AlbertHughes Tagged Articles at Cinematical

The Book of Eli had me halfway when they cast Gary Oldman -- but they got a guaranteed ticket sale from me when they cast Ray Stevenson. I'm disappointed that he's playing another badass assassin type, but hey, at least I'll believe he could kick Denzel Washington's ass.

The plot description has been incredibly dry thus far -- a man named Eli protects a book that may be humanity's salvation, Oldman is the despotic mayor of a struggling town, Mila Kunis is an assassin sent to kill Eli, but who ends up joining him. But we have a little more, courtesy of its newest cast member. Stevenson sat down with Reelz Channel, and shed a little more light on the bleak future this film will inhabit. "The world in which it is set is completely uncompromising. The most precious commodity is actually water, because virtually all of the water is poison, toxic -- whether it's due to eruptions from the earth or the poisons in the sky. These very basic things are what drives human nature down to almost animalistic qualities. But what still separates us from the animals?"

Hmmm. Shades of Waterworld, a threat that looms over every post-apocalyptic film not titled The Road. There's never an in between when it comes to this genre ... you either end up with something cool and Max Maxish, or you end up with The Postman. Let's keep hoping for the best, though. The film begins shooting in February, and has a release date of January 15, 2010.

After blowing up baddies in this week's surprisingly entertaining Punisher: War Zone, it looks like Ray Stevenson is now taking aim at Denzel Washington's protagonist in The Book of Eli. In the near future, Washington's on a mission to deliver a book that may hold the key to nothing less than Our Salvation (not to mention so very many late fees), with Mila Kunis at his side and Gary Oldman on his tail, and now -- according to Variety -- Stevenson (HBO's "Rome") has this makeshift messiah in his sights.

The post-apocalyptic thriller marks the return of the Hughes Brothers behind the camera for the first time since 2001's From Hell, and between them and a cast of this talent (yes, that includes Kunis, stop snickering), they might manage to make this somewhat less derivative than it already sounds, to echo Monika's sentiments.

Production starts in early 2009 for a release date in early 2010.

A double Academy Award winner is going back to the future. Denzel Washington will star in the post-apocalyptic drama Book of Eli, to be directed by Albert and Allen Hughes, according to Variety. He will play "a lone hero in a not-too-distant apocalyptic future who must fight across America to bring society the knowledge that could be the key to its redemption." Sounds like the best of all possible worlds, doesn't it? Denzel as an intellectual action hero of the future.

Denzel has been resolutely dealing with modern-day problems for the last decade, so maybe he felt like a change of pace. As far as I can tell, the only time that Denzel's tipped his toe into future waters was back in 1995 with Brett Leonard's Virtuosity. In that movie, set just four years into the future, he faced off against a virtual reality Russell Crowe. How far into the future will Book of Eli be set? Who gets the blame for the apocalypse? Will this be a tale of weary, wary survivors or vengeful warriors? And what's in that book, anyway?

Amazingly, this will be the first feature from The Hughes Brothers since 2001's graphic novel adapatation From Hell. They'll be working from a script originally written by Gary Whitta (the two new Akira films) and re-written by Anthony Peckham (Clint Eastwood's upcoming The Human Factor and Sherlock Holmes for Warner Bros). Joel Silver is on board as one of the producers. Filming begins in January.

It's been five long years since Albert and Allen Hughes gave us Hell -- From Hell that is -- and though they have been busy with television projects, it is time they got back to the big screen. Well, their next project has now been confirmed as the long-awaited adaptation of the TV-series Kung Fu. For those unfamiliar with the show (I admit, I've never seen one episode), it featured David Carradine as a Shaolin monk who is forced to flee China and ends up in the American wild west.

A script was written for the movie version by Howard Friedlander and Ed Spielman, both of whom worked on the show, but it will be rewritten by Cory Goodman, who also wrote the upcoming Andrew Douglas film Priest. There is no word on casting yet, though Carradine will have to be involved somehow, but Warner Bros. is planning for a 2008 release to coincide, and hopefully garner a promotional tie-in with, the Beijing Olympics.

Considering The Hughes Brothers had been trying to get this job for past two years, they hopefully know what to do with it. Though we don't know who the other filmmakers were who wanted the gigs, I have to wonder if Quentin Tarantino was interested, at least as a writer or producer. After all, he has paid homage to the series through dialogue (Pulp Fiction) and casting (Kill Bill's title character is played by Carradine).

The tie-in part of the story makes me wonder if Hollywood will be putting together any other martial arts films around the same time. We still haven't heard the full stories on the Bruce Lee biopic Martha wrote about last summer, or the mysterious Rob Cohen-directed, Bruce Lee-starring film that Erik mentioned last month. And maybe Kung Fu Hustle 2 is on hold for this very same reason. Okay, I doubt it. The Olympics and cinema may already be linked enough by the promotional videos being shot by Oliver Stone, Giuseppe Tornatore and Majid Majidi.

Any fans of the show care to chime in with your opinion?