Voltron film moves forward

Atlas Entertainment’s Charles Roven, Richard Suckle and Steve Alexander are ready to form Voltron.

The producers behind "Get Smart" and "The International" (and Roven of course also produced "The Dark Knight) have acquired the rights to make a live-action feature based on the robot-lion property, pushing the project forward after several years in development with the Mark Gordon Company.

Roven and his partners acquired rights to the Japanese title from World Events Prods., a St. Louis-based company that has held those rights for more than two decades. “Wanted” producer Jason Netter of Kickstart Entertainment and World Events’ Ted Koplar are joining the Atlas trio in producing.

"Voltron," a television hit in the 1980’s that has retained a loyal fan following, features a “Transformers"-like conceit, in which a band of five robot-lions combine to form one super lion. A group of five pilots control the lions, which are charged with defending the planet Arus from villain King Zarkon, who dispatches evil creatures called Robobeats to fight the Voltron robots.

No doubt the success of Transformers at the box office has helped push this through. I always felt that the Power Rangers basically ripped off Voltron regarding the lion robots combining to form the giant Voltron.

Are you a Voltron fan? Who and what do you want to see in the film?

Source: RiskyBusiness
HOME

Letterman - Optimus Prime Top Ten List

Top Ten Things That Sound Cool When Spoken By A Giant Robot.

HOME

The Random - Sucker Punch, Predicament, The Wedding Doctor, Transformers 3, Mother's Curse, Kick-Ass, Alien Nation, Asteroids, Resident Evil

Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen) has confirmed that he's trying to tone down his upcoming female insane asylum-set thriller Sucker Punch from an R to a PG-13 - Chud have more

Flying Conchords star Jemaine Clement will to star in the comedy heist film Predicament based on the novel by Ronald Hugh Morrieson - via Stuff

Jonathan Abrams has sold his romantic comedy script The Wedding Doctor to Relativity Media. The story follows a nervous bride with cold feet who seeks the help of a relationship analyst to make sure she's marrying the right person. Trouble is he decides that he is the one she should be marrying - THR)

Ramon Rodriguez, the college roommate of Shia LaBeouf in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, will likely have a bigger part in the sequel according to director Michael Bay - LA Times

A road comedy with Seth Rogen and Barbra Streisand in the leading roles? That unexpected pairing may just happen in a film called Mother's Curse - via Hitflix

The world premiere of footage from director Matthew Vaughn's Kick-Ass will be presented at Comic-Con in San Diego on Thursday, 23rd July - Comingsoon.net have more

Sy-Fy is developing another spin-off series based on the 1988 film Alien Nation reports Variety. Sounds like District 9 has kick started the franchise again. The original film was set in 1991, when alien refugees had come to Earth three years before and were now attempting to integrate into Los Angeles. Tim Minear ("Angel," "The X-Files," "Firefly") is penning the update for Fox 21. This new version is set in the Pacific Northwest of the 2020's, two decades after the first alien ship crashed on Earth.

Universal Pictures has won the film rights to the classic 1979 video game Asteroids says The Hollywood Reporter. The game featured a spaceship that had to shoot down incoming asteroids to avoid collision, that's about it which means there's no backstory and a lot of creative freedom for Matthew Lopez who is adapting the script.

ShockTillYouDrop is reporting that a new live-action Resident Evil sequel called Resident Evil: Afterlife is in development for a September 2010 release. They've actually gotten confirmation from Sony that it is indeed happening. And that Paul W.S. Anderson is at least writing the script and that Capcom is on-board.

HOME

Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen, 2009 - Movie Review

Director: Michael Bay
Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, John Turturro, Tyrese Gibson
Running Time: 150 minutes
Score: 6.5 / 10

This review by Jinja. Spoilers ahead....

What's it about?

IMDB blurb: "Decepticon forces return to Earth on a mission to take Sam Witwicky prisoner, after the young hero learns the truth about the ancient origins of the Transformers. Joining the mission to protect humankind is Optimus Prime, who forms an alliance with international armies for a second epic battle."

Was it good / bad?

I probably didn't do myself any favours by watching the first one the night before seeing the sequel. But I did have my expectations very low due to a couple of friends mentioning their disappointment.

+ The CG again was phenomenal - but, I said this first time round, the transformations were overly complex.
+ The eye-candy in this movie was spectacular.
+ Giant transforming robots fighting!

- Unfortunately I think the CG is also what totally overpowered the flick.
- The story was overly ambitious and complex - not for the younger audience.
- There was unnecessary language, that again I wouldn't be overly comfortable with my 10 year old nephew hearing.
- Some gratuitous shots of Megan Fox and Isabel Lucas - now don't get me wrong I enjoy the sight of an attractive woman, but the bit with Megan Fox painting the bike at the beginning was ludicrous!
- Slow-mo overload!
- A robot that transforms into a human!?
- Way way to long.

Just another thought what happened to the characters played by Anthony Anderson and Rachael Taylor?

Coolest / worst scene?

Coolest scenes were Optimus going berserk (on a few occasions) on decepticons and BumbleBee kicking ass.

Worst, the ridiculous geography that goes on at the end. One minute they are at the pyramids in Cairo, then the adventure takes them to Petra in Jordan. Then from Petra they see the military parachute out and land near the pyramids...and within minutes they are driving to meet up with them (I know I've seriously paraphrased that). Now Cairo and Petra are around 251.1 miles (give or take) apart. Sorry no, that last part of the film all took place within the same 'evening' - I know this is a film about alien life-forms that transform from giant robots into vehicles but come on. There wasn't even a mention of the fact Israel even existed between Egypt and Jordan.

The Robots - What about the robots?

The twins were initially annoying, the half way through they were annoying and by the end you had enough of them as they were annoying and you hope the devastator kills them! A pair of street jive idiot punks, mildly ammusing but generally annoying - did I say that already?

The return of Megatron - acceptable, was expecting the whole cargo ship to transform rather than just the five overly suspiscious vehicles on-board. Unfortunately too many bad guys leaders, Megatron, StarScream and the Fallen, wanting screen time.

Soundwave - good idea as the satellite, but where was the voice!?

The Devastator - the biggest overly complex transform of the lot. Was just too big.

The Fallen - a lazy bugger who'd been hanging out on one of Jupiters moons for the past 17,000 years.

Did you laugh / cry / cover your eyes / walk out?

Laugh - yes, some very funny bits especially John Turturros paranoia and still some of the 'aliens out of place on earth' moments.

Cry - not even with laughter.

Cover my eyes - followed by a shaking head of disapproval at some of the continuity errors and pretty much the whole last half hour.

Walk-out - I didn't walk out of Vertical Limit (my current leader of absolute chod movies) so wouldn't walk out on this - worth staying for the visuals.

Anything we should watch out for?

You may miss it near the beginning, but the bit of an argument in China between the army and couple of Transformers. The governments manage to cover up the whole thing as a little earthquake or something...its complete and total destruction of downtown Shanghai!!! (BTW yes sarcasm set to very much high on that comment)

Why should we see / avoid it?

Big robots, lots of fighting, CG overload - your choice.

HOME

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen did quite well at the box office

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen had an estimated take of $16 million from a 3,000 screen midnight run last night reports Variety.

That number is second only to The Dark Knight last Summer which took in $18.5 million from Thursday midnight runs last July. "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" previously held the record for a Tuesday midnight run opening with $12 million in 2007.

By this Sunday, 'Fallen' is expected to have a first five-day haul not far off from the $203 million take that 'Knight' scored last Summer.

Reviews have been pretty bad all over

Rotten Tomatoes : The first film had a 57% approval rating and 5.8/10 average score. 'Fallen' however sits at 20% and 3.9/10.

Metacritic: The original scored 61/100, whereas 'Fallen' sits at 40/100.

HOME

Could Tyrese Gibson be in the Captain America film?

Busy promoting Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and his new comic book, Mayhem, Tyrese Gibson mentioned a few interesting things.

“The energy from Comic-Con really did something to me,” Gibson told MTV News of what prompted him to try his hand at comics. “Instead of me sitting back and waiting on ‘Luke Cage’ to finally happen — which I’m still looking forward to doing once they get the script together — and instead of me waiting on ‘Captain America,’ which they were talking about me for, I’m going to create my own. And that’s what I did.”

Now what could Tyrese be in talks about Captain America for? There was the rumour that Will Smith could be playing Steve Rogers, but nothing more has been said. Smith as the First Avenger is a bit of a stretch, but he would bring in a wide audience (I don't think it will happen though), however Gibson as Cap would never work. He's just not that big a name to pull in the punters.

There are a couple of characters that spring to mind for Tyrese.

First there is the role of Sam Wilson aka The Falcon. Sam debuted nearly three years before Luke Cage so is one of the first African American characters (Black Panther is from Africa).

The Falcon, as the name suggests, had the ability to fly via a high tech winged suits. He was also a top spy kind of character and had many an adventure with Steve Rogers.

Maybe Tyrese is in talks to play Sam, maybe not. As The First Avenger film is supposedly going to be set for the most part in World War II then it seems unlikely that The Falcon will feature in the film. However, he is a cool character and it would be great to see him on screen.

The other, more likely, option is Isaiah Bradley who featured in the Truth: Red, White & Black mini series.

Project: Rebirth began as a collaboration between US, British and German eugenicists led by Dr. "Josef Reinstein" (real name Dr. Wilfred Nagel), and Dr. Koch. When WW II began, Koch took over the German program and Josef Reinstein took over the American program. Each was attempting to recreate the super soldier serum which had previously turned Steve Rogers into Captain America a year prior to Pearl Harbor. Reinstein's early attempts to refine the formula were tested on African-Americans. Three hundred of these soldiers were taken from Camp Cathcart and subjected to potentially fatal experiments at an undisclosed location in an attempt to re-create the Super Soldier formula, as seen in Truth: Red, White & Black. Only five subjects survived the original trials. In the name of secrecy, US soldiers executed the camp's commander and hundreds of black soldiers left behind at Camp Cathcart. The government told the families of the three hundred subjects that their loved ones had died in battle.

The sole survivor of his test group, Bradley stole a spare costume intended for Captain America before he engaged in a suicide mission to destroy the Super-Soldier efforts of the Nazis at the Schwarzebitte concentration camp. There, he was also able to assassinate Koch. The mission ended when the Germans captured Bradley. Nazi interest in the American supersoldier was high; he was even brought before the Führer himself. Bradley was later rescued, only to be court-martialed and imprisoned at Leavenworth around 1943. In 1960, Bradley was pardoned by President Eisenhower and released.

This is all supposition on my part based on the few words mentioned by Tyrese. Isaiah Bradley seems the role most suited for the film.

What do you think Tyrese Gibson was talking about in relation to Captain America?

HOME

Megan Fox's part just a cameo in Jonah Hex?

Jonah Hex is the facially challenged Wild West bounty hunter who is being played by Josh Brolin (check out the photos of him as Hex in the live action version). Megan Fox plays a prostitute in the August 2010 film, and sequels are in the works. Plus the character is also starring in an episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold.

However it looks as if Fox's character is not going to be in it that much.

“It’s basically a cameo,” said Fox speaking to MTV. “She’s a twisted love-interest to Jonah’s character; my part’s pretty small.”

Jonah Hex lives in a deadly world filled with lies, lead and life-threatening encounters. Which is why Fox’s next statement made it seem even less likely that her character Leila would be returning for those sequels.

“I worked the first week, and then I was shot out of the movie,” she explained “My scenes with Josh were my favorite, because he really pushed me as an actor. He obviously knows what he’s doing.”

Although the film, directed by relative-newcomer Jimmy Hayward, is a no-nonsense genre flick, Fox was quick to point out that Josh Brolin approached it with the same acting chops as his recent Oscar-nominated work in “Milk.”

And although Megan may not get much screentime in “Jonah Hex,” she said that the film is some of her best acting yet – and Brolin’s work may be nothing short of iconic. “He is a sort of chemically-enhanced, nuclear John Wayne on steroids,” Fox said of Jonah.

I think it will be a little more than a cameo though as photos show she has at least two costumes and she previously mentioned that she'll be shooting someone. Looks like it will probably be a few scenes in the film.

Discuss in the forum or leave a comment below.

HOME

John Carpenter's ALF, David Cronenberg's Cabbage Patch Kids and other toy based films

With Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra on the way here are some other toy lines that could be moviefied.

Funny Videos | Funny Cartoons | More Video Clips

Discuss in the forum or leave a comment below.

HOME

Those pesky Transformers get everywhere

In the past couple of weeks, there's been a surge in sightings of mysterious robots in cities and famous landmarks around the world, including Tokyo, Berlin, Rome, and Barcelona. People from across the globe have been posting videos and photos of these sightings on sites.

Check out the Tokyo sighting:

Barcelona sighting:

Gorila o robot!!!! Qué es eso?
by RubiTruji

A number of more subtle sightings have been spotted in Sydney (above), Perth and even Machu Pichu (zoom into the right of the smaller peak in the middle) .

The most recent sightings have been in France and the UK. In France two model-airplane-enthusiasts watched their airplane crash land, and transform into a robot.

Premier Vol
by Vinnylemans

In the UK, there was a similar incident involving a scooter turning into a robot-type creature.

These robot sightings have so far been tracked by two conspiracy blogs run by Robo-Warrier and Leo Ponce de Leon Spitz.

I think this is a cracking viral campaign for the new Transformers film. Have you spotted any more?

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is out in the UK tomorrow and in the USA on the 24th.

Discuss in the forum or leave a comment below.

HOME

Shia talks Indiana Jones 5

While chatting to the BBC about Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Shia LaBeouf mentioned news about a certain archaeologist.

"Steven [Spielberg] just said that he cracked a story on it before I left and I think they're gearing that up."

That is pretty much all he says apart from that fact that there are "definitely no special effects in that movie."

I think the last part is in reference to the fact that the Transformers film is chock full of CGI (rather like the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull).

This is what you call early days, but it does look as if they are kicking around the idea of a 5th Indiana Jones film. It is sad that this news doesn't thrill me as much as it should do. The most recent film was such a disappointment.

If they do make another I hope the story is great, they cut out silly CGI and actually let Indy solve the mystery instead of some gibbering idiot.

How do you feel about the possibility of a new Indy film? What do you want in it and what don't you want in it?

Discuss Indy in the forum or leave a comment below.

HOME

The Robots that didn't make the cut for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Paramount UK put these together to promote Michael Bay's new film. In each of the clips a household appliance or toy tries and fails to win a part.

Discuss in the forum or leave a comment below.

HOME

Megan Fox is hot because of CGI

The entire CGI budget of the film goes to digitally mastering Megan Fox's hotness. This is funny.

Discuss in the forum or leave a comment below.

HOME

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - Megan gets close to Wheelie & Prime brings out the big guns

This clip with Megan Fox and a Decepticon called Wheelie (who I think transforms into an RC car) was out with a German dub but it is now out in English. Apparantly Wheelie is voiced by Spongebob himself, Tom Kenny, but I can't find definite confirmation on that.

This next TV spot has the Optimus Prime firing a rocket which looks really cool.

Discuss in the forum or leave a comment below.

HOME

Soundwave is spiky

This is the first proper look at Soundwave from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

No turning into a tape deck for this Decepticon. Instead he is going to be a satellite in Earth's orbit. I'm not sure if he will be in his robot form much and I read somewhere that he won't actually land on Earth. Unfortunately I cannot remember where I saw that.

How do you feel about Soundwave's new look?

Source: TLAMB

Discuss in the forum or leave a comment below.

HOME

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - Japan Premiere

Director: Michael Bay

Cast: Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel

Released in the USA on 24th June and in the UK on 19th June
Discuss in the forum or leave a comment below.

HOME

Megan Fox and Isabel Lucas

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the ladies of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. No need to thank me.

Discuss in the forum or leave a comment below.

HOME

Megan Fox and some other people at Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen Japan Premiere

Michael Bay posted these photos from the Japanese premiere of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

Not long now until some big screen Megan Fox action....sorry, I mean giant robot action.

Discuss in the forum or leave a comment below.

HOME

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen will be bigger and longer on IMAX

Director Michael Bay made an announcement about his upcoming Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, including details surrounding finishing the film, the scale of the project, and what the IMAX version will offer. Here is what he had to say:

Hey everyone,

In Japan today. After a month and half seven days a week most days going till midnight me and my crew have just about finished Transformers. I have never seen such a level of dedication from every crew member in a movie before.

Even today after the press in Japan and right before the premiere tonight, I have to sneak out to a digital house to approve the last few effect shots.

It has been a long hard road, but really fun one to travel. What you will notice that is strikingly different than Transformers 1, is the level of animation detail. The robot characters (42 in all), you really can feel empathy for them. What is also very different is the sheer scale of the movie. We have been very tight holding back much of the best imagery in commercials and trailers.

The way to see this movie is on IMAX. Never before has there been 4k rendered character animation shot on full IMAX 70 mm film. This is a first and the results are stunning. You will see Optimus Prime in a few shots where he is actually perfectly to scale on the IMAX 50 foot tall screens.

For IMAX, I created a slightly longer cut with more robot fighting. Four scenes were shot on IMAX cameras so the screen will fill the full IMAX screen for these scenes.

Haters beware.

Michael

Starring Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, John Turturro, Isabel Lucas, Rainn Wilson, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen opens in theaters on 24th June.

Discuss in the forum or leave a comment below.

HOME

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - Music Video - "New Divide" Behind the Scenes

A behind the scenes look at Linkin Park making the music video for "New Divide" on the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen soundtrack.

Discuss in the forum or leave a comment below.

HOME

Great photo of Devastator from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Here is a photo showing the scale of Devastator in Michael Bay's sequel. In other words, Big.

The film is out on the 24th June.

Discuss in the forum or leave a comment below.

HOME