Kevin James stole Brendan Fraser’s career and made it fatter. Here’s the teaser for Zookeeper, Kevin James’ latest in which he gets love advice from talking zoo animals. I could say a lot about this film, but I think Scream, Fall Down, and Monkey Covers His Eyes pretty much covers it.
And yes, this script sparked a bidding war and eventually sold for $3 million dollars. And you wonder why MGM is broke.
You know how you’ll hear something like “Two and a Half Men is the number one comedy on television!”, and you just stand there confused, because you literally don’t know a single person who has gotten through five minutes of that show? Yeah, this is like that. According to the Hollywood Reporter, The Last Song is the top-selling home video in the country.
“The Last Song” debuted at No. 1 on both the Nielsen VideoScan DVD sales chart and the research house’s dedicated Blu-ray Disc sales chart for the week ending August 22.
The Season 4 set of “Dexter” bowed at No. 2 on both sales charts. “Date Night,” which debuted at No. 1 on both sales charts the previous week, slipped to No. 3 on the DVD tally, and to No. 5 on the Blu-ray Disc chart, behind “Clash of the Titans” at No. 3 and “Kick-Ass” at No. 4.
Remember The Last Song? It’s that Nicholas Sparks movie where Miley Cyrus turns her back on a piano scholarship to Juilliard, but finds love when the local volleyball hunk helps her protect a nest of sea turtle eggs from a mischievous raccoon. I am not making this up.
“Furry Vengeance,” a family comedy that earned $17.6 million in U.S. theaters, debuted at No. 4 on both the DVD sales and rental charts.
That’s the one where Brendan Fraser screams “MILEY CYRUS!” at a boulder. …And his nemesis is a raccoon. Whoa. Is that meta? Does America just love Miley Cyrus and hate raccoons? Forget it, I’m going back to bed.
When Brendan Fraser burst onto the scene with Encino Man, the movie world was forced to take notice. Here was a guy who did it for the art, not the paycheck; a place he solidified with roles in George of the Jungle, Dudley Do-Right, Monkeybone, and of course Furry Vengeance. This week he once again demonstrated the depth of his integrity by turning down a role in Journey to the Center of the Earth 2. His reason? They couldn’t make it with his chosen director, the guy doing Yogi Bear.
Fraser felt strongly about making the movie with Eric Brevig, who directed him in the original. Trouble is, Warner Bros wants the picture for fall, 2011 release and Brevig is up to his eyeballs on another film for the studio, Yogi Bear. Meanwhile, Warners brass is high on Brad Peyton because of Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore, the Peyton-directed film which Warner Bros opens July 30.
New Line and Walden Media will move the picture right into pre-production, but they are preparing to redraw the film to make Josh Hutcherson the lead character. Fraser played Prof. Trevor Anderson in the original, and Hutcherson played his nephew, Sean.
It looks like a game of chicken between Fraser and New Line/Walden Media execs and there are risks on each side. Fraser is prepared to give up a fat sequel salary. New Line/Walden faces the prospect of making a pricey 3D film and opening it without a proven star in Hutcherson. [Deadline]
Oh what I would give to be in the same room while they were having that argument:
“I’m the star of this franchise, and I want the guy from Yogi Bear and Xena Warrior Princess!”
“That hack!? Are you high? Not a chance! You’ll work with a real professional! The guy from Cats & Dogs 2! And you’ll be grateful for the privilege!”
In any case, this will hopefully free up Fraser to finish his passion project, The Adventures of Spazzy McFarts.
Brendan Fraser’s new movie, Furry Vengeance, opens today, and some poor critics were actually forced to see it. As if that weren’t bad enough, they actually had to report what they saw instead of just cupping their hand under their armpit to make a fart sound like a normal person. Here’s what the black boxes recorded as their burning plane hurtled towards the Earth. NEVER FORGET.
In “Furry Vengeance,” Fraser plays a father, Dan Sanders, a doughy, goofy, run-of-the-mill ecological hypocrite who has moved his family from Chicago to the Oregon woods, assigned to oversee construction on behalf of his screechy capitalist boss . [AP/EntertainmentWeekly]
Think Home Alone in the forest. [USA Today]
The ubiquitous Ken Jeong turns up in a vaguely racist role as Fraser’s “comically” accented boss… [NY Post]
Neal Lyman — get it? Lie Man, who lapses into high-pitched gibberish when English language humor fails. There are other racist undertones, including slurs confusing Native Americans and Indians. [USA Today]
The company touts itself as a “green company.” In truth, it’s nothing of the sort. They happily explode beaver dams and trample through pristine forest to lay down pavement and a shopping mall. [AP]
The cuddly woodland creatures that live in that forest aren’t exactly in favor of the proposal. So they form their own preservation posse and pool their resources — acorns, boulders, a surprising deftness for hot-wiring cars — to unleash all manner of Animal Planet fury on Dan. [WashingtonPost]
A raccoon is their ringleader with ferrets, vultures, squirrels and skunks ready to pitch in. [OrlandoSentinel]
One of Dan’s tormentors is a lovely pied crow, which last time I checked (just now, on Google) is native to Africa. [BostonGlobe]
They communicate with little thought-balloons. [OrlandoSentinel]
We know the animals are good at this sort of thing, because the movie starts with their dispatching of the man Neal originally wanted for the job (Rob Riggle, in a cameo), knocking him and his sports car off a cliff with a boulder. As if to soften things, Riggle’s character is heard to mutter, “I quit,” after the fall, presumably from the bottom of the cliff. Or maybe from hell, I don’t know. [AZ Central]
The story progresses from bird attacks and stinky skunk shenanigans to a chase scene with bear and undies that concludes, after a fashion, with Fraser dangling from a tree in an upended portable toilet. [SF Chronicle]
In one scene, Fraser gets blasted in the crotch with a gushing garden hose. In another, an angry raccoon bites him in the crotch. In a third, Fraser straddles the peaked roof of his exurban home while chasing a pesky crow, then slips and falls, totally nailing himself in the . . . [WashingtonPost]
Water. Coffee. Fangs. Power window. Peaked roof. Leech. You name it: If it’s hot, wet, pointy or painful, it lands in Fraser’s no-no zone. [SF Chronicle]
Macgruber has two new trailers. I didn’t feel like posting them today because I’ve already posted like eight of these, and the new one is a PG version. Which means they refer to Val Kilmer’s character, Dieter von Cunth, as “He goes by the name Dieter.” Are we that puritanical that we can’t even say “Cunth”? I know people whose actual last names are “Kuntz” and “Slutsky”. Crap, now I’m too busy giggling to remember what my point was. |ComingSoon|
Doug Liman may direct a Gambit movie based on a Coen Brothers’ script. The script is a remake of a 1966 film in which Caine “played a cat burglar who tries to rob a billionaire of his priceless statue and enlists the help of a waitress who is a dead ringer for the victim’s late wife.” Wait, what? No exploding playing cards based on the comic-book character? Pass. Doug Liman was also listed as an executive producer on the Knight Rider TV remake, proving that no one in Hollywood ever fails at anything badly enough to get fired.|Deadline|
Ang Lee will direct Life of Pi IN 3D! A good chunk of the book is kind of like Castaway, but with an Indian boy stuck on a life boat with a zebra, a hyena, and a tiger. So, uh… good luck with that. |IndieWire|
Sharlto Copley says the District 9 sequel shoots in two years. “There’s a million ways you can go. Neil’s actually very interested in prequels as well. Neil wants it and I want it. Neil’s doing another film first. Then I think if everything goes according to plan we’ll do the second film in about two years time. That story can go in so many different ways. There’s a whole universe. I’m sure a lot of writers say that, but we actually have an entire universe.” Do you? As much as everyone throws that around, does anyone actually know what the f*ck that even means? Whatever, dude. Just explode some more prawns and everything’s cool. |Empire|
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