legion Tagged Articles at Cinematical

When the red-band trailer for Legion appeared online, the responses ranged from "What the hell?" to "How can angels go bad?" to "I don't like the look of that at all." All the footage is very dark, demonic, and confusing and we have to wait until January 2010 to figure out why all hell (or heaven) seems to be breaking loose.

But guess what! You don't have to wait that long if you're insanely curious about it. IDW Publishing announced that Scott Stewart and Tom Waltz have penned a four issue miniseries that will serve as a prequel to Stewart's upcoming holy war. Legion: Prophets will introduce you to the Theologians, the Guardian, the Codebreaker and the Voice, five very different and unlikely individuals who become humanity's only hope in surviving the Apocalypse. (Here we thought it all rested on the well-built shoulders of the ex-angelic Paul Bettany.) "There were a lot of cool and scary characters and situations that I wasn't able to include in the main narrative of the movie, so I'm very excited to be able to expand the Legion universe beyond the film and explore those other stories through the comic book series," says Stewart.

Legion: Prophets hits comic store shelves in November, just in time for the holidays and to make you look a little askance at the angels glittering on every holiday decoration. If you're still into the movie after reading the paper prequel, Legion comes to the big screen on January 22, 2010.

[via io9]

The Fourth Kind
Whether or not you actually believe in such things, this alien abduction thriller which is supposedly based on true events looks creepy as hell. Milla Jovovich stars and the film releases on November 6.

Legion
A motley crew of humans in an out of the way diner are the first point of attack for a band of angels who, acting upon God's orders, aim to exterminate humanity. This could be quite awesome, but this red band trailer is pretty long. I hope I haven't just seen all the good parts. The wrath of the almighty starts on January 22.

Gentlemen Broncos
Jemaine Clement stars as a science fiction writer who steals his latest book from a fan. Clement is hilarious on Flight of the Conchords and this seems like a similar brand of humor. The dramatizations of scenes from the swiped novel are priceless, and it's directed by the dude who brought us Napoleon Dynamite. This goes into limited release on October 30.

Did You Hear About the Morgans?
Romantic comedy in which a couple played by Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker find their strained relationship pushed even further when they have to join the witness protection program. The rumors start on December 11.

As a friend pointed out yesterday after watching the panel, it seems impossible given the fact that Screen Gems is often a studio imprint that means anything but the mark of quality (Boogeyman, anyone?), but the studio's upcoming film Legion looks pretty kick-ass. Screening an extended trailer and fielding questions from attendees Friday afternoon, cast members Paul Bettany, Adrianne Palicki, Tyrese Gibson, Doug Jones, and director Scott Stewart introduced what could be a surprisingly entertaining film that combines epic scope, an ensemble cast, and of course, lots and lots of guns.

The highlights of the panel:

• Tyrese Gibson is a shameless promoter – sometimes not even a self-promoter. Though he took an opportunity to shill his new comic book and longstanding Twitter page at the end of the q&a, he devoted a surprising amount of time – perhaps even unhealthy – to discussing Bettany's chiseled physique as Michael, the archangel who aligns with humanity to defend it against a horde of violent angels.
• Oh yeah, the movie is about Michael the archangel aligning himself with humanity to defend it against a horde of violent angels.
• Doug Jones reportedly took the role because it was the first one he'd been offered that didn't demand he cover up his face. After playing Silver Surfer and Abe Sapien, the lanky charmer said he embraced the chance to play one of the film's most fearsome creatures, The Ice Cream Man. (I know that sounded anticlimactic but the short clip in which he appeared was truly creepy.)
• The best scene from the footage shown featured a geriatric female diner patron (imagine your sweet grandmother) with a filthy mouth, by which her use of profanity is only a prelude to her devouring other customers with razor-sharp teeth and literally climbing the walls.

Paul Bettany obviously has a thing for the sacrilegious. Fresh off playing the Archangel Michael in Legion, Bettany is reteaming with director Scott Stewart for Priest, ScreenGems' adaptation of Hyung Min-woo's popular manga series.

Bettany will play Ivan Isaacs, the warrior priest who turns his back on the Church to rescue his niece from a pack of vampires. The role once belonged to Gerard Butler, until the project fell apart sometime in 2006. ScreenGems revived the project last December with Stewart, keeping Cory Goodman's screenplay.

The casting came about not out of Bettany and Stewart's desire to reunite for religion, but due to ScreenGems president Clint Culpepper, who apparently thought Isaacs needed to be played by a former albino monk: "I knew the moment I saw Stewart's first cut of Legion that Bettany was Priest and so I mentioned it to him immediately."

Whether this Priest will make it any further into production than Andrew Douglas and Gerard Butler's will remain to be seen -- but since everyone wants their own religious pseudo-western, I bet the second time will be the charm. I still wish Butler's version would have taken off, but Bettany is probably a better physical choice for the role. He bears an uncanny resemblance to the art, anyway. I'm not a huge fan of the series, so hopefully some manga experts can weigh in with what they think of the casting.

Variety reports that Paul Bettany's Legion has just added a whole crowd of actors, including the star power of Dennis Quaid, Kate Walsh, and Tyrese Gibson. They will be headlining a cast that includes Jon Tenney, Charles S. Dutton, Lucas Black, Adrianne Palicki, Kevin Durand and Willa Holland. They've signed on just in time, as the movie is about to start shooting in New Mexico.

Legion is a thriller that stars Bettany as the archangel Michael, who is all that stands between mankind and an apocalypse after God has lost faith in humanity. But the Almighty apparently hasn't lost all hope -- a child is on the way who is the second coming of Christ, and a group of strangers who recognize the fact must band together to save it. It is director Scott Stewart's first feature film, from a script he co-wrote with Peter Schink.

I am quite intrigued by the movie, as I am a sucker for any kind of Biblical thriller. The problem is that they are almost always terrible. (Though I will always give props to The Prophecy for proving that the Devil does, in fact, wear a mullet.) The combination of Paul Bettany and Dennis Quaid gives me some hope though, since they generally pick good scripts. We'll see if this is one of them.

We might have well-meaning prophets roaming the earth in the form of Jonny Lee Miller on television, but things are about to get meaner on the big screen as God gets ticked off with Earth. I imagine this will be nothing like Two of a Kind, where John Travolta and Olivia Newton John had to fall in love for God to not wipe out the human race. Instead, there's thrills, an archangel, and the arid desert.

Variety reports that Paul Bettany has signed on to star in an upcoming thriller called Legion. From a script by Scott Stewart and Peter Schink, which Stewart will direct, the film focuses on "what happens when God loses faith in humanity and sends his legion of angels to wipe out the human race for the second time. Mankind's only hope lies in a group of misfits holed up in a diner in the desert who are aided by the archangel Michael (Bettany)." Now, I get how humans can save the day against monsters and the like, but just how do you fight God? I can only imagine that these guys will have to prove their worth to save the day, because it's not like you can point a bazooka at the sky and put the big Dude in his place.

So, apparently Stewart's script involvement was a rewrite, and Screen Gems president Clint Culpepper says: "I was so impressed with his rewrite that I took the meeting with him, and his visual presentation closed the deal. I'm sure he had the same impact on Paul." Sounds...impactful. Production begins next month in New Mexico, so I imagine we'll hear about more cast soon, and then get to see this impact for ourselves soon enough.