Warren Ellis Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Cinematical has just received the following title track for Nick Cave and Warren Ellis' original and haunting film score for The Road. It's simple and chilling -- just as any accompaniment to a post-apocalyptic world should be -- full of violin and piano tunes, some wind instruments and sound loops. The soundtrack is being released digitally today over at Amazon, with further digital retailers tomorrow and a CD release to follow on January 12, 2010.

We first alerted you to the score back in March, and then to the duo's Soundtrack Collection in September. As you might have gathered, some of us are big Cave & Ellis fans. And rightly so. They provided an award-winning score for John Hillcoat's earlier feature The Proposition (which Cave also wrote), and also scored The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. And of course, that's besides their work in Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, which has memorable cinematic ties to Wings of Desire (before Ellis teamed up with Cave).

Too often these days it's easy to get pulled out of movies due to overly imposing and grandoise film scores desperately trying to yank at emotions, rather than just lightly coaxing the right feel for a particular scene, and Cave and Ellis definitely know how to let simplicity reign. Check out the clip and track list after the jump and grab it over here at Amazon.

When Warren Ellis' Red was first optioned, I wasn't particularly excited. As readers have pointed out, Ellis has many books that would be more exciting to see on the big screen. The initial casting of Bruce Willis and Morgan Freeman didn't inspire a lot of excitement, either. (I love both, but Willis as an ex-assassin? Hardly inspired.) But as Robert Schwentke has filled out his cast, things have gotten a lot more interesting. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Mary-Louise Parker and John C. Reilly are in talks to join Red alongside Freeman, Willis, and Helen Mirren.

Reilly would play a retired CIA agent who is paranoid that everyone is out to kill him. Willis' predicament will naturally prove him right, and it's the frantic, nervous role that Reilly specializes in. Again, it's not the most inspired casting, but it's exciting to see Reilly finally land a comic book role. I like to see actors drawn into this world, even if it is in a more "standard" storyline.

Parker will play Willis' love interest, an ordinary employee of the federal pension office who becomes embroiled in his struggle to stay alive. As if relationships aren't hard enough, it's "Honey! My former employers are trying to kill me! Get your passport, we have to hide in Bruges." She is a talented actress, so I sincerely hope she gets a little more to do than run around and be frightened. Perhaps she can be trained in the arts of action by Mirren's character.

It's a really good cast so far, and there's undoubtedly more to come as Willis' opponents are lined up. This could be something a little more in the mold of A History of Violence, which would be a refreshing change from the flashy adaptation attempts like Wanted. Red is officially on my radar.

I have a major girl crush on Helen Mirren. I want to be her, and I simultaneously want her to take me under her wing, and turn me posh. Now she's set to make me geek out even more, because Screen Daily and The Hollywood Reporter report that she's just signed on to Red, Summit Entertainment's adaptation of Warren Ellis' bloody miniseries. Robert Schwentke is set to direct.

Mirren joins Bruce Willis and Morgan Freeman in this cheerful tale of assassins. Willis plays black ops CIA Agent Paul Moses, who is enjoying the peace and quiet of retirement. But when there's a change of guard at the CIA, it's decided that Moses is too much of a liability. While Ellis' book pitted Moses against a single assassin, the movie will put Moses against a host of younger and more technologically adept opponents. It'll be the old school versus the new school -- and we all know who will probably win. I believe Freeman is playing the new CIA boss who decides Moses has seen and done too much to be anything but a liability, but nothing has been specified.

In her first comic book adaptation, Mirren will be playing an old associate of Willis, who has her own lethal set of skills. (Shades of Taken!) Don't be surprised if they're sexy skills. But you know what? It's Helen Mirren. If she wants to use her looks in order to dispatch a dictator or arms dealer, she can. Filming is set to kick off in January, and I count the days until I can see Mirren actually kick some ass onscreen.

Comics legend Warren Ellis is all over Hollywood these days. He has Red in development at Summit, Gravel was just recently optioned by the top-notch crew at Legendary Pictures, and Ocean is in the works with Hollywood Gang, for whom Ellis is also penning a King Arthur script. Now Variety reports that Ellis' miniseries Black Summer has been optioned by the fledgling banner Vigilante Entertainment. Ryne Pearson is set to adapt it for the big screen.

Black Summer kicked off in 2007, and walks some familiar Watchmen ground as it examines the darker implications of vigilante heroes. It centers around a superhero team called the Seven Guns, a group of ordinary humans who have willingly undergone severe surgery to become superhuman vigilantes. They take to the streets of a West Coast city to battle a corrupt city government, its equally sleazy police force, and greedy private security forces. But by the time we meet them, those days are gone. But one member, John Horus, decides to go after the man he feels is committing the biggest illegal act of all -- the President of the United States. His violent decision puts the rest of the Guns in danger, In typical Ellis fashion, the blood begins spraying and the bodies drop, and everything becomes very politically murky. If you'd like to see some previews or check out some interviews with Ellis, it's all been neatly collected at Avatar Press' site.

This project is in pre-pre production right now, so it's hard to get too excited as to how (or if!) it will end up on the big screen. But it's great to see more and more of Ellis' work being picked up for adaptations. Let's hope it meets better fate than most of Alan Moore's work.

I like the cut of Legendary Pictures' jib. A company that produces Batman Begins, 300, The Dark Knight and Watchmen is one to salute, and their upcoming slate is nothing less than exciting. (Inception, Sucker Punch, Jonah Hex, Clash of the Titans, and Sam Raimi's Warcraft are just a few films they've got cooking for 2010 and beyond.) So when they option a title, I feel like you have to sit up and take notice because it's landed in pretty good hands. Throw in a Warren Ellis title and you might just have The Next Big Thing. Variety reports that just such a deal has gone down, as Legendary Pictures has optioned Warren Ellis' Gravel.

William Gravel is the star of an ongoing series published by Avatar Press (picture James Bond with a few more tricks up his sleeve). By day, he's an SAS sergeant-major, and by night he's a combat magician with mercenary tendencies. He combines traditional weaponry with spells and parchments. Like Daniel Craig's Bond, he's a grim guy with little time for conversation or wisecracks. Ellis describes him as "a man with no ambition beyond closing time at the pub [and] his tolerance for human life is minimal." He battles everything from zombies to massive reptile beasts, always looking to profit and get what's his. If you like your action with a touch of arcane wizardry, you'll like these books.

Ellis is penning the initial draft of the screenplay and will be executive producer on the project. No director is attached, but I'm keen to see this one take shape. I'd like to see a trend towards supernatural comic adaptations, as it would certainly help balance out the vampires.

The best movie scores don't just add extra depth to a movie, but they take on lives on their own; they sneak into your subconscious so that the next time you hear Nino Rota you feel like downing some espressos and dancing in the Trevi Fountain.

Post-punk/death rocker turned mustachioed Southern Gothic philosopher Nick Cave and his fellow Bad Seed bandmate Warren Ellis* have become standout film composers in the past few years, beginning with their collaboration on The Proposition, a Western from the land Down Under directed by The Road's John Hillcoat and written by Nick Cave. They also created the soundscape for the sadly underseen and somewhat overlong The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Their most recent collaboration on the score for The Road is worthy of an Oscar nomination -- subtle, appropriately dark but not overbearing, and elegant.

However, the two have also written scores for other, lesser-known movies like the documentary The Girls of Phnom Penh, about young Cambodian sex workers, and The English Surgeon, a doc about a brain doc who regularly travels to the Ukraine to perform surgery on the poor, sick, and often desperate.

White Lunar is an upcoming 2-disc compilation of these scores, along with a few extra bits from the vaults:

You know, I think Morgan Freeman likes playing in the comic book world. After turns in Wanted, Batman Begins, and The Dark Knight, Freeman is currently in talks to join another DC production. According to Variety, he's in talks to costar with Bruce Willis in Red, an adaptation of Warren Ellis' 3-book series.

Ellis' series centers on a former black-ops CIA agent named Moses. He's retired and enjoying the quiet life, and the CIA is happy to let him do so, until a new director is hired, and decides to pull up his file. When the director finds out what Moses actually did, he decides that he's a liability, and sends a high tech assassin to kill him. When the book was optioned last year, it was reported they'd added a love interest, and that Moses would be getting the old team back together. There would also be a generational divide as Moses contends with younger agents who rely on new and improved gadgets. Variety doesn't say whether all those new twists and turns have been kept, but I suspect they have, as three issues aren't quite enough to make a movie out of.

Red is one of the only DC Comics to jump the Warner Bros. ship, and is being produced at Summit Entertainment. Erich Hoeber and Jon Hoeber are penning the script, and the movie doesn't yet have a director. Maybe Freeman can lure in his Invictus boss, and break him into the comic book world?

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Summit Entertainment is picking up its first comic book adaptation: Warren Ellis' Red. Erich and John Hoeber, the brothers behind Warner Bros' movie adaptation of Whiteout, will be penning the screenplay. Not only does this make the second Ellis movie in a week (Ocean is being developed by Warner Bros, read our story here), but this is the first DC title to jump the Time Warner ship.

Ellis' three issue book centers on a black-ops CIA Agent, Paul Moses, who's now living the quiet life of retirement. For years, the CIA has left him alone, but when the agency gets a new head, it is decided that Moses has to go. Action sequences and bloody carnage follow.

I know some of you are super-jazzed about political content and political film, so how about a good, healthy dose of politics in a science fiction wonderland? In August of last year, producers Gianni Nunnari and Nick Wechsler optioned Warren Ellis' comic mini-series/graphic novel Ocean. Now, The Hollywood Reporter posts that new writer Ryan Condal has been tapped to write the adaptation. He has not penned a produced feature yet, but THR notes that he is known for a spec called Galahad, "a revisionist take on the King Arthur legend."

The writer's background certainly should help here. I'm betting that even if you haven't read Ellis' work, this should sound familiar. On one of Jupiter's Moons, Europa, thousands of coffins are found that hold "angel-like bodies and a giant weapon of mass destruction." "A U.N. weapons inspector is sent to investigate the find, teaming with a space station crew, when a powerful conglomerate moves in to exploit the discovery." And the place he's sent to -- Cold Harbor.

Are you ready for some weapons of mass space destruction?

I love the idea that man's origins are with aliens. I love the concept in "non-fiction" books of UFO lore. I love it in my favorite books, Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. I even loved it in Mission to Mars, which was only redeemed for me by that too-expository reveal at the end. Hopefully, the next Indiana Jones movie will also be dealing with the idea. But if not, I can at least look forward to Ocean, an adaptation of Warren Ellis' DC/Wildstorm comic mini-series (now available as a graphic novel), which has just been optioned by producers Gianni Nunnari (300) and Nick Wechsler (The Fountain). I haven't read the title (I would have if I'd known about it -- I'm going to buy it asap), but Wechsler told Variety the comic is, "an alien thriller with a fresh take on the origin of man." From what I can tell, it's the usual, plausible (IMHO) notion that an alien race deposited its seed on Earth and we are the result.

According to the Wikipedia synopsis, Ocean is set 100 years in the future, when alien artifacts are discovered on Europa, the ice-covered moon of Jupiter. Because some of these artifacts appear to be weapons of mass destruction, an inspector from the UN is sent to investigate. Unfortunately, the alien race is still around, only cryogenically dormant, and of course thanks to an evil corporation (apparently modeled after Microsoft) manages to wake up the violent creatures. Sure, it sounds a lot like the plot of Alien, but there's obviously more political allegory in this that makes it more relevant to current events. I also think the relationship between humans and this ancient warlike race, which happen to be our ancestors, is pretty interesting -- especially with the idea that these grandfathers might return in the form of an alien invasion. Hopefully, the movie will retain all these layers of contemplation and we'll get a much-needed deep-thinking sci-fi tale.