks to fan donations, the project has already pulled in 90 percent of the feature-length project’s $8.5 million budget.

Iron Sky’s premise is that Nazis in flying saucers escaped to the moon during the closing days of World War II, and in 2018 they return to conquer the Earth. Casting for the film is almost done, and filming will begin in Australia and Germany later this year.

Though Iron Sky’s success in pulling in fan funding might encourage others to create films in which the audience and investor are the same, special-effects guru Samuli Torssonen warns that theirs is a special case.

“We didn’t come out of nowhere,” he said. “We’ve been building our Internet community and visibility since 1999, with Star Wreck. You have to invest a lot of time and energy to win the trust of the Internet audience.”

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Ant-Man Movie Update

Writer/director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Scott Pilgrim, Hot Fuzz) talked briefly with Box Office Magazine about his big screen adaptation of Marvel’s Ant-Man which has been long in development. Wright says he hasn’t yet started writing a second draft of the script, and won’t be able to until September. He also talks about his vision for the film. Read his comments after the jump.

I haven’t actually started the second draft yet–I’m not going to be able to until this film [Scott Pilgrim] is out–but what we wrote for the first draft, and what Marvel really liked, is that it’s funny, but it’s a genre film. It’s about the level of comedy that Iron Man has. The idea is to make a high-concept genre film where it’s within another genre. His suit and its power is the big gadget and it takes place in the real world. I just wanted to do something that was slightly different than the superhero origin film. I felt that between that and the various mad scientist, crazy doctor films that we’ve all seen, this would be a way into an origin that was slightly different. I’m not really a multi-tasker–I haven’t done anything since Marvel liked our first draft.

I’ve heard nothing but amazing things about Wright’s first draft. I’ve even heard that Marvel wants to push the project into production as soon as Wright becomes available. Read more from Wright, including why Nick Frost and Simon Pegg weren’t given roles in Scott Pilgrim, in Box Office Magazine.

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Marvel Comics Launches Television Division

Everything eventually loses steam, and I can’t help but wonder when Marvel will start to see greatly diminishing returns. There have been nearly a dozen feature films in the past ten years, Disney invested $4 billion to ensure we’d get more, and now comes news that the comic book titan will invade your TV.

The Hollywood Reporter says Marvel Television is the company’s latest venture, one no doubt sparked by the recent Disney agreement, so in tune with vertically integrating everything is the House of Mouse. In fact, a few weeks ago, it was announced that Marvel characters would have a permanent home in the Disney theme parks, which shouldn’t come as any great shock.

My initial thought was all the old Marvel cartoons and even the made-for-DVD animation we’ve seen recently, but apparently, live-action series are being discussed. And here’s where Marvel might find it has too much of a good thing.

Jeph Loeb, who used to executive produce Heroes, is running Marvel Television, and that kind of makes sense. He know TV, and even though he’s never written for Marvel and the company likes to elevate writers it’s familiar with, Heroes certainly paid an homage to superheroes, particularly X-Men. However, some early fans of Heroes don’t have many kind words to say about Loeb, so this announcement may not please them very much.

The interesting decision Disney has to make here is what characters go where. Obviously, Fox, Sony, and Paramount are bleeding dry the Spider-Man, X-Men, and Avengers universes. Do we develop shows based on characters that are really under the radar or does Disney kind of pull back on Marvel’s full-scale theatrical assault and save some of the good characters for the small screen?

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‘Space Battleship Yamato’ Live Action Movie Trailer - Awesome!

Here’s the good news—we just saw the new trailer for Space Battleship Yamato, and it looks like director Takashi Yamazaki’s 2.2-billion-yen budget was well spent. Space Battleship Yamato could surprise us all by being one of the best sci-fi movies of the year.

But here’s the bad news—the film, a live-action adaptation of the original anime TV series, doesn’t have a U.S. release date, so for now the only way to see it when it opens Dec. 1 is for those of us who don’t already live there to head to Japan. Read more

Hulu Coming To PlayStation Network ‘Soon’ - Maybe

Once again, Hulu is drawing some attention from a possible partnership with a video game console. According to a report by Bloomberg, Sony may be close to securing a deal to bring a Hulu subscription to the PlayStation Network. In fact, “the partnership could be announced as soon as next week.”

Weeks ago, Reuters ran a similar report, claiming Xbox 360 and iPad would also offer a premium Hulu service. However, these claims have not yet been fruitful. Considering the clamor for Hulu on multiple devices, these reports can be the result of wishful thinking — or Hulu is planning an aggressive multi-platform approach, not unlike Netflix.

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Benjamin Walker Cast In ‘X-Men: First Class’

Rumors are swirling around who will appear as which mutants in Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men: First Class, but today we finally have an official confirmation of a new cast member. According to Roger Friedman’s Showbiz 411, Benjamin Walker has joined the First Class cast as Dr. Hank McCoy, better known as the blue, furry Beast.

Walker’s involvement has been whispered for a few days, first cropping up by way of The New York Times. If you follow theater at all, you’ve probably heard of Walker’s performance in Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, and the production’s plans to move to Broadway. But that may now be delayed thanks to Walker’s evolution into a First Class mutant.

Walker has been kicking around movies for quite a while — you might remember him in Flags of Our Fathers and Kinsey — and is a promising young actor who just hasn’t made it big yet. He’s earned rave reviews as the titular Jackson in his flashy stage performance. I have no doubt he’ll make a good McCoy, especially since he won’t be burdened with the garish make-up Kelsey Grammer wore in X-Men: The Last Stand. As X-Men geeks know, McCoy started off relatively normal looking, but evolved into the furry fellow he is today. He’s continued to evolve into a creature that looks more like a cat than a man. McCoy is a quietly tragic character, as he lives in fear that he will lose the ability to think or practice science once burdened with animal senses and paws. I’m still not thrilled with First Class, but the idea of seeing that story — even in a truncated form — is an appealing one. McCoy is a gentle and humorous character, and he’s never gotten any time to shine in the movies.

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Image From ‘The Walking Dead’ TV Series

AMC, which is producing the TV adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead, has released the first production still featuring the show’s zombies. Earlier this month AMC did issue a number of photos of make-up tests featuring the outstanding work of make-up master Greg Nicotero, but this is the first chance to see one of “the Walkers” in action (though she appears to be crawling in this scene).

Although movie adaptations are perceived as being sexier, it’s hard to argue that a property like The Walking Dead, which is firmly established in the comic market and breaking out in the bookstores, isn’t better served by a TV series, especially if it’s being overseen by Frank Darabont and produced by AMC (Mad Men). For one thing TV series, like comics are basically extended serial narratives. For another, a successful TV series can run for years exposing the property to millions of viewers, something that could really help an extensive series like The Walking Dead (the 12th volume is due out in July).

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Guillermo del Toro Talks Lovecraft - ‘Mountains Of Madness’

Out with Tolkien, in with Lovecraft? Guillermo del Toro talks about an adaptation of At The Mountains Of Madness…
With Guillermo del Toro’s directing duties on The Hobbit now out of the question due to scheduling issues, one question immediately arises: what project will take its place?

One possibility is another book adaptation, this time H. P. Lovecraft’s icy 1931 novella, At The Mountains Of Madness. It’s a film del Toro has been expressing an interest for at least three years. In a 2007 interview with First Showing, the director said, “If I had the freedom to choose and the chance to hold it until its done, I’d do Mountains right away.”

Earlier this week, Aint It Cool News caught up with the director for a lengthy discussion about his current project, SF horror Splice, a film on which he’s producer, with Vincenzo Natali directing. Towards the end of the interview, meanwhile, del Toro once again expressed his enthusiasm for getting a Mountains Of Madness adaptation off the ground.

“Mountains is exactly the movie I would like to do,” del Toro said. “It would push buttons, and it’s extreme in many areas. It’s a hard R-rated, big production tentpole in the genre of horror. What I love about tentpole horror - which is not done much anymore, if at all - is that there was a time when you could see something like Alien or The Shining or The Thing. Movies that came not as a B-movie product of a studio, but as an A, tentpole, big release, high-end production like The Exorcist, and so on and so forth.”

Del Toro’s reference to The Thing is an interesting one. Not only did John Carpenter’s 1982 display echoes of H. P. Lovecraft’s story - both are set among the frozen wastelands of the Antarctic, with desperate men fighting off hideous, tentacled monsters - The Thing was also one of the bloodiest Hollywood studio pictures released at that point. The adaptation of Mountains, del Toro suggests, would be no different. Read more

Video - Frank Darabont Talks About THE WALKING DEAD TV Series

AMC’s Walking Dead series has officially begun production and information is slowly leaking onto the net. Right out of the gate we’ve got a video interview with producer Gale Anne Hurd and the writer/director bringing it to the screen, Frank Darabont. We’ve also got a few images of “the walkers” featuring some great zombie make-up (via: AITH).

Synopsis:
Police officer Rick Grimes leads a group of survivors in a world overrun by zombies.

Check out the images and watch the video interview after the break. Head to Quiet Earth to see the stills.

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First Look At Frank Miller’s ‘300′ Prequel, ‘Xerxes’

Frank Miller’s first order of business related to another 300 movie was to come up with the graphic novel, which presumably, Zack Snyder would also direct. Rather than going forward with the stories of the Spartans, or moving backward to see where they had come from (with no Gerard Butler, more than likely), Miller has gone a completely different route: Xerxes.

 

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