20th century fox Tagged Articles at Cinematical

A mere week after Sony canned Steven Soderbergh's Moneyball, another big-budget film may have bitten the dust. Fox is putting the breaks on Tony Scott's next project, Unstoppable, over budget concerns, and may can the project altogether.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film was set to begin shooting in fall, and Denzel Washington and Chris Pine were attached to play the leads. But none of the acting deals have been officially closed, and not even Scott is definitively signed to the project. Fox is growing more and more concerned about the cost of production on the thriller, which would be quite high -- after all, it centers around a runaway train loaded with toxic chemicals, and it's being stopped by the $20 million dollar Denzel Washington. While the film isn't in as much production peril as Moneyball, its budget is definitely a roadblock, and fat will have to be trimmed somewhere. Maybe they can make a smaller train, or just have it be an unstoppable semi-truck, or maybe some of the A-Listers can take a pay cut ... something like that.

This summer has seen a lot of big-budget films falter at the box office, so studio hesitations are understandable, and budget trimming has been a long time coming. Though I do love a good action flick, I'm neither here nor there about the plot of Unstoppable, but it would be a shame for Pine to lose his next big role, and kill his Captain Kirk Buzz. So let's hope they figure out how to cut some corners.

The Avengers' mighty writer Zak Penn gave a nifty little update on all things Marvel yesterday, and it completely slipped past my radar. Better late than never though, right?

SciFi Wire caught up with Penn right as he was on the verge of another Marvel meeting. With Iron Man 2 well underway, they're beginning to knit together the continuity and overlap the plotlines: "I'm taking a meeting next week with the Thor and Captain America people, and we are all going to get together, and I will see what is going to happen. I'll see where they are leaving the characters; it's pretty complicated. ... There's a board that is tracking what is happening. [We'll see] how this movie overlaps in that movie ... Marvel is autonomous now. It is night and day: Everyone has read every comic. They know how to make a cool movie." (Low wages or not, wouldn't you just love to work for Marvel?)

Every compliment Penn has for Marvel is a backhanded slap to his old parent studio, Fox. He revealed that he was frustrated while writing X-Men and X2 because he was dying to do a crossover, and bring in the Fantastic Four.
"They're doing Captain American and Thor first, and then Avengers is coming out," Penn said. "They want to see that they're all connected, not like the Fantastic Four can't come into the X-Men world, like I was told ... It is a world of difference [at Marvel]; it is a lot easier to do things like that, and they encourage it." Here I'll leave off so you can weep at the missed opportunities, and wish we lived in an Ultimate Universe where Marvel still owned their entire stable of heroes.

Poor Bryan Singer. He may have X-Men and X2 under his belt, but a lot of fans will never forgive him for selling out the mutants in favor of Superman ... and we won't go into the Superman thing again.

But Singer is sorry. Very sorry. In fact, he told Total Film that he made a terrible mistake and that he regretted not directing X3 "before I was watching it, during watching it, after watching it." (Join the club, Singer.) He was quick to amend his longing with praise for a little praise for Brett Ratner, though. "It's weird for me to watch it, because I'm so close to the universe. And also Brett is a good friend of mine. But, of course, I would love to return to that universe." How to return is a problem now that the series has devolved into spin-offs and prequels, and he's understandably reluctant to return through one of the avenues open to him: a Magneto origin story. "The only thing that concerns me about Magneto is that if the prequel were to follow the track I used in X-Men, which is Magneto's history in the concentration camp, then I've lived in that world. Apt Pupil, X-Men and now Valkyrie ... I've lived in that Nazi universe for quite a while. I just might need to take a little break before I do something like that."

The announcement of a Deadpool spinoff was pretty much a non-event. It was a guarantee the moment they cast Ryan Reynolds way back in February 2008. It may even have been predestined from the moment Reynolds was born. It's probably written on a scroll somewhere ... a scroll illustrated by Rob Liefeld, because that's how mysticism works.

The real issue is whether or not fans care after they trotted out a guy with arm-katanas and called him Deadpool. (Let's pretend it matters that we do or don't.) There was a lot of happy talk that Reynolds was "actively developing" the spin-off, but Hugh Jackman "actively developed" X-Men Origins: Wolverine, too.

So, take HitFix's interview with Reynolds for what it's worth. Drew McWeeny caught up with the man who assured fans he would really give us the Merc with a Mouth: "Well, I'm intimately involved with it. We're just trying to break a story right now and figure out who the villain is going to be and all that stuff. But, it's going to be just like the comic books. I'm gonna have a messed up face and you may see some flashbacks of Wade earlier in his life, but primarily what you see is what you get in the comics and that's the goal. And there is no better place to draw material from then the comics which are incredible." There's a fragment of hope there. Grab onto it, and dream of a movie where Wilson cracks jokes about spin-offs and franchises like he mocks the pages of his comic book.

It's a real non-surprise that mere days after the premiere of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, confirmed sequels and spin-offs have begun hitting the trades. (Of course, they had been basically a go-ahead since filming on Wolverine began, but that goes without saying.) Yesterday, Fox and Hugh Jackman confirmed they were actively developing a Wolverine sequel set in Japan, today the MTV Splash Page got the official word that they were going ahead with a Deadpool spin-off. (Variety and The Hollywood Reporter subsequently confirmed the story, but it did arise on MTV first.)

Of course, if you saw Wolverine -- spoiler warning ahead -- you are undoubtedly wondering how this could be since Deadpool was cleanly beheaded by our feral hero. But those of you who stuck around for the credits and got the Deadpool secret ending saw that he picked up his head, broke the fourth wall to shush you, and went on his merry way. I'm going to assume that a Deadpool spin-off would actually proceed from this point, and not delve into Wilson's background pre-Wolverine. That would also go along with comments Ryan Reynolds made claiming he wasn't playing Deadpool in Wolverine, but Wade Wilson and the creature who becomes Deadpool. Considering what they did to that "creature," fans may be really glad there's some wiggle room in that statement.

Personally, I think they could retcon that, have Wilson stuck rotting in some cell, and pass that Deadpool wannabe off as some kind of clone. Stupider things were done in that film, I could excuse that rewrite ... and as Reynolds has said he wants a film that sticks to the character continuity, there might be some hope for the Merc with a Mouth.

Fox's plans for X-Men: First Class became official back in November, assigning Josh Schwartz the enjoyable task of scripting an adventure for up-and-coming X-Men. At the time, it wasn't clear if the film would be based on the comic book series that follows a young Cyclops & Co, or if it would be a sequel to X3 that followed Kitty Pryde, Iceman, and Colossus.

Lauren Shuler-Donner gave the answer during big interview on Fox's Life After Film School show and to the surprise of no one, X-Men: First Class will be a prequel. "It is the first class of Xavier's school, way back when, so it's young Scott, young Jean, young Beast and that'll be really fun. I think [the plan] is to follow some of the characters into their own stories, and weave them back into the X-Men world. And hopefully First Class will become its own franchise and we can follow them as they grow up." Given that a young Cyclops appears in X-Men Origin: Wolverine, the plans are obviously already in motion.

Personally, I was hoping for a series that did follow the "new class," because then we could have a Wolverine and Kitty Pryde match-up. It seems a bit dull to have a series following characters you know survive to become X-Men -- but considering I happily read Wolverine: First Class my argument isn't exactly watertight. At least the transformation from Beast from a man to a furry blue cat would be interesting ... but really, shouldn't Fox be looking forward with their characters, not back?

[via Comics Continuum]

One of the ongoing sentiments surrounding the leak of X-Men Origins: Wolverine was "Serves Fox and Tom Rothman right! Payback's a bitch!" No matter how you feel about Fox and Rothman, the leak wasn't what you should wish on anyone. Wolverine represents a lot of effort by a lot of people who aren't responsible for the sins of the Fox father.

One person who's come out swinging in defense of Rothman is the man you might least expect: Wolverine's director, Gavin Hood. The Internet has been rife with rumors of riproaring fights, intervention by Richard Donner, and reshoots. In a video interview with THR's Risky Business, Hood shot back at the rumors:

"I am very fond of Tom [Rothman]. When we're in a room debating, he's a very forceful personality, I'm a fairly forceful personality ... we didn't always agree. We certainly never yelled at each other. Some of these fan sites have really been upsetting in that way. I have never had a stand-up argument with Tom Rothman. Never, ever, and nor has Tom with me, ever, and that is a fact. It's quite upsetting to see how these things sort of spiral. Did we discuss and debate, what stylistically I was going to bring to the movie, and his expectations, and my [expectations]? Of course, of course you do that, and I hope it makes the movie better. Nobody's trying to screw up the movie. I mean, there's this stupid notion out there that Tom Rothman wants to ruin the franchise. What? That's stupid ... This is a huge thing for the studio. Of course he doesn't want to ruin the franchise. Is he going to put a gun to his own head? He has a huge amount riding on this movie, as do I. There were disagreements, but I think they were handled with dignity and sincerity."