Deadline reports that Kazakh Wanted director Timur Black Mambatov is set to take a break from filming ridiculous graphic novel fantasies to take on the lyrical Holocaust drama, The Last Witch Hunter.  I’m guessing it’s about a dyslexic Hungarian Jew who learns to play the banjo and learns the value of love.

Timur Bekmambetov (“Night Watch,” “Wanted”) is attached to produce the project with an option to direct. Based on a pitch by writer Cory Goodman (“Priest”), the film would center on a protagonist who “is one of the last remaining witch hunters, a breed that keeps the population of witches and warlocks in check. They are about to repopulate in a major way unless he can stop them.” [ThePlaylist]

Oh hell yeah, I’m all over this.  But only if it means Nic Cage and Van Helsing get to American Gladiators joust over a giant ball pit at Chuck E. Cheese.

(barely related, but awesome. call me, ladies.)

If you were dreaming of the day when you’d get to see more super assassins curving bullets into people’s skulls on orders from a magical mechanized loom manufactured in the pre-industrial age that could predict the future… uh… tough luck, puto.  Angelina Jolie pulled out of Wanted 2 and now the movie is off. Says NY Mag:

We’ve just heard the actress has pulled out of the planned Timur Bekmambetov-directed sequel at Universal, and the studio has pulled the plug rather than recast the film. As for Jolie, we hear she is now intent on starring in Warner Bros.’ Gravity, a space thriller to be directed by Children of Men’s Alfonso Cuarón from a script he wrote with his 28-year-old son, Jonás.
Like Wanted 2, Gravity had previously been set up at Universal, with Jolie set to star. But a few weeks ago, the studio put Gravity into turnaround, possibly because it’s such an artistically challenging project: Jolie would be alone on-screen for much of the movie, playing the sole surviving human member of a space mission, desperately trying to return home to Earth and her daughter.

SPOILER ALERT: Didn’t Angelina Jolie kill herself at the end of Wanted?  Seems like having her in the sequel would be more of an obstacle to the script than not.  But I’m more interested in this stranded-on-a-space mission project anyway.  I know when I’m the sole survivor of a space mission, I spend a lot of my time showering, and making sure my breasts are really, really clean.  In slow motion.  Just sayin.

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

(“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:

Read the rest of this entry »

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.