paramount pictures Tagged Articles at Cinematical

• The biggest news of the weekend was a story that hit Variety late Friday night: Stephen Chow has landed the role of Kato in The Green Hornet and the director's chair. Rumors and Seth Rogen's wishes have attached him for some time, but now it's official, and definitely shows that the project is going to be heavy on the comedy. (Incidentally, I never realized before now what huge Green Hornet fans my geek parents were -- let's just say Rogen's ears must be burning.) The movie is scheduled to be released June 25th, 2010.
  

• Tintin has run into some major financial problems. According to the LA Times, Universal has passed on the film, leaving Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson to scramble for a new studio to financially back them. It's as embarrassing as you can imagine -- not only because its two of the biggest names in the business, but because Spielberg may have to make nice with Paramount (who's financing half the film) just as he and David Geffen are trying to extricate themselves from it. It also leaves Spielberg without a project to direct, as Tintin was supposed to be next in line, and it delays the whole thing even longer. But hey, at least struggling directors the world over can now do something they never thought possible -- feel just like Spielberg!
  

A couple of weeks ago, there was a story ping-ponging its way around the Web that went something like this: Paramount had cut a deal with the major cable providers to launch their tentpole Transformers on television the same week it landed in theaters. The idea was that it would be available as a premium pay per view choice for somewhere in the neighborhood of $40 and assuming the experiment turned out to be a rousing success -- and it would have -- the vaunted 'window' would be good and smashed for all time. There were some outlets that were convinced the story was going to turn out to be true, but my Paramount contacts told me it was complete crap, and they were right -- no such plans were afoot, obviously. The interesting thing about all of this is that most of the people I talked to who believed the story was going to turn out to be true were not outraged by it in the least -- and neither was I. I've come to believe that 'smashing the window' is an idea whose time has truly come, mainly because of the ever-deteriorating movie theater experience.

Take it from someone who chose his first apartment based on its proximity to two movie theaters -- this is not a stance I take lightly. I don't think there's anything in the world that beats a really good experience at the movies, but I've also noticed that over the past few years, the onus has been more and more on me to make that experience happen. Going to the movies on Friday night became a non-starter a long time ago, since it's kind of hard for me to follow a film when the guy to my right is breaking up with his girlfriend via cellphone and the guy to my left is playing his portable video game at full volume through the second and third acts. The matinees used to provide an escape from that kind of behavior, but no more. Last week I ended up walking out of an early show of Knocked Up because, honest to God, I couldn't follow what was going on thanks to the non-stop jabbering of a gang of high-school girls in front of me.

You may have noticed that, about an hour ago, prominent movie website IESB.net came back to life after being down for an extended period of time. Here's what happened in a nutshell: After IESB posted some spy video and images of Iron Monger on the set of Iron Man, Paramount Pictures went ballistic and sent a legal letter to the IESB host demanding the site be shut down for copyright infrigement. That much was pretty much common knowledge, but I got a more detailed account today from IESB's Stephanie Sanchez. "We were not notified in any way, or asked to take it down," Stephanie says. "We were literally in the middle of posting a story and all of a sudden our server was gone. We called our hosting company, they transferred us to legal and we were forwarded the letter that was sent from Paramount on Friday that demanded the shut down. Note, this is a letter we were never sent and weren't given any warning about."

Stephanie continues: "Here's the kicker. The video and pictures that were in question were in no way property of Paramount. Both were shot from a parking lot of a 24 hour fitness center across the street from the Iron Man shoot that was taking place on a public street in Long Beach, CA. There was no violation of copyright whatsoever. After hours on the phone yesterday with Paramount reps (who had no clue about it) they completely apologized and said this should have never happened. It was the idiots in the Paramount legal department who did this." Stephanie also notes that after this ordeal, IESB has "lost respect for the studio, we lost out financially and most importantly it was just really a blow to our reputation." She also says IESB will be posting a letter to readers today giving more details, and thanks the online community for their support.

Don't you hate road-rage drivers? Well, look on the bright side -- at least when you're driving down the highway towards the video store, you don't have to contend with Bonecrusher going on a mad rampage in the next lane over. The above pic is the first of fourteen that Paramount Pictures has released to us, as their Summer 2007 Preview. There are more images from Michael Bay's Transformers, as well as a handful of pics from Shrek the Third, the Sienna Miller fairy tale Stardust, and the Andy Samberg action-comedy Hot Rod. Oddly, despite the blockbuster punching-power of Transformers and Shrek the Third, the one I'm looking forward to most is Stardust, by far. I don't know much about it, except that it has Sienna Miller and it's got some hippy-dippy Princess Bride kind of vibe, and the first trailer popped up on some Russian website a few weeks ago. That's enough for me! After the pics, check out Paramount's press notes for each film.

Following their brutal break-up with Paramount Pictures, Tom Cruise and his producing partner Paula Wagner have reportedly cut a deal with a group of investors that includes Washington Redskins (that's an NFL football team for you non-sports fans) owner, Daniel M. Snyder.

As part of the deal, the group will finance the overhead costs (ie: staff, office expenses) of Cruise and Wagner's production company -- to the tune of less than $3 million a year -- as well as help shell out the bucks for future projects. (Yes, that's less than Paramount was offering Cruise/Wagner to re-sign with them. Desperate, are we?) Oh, and about those "mysterious hedge funds" that were "supposedly" providing Cruise/Wager with upwards of $100 million? Well, no names have been released and Cruise's lawyer claims there was never a hedge fund deal in the first place. Man, this thing just keeps getting weirder and weirder, huh?