abbie cornish Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Last year, when I interviewed Kimberly Peirce for Stop-Loss, I asked why a relationship played up between Ryan Phillippe's character and Abbie Cornish's in the trailer seemed absent from the final film, not to mention a confrontation between Phillippe and the senator he's driven cross-country to reach coming to a close over the phone and not in person. She explained that about as soon as they had to start editing the film itself, they had to turn over the footage to the promotional department for them to work with simultaneously, and that things don't always match up as a result.

Now, every once in a while, usually in regard to Apatow's oft-tested and whittled-down comedies, absent jokes and alternate takes come as a little surprise. But the year-old teaser for Terminator Salvation capped itself by showing Christian Bale facing off against a robot hiding underwater -- a scene that should appear early on in the film, but doesn't. In Disney/Pixar's Up, our geriatric hero doesn't blow a raspberry as he departs with his house (perhaps for the best), and in 500 Days of Summer, Joseph Gordon-Levitt does not in fact board a bus filled with Zooey Deschanels (certainly for the worst).

What's the most striking occasion you can think of where a scene regularly flaunted in the trailers or TV spots was nowhere to be seen in theaters, and was clearly part of a scene and not a one-off teaser like Pixar themselves so often indulges in?

Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch has been a revolving door of casting and schedule conflicts. Last month, the film lost Amanda Seyfried but quickly replaced her with Emily Browning. Now, he's cast Jena Malone and Jamie Chung, who have stepped in to replace Evan Rachel Wood and Emma Stone, respectively.

Wood and Stone were both forced to drop out due to schedule conflicts and as of now, only Abbie Cornish and Vanessa Hudgens remain out of the original line-up, which was always in negotiation anyway.

But don't despair, because every casting report gives us a bit more of its grindhouse plot. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Malone will be playing Cornish's younger sister, both of whom have the unfortunate luck to be locked in this hellish mental institution. Chung will be playing Annie, "a country girl with a big heart." (I want to add "as big as all Texas" but I'm not going to jump to geographical conclusions. Maybe she's from West Virginia or Tennessee.)

There's not much more to say about the casting, except that I'm glad to see a little diversity by way of Chung, and I'm uncertain about Malone. She's certainly a very respectable young actress (and co-producer these days) but she always comes off so brittle and humorless. Maybe all she needs is a part like this where she can cut loose and have fun ... and how can you not have fun with a film like this? It's a laugh just writing about it.

Losing your lead actress might daunt some directors, but not Zack Snyder. Snyder doesn't sleep, he waits -- and he already has a replacement for Amanda Seyfried. Entertainment Weekly reports that Emily Browning will take on the role of Baby Doll in Snyder's upcoming Sucker Punch.

You probably best remember the Australian-born Browning as the young Angelina Jolie lookalike in A Series of Unfortunate Events -- and if you're a guy, you've probably been counting the days for her to grow up, which she did in this year's The Uninvited.

I haven't seen enough of Browning to say if she's a better lead than Seyfried or not. She's definitely dabbled more in the Gothic than Seyfried, who was an appealing pick precisely because she hadn't played dark and violent yet. She's the kind of girl who shouldn't land in a mental institution, whereas Browning (and I'm going purely off Unfortunate Events) looks as though she might expect it.

Shooting is still set to begin in the fall, and EW is still reporting that Evan Rachel Wood, Vanessa Hudgens, Abbie Cornish, and Emma Stone remain "in talks," so we could still see some faces come and go. Schedule conflicts are really killing off the cool casting this year.

Shortly after Watchmen's second weekend in theaters, word began to spread that because the film was a financial failure, Warner Brothers would stop making R-rated superhero movies (even though Watchmen wasn't really a "superhero movie") and start concentrating more on PG-13 superhero movies, like The Dark Knight (which should've been R-rated). Confused yet? But that's not stopping Warners from taking wild chances on other R-rated material, like Zack Snyder's $100 million all-female "Alice in Wonderland with machine guns," Sucker Punch -- due to begin production this fall (with an October 2010 release date), starring Evan Rachel Wood, Vanessa Hudgens, Abbie Cornish, and Emma Stone

So they can't make an R-rated Batman movie, but line up an all-female cast on an original script set in the 1950s with no established audience and, heck, Warners will throw a good $100 million at it. Why not? The NY Observer says they'd be "shocked" if the studio actually moves ahead on this project, now that lead Amanda Seyfried has dropped out -- coupled with the fact that the last time they gave Snyder over a hundred million, he gave them a film that won't even come close to making that money back. Is Sucker Punch really that much of a gamble, or will the idea of hot young starlets kicking ass bring the horny teenage fanboys (and girls) to theaters in droves?

Personally, I like that Warner Bros. is taking these risks. And maybe they can afford to with The Dark Knight cleaning house and three more Harry Potter films on the way, but if we're not going to get our hardcore R-rated superhero movies, then there needs to be a happy medium. They need to satisfy that audience with something cool and flashy, like Sucker Punch.

What do you think? Is Sucker Punch a risky investment considering what happened to Watchmen? Or do you think the all-female action film will be too hot to resist?

Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch just lost its Baby Doll, according to Entertainment Weekly.
Amanda Seyfried had been tapped to play Baby, the unlucky girl whose sleazy stepfather locks her up in a mental institution and schedules her for a lobotomy.

The reason is one that seems to be damning a few actresses this spring -- schedule conflicts. Sucker Punch was scheduled to shoot in the fall, the same time as the fourth season of HBO's Big Love. HBO won't release her from her commitment, and apparently doesn't want to work around it. (There's a joke about fundamentalist Mormons and compounds here, but I'm not going to make it.)

It's a shame, as Seyfried really fits the "Alice in Wonderland with machine guns" theme Snyder's film is aiming for, and she's one of the most promising young actresses around. She's been picking smart scripts lately, and the idea of seeing her dabble in action was a pretty cool one.

There's no word on who might step up to replace her. Just about every other young up-and-comer (Evan Rachel Wood, Vanessa Hudgens, Abbie Cornish, and Emma Stone) were negotiating to join, so the pickings are slim. One of them might be able to angle for the lead now that Seyfried is gone. Or maybe Snyder should look to someone even younger -- is Emma Watson free?

Not one to take a breather, Zack Snyder is immediately launching into his next project (and his first original script), Sucker Punch.

I don't want to get all gushy and fangirly, but this might just be a film for the girls who identified with this. It might even be a film that embodies the Bechdel Rule. It's an R-rated, $100 million dollar action movie set in the 1950s, and it centers on a girl imprisoned in a mental institution by her evil stepfather. Due to be lobotomized, she loses herself in a fantasy world where she dreams about escaping with her fellow inmates. Or, as Snyder describes it, it's "Alice in Wonderland with machine guns."

Entertainment Weekly reports that Amanda Seyfried is in negotiations to play the lead, and that Evan Rachel Wood, Vanessa Hudgens, Abbie Cornish, and Emma Stone are also in talks. Production doesn't start until fall, so we could see a few of these faces shift, but I'm liking the line up so far.

But seriously, how cool is this? It's the exact opposite of the chick flicks we've been inundated with of late -- and while I don't think violence and ass-kicking automatically make a film feminist, it's a step in the right direction.
Even Snyder is cheekily aware of that: "I already did the all-male cast with 300, so I'm doing the opposite end of the spectrum."

If nothing else, it might just help Warner Bros reconsider that whole "no female leads" stance they took in 2007.

It was almost a year ago when news hit that Jake Gyllenhaal was going to the moon with director Doug Liman. Literally, not the Honeymooners way. Focusing on a private expedition to the moon to create a Lunar colony, the project was set for another rewrite in June. But that was all we heard. Now rumors are bubbling about casting, and if true, we could see a clash of the private and public.

Just Jared has posted that In Touch insiders have pegged Abbie Cornish as Jake's co-star in the lunar film -- in other words, Jake's current girlfriend Reese Witherspoon's ex-husband Ryan Phillippe's current girlfriend. Oh, those messy Hollywood lives. The insider states: "This is one of those only-in-Hollywood situations. It could work out as long as Reese doesn't visit Jake on the set."

Whatever the potential drama, this would definitely be an interesting casting move for the feature, which is hoping to hit screens in 2010. Cornish has taken on a number of themes over the last few years, from the times of Queen Elizabeth to being a tough Texan girlfriend, so why not add some moon action to the mix? Thoughts?

I loved Tom Tykwer's Perfurme: The Story of a Murderer, starring Ben Whishaw as a sociopathic serial killer. Whishaw's performance in that film -- in which he had very little dialog and had to convey almost everything through facial expression and body language -- was just outstanding. In poking around IMDb a bit while writing some Sundance reviews, I found out that Whishaw (most recently seen in Todd Hayne's I'm Not There) has three new projects lined up, and I'm excited about all of them.

First up is The Restraint of Beasts (currently in post-prod), an adaptation of Magnus Mills's first novel. The film is being directed by Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski, whose film My Summer of Love back in 2004 first brought Emily Blunt to notice.The darkly comedic story is about an unnamed supervisor (presumably Whishaw) working with two Scottish high-tensile fence builders in the countryside and "accidentally" killing people along the way by day and hitting the local pub at night. I have the book on reserve to read before the film comes out -- I like Mills's work but I've not read this one yet. If this film does well, perhaps it will be the beginning of a series of adaptations of Mills's books.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age reunites director Shekhar Kapur and Cate Blanchett in the follow-up to the 1998 film Elizabeth, which told of the early years of Queen Elizabeth I. The earlier film deconstructed the earlier history of Elizabeth I, when she ascended to the throne following the death of her half-sister, Mary Tudor, aka Bloody Mary. The daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn (who was beheaded when Elizabeth was three), Elizabeth had been raised a Protestant in the Church of England. Mary Tudor, a devout Catholic, had been married to Philip II of Spain, which made him, until Mary's death, the Prince Consort of England.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age picks up some years after Elizabeth left off, with the Protestant Elizabeth now firmly in control of the British crown. Once again, Elizabeth faces enemies and insurgency, this time from her Catholic cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots (Samantha Morton), and her former brother-in-law Philip II (Jordi Molla), who comes at odds with his former sister-in-law over both religion and her approval of the capture of Spanish treasure ships. The Inquisition is in full force in Spain, and the Catholic Philip regards Elizabeth as a heretic and whore, believing that God wants him to bring her down and bring England under the firm hand of the Catholic Church and the Inquisition. Once again, Geoffrey Rush is by Blanchett's side as Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth's spymaster and adviser, whose intelligence about a plot against Elizabeth saves the queen's life, even as it sets in motion a war with Spain that could spell the end of her reign.

Yeah, I was kind of thinking the same thing after reading that headline: "Ryan Phillippe? In a Viking epic?" Is someone playing a cruel joke, or is this thin-as-tissue-paper pretty boy really going to try to pull off playing a tough-as-nails Viking? Well, according to The Hollywood Reporter, it would appear as if the latter is indeed true -- Phillippe, Sean Bean and Abbie Cornish have signed on to star in writer-director Menno Meyjes' Viking tale Last Battle Dreamer. HR describes Phillippe's role as being a "seventh-century Viking warrior named Thorfinn (sorry, I need to pause for a chuckle ... carry on ... ) who, along with his older brother, the battle-scarred Hakon (Bean), invades Britain." Maybe I'm totally mis-judging the guy (and, to be fair, I've sort of warmed up to Phillippe over the past two years), but no part of me sees him playing "a seventh-century Viking warrior."

But I digress. Bean and Cornish, on the other hand, I'm really starting to dig. I can certainly see them starring in a film like this, which Meyjes says is "a love story written in fire and blood." Back when this film was first announced, Variety said Meyjes was looking for an American to star as the Viking and a British woman to co-star as the noblewoman with which our heroic Viking falls for. Monika suggested Brad Pitt for the role. Well, I guess they're both blondes. Phillippe and Cornish will also star alongside one another in the upcoming Stop Loss, while Meyjes (who's completing post production on his matador biopic Manolete) has the John Cusack flick Martian Child (a film in which practically everyone at Cinematical wanted to review for some reason) due out this October, courtesy of New Line.