Dreamworks Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I would love to see Hugh Jackman in a boxing movie. It seems like he's long past due for one given his physical prowess, and he'd be a good fit for a Cinderella Man sort of tale. Unfortunately, he's decided to pursue the sport through robots and Shawn Levy, as Variety reports that he's in line for Real Steel.

Based on a story by Richard Matheson, Real Steel is probably best described as Rocky meets Wall-E and The Iron Giant. Jackman plays a professional boxer who has to hang up the gloves, and rearranges his life when human boxers are replaced by 2000 pound robots. Our obsolete fighter tries to go with the flow, and becomes a Robot Boxing promoter, but success constantly eludes him because all he can afford are crappy robot parts. Then one day, he discovers a discarded robot who has a distinct gift for winning. Wouldn't you know it, the ex-fighter also discovers he's the father of a 13 year old son, and they bond as their scrappy robot fights his way to the championship.

There's not going to be a lot of surprises with Real Steel (they'll be misfits who find each other, and build a family), and Levy's track record isn't particularly promising. Nor is Hollywood particularly good at adapting Matheson's work to the big screen. But with Steven Spielberg as executive producer (a job which reunites him distantly with Matheson), there might be some hope. Not much, but some. I really wish Jackman would take some time and pick another film like The Prestige or The Fountain, and steer clear of the goofy popcorn concepts.

In honor of this week's release of DreamWork's Monsters vs Aliens on both DVD and Blu-ray, we measly humans here at Cinematical have decided to wade through the hordes of monsters and or aliens in kid friendly films to find the cream of the closet-dwelling, slime-dripping, child-eating, smile-inducing crop of inhuman lovables. In doing so it has occurred to me just how hard it is for a film to make an iconic character for children.

Sure, it's easy to make something marketable for kids, but to make monstrous and unique characters for children to cherish into adulthood, not unlike the mutated heroes of MvA, takes a lot of talent.

E.T.
I have no reason to lie to you. I'm a 24-year-old man and E.T. still scares me. He has ever since I was a wee little lad. I can't pinpoint the moment that instilled such a ridiculous fear of everyone's favorite horticulturist from outer space, but I think it's a combination of two scenes. The first being when ET tries to phone home and inadvertently causes hurricane winds, flying saw blades, and me in the fetal position. Then we have the seemingly innocent visitor gray, shriveled and dying in the creek bed, looking like the specter of death to a frightened child like me.

My kindertrauma aside, I can't help but respect the terrifying little dude. He holds a special little place in my heart, even if it's in a deep, dark recess that makes me long for my blanky,

Famed director Steven Spielberg has made lots of different kinds of movies over the years. He's dabbled in sci-fi, comedy, period pieces, kid's flicks -- you name it, he's made it. But one genre he's never touched is maybe the hardest of them all: the musical. Well, that's about to change, because Variety reports the director is working with Showtime to develop a behind the scenes series about a musical Broadway show. Spielberg has reportedly been developing the series for years now, and has now handpicked his team for a deal with Showtime.

The series is still in development, but what is known is that the show will center on "a behind-the-scenes look at every aspect of launching a tuner, from penning the songs to recruiting investors." There are also plans to mount an actual Broadway show once the season finishes on Showtime.

According to Variety, Spielberg is counting on the series having the legs to go for at least a few seasons and center on different productions each season. Personally, I love pulling back the curtain on anything to do with the world of entertainment, and there is no shortage of stories to choose from considering the entertainment business is packed with some wild characters. So what do you think? I know I'm sold on the idea -- how about you?

After the jump: some of my favorite behind-the-scenes musicals...

I really believe this is the best geek news we'll have all month. Not only is Robert Downey Jr. officially on board Cowboys & Aliens, The Hollywood Reporter announced that he's bringing Jon Favreau along for the ride. Considering the original screenplay was penned by Iron Man screenwriters Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, it's literally a dream team come true.

As if it wasn't touched by the movie gods enough, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, they-who-can-write-no-failures, are penning the script, and producer Damon Lindelof came aboard last fall. There's no way this can fail. Even if the movie was one big trick, and simply 2 hours of Robert Downey Jr. in a cowboy hat reading a phone book, it would succeed. We would just call it arthouse, and praise them all for subverting our expectations!

But there's no danger of arthouse here, Cowboys & Aliens really does promise to be pure fun with this team. The story takes place in 1880s Arizona, where a war is raging between settlers and Native Americans. Their war is interrupted by the arrival of a UFO, which promptly unleashes hell onto the plains of Silver City. The Native Americans and settlers must unite to fight a larger threat, and are led to battle by Zeke Jackson (Downey), a gunslinger and former member of the Union Army. You can read the entire graphic novel online, which should keep you satisfied until Cowboys & Aliens hits theaters in the summer of 2011.

Even Michael Bay needs a break from explosions, robots, and Megan Fox. As Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was demolishing the box office, DreamWorks and Bay bought up the rights to James Frey's I Am Number 4. Variety now reports that they've secured the rights, and have now set Alfred Gough and Miles Millar to work on penning the script. Bay is attached as producer, but is still dancing around the idea of directing the film for DreamWorks.

I Am Number 4 is the first book in a series of six. It's centered around a group of nine aliens who flee their destroyed planet, and crash on Earth. They disguise themselves as teenagers (of course -- why would you be a supermodel or a sports star when you could go back to high school?), and Number 4 realizes they are still being hunted by those who destroyed their homeworld. There's some dashes of the television show Roswell there, and probably a few dozen other sci-fi teen tales.

The teen-out-of-water story of Number 4 is familiar territory for Millar and Gough, who are probably best known for their stint on Smallville, though they also had a hand in Spider-Man 2. What I find the most remarkable about is the continued success of Frey. Who says lying about your memoirs will damage your writing career and option prospects? This is America, baby!

Steven Spielberg is going to need a bigger boat -- a much, much bigger boat. He's leaving this shore, sailing away to 17th century Jamaica for one last adventure with the late Michael Crichton. USA Today reports that DreamWorks has bought the rights to Crichton's posthumous novel, Pirate Latitudes, and has hired screenwriter David Koepp to develop it into a film. Spielberg is producing, but plans on directing, though nothing has been scheduled until the script is completed.

While it's a bittersweet reunion, it's one that's sheer luck and coincidence according to DreamWorks' co-chair and CEO Stacey Snider. "Anything that Michael wrote, Steven would be keenly interested to read. But without Michael knowing it, or even me knowing it, it turns out Steven always wanted to direct his own pirate film." Not surprisingly, Spielberg already is coolly confident in Pirate Latitudes. "Michael wrote a real page-turner that already seems suited for the big screen. Michael and I have had almost two decades of solid collaborations. Whenever I made a film from a Michael Crichton book or screenplay, I knew I was in good hands. Michael felt the same, and we like to think he still does."

Pirate Latitudes doesn't hit store shelves until November 24, so plot details are relatively scarce. But this isn't going to be a tale of undead pirates and squid-faced Davey Jones like Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean. Latitudes is a semi-historical tale of piracy that takes place in 1665. Its star is the dashing Captain Edward Hunter, who infiltrates the notorious Port Royal, and plans to raid a Spanish galleon loaded with treasure. Cue the cannons and swashbuckling, though it sounds as though Spielberg plans to load it up with lots of grimy, historical details.

The pre-production plate of Steven Spielberg grows ever larger, and as we wait for him to tackle that long delayed Abraham Lincoln biopic, he's cracking a fifth Indiana Jones,
looking for 39 Clues, pondering a Martin Luther King Jr. biopic, and annoying people with his Oldboy remake. Now he's lined up yet another possible directing gig as Variety reports that he might just go good and undercover with Matt Helm.

Now, you can't get any classier than Matt Helm. He's the leading man of Donald Hamilton's novels, and starred in 27 books of sheer badassery. A U.S. counter-agent, Helm didn't bother too much with the spying and espionage stuff, but just put himself into the right situations to kill people. He's grim and ruthless, with no time for love, and gives Bond and Bourne a run for their money. He's ripe for cinematic reinvention too, as Helm came to the big screen as a goofy, campy, wisecracking spy played by Dean Martin.

Tales of a Viewmaster movie have been floating around for a few days now, and I thought it was just the fevered imagination of Twitter. But no. Now it's in The Hollywood Reporter. DreamWorks is talking to Mattel to acquire the rights to the toy, and has asked Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci "to do some Transformers-style magic on it."

The reason I thought it was a Twitter joke is that Brad Caleb Kane announced via 140 characters that he was penning the script. "It'll be like the old '80s Amblin movies: Goonies, Young Sherlock ... in that vein." The Tweet was subsequently deleted, though the plan is still in the works. DreamWorks really wants to make a family friendly film out of the ViewMaster, and is trying to get everything signed and official. Let's stress that -- it's not signed, and Kurtzman and Orci seem to be the deciding factor. One can hope that if they declare it to be ridiculous, DreamWorks will come to its senses and realize you cannot make a film out of an inanimate object. I mean hey, I loved the ViewMaster too, and I felt like I was transported into a magic film cell world, but it doesn't mean it can actually be a movie.

Besides, the ViewMaster already tried to make it onscreen in the 1980s, and failed. Go below the jump and remind the toy it's just not ready to be a feature after this performance.