Lorenzo Di Bonaventura, the Hollywood a-super producer behind-a dis-a year’s Transformers 2, Imagine That, and G.I. Joe, made headlines a few weeks back when he announced plans to make a movie based on the Asteroids arcade game.  But IGN recently caught up with him, and he reassured fans that there’s a lot more to the idea than just triangles and polygonal blobs (haha, because that would be stupid!).  Here’s the quote, and I warn you, you might wanna put on a helmet because this is going to make you bang your head against something.

“It’s funny because people say there’s nothing in the game, but that’s not entirely right,” he said. “I was attracted to Asteroids, plain and simple, because I think what it tells you is that there’s going to be this big thing in space. We’ve crafted a really strong, deep mythology for the thing.”

Yeah, there was this big thing in space, and it was called the Big Bang.  The mythology is that first there was the big bang, then there was Lorenzo Di Bonaventura.  F*ck you, universe.  F*ck you in the black hole.

“Without divulging too much about it, it’s two lead characters – two brothers – who have to go through a seminal experience to figure out their relationship, against this huge backdrop.”

Wait, didn’t they already make this movie?  I’m pretty sure they did, it was called Seminal Brothers 6.  They figure out that their relationship involves double teaming white girls.  This discovery came pretty early in the movie, from what I remember.

The other day in a radio interview, the host was asking me about Hollywood’s hard-on for remakes and movies about toys. “What’s next?” the host asked me, “A movie about Pong!?”  That’s right, the most preposterously retarded idea he could think of is almost identical to an idea Universal considers good enough to spend millions of dollars on.

Universal has won a four-studio bidding war to pick up the film rights to the classic Atari video game “Asteroids.” Matthew Lopez will write the script for the feature adaptation, which will be produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura.  [Lopez recently worked Bedtime Stories and wrote the latest draft of The Sorcerer's Apprentice, while Di Bonaventura bears responsibility for G.I. Joe.]
In “Asteroids,” initially released as an arcade game in 1979, a player controlled a triangular space ship in an asteroid field. The object was to shoot and destroy the hulking masses of rock and the occasional flying saucer while avoiding smashing into both. [THR]

A F*CKING BIDDING WAR.  For a movie based on three dots that shoot one dot at other small clusters of dots.  If you can think of anything stupider than this… someone in Hollywood will pay you a lot of money.  GREAT NEWS, EVERYONE, TOM CRUISE JUST SIGNED ON TO PLAY BLINKING LIGHT NUMBER FOUR!  SOMEONE FINGER MY ASSHOLE SO I KNOW I’M NOT DREAMING!

Related Asylum Poll: Which Atari game SHOULD be a movie?

As of last week, Transformers Revenge of the Fallen was already accounting for 45% of all ticket sales on Fandango, even though it doesn’t open until this weekend.  It now accounts for 83% of all ticket sales on MovieTickets.com.  But as of last month, Michael Bay wasn’t happy with the marketing, and sent an angry, misspelled email to the heads of Paramount.  From TMZ:

I’ve been locked away editing for six months, but I have been waiting, and waiting for the ‘anticipation’ of an ‘event movie’ to make it into the ‘public zeitgeist’.

And if he wasn’t making air quotes while he dictated this to his assistant, everything I know about the world is wrong.

Right now we are not an event.  We are just a sequel, which is very different.  There is no anticipation. [...] So far our print [print advertising] has been in my opinion and abject failure.  The summer previews for entertainment weekly was really weak. [...] On the foreign front, from the terrible amateur cut down trailer I received which had a 23 frame flash cut of Megatron, if someone would of given me just one call I could of told them the whole point of the trailer was the reintroduction of Megatron. [...] At this time last movie we had an 30 minute MTV event around the Video Awards, now we have our two leads just announcing an award – they want me to play a small clip. I consider this so lame.  Clips don’t blow people away!

You know what does blow people away?  People getting blown away!  You should of let me ‘blow up’ that ‘midget’ in Time Square, but I guess some people just don’t care about the ‘zeitgeist’.  That’s ‘German’ for ‘awesome,’ right?  Btw, I accidentally* grazed Megan Fox’ boob earlier, lol!  3===>  ~~~ (+) (+)

Sincerely Yours (*explosion sound*),

Michael Bay

*Not accidentally

(The photoshopped sunglasses heard round the world)

There’s a rumor floating around the internet that Stephen Sommers was fired mid-way through shooting G.I. Joe (anyone who saw Van Helsing wouldn’t have hired him in the first place).  Here’s the original rumor, which came from this messageboard (sorry for all the words, I’ll edit as best I can):

After a test screening wherein the film tested the lowest score ever from an audience in the history of Paramount, the executive who pushed for the movie, Brad Weston, had Stephen Sommers, the super hack director fired. Removed. Locked out of the editing room.

Stuart Baird, a renowned “fixer” editor was brought it to try to see if it could be made releasable. Meanwhile producer Lorenzo [di Bonaventura] whose turkey IMAGINE THAT explodes this weekend as the new bomb in theatres (also championed by Weston) was told his services were no longer needed on the film either.

Hasbro CEO Brian Goldner, who turned down other offers from the property to go with the script that was rushed in 8 weeks by Stuart Beattie because of the writer’s strike is frantic that this will destroy the brand and is distancing himself from the pending catastrophe.

NONE of this needed to happen, except someone who did not know the mythology, Lorenzo was in charge of the film and never contradicted Sommers on anything. Lorenzo, was Chairman of Warners and had GI JOE under option there (not as a producer) for SEVEN years and he refused to greenlight the film, stating that because he grew up in Italy he had no knowledge of it. If you google enough, at one point you will see he wanted the film to be about an action hero named MANN (Action Man, get it) and he clearly had no clue what the GI Joe world really was.

LatinoReview just spoke with Di Bonaventura, who denies the story, which isn’t surprising considering the story kind of makes him look bad, and as anyone will tell you, Hollywood peoples’ number one motivator is to not look bad.  Other people are refuting the “tested low” part of the story, but when a movie tracking 13% on Rotten Tomatoes can supposedly test well, it just goes to show that maybe an audience full of unemployed extras isn’t the greatest indicator of… anything.  But the part that smells of BS to me is part where the CEO of Hasbro is supposedly embarrassed. This is the same guy producing a Candyland movie. This guy wouldn’t embarrassed of his daughter doing scheiss porn. Or worse, Danny Masterson.

Director John Singleton, producer Lorenzo Di Bonaventura, and Vin Diesel have signed on for Wheelman, a live-action film adaptation of a videogame that came out last month with Diesel as its main character and the game’s producer. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Diesel will play an expert driver who comes out of retirement to protect a woman from his past. [Variety]

Let’s review: Vin Diesel made a videogame that was essentially based on his The Fast and The Furious character.  Now, he’s making a movie out of that videogame, the videogame which was a videogame version of his movie in the first place. (a movie which had three sequels, a movie which was Point Break with cars).  This is like making a photocopy of your ass, then painting a picture of the copy with your ass, and then shoving the painting up your ass.  (Sorry, I only do ass-based analogies).