Monster House poster

From I Watch Stuff: "An early teaser poster for the Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg produced CG cartoon Monster House has been released. As you can see, the poster carries a strong message of vulnerability, with the boy in the image completely exposed, surrounded on either side by jagged, threatening shapes. At the same time, both the menacing tree and ferocious house itself are left dark enough that, with just a stick of chalk, parents will able to label them as 'pedophiles' and 'too much candy' respectively, providing a strong political cartoon for their child that might hopefully keep them away from the two greatest dangers of childhood."

Clearing up those Halloween rumors

From Horror channel, "If you're a Halloween fan, there’s a good chance that you’ve been following the latest rumblings of a 9th movie very closely. More specifically, Horror director Dante Tomaselli’s bid for the director’s position and screenwriter Jake (When a Stranger Calls) Wade Wall’s claims that his Halloween prequel script, Halloween: The Missing Years, was being considered again.

Well, we did some digging and asked the right questions of the right people and have learned that neither of those will be happening. A director is being discussed at the moment, a big one from what both Wall and we have heard, but Wall’s script will not be the basis for the new film. His idea took place in the years before Michael escaped from Smith’s Grove Sanitarium, which would be a cool idea if it weren’t for the noticeable lack of Donald Pleasance...

We can now tell you that the new Halloween, which will likely be officially announced anyday now, will take place at Smith’s Grove Sanitarium but will not be a prequel. It will be full-blown Halloween movie, complete with the trademark mask and slow gait. Hopefully whoever this director is they’re in talks with has realized what made the last sequel suck so much (mainly Busta Rhymes) and will give us something new. We’ll give you more when we have it!"

Bryan Singer Leaving "Logan's Run"?

From Darkhorizons, "Bryan Singer is taking a break after wrapping up work on "Superman Returns" which means he may not direct the remake of "Logan's Run" after all reports Variety.

Warner Bros. and producer Joel Silver want to start lensing the sci-fi pic this fall, which would've meant Singer would end up shooting two tentpoles -- "Logan's" and a "Superman Returns" sequel -- back-to-back.

Even if he doesn't direct "Logan's Run," Singer is still likely to play some sort of role and perhaps take a producer's credit. "V for Vendetta" director James McTeigue is rumoured to be stepping up to the helm but at present its only speculation.

Singer himself is not expected to make an official decision either way about "Logan's Run" until "Superman Returns" bows in July. Assuming "Superman Returns" is a hit, Warners plans to start shooting the sequel in the later part of 2007 with Singer again at the helm."

FANTASTIC FOUR 2 is coming sooner than you think... consider this fair warning!

From AICN, "Hey folks, Harry here... Well those wacky minds at Fox are at it again - they've torpedoed the Futuristic Special Effect ridden Jay Roach comedy with Jim Carrey and Ben Stiller - which... might not have been the worst idea - but the odd thing is... they took USED GUYS release date of JUNE 15th, 2007 and gave it to FANTASTIC FOUR 2 which had the terrible date, which probably never would have worked for marketing... JULY 4TH, 2007. Oh well, God knows that getting a few extra weeks for post is idle time that all filmmakers hate... I'm sure everyone on the FANTASTIC FOUR 2 team are ecstatic to have a couple of weeks shaved off their schedule. Why the blink? Oh the other little film being released on JULY 4th, 2007... it's Michael Bay's multi-ton mechanized robotic bit of badassness... TRANSFORMERS... so maybe it was a good idea to get out of the way... The only way FANTASTIC FOUR 2 could blow that film away would be if it was a great FANTASTIC FOUR movie. Blink. Oh, I get it."

"Poseidon" Drowns At Box-Office

From Darkhorizons, "Last week's soft opening for "Mission: Impossible III" was just the start of bad news for exhibitors this Summer. This past weekend saw a 6% decline in the overall market, the first drop in eight weeks and the lowest total gross at the box-office in six months.

By far the biggest loser was Warner Brothers $160 million remake "Poseidon" which, not buoyed by many negative reviews, tanked with a weak $20.3 million opening in second place that already has it labeled by many as one of the year's biggest bombs. The studio will be putting its hopes on the international division making up some of that amount like they did with Wolfgang Petersen's last film "Troy" ($133 million domestic, $365 million overseas).

Also suffering, Lindsay Lohan comedy "Just My Luck" with $5.5 million - the lowest opening ever for a Lohan-starrer. Disney's delayed release of the international soccer flick "Goal!" proved a bad idea, the film's dismal $2 million take not even cracking the Top Ten. Terry Zwigoff's "Art School Confidential" expanded to nearly 1000 theatres but took in just $1.2 million.

MI3 managed to hold onto the top spot over "Poseidon", but dropped an average 49% from last week's debut. At present its on course for about a $160-170 million total gross which would be the worst of the series domestically. Overseas though the film continues doing strong business, especially in Asia, though some European territories like the UK are still a tad quieter than they should've been.

It was glum this weekend, even in limited release circles with rather low per-theatre takes for small films like "Wah-Wah", "Down in the Valley" and "The Proposition". Funnily enough the only film getting any traction is Robin Williams comedy "R.V." which in its third week dropped a mere 14% and has already tripled its $16.4 million opening weekend take."

A Breakdown of $200+ Million Budgets

From Darkhorizons, "One of the most difficult things to ween out of any filmmaker or studio is a film's budget. More often than not they generally underestimate the amount by a good 20-30%, and of course it almost always never includes development costs or marketing/publicity expenses - an amount which can be as high as the film itself.

This past weekend though, The Wall Street Journal surprised everyone with a breakdown of some Summer movie budgets for the newest club on the block, the $200+ million epic. Amongst their estimates:

"Spider-Man 3" - $250-$300 million
"Superman Returns" - $261 million
"King Kong" - $250 million
"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" - approaching $225 million
"X-Men: The Last Stand" - $210 million

How they got the numbers remains unsure but for the most part they do seem rather spot on with the word through the grapevine rather than the on the record statements.

Officially X3 cost $165m, Kong cost $207m, and Superman has drawn conflicting amounts ranging from $190m to $250m. In Superman's case its not sure whether that amount includes the $45-65 million in development costs accumulated over nearly ten years before Bryan Singer came onboard.

Also, Spider-Man 3 is still shooting so there's no telling how much higher it will go, whilst Pirates is being worked on to the last minute and may climb further. Pirates will be balanced though with the third film which will obviously re-use much of the elements from the second one and save on costs - by how much though is uncertain.

George Lucas Talks Indy 4

From Darkhorizons, 'Too often filmmakers go on about the size of their movies and, like most teenage boys, it always seems to be the 'bigger is better' school of thinking that rules the day.

I would've pegged George Lucas in that category, but talking with MTV this week he actually made some good sense when it came time to hyping up the fourth "Indiana Jones" flick, and in the process took a little dig at MI3's somewhat disappointing opening - "I think Tom Cruise proved that people are getting bored with that kind of stuff. What they want to see is something different. And 'Indiana Jones,' if nothing else, is always different".

Lucas once again confirmed the script is finally done and will "probably" start shooting next year - "We're working on it, we're working on it," Lucas said. "We've been working on it for 10 years. I think it'll be a great film, but it's completely different. It's still got a lot of action, and it's still very funny. I think it works like crazy".

As for the 3D versions of the "Star Wars" films, he's more hesitant on that front - "I don't know. Eventually. We're working on that technology, seeing if we can get that to work out".'

Full Trailer to Pan's Labyrinth

This looks like a cross between Silent Hill and the Dark Crystal:

Click here.

Watch the first 7 minutes of X3

Looks like fun, take a look.

Poseidon Adven.., er, I mean just Poseidon, no adventure

From Aintitcoolnews, "Hey, everyone. Capone in Chicago here, preparing to pile on to the mediocre reviews that have been heaped upon Poseidon.
I even decided to hold out and see it on the big, juicy IMAX screen to see if that made any improvements to the festivities.
My guess is that if you decide to partake in this early entry in the summer movie season, you're going to do a lot of eye rolling. Even though you'd be sitting in the dark with no audience, your eyes will have no other choice but to roll around in their sockets in disbelief. A lot of early reviews of Poseidon have picked on various aspect of the production. The pacing is too rapid. The big "rogue" wave that topples the cruise ship comes in at about the 20-minute mark, and the film is only 100 minutes long.
But a short running time and fast pace is not necessarily a deal breaker in my book. My problem was context. In a film like United 93, in which recent history is our context (and therefore we don't need a lot of background on the characters), this is not as much of an issue. But with Poseidon, our context is given to us only on a need-to-know basis.
Everything we learn about our characters has to do with the plot. There is very little extraneous information, and every single detail given to us about the handful of survivors climbing to the top of the upside-down ship is important. This is not a good thing. It takes moments when characters might be developed (in an effort for us to give a shit about them) and turns them into, well, a walking, breathing script points. For example, Kurt Russell rises to the top as the group leader. Why him? As we find out, he used to be the mayor of New York City (making him a natural leader) and a firefighter (making his ideas about rescue the most important). Josh Lucas plays a gambler.
Well, that's not very useful; we need someone who has a detailed knowledge of ships. Not a problem, now Lucas' character is also an ex-Navy man. Okay, wait, wait. We also need someone who knows something about how structural engineering. How about Richard Dreyfuss! He plays a gay architect, who begins the film ready to commit suicide over a broken love affair, but never really volunteers for any duties that might put his life at risk to save others.
Wait, aren't there any women on the sinking boat? You bet. We have Emmy Rossum, who doesn't really serve any purpose other than to look beautiful and be Russell's daughter. And there's Jacinda Barrett as Lucas' potential love interest. The key to surviving Poseidon (the ship not the movie) is to be indispensably useful or be related to or in love with someone who is. Anyone who doesn't fit that bill is toast. And if you're an asshole named Lucky Larry (Kevin Dillon), your odds aren't too good either. It doesn't take long to figure out this formula, and it makes the movie painfully predictable. That doesn't take away from some of the awe-inspiring wave sequence and the horrific disaster footage that follows, but it doesn't help either.
Director Wolfgang Petersen has proven himself a capable action director (In the Line of Fire, Air Force One, Troy), and he has a gift for constructing tales of men attempting to survive at sea (Das Boot, The Perfect Storm), but Poseidon is a major step back for his talents and a classic example of letting the spectacle overtake the importance of the story.
You may wonder why I haven't brought up the original 1972 disaster epic The Poseidon Adventure. It's because the two films have so little in common that it's hardly worth mentioning. Gene Hackman's role for the original is essentially split in half between Lucas and Russell, and once you've done that, why bother trying to compare?
As I mentioned before, I opted to check out this film on an IMAX screen (just to be different), which did actually heighten my enjoyment of the film only slightly. You just can't beat that crazy sound system and gi-normous screen.
Poseidon is not boring, but it makes no effort to be original or cinematically significant. Striving to be a summer popcorn flick doesn't give filmmakers an excuse to be lazy. If you aren't going to try and improve on the original film or advance the disaster genre, why bother making the film at all?
These are the thoughts that filled my mind walking out of Poseidon."

Shamalongadingdong's Lady in the Water trailer

Hey Octopunk, doesn't this trailer remind you of Marebito a little bit?

See trailer here.