Mayer Aniston Are Done

Yes, that is the news out of Hollywood this morning. John Mayer is reported to have dumped Jennifer when she returned from promoting Marley & Me in Europe last week. The couple

seemed to be happy, and we heard plenty of marriage and engagement rumors. Those rumors either had him proposing on her birthday last month or shortly afterwards.

The two were out and about at the Oscars together, also hitting the parties. However, now friends of the two are saying these two are completely done. Aniston recently spoke to a UK magazine about relationships and she had the following to say:

Who ever said that every relationship has to last forever? That’s hoping too much. I think every relationship is a world unto itself.

Haven’t we heard this one before? How many times will these two make up and break up before they finally call it quits for good? Is this the time or not? Representatives for both sides have declined to comment. Are John and Jen done? What do you think?

Deadpool - X-Men Origins

While on the rounds for Adventureland Latino Review got the chance to ask Ryan Reynolds about X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Reynolds spoke about the role of Deadpool in the film, about a possible Deadpool spin-off and how ‘chummy’ the atmosphere was on set.

Will we care about your character Deadpool?

Reynolds: You know, I think you will.

Because he’s kind of a good guy, bad guy…

Reynolds: Ya, he walks the line. Ya, I think you will actually care about him. You’ll be curious about him. You’ll be curious beyond the film, you’ll be curious about him. I play Wade Wilson and I play Deadpool, and the character I play as Deadpool, I personally, Fox may differ from me, but I personally don’t consider him as Deadpool, I consider him to be what Deadpool becomes. Or the thing Deadpool came from. It doesn’t carry on past that.

There’s talk, because Deadpool is so popular, that Fox might want to do a spin-off. Would you be interested in that?

Reynolds: Ya, I love the character. I’ve always loved the character. I remember reading one of the Deadpool comic books, and somebody asked Deadpool what he looks like. And he said he looks like a cross between a Shar-Pei and Ryan Reynolds. And I was like, I really, really wanna play this guy at some point. I thought it was pretty cool. It’s a guy that knows he’s in a comic book. How hard is it to shoot that properly? That’s not something they put in Wolverine nor would it belong in that universe.

Natalie Portman as lead female

Last week we heard that Josh Hartnett was among a short list of actors who Marvel wanted to play Loki, and that Alexander Skarsgård (True Blood) was in the running to play the thunder God himself, Thor. Well now a source tells Deadline Hollywood that Hartnett is actually in the running for Thor, not Loki, and that Natalie Portman is apparently front runner to play the female lead.

Sure, there’s a big push to cast Josh Hartnett in the winged helmet, which is ironic since Warner Bros once upon a time threw an amazing amount of money at him to play Superman but he refused. But my sources say there’s an equally powerful lobby to cast an unknown. I’ve heard that, besides Hartnett, the following actors are being tested: Charlie Hunnam (the British co-star of the F/X series Sons Of Anarchy); Tom Hiddleston (award-winning British actor and RADA graduate who played Winston Churchill’s son in HBO’s The Gathering Storm), Alexandar Skarsgard (Stellan’s son who has appeared in the HBO Iraq War miniseries Generation Kill and vampire drama True Blood, and who’s definitely visually right for the role), and Joel Kinnaman (some Danish dude). Meanwhile, I’m told Natalie Portman is in the lead for the female lead.

Out of all of Marvel’s upcoming movies Thor will be one that will be the trickiest to convert onto the big screen (apart from whoever gets the job of joining the characters together for The Avengers). With the release date being pushed back to 2011 it gives director Kenneth Branagh more time to sort everything out, including who he will cast as the lead. I haven’t read a Thor comic so I have no idea who Natalie Portman would play if this turns out to be true, although I like her as an actress.

Angelina and Liev on the set of Salt

Some more images from the set of Salt have appeared online. This time we get a look at Liev Schreiber on set with Angelina Jolie in New York. Liev plays a character called Winter, Jolie’s ally and supervisor in the CIA’s Russia office. One or two images also feature Chiwetel Ejiofor, who plays a counterintelligence officer trying to take her down.

Spider-Man 4

Sony and Marvel have announced that the release date for Spider-Man 4 will be May 6th 2011. Marvel also announced release dates for some of it’s upcoming movies, which you can see below.

Iron Man 2 - May 7, 2010
Thor - June 17, 2011
The First Avenger: Captain America - July 22, 2011
The Avengers - May 4, 2012

From the looks of things 2011 is the place to be. We will be getting Spider-Man 4 in May, Thor in June and Captain America in July. Only 2 years to wait!

Eclipse

We heard last week that Drew Barrymore was apparently being considered to direct the third film in the Twilight saga, Eclipse. However she isn’t…because someone else is.

From Variety:

Summit Entertainment has tapped Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona to direct “Eclipse,” the third pic in the “Twilight” vampire series.

Summit, which had no comment Wednesday, is expected to make the official announcement soon. The minimajor recently gave “Eclipse” a release date of June 30, 2010.

Bayona’s a protege of Guillermo Del Toro. He directed the Spanish-language horror-thriller “The Orphanage,” which was exec produced by Del Toro, and is attached to helm the Universal thriller “Hater,” with Del Toro and Mark Johnson producing.

Could it be that Summit have actually made a good choice? Guillermo Del Toro is a great director, so a protege of his will no doubt have an eye for film making.

Wonder Woman

We have been getting lots of superhero movie news recently. Iron Man 2 and Green Lantern are edging closer to filming, and Marvel are starting to line up the dots for the big Avengers movie in 2012. However, if you look close enough you will realise one thing. It’s a cockfest. After the bad apples such as Catwoman, Elektra and Aeon Flux, studios have steered clear of female driven superhero movies. However now according to IESB the Wonder Woman movie is picking up speed at Warner Bros.

There was a regime change late last year over at Silver Pictures, Andrew Roma is now the man in charge and will be the man spearheading the live action Wonder Woman project along with mega producer Joel Silver.

Sources in the Burbank studios have confirmed there is quite a bit of movement on the WW front. With Green Lantern going into production this year, it looks like Princess Diana may finally get the go ahead from WB.

WB and Silver Pictures are in the early stages but they are eager to get started on the movie. Sources tell IESB that WB is looking for new writers on the project and have been taking pitches the last few weeks.

In the past there have been a number of starts and stops with the Wonder Woman movie. Megan Gale was set to play the character in Justice League: Mortal, however Warner Bros. have put the movie on told for the time being. They have made it clear that they want to follow Marvel’s lead by introducing the characters in solo movies and then joining them together in a movie further down the line. Green Lantern will be Warner Bros. first outing, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they were planning on Wonder Woman to follow him.

Myspace - New Terminator

Myspace were sent a new poster for Terminator Salvation which you can see below.

Linda Hamilton in Terminator Salvation

"Remember how, in the previous Terminator movies, learning computers kept getting sent from the future? This is that future, and Christian Bale is Edward Furlong." When those fateful lines begin Terminator Salvation, Linda Hamilton will be the one speaking them. A CHUD source who saw the film has confirmed that the actress's call-back voice-over begins the epic story. Let's hope McG also managed to get that Schwarzenegger cameo, a final shot that reveals it's been him telling the entire story to his Terminator grandchildren.

(Thanks, Rick.)

Confirm Megatron will be in Transformers 2

Hugo Weaving recently spoke to AdelaideNow and let slip that he’ll be returning as the voice of Megatron in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

“I’ve already done it,” Weaving says, adding Bay had told him to keep the news hush-hush. “He’s over in LA and we were working on the video split sort of thing and I had this strange conversation where he seemed to imply it was all a big secret. So there you go, I’ve given you the secret scoop.”

Weaving is coy about revealing too much, but does give a tiny hint.

“I think in the last one, doesn’t Optimus Prime pick up a little bit of, a little shard of the cube, or the thing that’s left, and he takes it with him. Maybe there’s something there… but I don’t know,” he laughs.

This revelation led director Michael Bay to post a message of his official site confirming the news. Bay had previous been trying to keep it a secret, even telling Empire Magazine that “He’s not in this movie.’’

Okay cat is out of the bag. Megatron is back —- but you will only get to see him from the long lost past. We go way back in time as this movie explains the mythology of the Primes. He is not a tank like everyone suggests, but an alien vehicle. But sadly he does not has much screen time.

Michael

Prince of Persia - The Sands of Time

Two new images of Jake Gyllenhaal from Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time have appeared online over at The Huffington Post. The casting of Gyllenhaal all makes sense now. The game is mostly played by males which means Disney have that demographic, so in order to get females flocking to see this action/adventure they needed to hire a good looking A-Lister (just like they hired Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom for Pirates of the Caribbean). I know your game Disney! (And it will probably work).

Violent girl-fight

It is inevitable in movies that if you have two good looking females on opposing sides, they have to have a good old cat fight at some point. G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra is keeping with tradition and we will be getting a Sienna Miller vs. Rachel Nichols “violent girl-fight”. Oh, and they’ll be wearing them leather suit while going at it.

From MTV:

Sienna said her favorite scene, however, was decidedly low-tech, depicting her evil Cobra assassin pulling hair with Joe agent “Scarlett” O’Hara. “There’s a really, really good girl fight between Rachel Nichols and myself,” she explained. “It’s like a proper, violent girl-fight scene. And we both worked so hard for the choreography and the training of it. … We both got hurt. I’m clumsy, so I slipped on a rubber bullet at one point and sprained my wrist quite badly. She ran into a flame and got burned.”

I hope we get a glimpse of this in the next trailer, whenever that will be.

Iron Man 2

Deadline Hollywood are on a role with these Iron Man 2 scoops. There had been talk of Scarlett Johansson joining the cast as The Black Widow ever since Emily Blunt had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts. To be honest I didn’t want it to be true as I was hoping Blunt, Fox and Marvel could work something out as she would be great in the role, however things didn’t work out. Now apparently Scarlett Johansson is confirmed for the role.

Now I’m told that Emily Blunt won’t be in the sequel and Black Widow will now be played by Scarlett Johannson. (Interesting because Scarlett actually screen-tested for the role and didn’t get it.) But I hear that, unlike Mickey’s money, the deal for her is “just the opposite, a terrible deal made by CAA,” one of my insiders says. “It’s as bad as any deal that I’ve heard. It’s lowball money. And it ties her to countless movies, including that ensemble The Avengers, which is what makes this brutal for a lot of actors.”

I’d hardly call signing up for The Avengers movie ‘brutal’. It’d be damn exciting! Moving past all the gossip I think if the deal was that bad Johansson wouldn’t have agreed to it.

I have only seen one movie that Scarlett has been in and that was Home Alone 3. I don’t really know whether she will suit the role, although I know Blunt would have suited it better. What do you think? Good casting or ‘meh’ casting?

Damn Avatar trailer

One of the cool things about having James Cameron in your email address book is that whenever some Avatar news goes flying around you can check whether it is true or not, and that is exactly what AICN did after talk of Cameron rejecting 8 trailers appeared online a few days ago.

Harry,

Good to hear from you. As usual the rumor mill is grinding out mostly spurious stuff. I have no plans at present to go to Showest, and in any event we have decided not to unveil material there.

As to the trailer story, I have no idea where that came from but I haven’t rejected any trailers (yet) since I haven’t seen any yet. They’re still working on them for presentation, which presumably will be soon. I’m sure I’ll reject a couple once I have the chance. Right now I’m just focused on having a movie to sell.

The cut is shaping up nicely and the stuff coming in from Weta Digital is astonishing. Every once in a while, as we are absorbed in some intensely detailed discussion about sub-surface scattering or the way a tail is moving in the animation, I’ll just stop and have this moment of clarity, as if seeing it for the first time. And I realize that’s what the lunar astronauts must have felt like. They’d be in the middle of some complex set of procedures and they’d look out the window and go “Oh, yeah. That’s the frickin’ moon!” It feels like that.

Anyway, back to the grind.

Jim out

Spider-Man 4 villain. Wants Dunst to return.

IGN caught up with Spider-Man director Sam Raimi today at the SXSW Film Festival to discuss his new horror film Drag Me to Hell, and while chatting with the director they slipped in a couple of questions about Spider-Man 4.

According to Raimi, he has yet to decide on the villain for Spider-Man 4, though he has firmer plans for the film’s love interest.

“Right now, I’m working with the production team,” he explained. “I’m in the earliest stages of working with the writer, trying to work out a story.”

He added, “We’re closing in on Spider-Man’s adversary or adversaries… but I think Sony is going to want to release the Spider-Man announcements themselves.”

When asked if Mary Jane Watson or Gwen Stacy would take centre stage in terms of romance, Raimi was a little more forthcoming.

“I’m hoping that Kirsten [Dunst, who plays Mary-Jane] will be in it, but we’re still talking about that,” he revealed. “Definitely, she’s got to be in it. It wouldn’t be the Spider-Man series without her.”

Sony recently announced that we will be seeing Spider-Man 4 in May 2011, so Raimi has at least a year to get everything sorted. I got the feeling they introduced Gwen Stacy in Spider-Man 3 to spice things up a bit. Maybe they could makes things even more interesting by adding a character that could be both a love interest and a villain. *cough* Black Cat *cough*

Transformers 3

According to Variety Paramount and Dreamworks have set a release date for Transformers 3, July 1st 2011. No news on whether Michael Bay, Shia LaBeouf or Megan Fox have officially signed on, but they will most likely be back.

2011 is turning into one hell of a Summer. We will be getting Spider-Man 4 and Thor in May, and The First Avenger: Captain America and Harry Potter
and the Deathly Hallows: Part II in July.

Bond girl in Quantum of Solace

The last time we saw Olga Kurylenko she was playing a tough cookie Bond girl in Quantum of Solace, and now it appears she will continue that tough cookie streak as she does battle against the Romans in Centurion. The image comes from Empire, who also had a chance to visit the set and talk to director Neil Marshall (Doomsday) and Olga herself.

“Etain is kind of revenge incarnate,” says the writer/director, speaking to Empire exclusively on set. “Her family were butchered by the Romans, she had her tongue cut out by the Romans, she’s had a hell of a time and she’s out for Roman blood.”

“She’s quite furious,” agrees Kurylenko. “Because one sense is not there – she can’t speak – all the others are more developed. She sees very well and hears very well: she is an animal!”

Set in AD 117 Centurion centers on the 9th Legion fighting for their lives behind enemy lines after a devastating guerrilla attack. Michael Fassbender (Inglorious Basterds), Dominic West, and Noel Clarke are among the cast, and the film will be released later this year.

Michael Bay says ‘wtf’ to the 2011 Transformers 3 release date

Yesterday Paramount/Dreamworks announced that we will be seeing Transformers 3 on July 1st 2011. Well director Michael bay took to his blog to express his views on this, as he will most likely end up directing it.

Wait a Minute!

I said I was taking off a year from Transformers. Paramount made a mistake in dating Transformers 3 - they asked me on the phone - I said yes to July 4 - but for 2012 - whoops! Not 2011!!! That would mean I would have to start prep in September. No way. My brain needs a break from fighting robots.

Michael

Seems Paramount and Bay have some things they need to discuss…

Linda Hamilton’s voice will be in Terminator Salvation!

In February Linda Hamilton, who played Sarah Connor in the original Terminator films, told MTV that she was talking with the Terminator Salvation people about possibly doing a voice-over in the film. Now Chud have word from someone who has already seen the film that Hamilton’s voice-over is indeed in the film.

A source who has seen the film confirms to us that Hamilton’s voice over is in the film, and that it works very well in context. Her voice over is not long, and it comes at the very beginning of the movie; the source compared it in tone and style to her voice over in T2.

We have also been getting strong hints that Mr. Schwarzenegger will also be appearing in some form. We have to hand it to director McG for making this happen and keeping the Terminator universe connected. It will make the viewing experience just that little bit cooler!

Dragonball Evolution - Movie reviews

Dragonball Evolution has already been released in some parts of the world such as China and Japan. As a result reviews have been pouring online…and it doesn’t look good (although that was expected).

Anime News Network gave it an F:

In the end, it all boils down to one thing: this movie appeals to nobody. It was made for no one. People who aren’t familiar with the Dragon Ball story at all will be so flabbergasted by what’s happening that they will likely tell everyone they know that it’s one of the worst movies they’ve ever seen. Fans who do know what the general story is will be furious at just how unbelievably badly they screwed this entire thing up. Kids are used to better writing than this in their weekday afternoon cartoons (although you may run into a kid who has never actually seen a movie before, and they might dig it until you show them another movie). It’s a clunky, tiresome, badly executed, horribly written pile of shame that deserves no quarter.

Nuke the Fridge

This film was easy to sit through, but not worth the price of admission. The plot is almost nonexistent and pasted together with visual effects when they needed to fill in gaps where there was nothing to say. The scope of his film is too small and almost feels like it was more for a direct to DVD release. “Dragonball” deserves better and so do you, my advice is to go read the manga.

AICN

Dragon Ball: Evolution is a terrible film for both DB fans and as a standalone film. It’s not unwatchable, but it’s definitely in the same league as Street Fighter circa JCVD which means you’ll want to gather your friends and have a great laugh together.

A Nutshell

This is basically a movie that only children below the age of 5 will enjoy tremendously, despite having to see 6 half-balls, contributed courtesy of the 3 lead female characters, being continuously flashed on screen, thanks to some neck plunging wardrobe (where’s that malfunction when you need one?) Totally bland and really uninteresting, I would suggest sticking to the manga instead.

These are all negative and so far I haven’t been able to find a positive one to counter all of the bad buzz.

Thanks to movieboy1 for the links.