Thompson on Hollywood

Cameron To Direct Avatar 2 & 3; Who Will Direct Cleopatra?

James Cameron has made up his mind. He can't get Avatar out of his head. And he's doing the right thing, shooting two sequels to Avatar (possibly back to back), because he's going to give audiences more of what they want. (Reminder: Avatar grossed $ $2.8 billion worldwide, bolstered by premium 3-D prices, and tops Blu-ray sales records.) And he'll plow some of the huge R & D that went into the cost of Avatar back into the sequels (presumably making them less expensive--although you know he'll want to up the VFX ante). And he will remind us of what top-of-the-line 3-D can be. Immersive. Engrossing. Welcoming us into another world, in this case, Pandora. Don't you want to go back there? Holiday 2014 and 2015 seem very far away. But now Cameron knows what he is going to do next.

By Anne Thompson
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October 27, 2010 4:49 AM
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Peter Morgan Talks Clint Eastwood's Hereafter, James Bond, Freddy Mercury, 360, and Tony Blair

Screenwriter Peter Morgan is unusual: a Brit based in Vienna, he's a prolific writer of self-generated screenplays, and not so often a writer-for-hire. (He's been nominated for two Oscars, for The Queen, an original, and Frost/Nixon, adapted from his play.) Hereafter is an unusual original, even for him, written in a "disgracefully short period," he says. After Steven Spielberg flirted with it, Clint Eastwood scooped it up and shot it without making any changes. Morgan still isn't sure how he feels about it. Would he have liked to work on it more, or is the movie as good as it is because it's idiosyncratic, not polished, and emotionally raw? (The movie opened well this weekend; Metacritic rates it at 56.) The script weaves together three stories about people trying to reach the hereafter--or in the case of the character played by Matt Damon, avoiding it.

By Anne Thompson
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October 24, 2010 11:48 AM
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Spielberg Takes On Robopocalypse

Steven Spielberg is committing to direct Daniel H. Wilson's futuristic novel Robopocalypse for DreamWorks. Spielberg plans to begin principal photography in January 2012 for release by Disney’s Touchstone in 2013. DreamWorks acquired the unpublished manuscript in November 2009; Drew Goddard adapted the dystopian story about a robot rebellion against humans. Doubleday plans to publish the novel in June 2011. Spielberg's next two films, War Horse (Touchstone) and The Adventures of Tintin (Sony/Paramount) are both coming out in December.

By Anne Thompson
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October 22, 2010 6:16 AM
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Oscar Watch: Reeves Talks Let Me In--Not an Oscar Contender

Let Me In is one of those strange tweener movies that is neither fish nor fowl. It was a fall festival hit, but movie audiences like their movies to fit into neat and tidy categories, and this one defiantly refuses to do that. Here's why.

By Anne Thompson
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October 13, 2010 10:32 AM
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DreamWorks and Disney Update Release Schedule: Spielberg's War Horse Joins Tintin for Holiday 2011

DreamWorks and Disney have finalized release dates for five films on their slate. After a confab in London last week with Disney's international and domestic marketing managers and DreamWorks brass--who showed footage from five films including Steven Spielberg's World War I epic War Horse, which is currently filming in England--Disney moved the DreamWorks slate onto new dates. (DreamWorks' films go out through Disney's Touchstone label.)

By Anne Thompson
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October 13, 2010 5:51 AM
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Ranking Stanley Kubrick: Top Ten Directors, Top Twenty Flickchart Movies

My most recent online time-waster (along with Flickchart) is Formspring, which asks you questions and posts your answers on various social media. For example, when asked to name my top ten directors of all time, I came up with this list:

By Anne Thompson
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August 12, 2010 4:02 AM
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Super Hero Glut: Will Marvel and DC Projects Get Repetitive?

There are many many comics movies in our future. How many of them will moviegoers be able to ingest? How many will turn out to be any good? Will fatigue set in, as Matthew Vaughn, the director of X-Men: First Class, predicts?

By Anne Thompson
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August 10, 2010 4:54 AM
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Emmy Noms Winners: The Pacific, Glee, Mad Men; Snubs for Treme and Leno

The highlights of Thursday morning's nominations for the 62nd annual primetime Emmy Awards are:

By Anne Thompson
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July 8, 2010 4:04 AM
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Same-Sex Kissing, Jamie Bell for Spider-Man? Kutcher's Katalyst, Swank Gets Toothy for Carpenter

-Rumors are swarming that Billy Elliot's Jamie Bell is Sony's choice for Marc Webb's Spider-Man reboot. The young Brit is already the face of Tintin in Sony's Spielberg directed/Jackson produced CGI The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, which comes out December 2011. Could Bell really be both Tintin and Spider-Man? Sony PR refuses to comment on such casting speculation.

By Sophia Savage
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June 7, 2010 8:00 AM
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First Universal Tour of Rebuilt New York Street; Spielberg Talks

On the morning of June 1, 2008, Steven Spielberg was sound asleep when the phone rang with horrible news: "The lot is burning down again." Spielberg jumped out of bed and drove 28 minutes to Universal City, waving his ID at roadblocks until he got to scene of the fire. "It was a wall of flame," he recalls. "At the height of the fire it was like watching special effects--the only problem was that it wasn't."