Archive for John Malkovich

Twilight isn’t the only franchise looking for some Oscar luster. While Transformers 3 won’t be replacing trash-tastic director Michael Bay with Ang Lee or Kathryn Bigelow, the on-screen talent is going to get a lot classier. “We just locked in Frances McDormand and John Malkovich,” reported Bay on his website. “Both amazing actors I’ve always wanted to work with.” Yes, after watching an Autobat urinate gasoline on John Turturro in the first movie, we’ve always wondered what movie magic Bay could wrangle out of an Oscar winner like McDormand. And who can wait to see a tete-a-tete between Malkovich and Megan Fox? With those acting fireworks, giant killer robots will only get in the way!

Despite the critical drubbing last year’s Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen received, it sounds like no expense will be spared on the 2011 follow-up. Crows Bay, “We are going to shoot in LA, Chicago, Washington DC, Florida, Texas, Africa, Moscow, and China.” And by shoot, we assume they mean “blow the crap out of stuff.” [via Vulture]

[Photos: Getty Images/WENN]

Sony’s Columbia Pictures has decided to scrap Spider-Man 4, scheduled for 2011, after more than two years of pre-production. Instead, the studio will reboot the series entirely, jettisoning director Sam Raimi and star Tobey Maguire. “Peter Parker is going back to high school when the next Spider-Man hits theaters in the summer of 2012. Says the company’s statement, “[Columbia and Marvel Studios] are moving forward with a film based on a script by James Vanderbilt that focuses on a teenager grappling with both contemporary human problems and amazing super-human crises.”

This isn’t the first time an action franchise has wiped the slate clean, but it usually happens years after a flop like Batman & Robin or Superman IV: The Quest For Peace. But Spider-Man 3 made almost $900 million worldwide less than three years ago. So what happened?

While Raimi is polite in the studio’s press release (“While we were looking forward to doing a fourth one together, the studio and Marvel have a unique opportunity to take the franchise in a new direction”) it’s known he was clashing with the studio over the planned sequel’s cast—he wanted to use winged criminal The Vulture (think John Malkovich), they wanted sexy seductress The Black Cat (think Anne Hathaway). Raimi had been averse to using Venom in Spidey 3, and while the film was a hit, some fans didn’t appreciate Raimi’s love of dance sequences and old-timey melodrama. Since Maguire, Raimi and co-star Kirsten Dunst were an all-for-one/one-for-all team, Sony must have decided they’d be better off without them. Following the massive success of Avatar, some are even speculating James Cameron (who campaigned for the franchise before Raimi got the nod) may take over to bring the character into 3D. Truth is, they might need a director that exciting to make up for this bad buzz.

[Photo: Sony Pictures]

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