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

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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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

Netflix Streaming Through Your Wii - Coming Soon - Really

Here is a piece of news from the Netflix Blog…

Jessie Becker here from Marketing and we’ve got some great news to share. We are in the final phase of getting ready for the launch of streaming to Wii. Today, we shipped out instant streaming discs for the Wii to some of our Netflix members. Their feedback will ensure that we deliver a great experience to everyone when we launch. Instantly watching movies and TV episodes from Netflix via Wii will be available soon at no additional cost – all you need is a Netflix unlimited plan starting at $8.99 a month, a Wii console and a broadband Internet connection.

If you have reserved your disc already, you don’t need to do anything - we will send you an email as soon as we ship the disc. If you haven’t, reserve your disc today at www.netflix.com/Wii and stay tuned for a launch announcement!

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Who Will Direct ‘Twilight: Breaking Dawn’?

Who’s going to be calling the shots for Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart on the final Twilight movies?
Whether you’re a fan of the Harry Potter franchise or not, you’d still have to concede that the films really improved once Warner Bros started taking a few gambles with its directors. After the first two workmanlike movies at the hands of Chris Columbus, the appointment of Alfonso Cuaron for Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban can surely be classed as something of a masterstroke.

Is Summit Entertainment now having similar thoughts with its Twilight franchise, though, we wonder? To be fair, the Twilight movies have attracted directors who, in some cases, you wouldn’t necessarily have placed immediately with the material. Catherine Hardwicke, Chris Weitz and David Slade have been the names calling the shots on the films to date, but it looks as if Summit Entertainment may have its sights set - with no disrespect intended to those concerned (not least because we loved Hardwicke’s Thirteen) -  a little higher in terms of the Hollywood grapevine.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Summit has been trying to attract three particular directors to helm the final two films that Twilight: Breaking Dawn is being broken down into. And those names? Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting, Milk, lots of other cool stuff), Bill Condon (Dreamgirls, and the wonderful Gods And Monsters) and Sofia Coppola (Lost In Translation).

It’s early days, granted, and Entertainment Weekly notes that scriptwriter Melissa Rosenberg will be delivering an outline to potential directors in the next week or two. Our gut feeling, if they want to reach out to a new audience, is to let someone like Tarantino do it. But perhaps that’s why we don’t run Summit Entertainment.

We’ll keep you posted, but in the meantime, here’s the Entertainment Weekly piece.

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2-Minute Sneak Peek At New ‘Predators’ Movie

Robert Rodriguez premiered footage from Nimród Antal’s Predators at SXSW on Friday, and Fox has put the put the 2-minute sneak preview online. Watch it now on the official Predators movie website, or embedded after the jump. Please leave your thoughts in the comments below.

 

Official Plot Synopsis: Royce, a mercenary who reluctantly leads a group of elite warriors who come to realize they’ve been brought together on an alien planet… as prey. With the exception of a disgraced physician, they are all cold-blooded killers mercenaries, Yakuza, convicts, death squad members human “predators” that are now being systemically hunted and eliminated by a new breed of alien Predators.

Coming to theaters on July 7th, 2010

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Ed Norton Says ‘Hulk’ Sequel Not Happening

We interviewed Edward Norton at SXSW for the Tim Blake Nelson directed Leaves of Grass, in which he plays straight-laced philosophy professor Bill, and then his redneck, pot growing twin brother Brady. It’s a great movie, and Brady deserve to stand alongside lovable stoners like Jeff Lebowski and Spiccoli. Look for a review later.

Anyhow, you can read the full interview with Norton and Tim Blake Nelson soon, but in the meantime, he did give us a nugget of info on The Incredible Hulk sequel, which he and Tim Blake Nelson were both attached to. As in, is it happening?

"I don’t think so. I think it has got more to do with what Marvel is doing. I get the sense they have this grand vision of unspooling a lot of their characters and then starting to put them together. I think they can only do so many at a time. Obviously, they are doing Iron Man 2 and then getting some of the new ones out."

Which isn’t great news, considering how much I enjoyed The Incredible Hulk. How are they going to make an Avengers movie without the Hulk? Me smash.

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