mcg Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Two months after being replaced on the He-Man movie Greyskull, Justin Marks has lost another big screenwriting gig: McG's Captain Nemo: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. You can speculate and snicker all you like. In the meantime, The Hollywood Reporter says that screenwriter Randall Wallace has been brought aboard to rewrite the script before taking his directing job with Disney's Secretariat. (So handy to have those screenwriter / director guys just hanging around the studio!)

20,000 Leagues is being envisoned by Disney as an origin story for Captain Nemo, and that nifty little colon after his name indicates that they'd like to make him over into a nautical franchise to complement their ongoing Pirates of the Caribbean series. Everyone is kind of hoping they'll draw on Jules Verne, and explore Nemo's background as given in that lesser-known sequel, The Mysterious Island. He was revealed to be the Indian Prince Dakkar, who had lost his wife, children, and kingdom after participating in the rebellion of 1857.

While the film is being labeled as an action-adventure, I think it's extremely likely that Wallace is being brought on board precisely to flesh out that tragic backstory, and up the anti-imperialism. This is the screenwriter of Braveheart, Pearl Harbor, and The Man in the Iron Mask, after all. If he has a specialty, it's perilous wartime romances, especially if they're set against the backdrop of revolution. We're probably in for a very frothy 20,000 Leagues, but at least its steampunk setting allows for that. Now cast Naveen Andrews so it'll be sexy steampunk.

Oh, the obvious jokes you can make about Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci being involved with a project called License to Steal. Considering they penned both of Michael Bay's robot-gasm installments, and Star Trek, plus produced The Proposal, one could say that this was their Hollywood life story.

But it's not. According to Variety, License to Steal is actually based on Marc Weingarten's Salon.com article The Learjeat Repo Man, which examines world of repo men. Not just any repo men that come after your flatscreen or your Prius, but the "big game" hunter who steal / repossess private jets, yachts, helicopters, and whatever else it is rich, corrupt people own. For the dangers they face (and oh, do they face dangers) they receive a cut of the overall value.

The script is being penned by Shane Salerno, Kurtzman and Orci are its executive producers. The project was shopped around by WME to three major studios, all with directors lined up to bid, and Salerno pitching it each and every time. McG took the project to Warner Bros., Timur Bekmambetov took it to Universal, and Bryan Singer took it to Sony. But Paramount snapped it up before anyone else had a chance to bid, and without a director attached. But Paramount has the dynamic duo pulling the strings, so they'll undoubtedly pull some major name in to tell the story they describe as "a smart, lighthearted action movie ... with a lot of unexpected plot twists." As you wait for the talent to hook themselves up, you can read the Salon piece, and dream of success and adventure ... either those enjoyed by Weingarten's repo men, or that of Kurtzman and Orci.

(Oversight! Thanks to ScreenRant for the photo up there! -- Weinberg)

Hollywood: the only city in the world where having lunch at the right Italian cafe could net you millions of dollars. Two fledgling producers named Derek Anderson and Victor Kubicek parlayed a tip from a dining partner into a deal for the rights to the Terminator series, resulting in Terminator Salvation and a deal that entitles them to "rake in half of any profits that might come from box-office, DVD and television sales as well as all the proceeds from a new video game and other consumer products," reports the Los Angeles Times. Dreams do come true -- as long as you can talk somebody else into forking over millions of dollars to reward your moxie, good timing, and luck.

It's a fascinating story, and well worth reading for anyone interested in the business side of Hollywood -- and for anyone who wonders, "What's a producer?" In this case, newbie producers Anderson and Kubicek (who only had one credit prior to Salvation on a film that was never released) thought they had a deal in place for millions of dollars in financing from Dubai, and so made a $25 million offer on the rights to Terminator, which were available from independent producers Andrew Vajna and Mario Kassar. When the Dubai financing fell through, the duo got another "lucky break" in the form of a commitment from a Santa Barbara hedge fund. The producers then secured funding and distribution from Warner Bros. and Sony, decided on McG as director and Christian Bale as star, and the rest is history. The producing duo also controls sequel rights and reportedly have McG signed up for one sequel and Bale for two more.

The Times also details various lawsuits that have followed in their wake, so it's not all roses and champagne for Anderson and Kubicek. Still, nice work if you can get it.

Warning: This is going to get a little 'spoilery', so if you haven't seen Terminator Salvation you might want to bookmark this baby for later.

It was the moment we were all waiting for this summer season: the resurrection of Terminator. The trailers were looking good, there was a Nolan in charge of rewrites, and for god's sake we even had Batman as John Connor -- how could this go wrong? Well, if you happened to catch the movie over the weekend you know just how wrong it was. It's time to play Monday-morning quarterback in the aftermath of one of this summer's biggest letdowns, and so let's try to answer one question: whose fault was it?

McG
There might be plenty of votes for McG as the culprit. He doesn't have the greatest track record for quality films, but I thought he pulled off a much better movie than expected. The cut-happy editing of Charlie's Angels was long gone and he had some great action set pieces, but that doesn't mean he made a good film. All of his trademark flaws were on display: uneven pacing, character motivations are glossed over or not even addressed; not to mention some stunning gaps in logic -- mainly: can someone explain to me why a techno-overlord like Skynet would build a machine that they can't control?

After the jump; find out who else earned the last three nominations...

If Star Trek weren't the final nail in the coffin of cinematic time-travel believability, Terminator Salvation arrives in theaters this week with an all-new albeit pre-existing series of space-time conundrums. The new film, directed by McG (We Are Marshall) from a screenplay by John Brancato, Michael Ferris and an uncredited Jonah Nolan (among other ghost writers), takes place in 2018, 11 years before John Connor sends Kyle Reese back in time to save and impregnate his mom. But how – if at all – does Salvation fit into the rest of the series' fractured chronology?

Cinematical started at the beginning, as it were, and decided to offer a timeline of the events that take place in the Terminator series. Assuming that James Cameron's original Terminator was the centrifuge from which the rest of the films' stories were spun – not counting the TV series – check out the checkered history we put together for The Terminator and its time-troubled mythology.

Not despite Charlie's Angels, but because of it (the first one, anyway), I really like McG as a filmmaker. Say what you want about his undeservedly but oft-criticized nickname, but the guy has the chops – and then some – to make blockbuster spectacle look, well, spectacular. Given his existing filmography, he's only made one serious creative misstep, the disastrous Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, since the first Angels movie was an exhilarating thrill ride and 2006's We Are Marshall a heartfelt and powerful drama.

Aiming for the A-list credibility enjoyed by the likes of Christopher Nolan, McG has unleashed his muscular, bombastic creativity on Terminator Salvation, which should certainly resuscitate the franchise even if it doesn't quite distinguish the director from other fanboy punching bags like Michael Bay and Brett Ratner. As part of Cinematical's special Summer Interview Series with different directors, we sat down with McG at the film's Los Angeles press day for an exclusive chat about reimagining Terminator's beloved characters. In addition to talking about defining the director's own filmmaking style and searching through summers past to find the films that inspired him to become a director, McG drilled us a little bit about our own feelings on the film, precipitating one of the more interesting, and, well, interactive interviews we've done in a while.

Terminator Salvation roars to life on screen with enough gutsy firepower to literally shake you in your seat. She's a mean, loud metallic beast that hasn't eaten in years, and the only commands she understands come in the form of growls, snarls, bullets and explosions. You can't really ask for more from an action picture (well you can, but we'll get to that); with Terminator Salvation, director McG proves that he's more than a punchline for online jokes -- his action scenes are fierce and eye-popping; he gives us the post-apocalyptic Skynet world we've always wanted to see and then asks if we want seconds or thirds. This is the Terminator film for a generation that expects over-the-top; an audience who likes it rough, but still PG-13, so we don't get carded at the door.

And that's all well and good if you also don't need to care -- because while Terminator Salvation is a gnarly little actioner, this movie about robots lacks, well, life. There's a fantastic scene in Terminator 2: Judgment Day when Sarah Connor runs right into her son John and the T-800 exiting an elevator in the mental institution, and her eyes pop as she drops to the floor; frightened to her core. She doesn't yet know that this T-800 is a good guy -- instead, all she sees is failure, death and desperation. And we feel that; we're so sold in that moment and our hearts do a freak-dance as the T-1000 closes in behind her. That scene is one of the single greatest of this franchise, and that panic, that momentum, that edge-of-your-seat, full-body experience is what's absent from Terminator Salvation.

She doesn't bleed when we kinda need her to.

The film itself might lack a certain something (coherence, for example), but the opening credits of Terminator Salvation offer a lot of food for thought, especially if you like to think about names. Which I do!

I was mildly surprised by the very title of the movie, which I had assumed was Terminator: Salvation, with a colon. That's how sequels are usually styled (e.g., Terminator 2: Judgment Day), but this one appears onscreen -- twice -- as simply Terminator Salvation. What does that mean? Does the story tell of how the Terminators were saved? (Spoiler: no.) Is the film about the salvation of the Terminator franchise? (Certainly not.) The only way the title would make sense is if it had the colon. Terminator: Salvation would mean that it's an entry in the Terminator series of movies, and that this entry is called Salvation. I'm sorry, but these things are important. (After some googling, I see that NPR's Linda Holmes has made a similar observation. So I'm not the only one.)

Then there are the names of the cast members featured in the opening credits, some of which are truly awesome. Moon Bloodgood! Jadagrace! Michael Ironside! Common! Some of those aren't even real names, but they still sound cool, especially when displayed in a futuristic techno font.

Finally, we come to the name of the director: McG (pictured). His real name is Joseph McGinty Nichol; he chose McG as his professional name presumably to prevent people from taking him seriously. Now he spends most of his time complaining about it, as if the name that he chose is a burden to him. A profile in last week's Entertainment Weekly discusses it at some length:

I see Terminator: Salvation next week. I am really nervous about it.

It's a deplored "fanboy" habit, I know -- to whine about a geeky franchise flick before it's even released. Haven't you anything better to do than worry about a summer blockbuster? Get a life.

But the thing is that I care about movies, and the Terminator series means more to me than any other franchise that's still kicking -- more than Star Trek, more than Indiana Jones, more than any of the superhero flicks. Terminator 2 is the greatest action movie ever made, and one of the greatest films, period. The Terminator scared the crap out of me when I was a young 'un -- a "formative" film experience if ever there were one. The third film obviously had its detractors, but I thought it was a damn fine actioner that honored the story. It's true sci-fi, with a deep, interesting mythology; it even makes a genuine effort to get time paradoxes right, and gets kind of close.

But Salvation... aaaaaaaargh. McG has worked hard to make a case for himself as the right choice for the franchise, but the fact remains that he's never really made a good film. People will point to the Charlie's Angels flicks as the cause for concern, but I'd want to talk about We Are Marshall, which is about as tedious and tone-deaf as movies get. Then there's the news that the story has been written and rewritten, and not always for the best reasons -- changed endings, a bigger role for Christian Bale -- which isn't a harbinger of a confident, thought-through movie. And the trailers have not exactly inspired confidence, at least in me, though the last one was a bit more promising.

Not long ago we were one of the first to report that Terminator Salvation director McG had officially challenged Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen director Michael Bay to a no-holds-barred, winner-takes-everything (well, maybe not everything) d*ck measuring contest. When asked about the robot-director's rivalry in an interview with Details magazine, McG said the following: "Michael Bay has a big c*ck. But I'd like to believe mine is bigger. If he's up for it, we can both reveal ourselves on the Spartacus steps at Universal and put the question to rest."

Great. Wonderful. Bring it on! This epic d*ck measuring contest could be shot with IMAX cameras in 3D and serve as a bridge between the two films, which open in theaters roughly a month apart. Sadly, though, before Bay could even respond, it would appear as if McG is bailing on the idea. Why? Well, he tells E! Online, "That was lost immediately and people gravitated to two spoiled brat directors [who] think they have big cocks. Nothing could be further from the truth. The funny thing is, I have an Irish curse and I think we're all familiar with exactly how [I'm endowed]."

Um ... did McG just publicly admit that he has a hard time getting an ... yeah ... but anyway, it doesn't look like fans will get the chance to see these two blokes break out their swords for a duel anytime soon. Let's get creative, though -- what could we have them do instead?