Two New 'I Am Legend' Trailers Surface

By Katey Rich

 

All the movie blogs are in a tizzy today over the new U.S. trailer for I Am Legend, which was somewhat melodramatically released at midnight last night on MySpace (I don't pay a lot of attention to these things, but does this usually happen?) I kind of underestimated both the Internet's and my own interest in this film until I spent half an hour this morning trying to figure out exactly which was the new trailer; having seen what is apparently every trailer available, I'm downright excited. I'm a bit of a sucker for futuristic films in a recognizable setting (I blame it on Back to the Future II), so the shots of Times Square overgrown with weeds or the Brooklyn Bridge in tatters are pretty thrilling (also, imagine! Times Square filled with plants instead of tourists!) The concept is foolproof and spooky: Robert Neville(Will Smith) is the only survivor of a virus that transformed the entire human race into zombie-vampire people (or something like that). During the day he has the run of the city, but at night he and his German shepherd cower in the bathtub, hiding from the mutated people. Neville is immune to the virus, and wants to use that immunity to cure the disease, but it seems that the zombie vampires have other things in mind.

I spent so long figuring out which one was the new trailer because it seems the international version and U.S. version leaked within hours of each other. Below is (I hope!) the actual U.S. version.

I like the way this one sets up the atmosphere Neville lives in long before we see the beasties who come out at night. This is something you always see in films, spending time with a character and getting into his head before the real business begins, but to see it in a trailer is remarkably effective. Also they're showing off their set-pieces--the abandoned South Street Seaport, the stunning shots of a desolate New York City--without tipping their hand. It all makes me think is how excited I am to get a proper look at these.

After the jump is the international trailer, with some discussion.

It's a little odd how we get so much more plot explanation in this one-- the fact that Neville is immune, the way he's trying to solve the epidemic--even though it's intended for an international, not entirely English-speaking audience. It's obviously a lot more action-oriented-- big-budget explosions being America's greatest export, of course-- and more ass-kicking Will Smith, who, as described in this New York Times article from earlier this year, is one of few black stars who can perform well overseas.

Really, I like the way the two trailers play together. If each of the elements laid out here-- pensive atmospherics, adrenaline-laced action-- come together in the film, you can see how it is expected to play well smack-dab in the middle of December, surrounded by big-budget kid pictures (Golden Compass, Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium) and the middle of the prestige film season. Looking at its release date of Dec. 14, though, it's almost comical how little is opening against it-- Alvin and the Chipmunks (God save our souls), Juno (sure to be a hit in its limited bow, but still, limited), Youth Without Youth (exclusively in New York and L.A.), The Perfect Holiday (coming out two weeks after This Christmas, and I cannot tell the different between these films whastoever). Basically, it's Will Smith's party, and he'll kill zombie vampires if he wants to.

Zobel Finds Indie Movie Success

By Katey Rich

I wasn't so crazy about Craig Zobel's Great World of Sound, but I'm apparently in the minority: not only did Zobel's film earn three Gotham Award nominations, but Zobel's latest project, Turkey in the Straw, is set to begin production at Plum Pictures. Barlow Jacobs and Zobel co-wrote the script, a dark comedy about a political race in a small Southern town.

Great World of Sound earned Gotham Award nominations for best feature, breakthrough director and breakthrough actor Kene Holliday, an actor who did mostly regional work before playing fast-talking music industry representative Clarence in Zobel's film. The movie really did have a lot going for it, and Holliday was by far one of the best parts, a live-wire counterpart to the film's main character, Martin (Pat Healy), who reluctantly gets into the song-sharking business and sees its downsides long before Clarence does.

As much as Great World of Sound left me unsatisfied, its sense of place and keen ear for dialogue indicated that Zobel is a real talent. A Southerner myself, I loved the film's true Charlotte-area accents and great expanses of pine-fringed highways. Zobel is sticking with what he knows for Turkey, which is good, and seems to have picked a story with a little more narrative force, which is even better. And best of all, Turkey in the Straw is shooting in my  home state of South Carolina! Given that the most recent SC-filmed projects to come out were Death Sentence and Who's Your Caddy?, we could use a little indie panache. Granted, no one will have ever heard of Craig Zobel when he gets down there, but with all that Southern friendliness, he might not even notice.

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Diablo Cody, Megan Fox Team Up For Horror Comedy

By Katey Rich

Cody: stripper turned Hollywood power player

Just when it seems Hollywood doesn't create real-life fairy tales anymore-- or that they all end in rehab or flashing the paparazzi--here comes Diablo Cody to warm our hearts again. While she's not exactly Laura Ingalls-- she did, after all, make her name writing a blog about her experience as a stripper--she's the latest example of a small-town girl made good, having wowed audiences with her screenplay for the Toronto Film Festival hit Juno and subsequently signed a deal to write a TV show for Showtime and, it was announced today, a horror comedy called Jennifer's Body, starring Megan Fox (Transformers). Fox plays a perfect-seeming cheerleader who becomes possessed and starts killing the boys in her town.

Normally casting news that involved the random chick from Transformers wouldn't catch my attention, but I've kind of fallen in love with Cody in the last few days, from reading her new blog about her experiences promoting Juno and getting incredibly excited about finally seeing Juno for myself. Cody also makes a great point about Jennifer's Body, which on first read seems to be standard horror-with-a-hot-chick fare: "And now-- Hollywood's tiresome profusion of 'girlfriend roles' be damned-- she's going to literally get out there AND DESTROY SOME FUCKING BOYS."

I've developed a personal vendetta against the "girlfriend role" lately, thanks to Michelle Monaghan and Mary-Louise Parker's wasted performances in Gone Baby Gone and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, respectively, and also Eva Mendes' elegant performance in We Own the Night, which proves that a girlfriend doesn't have to be a one-dimensional stand-in for a real emotional partner. Whether or not Cody will actually have any real power to change this trend--my guess is not, as much as I love her-- it's great to hear someone actually yelling about it, especially someone who's on the verge of making a serious  name for herself in Hollywood. It's outrageous that we're still struggling for real female characters onscreen, and I never would have expected Megan Fox to become one, but I'll take it in whatever form it comes.

Hopkins Shows His Claws, Goes A Little Psycho

By Katey Rich

Lon Chaney, Jr. as the original Wolf Man

In an interview last week about his independently-produced Slipstream, Anthony Hopkins brushed off a suggestion that he saw a lack of originality in Hollywood productions these days. "No, no. Some are not that good, but no. I get a bit tired of the same old formula, you know, but some wonderful actors are doing that."

Perhaps we should have seen it as a hint. MTV News confirmed yesterday that Hopkins will be joining the cast of one of the most anticipated big-budget projects in the works, a remake of the 1941 horror classic Wolf-Man. Hopkins will star as Sir John Talbot, the father of Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro), a man bitten by and transformed into a werewolf.

Hopkins' role was originated by Claude Rains, with Lon Chaney, Jr. (not to be confused with his more famous father) playing Del Toro's Wolf-Man. It's tempting to decry this as another example of Hollywood relying on old ideas to make new films, but isn't it kind of refreshing to see something sci-fi that isn't a comic book adaptation? Hopkins and Del Toro obviously bring some class to the proceedings (not to say either of them hasn't been responsible for some stinkers), and if this one is a hit, might we see Tom Hanks as the Creature from the Black Lagoon? Philip Seymour Hoffman as The Blob? The possibilities are endless!

MTV had a big scoop day with Hopkins, it seems, since he also confirmed his participation in a project tentatively titled Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Hopkins will, of course, play the titular director, in the film which documents Hitch's process of making Psycho. There's not too many details yet for the Ryan Murphy (Running With Scissors) project, but Hopkins did a great Hitchcock impression that seems promising for the movie to come.

Coens Question Cormac

By Katey Rich

Photo by Eric Ogden for Time.

Time magazine features one of the weirder bits of press that's come out regarding No Country for Old Men, the Coen Brothers thriller based on Cormac McCarthy's novel of the same name. The film comes out November 9 but already won raves at the New York Film Festival, including from yours truly. Notoriously press-shy McCarthy had yet to weigh in on any of this until Time's Lev Grossman found a very unusual offer: he was allowed to sit in a room with the Coens and McCarthy, write down their conversation, but not participate in it. "If it were a reality show it would be called Eccentric Genius Island," Grossman wrote.

What follows is less of an interview of McCarthy than McCarthy interviewing the Coens themselves, asking about projects they've worked on that never made it and how the hell they filmed the scene in No Country in which Josh Brolin is chased down a river by a fearsome dog. It also features one of my favorite exchanges I've seen in regards to the Coens' work, in discussion of the category of great American movies:

C.M. But Miller's Crossing is in that category. I don't want to embarrass you, but that's just a very, very fine movie.

J.C. Eh, it's just a damn rip-off.

C.M. No, I didn't say it wasn't a rip-off. I understand it's a rip-off. I'm just saying it's good. [Everybody laughs.]

It's a short, excellent interview. Who knew the Coens are great at my job as well as their own?

Wahlberg Replaces Gosling in 'Lovely Bones'

By Katey Rich

Peter Jackson isn't exactly a director with a reputation for not being able to make up his mind�he spent years and years on one project, after all�but this weekend marked the second time Jackson replaced his leading actor on the eve of shooting. Ryan Gosling bowed out of Jackson's upcoming The Lovely Bones on Friday, after gaining 20 pounds and growing a beard for the role (as reported by Variety). The always-reliable Mark Wahlberg has stepped in instead, and will star opposite Rachel Weisz as a father grieving his murdered young daughter.

Jackson pulled the old switcheroo back at the beginning of shooting for the mammoth Lord of the Rings trilogy, replacing Stuart Townsend with Viggo Mortensen in the key role of Aragorn just before shooting began. Now, of course, it's impossible to imagine anyone but Mortensen playing the role. When it comes to The Lovely Bones, Jackson has once again replaced a younger actor with someone older--Mortenson is 20 years old than Townsend, Wahlberg 9 years older than Gosling. Given that Wahlberg and Weisz are the same age--36--their pairing makes more sense, especially since Gosling, at 27, isn't old enough to be a parent of a teenager anyway.

Still, odds are there's more than just age-tinkering going on here. Gosling quit due to "creative differences," which could mean anything, but must be serious given the commitment he'd made to the film thus far (and the high profile of the film, particularly for an actor whose star is still on the rise). Though Gosling has gotten plenty of critical attention lately, for turns in last year's Half Nelson and this fall's most bizarre romantic comedy, Lars and the Real Girl, he doesn't have nearly the same recognition as Wahlberg, who has performed well in the past as part of a well-known ensemble (Boogie Nights, The Departed). Still, Jackson doesn't need a big-name actor in the part; based on a best-selling novel and directed by one of the biggest names out there, The Lovely Bones will have all the attention it can handle when it is released next year.

Bottom line: something big has happened to result in this switch. Gosling's career probably isn't doomed, but it's hard to see how being in this film would have hurt him professionally. We probably won't hear tales of catfights and brawls on set--thank God--but it seems like a safe bet that there was bad blood somewhere. Wahlberg seems fully capable of taking on the role, but it's hard not to wonder what Gosling could have done with it.

UPDATE: Kim Masters over at Slate says that "a strong source" confirms a blowup between Gosling and Jackson. Maybe those grisly details will be coming forward after all!

Weekend Roundup: Vampires Rule

By Katey Rich

Nothing too surprising about this weekend's box office. As predicted, Josh Hartnett somehow became the #1 movie star in America, with 30 Days of Night earning $16 million to come in at number one. Tyler Perry continues his reign with Why Did I Get Married? slipping to #2, and The Rock remains inexplicably durable with The Game Plan, which slipped one notch to #3 with a gross of $8 million. Let's not even get into how unscreened-for-critics sports parody The Comebacks debuted at #6 and made nearly $6 million. It's just too dismal to think about.

Happily, two movies for grown-ups are hanging on, at least, with Michael Clayton sticking around at #4 for its third weekend, with only a 31% drop. Gone Baby Gone was the only one of the four "serious movies" (we'll get to the rest in a second) that made a name for itself, debuting at #5 with a $6 million gross.

Short round-up of those "others" I mentioned: Rendition tanked at #9 with $4,175,00 (on over 2,000 screens!), Things We Lost in the Fire tanked even harder at #15, bringing in just over $1.5 million, and Reservation Road, with a limited opening on 13 screens, managed a $2,830 per-screen average but didn't make much of a splash.

Rounding out the top 10 were last week's We Own the Night at #7 (another example of grown-up fare hanging on by a thread), The Heartbreak Kid at #10 with $3.9 million, and the first weekend of The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3D, which is one of the more remarkable stories that no one seems to be talking about. A modest hit when it opened in 1993, the film has become a rerun classic (it seems to be on cable every Thanksgiving for some reason) and has been a huge success with its annual re-release in theatres. The film pulled off a phenomenal $9,122 per-theater average over the weekend, on 564 screens; I remember my parents telling me about the days before VHS, when you would wait every year for your favorites to come on television or back into theatres. It looks like 3D and the venerable power of a classic have somehow brought that tradition back to theatres. People still ringing the death knell for the theatrical experience (OK, maybe we have to go back to 2005 to find those people) should keep an eye on, of all people, Tim Burton.

Next weekend: Oh goodness, there's another Saw coming out. Enjoy these next few days, since soon we'll all be bemoaning the degradation of our culture once again. Full box-office numbers, thanks to boxofficemojo.com, are available after the jump.

Rank                Title                      Studio      Weekend Gross          Drop        # of screens             Per-theater    Total gross        Week # 

1	N	30 Days of Night	Sony	$16,000,000	-	2,855	-	$5,604	$16,000,000		1
2	1	Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married	LGF	$12,100,000	-43.3%	2,034	+23	$5,948	$38,865,000	-	2
3	2	The Game Plan	BV	$8,122,000	-26.4%	3,301	+173	$2,460	$69,150,000	-	4
4	4	Michael Clayton	WB	$7,100,000	-31.6%	2,585	+74	$2,746	$21,986,000	-	3
5	N	Gone Baby Gone	Mira.	$6,000,000	-	1,713	-	$3,502	$6,000,000	-	1
6	N	The Comebacks	FoxA	$5,850,000	-	2,812	-	$2,080	$5,850,000	-	1
7	3	We Own the Night	Sony	$5,500,000	-49.2%	2,362	-	$2,328	$19,784,000		2
8	N	Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas in Disney Digital 3-D (2007 re-issue)	BV	$5,145,000	-	564	-	$9,122	$5,145,000	-	1
9	N	Rendition	NL	$4,175,000	-	2,250	-	$1,855	$4,175,000	-	1
10	5	The Heartbreak Kid	P/DW	$3,900,000	-46.4%	2,782	-451	$1,401	$32,111,000	-	3
11	6	Elizabeth: The Golden Age	Uni.	$3,139,000	-49.0%	2,006	+5	$1,564	$11,213,000	-	2
12	8	Across the Universe	SonR	$2,700,000	-29.4%	960	+6	$2,812	$16,767,000	-	6
13	7	The Kingdom	Uni.	$2,379,000	-48.4%	1,730	-1,106	$1,375	$43,950,000		4
14	16	Into the Wild	ParV	$2,150,000	+131.5%	658	+505	$3,267	$6,502,000	-	5
15	N	Things We Lost in the Fire	P/DW	$1,604,000	-	1,142	-	$1,404	$1,604,000	-	1
16	15	The Darjeeling Limited	FoxS	$1,320,000	+21.6%	202	+107	$6,534	$3,903,000	-	4
17	9	Resident Evil: Extinction	SGem	$1,050,000	-60.3%	1,183	-1,066	$887	$50,008,000	-	5
18	11	Good Luck Chuck	LGF	$670,000	-67.0%	852	-1,099	$786	$34,206,000	-	5
19	22	Lust, Caution	Focus	$586,000	-3.9%	125	+48	$4,688	$2,107,000		4
20	27	The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford	WB	$560,000	+29.5%	301	+138	$1,860	$2,208,000		5