Three Actresses To Test Opposite Tom Cruise For Second Female Lead In Oblivion

I don't care who they cast as long as it's Kate Beckinsale. :) Yes I just used a smiley symbol in an article where it wont actually show up, but c'mon! it's Kate Beckinsale, Atwell is too young and Diane Kruger is a pretty but fairly dull actress.

Word comes from Toldya that the three Ladies will be in Pittsburgh this weekend where Cruise is filming 'One Shot' to read with him for the part. It appears the three are up for the role of the woman that crash lands in a pod on the surface beneath the clouds where humans now live.

There also seems to be some doubt over the title of the film, recently it was said it had been changed to Horizons as a working title, but this news arrives with the film again referred to as Oblivion.

Oblivion/Horizons is based on Kosinski’s own Radical Publishing comic book series and takes place in a future where humanity has fallen to an irradiated Earth and now live above the clouds as the surface is populated by a savage alien race. Cruise plays Jak, a maintenance drone repair soldier working on the planet’s surface alongside another worker, Vika. When a woman, Julia, is discovered in a crashed ship, Jak’s whole world is thrown into question and he finds himself strangely drawn towards Julia.

McG To Enter Summit Entertainment's Puzzle Palace

Ahhh McG, not a name that is usually greeted with a great deal of enthusiasm when it's linked with a project. Personally I think his first 'Charlie's Angels' movie was exactly what a movie based on that TV show should be, the recent TV revamp missed the point.

Of course he blew a lot of smoke up a lot of assess with 'Terminator Salvation', and even though I personally really like the film for the most part, the fanbase and general audience did not and it was pretty much a flop. So he'll be looking to get back on track with 'This Means War', which I think looks good from the trailer even though TMT's co head honcho Jamie does not!

This new project he is attached to sounds pretty cool and the writers previous script 'Safe House' was really good, so I am cautiously optimistic.

The Hollywood Reporter got the scoop.

McG is in negotiations to helm Summit’s Puzzle Palace, a thriller written by Safe House scribe David Guggenheim and being produced by Twilight mavens Temple Hill.

The story centers on the son of a veteran police officer  who learns his father is framed for murder. When he finds out that there is evidence hidden that could free his father, he is determined to find it, even though it means breaking into One Police Plaza, the most secure building in all of New York City. He ends up being locked inside the police HQ with crooked cops on his tail.

McG is already familiar with Guggenheim’s work. He is exec producer in Medallion, a thriller Guggenheim wrote. That project is in post-production and stars Nicolas Cage and Malin Akerman.

McG, repped by WME, is in post on This Means War, the action movie starring Chris Pine, Tom Hardy and Reese Witherspoon.

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol - Behind the scenes featurette on Dubai's Burj Khalifa

The trailer for the 4th Mission Impossible movie debuts tomorrow but Yahoo! Movies have put this cool behind the scenes featurette up to whet the appetite. It takes a brief look at the amazing stunt work Tom Cruise did on the worlds largest building, there is also a brief glimpse of the new trailer at the end.

I think this has the potential to be the best action sequence of the year and it'll be interesting to see how much of it is shown in the trailer tomorrow. It's also great to see this, Fast 5, Total Recall and The Dark Knight Rises keeping real stunt work alive.

New Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol Poster!

Yahoo! Movies

The IMF is shut down when it's implicated in a global terrorist bombing plot. Ghost Protocol is initiated and Ethan Hunt and his rogue new team must go undercover to clear their organization's name. No help, no contact, off the grid. You have never seen a mission grittier and more intense than this.

The Darth Maul Phenomenon

The moment the second laser blade came out of his Lightsaber hilt in The Phantom Menace trailer, Darth Maul became an icon in a saga filled with icons, yet in truth he had about 3 lines and died at the end of the movie, so why is he so popular?

There's certainly no doubting his popularity, if you check out the poster for The Phantom Menace 3D re-release he is front and center above everyone else, he's about to be resurrected in the Clone Wars series and Sideshow Collectibles just launched this new 40 inch statue worth an eye watering $2,000!

All this is 12 years after his small but exciting role in the first of the Star Wars prequel trilogy, and his popularity and iconic status shows no sign of slowing down and to me it's really pretty simple, he's a visually cool, badass villain.

You see everyone loves to talk about the clever string pulling villains in these types of films and yes they can be cool too, but often they are not physically adept, which is why a cool killer villain will always catch the eye, it was a formula used in the Bond movies with henchmen like Oddjob and Jaws, and to non-fans the character that captured the interest when the trailers for Hellboy hit was Kroenen, because while everyone loves a cool badass hero, a hero is only as good as his villain and the intellectual mastrerminds usually don't provide the big fight we want to see our heroes in.

Darth Maul is the epitome of this type of character with his red and black tattooed face contrasting with his black robes; his duel bladed Lightsaber and feral snarl, he was like a Sith Ninja. Some initially thought he'd be the Vader of the new trilogy but that wasn't to be, he served the purpose of simply being the physical threat to the Jedi while his master pulled the strings, and he was promptly killed by Obi Wan Kenobi at the climax of the movie.

So Maul was not the new Vader but he did have something in common with another Star Wars icon, the bounty hunter Boba Fett!

He, like Maul, gained cult status in the original trilogy and is hugely popular to this day with books and merchandise still regularly produced. However like Maul he had a few lines and was merely a cool looking badass, but also like Maul his popularity was so strong that his uber lame death in Return of the Jedi has since been wiped and official canon says he escaped the sarlac pit.

Now you'd think Lucas would have learned his lesson after Fett, I mean he's allowing Maul back from the dead as well and subsequent prequel villains Count Dooku, Jango Fett and General Grievous don't have a quarter of his status, even though I'd argue Jango plays a more significant role as part of the bigger picture and one of the strongest story elements of the prequels.

So did he make a mistake in killing him off? I'd argue no, he served his purpose and it certainly hasn't prevented Lucas from making loads of money off the character, or allowing many other stories to be written about him, but Maul was what he was, a visually cool badass, but once you've seen him that's it, there's no more to the show, sure there could have been had this been an all new trilogy, but it wasn't and there was a bigger story to tell, and so he was exactly what he was meant to be and I for one miss that type of villain in a movie landscape obsessed with "realism", and at least he got a much better death than poor Boba.

Sony Pictures To Adapt Assassins Creed

I have only played the first game and I found it boring but I'm told the subsequent sequels were far superior and I do like the concept, plus the lead character design is cool and riffs off the Jedi look.

It will be interesting to see if Sony see this as a tentpole summer film after the mediocre performance of The Prince of Persia, or if they'll do a lower budget R rated version and stick it in the Resident Evil release slot.

Comingsoon.Net got the news via Variety.

Back in May, Ubisoft Motion Pictures, the film and TV production arm of the game publishing company, announced it was developing 3D feature films based on Assassin's Creed, Splinter Cell and Ghost Recon. Variety now says that the Assassin's Creed adaptation has found a home at Sony Pictures.

The trade says that the studio is in final negotiations to adapt and distribute the movie, landing the film rights in a bidding war after Ubisoft started shopping the property over the last several months.

The fourth installment of the games, Assassin's Creed: Revelations is set to hit the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC on November 15.

Earlier this year, Jean de Rivieres, Ubisoft's senior VP of international marketing and distribution, said "Our strategy is not to diversify but to bolster the appeal of our franchises -- that's why we want to make sure our films will reflect the brands accurately and consolidate our fan base while expanding beyond the games' primary target audience."

Baronnet added, "We want to keep ownership, retain control over the film content, and we're open to work with studios on the development of our projects, and eventually collaborate on the pre-casting, pre-budget and script."

Sony is also developing big screen adaptations of Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and inFAMOUS.

The Flowers Of War Trailer

Wow! This looks to be both a powerful drama and visually stunning and visceral war movie. Good to see Bale branching out again and in this case interestingly taking a role in a war movie where he plays a character not involved in the actual fighting.

Based on a screenplay by Heng Liu (Assembly, The Story of Qiu Ju), The Flowers of War is adapted from Geling Yan's historical novel 13 Flowers of Nanjing. Produced by Zhang Weiping, THE FLOWERS OF WAR features award winning filmmakers Director of Photography Zhao Xiaoding (Under the Hawthorn Tree, House of Flying Daggers), Production Designer Yohei Taneda (Kill Bill: Vol. 1, Villain), and Sound Designer Tao Jing (Hero, House of Flying Daggers).

Inspired by true life events, The Flowers of War tells a genuine story of hope, love and sacrifice. Set in 1937, Nanking stands at the forefront of a war between China and Japan. As the invading Japanese Imperial Army overruns China's capital city, desperate civilians seek refuge behind the nominally protective walls of a western cathedral. Here, John Haufman (Bale), an American trapped amidst the chaos of battle and the ensuing occupation takes shelter, joined by a group of innocent schoolgirls and thirteen courtesans, equally determined to escape the horrors taking place outside the church walls.

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception Launch Trailer

I've said it before, the second game in the series was the best summer blockbuster never made, this looks like it will take things to yet another level! check out the awesome launch trailer below

A search for the fabled "Atlantis of the Sands" propels fortune hunter Nathan Drake on a daring trek into the heart of the Arabian Desert, a journey that pits him and his mentor Victor Sullivan against the occult treachery of a shadowy clandestine organization and its ruthless leader. When the terrible secrets of this lost city are unearthed, Drake's quest descends into a desperate bid for survival that strains the limits of his endurance and forces him to confront his deepest fears.

Developed by Naughty Dog, UNCHARTED 3 is the next game in the critically acclaimed UNCHARTED series, exclusively for the PS3 system.

UNCHARTED 3: Drake's Deception will be released on November 1, 2011 in North America and November 2011 in the rest of the world.

Visit the official UNCHARTED 3 website at: http://www.unchartedthegame.com/

Amazing Pics From The TDKR Set In LA

I posted some images on TMT the other night of the Batwing attached to a helicopter being flown above the city, the question was whether it was just being airlifted to a location or being filmed so this new vehicle would have in camera flying shots.

Well judging by these stunning shots taken by eyeprime, it looks will Nolan may well be going for some ambitious in camera shots of the vehicle flying through the city, given the machine is all lit up and looks as if it's meant to be in functional mode.

See more HQ's at the link.

New Footage Of Total Recall Shown At NYCC

Although The Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers currently sit atop my "most anticipated of 2012 list", Len Wiseman's Total Recall adaption/remake hybrid is in 3rd spot right now.

As a director I like Wiseman's style and from his interviews he seems a humble guy with a real passion for making movies and plenty of imagination for actoin sequences.

The new footage sounds pretty damn cool and you can check the description out below courtesy of Hollywood.Com

After showing off some shiny 3D footage for Underworld Awakening, the fourth entry in his vampire/werewolf action series, producer Len Wiseman appeared a second time on the New York Comic Con jumbotron to introduce exclusive footage from his next directorial project, Total Recall.

The movie is a semi-remake of the 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger sci-fi flick of the same name, but even after the first snippets of footage, the two films don't appear to share much other than a title and a loose, mind-bending scenario. The first round of footage was an extended version of the preview that played at SDCC (while Total Recall was still well into production). Colin Farrell plays Doug Quaid, who arrives at the brothel-esque Rekall center to have fake memories implanted into his brain—the ultimate form of escapism.

McClane (Star Trek actor John Cho, sporting a wild, bleached blonde do) runs the facility and personally assists Farrell with the process. But Rekall comes with one warning: You're not allowed to implant a memory that's actually true. Well, you can guess what happens next. Quaid's request to "become" a spy is denied when the machine goes haywire, due to a detection of truth. Before McClane can get answers out of Quaid, the Rekall center is infiltrated by a dozen robot and human police looking to bring Quaid down. The action sequence wowed audiences at San Diego, thanks to a wild series of gliding camera moves that follow Quaid has his inner killer turns on and beats the living daylights out of his opponents. Evidently, there's no CG trickery here—the filmmakers used the same techniques you see when a cam flies across the football field in an NFL game!

As far as I know, everything after this zippy camera move was new. The extended version of the scene sees Quaid escaping the Rekall Center through a duct and out into the open air of a futuristic metropolis. Then a sizzle reel of flashy imagery kicked in: Quaid running through a rainy, Blade Runner-esque slum; more of the flying cars and squeaky clean future city life; a vicious cat fight between Kate Beckinsale's Lori and Jessica Biel's Melina (which should bring smiles to those who know the original film); a vehicular crash/action scene atop a skyscraper/tower; and the meatiest of the shots, a quick dialogue between Quaid and Bryan Cranston's Vilos Cohaagen. Cohaagan was jabbing Quaid with a few threatening words, but they were barely audible over the screams Cranston received for just showing up.

Remakes will always make fans of the original nervous, but Total Recall may have enough imagination up its sleeve to make it feel like its own movie. Farrell isn't playing Ah-nuld (thankfully), and as we know from his diverse career, is fully capable of standing up and being the man. The brief shots of action we caught at the presentation made Farrell look like, for lack of a better phrase, a total badass, even amongst the movie's big scope. This movie may not take us to Mars, but from the quick reel of footage, it should end up taking us to enough other crazy places