Bump, set and spike my crotch, am I right?
Opening Everywhere: Identity Thief, Side Effects
Opening In IMAX: Top Gun
FilmDrunk Suggests: Rex Reed says that by paying for a ticket to see Identity Thief, you’re supporting America’s problem with obesity. He also says that your mom is “built like a brontosaurus dick” and that she “lubes with mayonnaise”. His words, not mine. So go see Channing Tatum in Side Effects.
You may have forgotten about it by now, but as of this time last year, producers Jerry Bruckheimer, David Ellison, and Paramount were pretty hot and heavy on the idea of a sequel to Top Gun, centered around drone pilots in Nevada (ROBOT MURDER PLANES!). What they couldn’t have predicted, however, was their director, Tony Scott, throwing himself off a bridge in August. Now, according to the NY Times, the sequel has “fallen apart.” But they do still have a 3D conversion of the original that they’d originally been working on as a way to promote the sequel, and while Top Gun 2 may have died with Tony Scott, Top Gun 3D is an unkillable monster that, once awakened, must feed on the money of the living.
Now that the sequel has fallen apart, Paramount and its partners are left with a 3-D film that might be perceived by moviegoers as a tribute to a director whose death remains a mystery to many friends and associates. It might also become a final box-office triumph — but only if the studio can reach the audience without seeming insensitive or exploitative.
Oh, you mean like those totally non-exploitative Michael Jackson or Whitney Houston movies? Since when has the movie business cared about being insensitive? Get the Jurassic Park people to build an animatronic Tony Scott chomping cigars in the theater lobby, people will love it. (Myself included, Robo-Scott sounds awesome).
“Titanic” in its 3-D format had about $342 million in ticket sales around the world, with a conversion cost of only about $18 million.
The response was driven partly by a powerful reception in China, where the film opened to $67 million in first-weekend business from a pool of 3-D capable screens that is still growing.
“Top Gun” — which had about $354 million in worldwide ticket sales, split evenly between domestic and international — seemed a natural candidate for conversion, especially with the potential for a sequel.
Mr. Scott contributed and responded enthusiastically to the conversion in the weeks before his death, according to people who were briefed on the project.
People briefed on the studio’s deliberations said it was considering a release in February, perhaps beginning with a one-week exclusive showing on domestic Imax screens. [NYTimes]
The complicating factor here is that the biggest markets for 3D conversions are China and Russia, but whereas Titanic was a story about timeless love on a sinking oceanliner, Top Gun is a homo-erotic brodown about shooting down Commies. So I guess the question is, do you change the Russians to North Koreans a la Red Dawn, or to aliens a la Battleship? Only time will tell.
You see, this is why I always get angry when people say the reason they think Reagan was so awesome was because he ended the Cold War. What was so great about ending the Cold War? The Cold War was the best thing that ever happened to us. Back then the bad guys had planes.
Yes, it seems Jerry Bruckheimer and David Ellison (brother of Megan, son of Oracle founder Larry) are serious about making Top Gun 2. They’ve hired writers Zack Stentz and Ashley Miller to work on the script (a boy named Ashley! Can you imagine?). Stentz and Miller previously wrote a draft of X-Men: First Class that was re-written by Jane Goldman (Kick-Ass), and wrote Thor with Don Payne (but weren’t asked back for the sequel). It’s hard to say what Stentz and Miller’s contribution will be, but with Bruckheimer producing it’s safe to say that it’s going to suck.
The Variety report doesn’t offer any details on plot, but last year Tony Scott offered some possible details in an interview with Hitfix. Speaking of Tony Scott, Unstoppable is on cable right now, and man, if you ever wanted to watch two guys try and fail to stop an easily-stoppable train for two hours, I highly recommend it.
“I’m not waiting for a script. I’m going to do my homework. I’m going down to I think it’s Fallon, Nevada, down near New Mexico and it’s a whole different world now,” Scott says. “These computer geeks — these kids play war games in a trailer in Fallon, Nevada and if we ever went to war or were in the Middle East or the Far East or wherever it is, these guys can actually fly drones. They are unmanned aircraft. They operate them and then they party all night.”
Ooh, I hope it’s still about nerds playing on computers. That sounds super glamorous.
HOT FLIGHT CONSULTANT: “Lieutenant, I just really want to hear about the Mig sometime.” (*winking sexily*)
MAVERICK: “Well, why don’t you come by some time and we’ll… discuss.”
CUT TO: Two hours later, at Maverick’s apartment
Mav offers her bong load, they pass out playing xBox.
With 1000 douchey frat guys dressing like Maverick and Ice Man every Halloween for the past 10 years (many of them good friends of mine), it was only a matter of time before one of them would go to work for a studio and bring back Top Gun. Which is exactly what Vulture is reporting, saying Paramount has put out offers to Jerry Bruckheimer and Tony Scott, and hoping Chris McQuarrie (Usual Suspects, Valkyrie, The Tourist) will write the script, with a smaller role for Tom Cruise. It would have to be a different kind of script if set in the present, since the old Top Gun School in Miramar, outside San Diego, on which the original was based, has moved to Fallon, Nevada, which will really deflate a guy’s beach volleyball.
YOU CAN RIDE MY TAIL ANY TIME, VULTURE:
At a junket for Disney’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Bruckheimer let slip that he had been “recently approached again to start talking about [a sequel]” but noted that “the aviation community has completely changed since we made the movie a long time ago.” Since 1986, the TOPGUN syllabus has been changed so the focus is far less on the spectacular and dramatic air-to-air dogfights that defined Top Gun and far more about teaching U.S. pilots to drop very large bombs on very small ground targets.
But we’re told by a source close to the project that McQuarrie — who is friendly with Cruise — has found a way to incorporate Maverick, and what’s more, we hear that Cruise has agreed to take a smaller role in the film, provided it’s not too “obvious” a part.
We’re told that a big part of the reason [for a sequel] is the influence of David Ellison, the 27-year-old son of Oracle Corp. founder — and world’s sixth-richest man — Larry Ellison. Despite being only 3 years old when Top Gun first strafed theaters, Ellison clearly became a big fan of the film on VHS, and went on to become both an aerobatic pilot and instrument-rated commercial pilot before attending USC’s film school and then launching his own production company, Skydance. His first production was the 2006 World War I drama Flyboys, in which he also starred.
It would be an interesting move for Bruckheimer, who’s been doing nothing but horrendous piles of farts for like 15 years now. If it’s hard to reconcile today’s Bruckheimer with the guy listed as a producer on Top Gun, Crimson Tide, Days of Thunder, and The Rock, that’s because 99% of the movies Jerry Bruckheimer produced that weren’t terrible were with his old partner, Don Simpson, who died of a drug overdose in 1996. Vulture wonders if this possible Paramount project is Bruckheimer’s way of testing the waters away from Disney, where he’s produced most of his terrible movies since 2000.
(*starts humming “Take My Breath Away“*) (…as long as there are no gays in there.)
Here’s Taylor Lautner on the Pittsburgh set of Abduction (Taylor Lautner goes on a hunt for his true identity after seeing his face on a missing person’s website — directed by John Singleton). It’s nice to see that our collective conception of what “Hollywood cool guy” is supposed to look like has evolved so much in 25 years. Dude, Marlon Brando was alive, thin, and attractive the last time this was cool. We’re going to be farming Alpacas on Jupiter and Will Smith’s great great great grandson is still going to be riding around on a motorcycle in Aviator shades thinking he’s hot sh*t.
“A motorcycle? Ooh, he’s such a bad boy,” people will say to their robot butlers while having sex with their cell phone.
[via DailyMail]
