This is the first full-length trailer for Black Lightning, which has way less black people in it than Black Dynamite. Produced by Wanted’s Timur Blackmambatov and directed by Alexandr Voitinsky and Dmitriy Kiselev, it looks pretty good for a reported $8 million budget. The trailer is in Russian without subtitles, but from the looks of it, the plot’s pretty close to Transformers. The main guy, we’ll call him Shia LaBovnik, sees a hot girl. Naturally, he wants to impress her by having an awesome car, but his dad buys him old sh-tbox instead, probably because he’s poor. Luckily, the sh-tbox turns out to be magic, and when the fight between good and evil comes to Earth, the hottie will be glad she chose the doofus with the magic sh-tbox and not the first greasy stud to roll down her block in an IROC like my mom did. Then there’s a lot of flying and magic and yelling and explosions. And as the trailer ended, Michael Bay stood up to give an impassioned speech about how if he can change, and you can change, we all can change, and then he pulled up Megan Fox’s skirt to flash everybody and everyone cheered.
(”Commandment 1: There is one true energy drink, and it’s name is ‘Xyience.’ Commandment 2: No fat chicks. Commandment 3…”_)
My favorite studio 20th Century Fox has announced plans to do a film about the life of Moses, in the style of 300. Because, as it says in Leviticus 2012, “Man shalt not lie with another man; it is abomination. Man shalt swordfight in underwear with other sweaty, shirtless man; lo, for it is awesome. Spake the lord: OOH WHA-AA AA-AAH!”
20th Century Fox has made a preemptive acquisition of a pitch to tell the story of Moses in “300″ style. The tale will start with his near death as an infant to his adoption into the Egyptian royal family, his defiance of the Pharoah and deliverance of the Hebrews from enslavement. The Moses story will be told using the same green screen strategy as “300,” so it will feel more like that pic or “Braveheart” than “The Ten Commandments,” the 1956 Cecil B. DeMille film.
The script will be written by Adam Cooper and Bill Collage, who make this their followup to a high-level deal they made to reinvent Herman Melville”s “Moby Dick,” with a graphic novel feel, for Wanted director Timur Bekmambetov. [Variety]
Now, if you had any doubt about Hollywood’s descent into unintentional self-parody, keep in mind that when I first reported their graphic-novelized version of Moby Dick back in September 2008, I wrote:
G4 just premiered a new trailer for Shane Acker’s 9, a CGI-designed-to-look-like-stop-motion film produced by Tim Burton and Wanted director Timur Bekmambetov coming in September. The plot sounds basically like if Terminator Salvation date-raped Wall E at a frat party.
When 9 first comes to life, he finds himself in a post-apocalyptic world. All humans are gone, and it is only by chance that he discovers a small community of others like him taking refuge from fearsome machines that roam the earth intent on their extinction. Despite being the neophyte of the group, 9 convinces the others that hiding will do them no good. They must take the offensive if they are to survive, and they must discover why the machines want to destroy them in the first place. As they’ll soon come to learn, the very future of civilization may depend on them.
…But the party really kicks into high gear when 9 runs into Six from Blossom. Boy, the 90s were stupid.
This is the new trailer for 9 (that’s right, 9, not Nine. The filmmakers think you and your Chicago Manual of Style can suck it.).
9 is an upcoming sci-fi CGI animated movie created and directed by Shane Acker. It is co-produced by Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov and animated by Attitude Studio (in Luxembourg) and by Starz Animation (in Toronto), with a few sequences done by Duncan Studios in LA. Voice cast: Elijah Wood, Christopher Plummer, Martin Landau, John C. Reilly, Jennifer Connelly and Crispin Glover. 9 will be released 9.9.9. [Source]
So basically it’s Wall E if it were produced by Tim Burton and the Wanted guy. Instead of a robot, the post apocalyptic world is inhabited by mutant things, who discover another race of evil, more warlike mutant things. With whom they must inevitably do battle.
Curve the harpoon!
According to Variety, Universal has made a “splashy buy” of classic Melville novel Moby Dick (get it, splashy? Because it’s a whale?). And they’ve tapped the dickhead behind Wanted to direct. The rest of the article basically confirms all of your worst fears about people in Hollywood.
Studio paid high six figures to Adam Cooper and Bill Collage to pen the screenplay.
The writers revere Melville’s original text, but their graphic novel-style version will change the structure.
Please, go on. This doesn’t sound enough like unintentional self-parody yet.
“Our vision isn’t your grandfather’s ‘Moby Dick,’ ” Cooper said. [ahh, much better -Ed.] “This is an opportunity to take a timeless classic and capitalize on the advances in visual effects to tell what at its core is an action-adventure revenge story.”
Scott Stuber is producing with Jim Lemley and Cormac and Marianne Wibberley.
“We wanted to take a graphic novel sensibility to a classic narrative,” said Collage. They brought it to the Wibberlys, the “National Treasure” scribes who are branching into producing and will team with Stuber. The project then caught the fancy of [Timur] Bekmambetov and Lemley, who teamed with the helmer on “Wanted.”
A graphic novel is a novel that has pictures, right? So when they say they’re adding a “graphic novel sensibility” to a novel, they’re basically saying they’re gonna add pictures, right? Or does it mean they’re shifting the target audience to people too dumb to read books? Either way, I can’t wait to see their update of the bible, Jesus: F-ck Yeah. It’s not your grandpa’s bible, you faggot.
