Comic-Con: Yes, There Will Be a Jurassic Park 4, Eventually

A fourth Jurassic Park is inevitable. Just a matter of when and who will be directing, presumably not Steven Spielberg or Joe Johnston.

During the Tintin panel along with Peter Jackson, Spielberg confirms they've committed to a story and a writer with the intention/hope/guess of it being released in "the next two or three years."

While the story is anyone's guess, we can only assume the phantom screenwriter is Mark Protosevich, who as of last month was reported to have taken several meetings with Spielberg over Jurassic Park 4.

Comic-Con: Guillermo del Toro Talks Up Pacific Rim

Not too much to go off of since it doesn't come out until July 2013, filming hasn't begun (Hence no footage for everyone to drool over) and the cast hasn't been 100% locked down, but nonetheless Guillermo del Toro was front and center yesterday to talk up Pacific Rim. He was joined by screenwriter Travis Beachham and actors Charlie Day, Idris Elba and Charlie Hunnam.

Outside of this logo courtesy of Legendary Pictures (via Coming Soon), the highlight was essentially helmer del Toro confirming the meat of the story: "Giant fucking monsters against giant fucking robots."

Bring it on. I'm just happy after the hardships of The Hobbit fiasco and At the Mountains of Madness (and then there's the 800 lb. gorilla of whether Hellboy 3 will ever see the light of day – my guess is it won’t), it's encouraging to see del Toro getting a movie made he is clearly passionate about.

Comic-Con: Let the Viral Marketing for Elysium Begin...

Neil Blomkamp's science-fiction actioner Elysium isn't due in theaters until March 2013. Sigh.

But with filming set to commence in the not-too-distance for his District 9 follow-up starring Sharlto Copley, Matt Damon and Jodie Foster, the viral marketing has started up in the form of a one-sheet courtesy of Coming Soon and this (fake) recruitment video.

Can't wait to see what Blomkamp has cooking upstairs for this and, not to mention, the production design work of the legendary Syd Mead.

And for you good readers yearning for more than just a viral one-sheet and video for an original movie that won't be out for another two years, let us present bald and buff Matt Damon (and how he's supposed to appear in Elysium) or The Bourne Egghead via WWTDD.

The Amazing Spider-Man Teaser Trailer Kinda Sucks

For as great as the Comic-Con presentation will, no doubt, be this weekend, most people aren't going to be there in San Diego to see it. So, the general public's first impressions of The Amazing Spider-Man will boil down to its teaser trailer, which Movie-List had but as it turns out it was a bootleg which we initially posted. Here instead is the official Yahoo! Movies link to said teaser.

Alright, so this Spider-Man reboot has a lot stacked against it in the eyes of many. After that "Eh..." teaser for The Dark Knight Rises, this had every right to surprise the Hell out of everyone and prove the (many) doubters wrong, and I really thought it was going to do that.

I was wrong.

Granted, this is only a two-minute reflection of a two-hour film still in the works, and we can all agree the final product isn't going to be as somber as this teaser suggests. But to start off your marketing strategy with winning people over for the new webslinger Andrew Garfield and a new series of Spider-Man movies by playing up a horror (?!?) angle. What's the word I'm thinking...oh yeah, dumb! Underwhelming is another.

Yeah, yeah, that closing POV shot is nice though. I'll give it that.

Kevin Costner Joins Django Unchained

If it wasn't already Christmas, then boy will next Christmas be, eh, Christmas Day for Kevin Costner fans.

He's lined up to play Pa Kent for The Man of Steel (due for to an unspecified December 2012 release). So he's already going to be back on everyone's radar next year. But not one to stick with one big movie, "TOLDJA" says Quentin Tarantino has cast him in Django Unchained.

Costner will play against type as Ace Woody, the bastard who trains slave into fighting much to pleasure of the racist assholes watching on in amusement. He joins a cast including Jamie Foxx as our hero, Christoph Waltz as his German dentist-turned-bounty hunter alley, Leonardo DiCaprio as the main villain and Samuel L. Jackson as himself.

It was just a few years ago we had to endure Costner in crap like Rumor Has It..., The Guardian and Swing Vote. Thank God he has fans in Tarantino and Zack Snyder who remember that magical time of The Untouchables, No Way Out, Bull Durham and, the capper of them all, JFK.

The Dark Tower Is Dead

At the start of this summer arrived word from Variety things were looking shaky on The Dark Tower, from director Ron Howard and his producing-partner Brian Grazer based on the Stephen King book series with Javier Bardem attached to play the lead character "Gunslinger" Roland Deschain.

When reporting the original item, I said:

"Let's put it this way, when a 'safe bet' for Universal is making a Jason Bourne movie with the character's name flashed all over the title but he’s not actually in it, then you know where something like Dark Tower stands there. My guess is they let it go, and in the event of a rival studio grabs it ASAP, their game plan gets changed big time."

In that time between that publication and today, Howard has committed himself to helming Rush, the biopic on UK Formula One drover James Hunt with Chris Hemsworth, Bardem appears to now be locked for the next James Bond film for next November and Universal quietly slotted Fast & the Furious 6 for May 2013, a release intended for The Dark Tower. 

So the evidence was all there and as much as this sucks for fans to hear, nobody should truthfully be surprised by this news from Heat Vision. The ambitious plan, including a film trilogy with two short-run television shows to be produced and air in between installments, is a thing of the past as Universal has killed the project.

Before anyone falls back on them being "chicken-shitted," remember how much that studio got behind equally ambitious projects like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Land of the Lost, Drag Me to Hell and Bruno, among others. So they've definitely taken risk the last few years with no cha-ching payoff. If that were the case, then Dark Tower and Guillermo del Toro's At the Mountains of Madness would be filming and getting ready for their big Comic-Con panels this weekend.

The Man of Steel Gets New Writers

Common practice for a big movie, like The Man of Steel, to have a multitude of writers go through the script before, during and after production. But since the Superman reboot's announcement back in early 2010, all we've heard was David Goyer as the sole official screenwriter, with a "Story by" credit for producer Christopher Nolan and those rumblings, originating from IGN Movies, on little brother and writing partner-in-crime Jonah Nolan.

On the eve of both Goyer's taking on the Godzilla reboot and the start of production, Movie Hole confirms li'l Nolan's participation (i.e. "Nolan took a pass on it") and reports on the involvement of a new screenwriter courtesy of director Snyder: Kurt Johnstad.

So far, his career highlights are being writer to Snyder-centric endeavors ranging from 300 to its prequel 300: Battle of Artemisia, the one Warner Brothers/Legendary Pictures are so hot for they're not waiting for Snyder to call "Action!" behind camera and instead gave the gig to Noam Murro.

So are two more writers this late into the game a case of the "Uh-ohs!" for the Last Son of Krypton's second shot at a big-screen franchise? Not necessarily. It just depends on the extent of their work. If we're talking about what happened to Jonah Hex (a new director, Francis Lawrence, replacing the original, Jimmy Hayward, and reshoots/rewrites said to be in excess of 70 pages), then yes. But as history has shown, it's not bad for someone to come in after Goyer and rework said script.

The Dark Knight Rises Teaser Is OK

Props to Collider whose trailer description (which we didn't post because, fuck it, we opted to wait to see the damn footage instead of talking about it!) gels with the real McCoy.

The Internet hysteria, also known as the marketing for The Dark Knight Rises, went to 11 last week with the promise of both a teaser one-sheet and trailer. Well we got the former and fanboys naturally lost their mind. Because it was for a Batman movie and from Christopher Nolan, the idea of having the Bat symbol in any form was praised as "genius." Eh, it looked good, yes. But I didn't lose my mind over it. It was a teaser, and it did its job. It teased.

Which, of course, leads us to the big jalapeno of everyone's first real look at footage from the third, and final, Nolan-helmed, Christian Bale-starring Batman epic. Here it is, via Coming Soon.

My reaction is the same as the teaser one-sheet. It's alright, but nothing to go ape-shit over. But once again, it's a teaser and it ultimately did its job. It teased! Certainly showed more footage than I thought it would last week.

News, Rumors & 100% Grade-A Internet Bullshit - July 15, 2011

- Going to Comic-Con next weekend, but bummed you'll miss out on seeing Captain America opening that very same weekend? Superhero Hype says, "Have no fear!" A special screening is going down on the morning of July 21^st with the Sentinel of Liberty himself Chris Evans will be there to introduce the film. Special note, fanboys, please refrain from touching Evans until his body-guard (ironically named Bucky) will "have words" with you.

- Ruairi Robinson and Albert Hughes came and went, but Warner Brothers (for some unexplained reason) is still insistent on Akira. Are things that frantic now that Harry Potter is ending, Christopher Nolan is wrapping up his Batman trilogy on his own terms and DC Entertainment started out the gate with a certified box-office bed-shitter in Green Lantern? Spanish filmmaker Jaume Collet-Serra (who recently delivered a decent-sized hit with the Liam Neeson-actioner Unknown) is the latest to pull up their sleeves and give Akira the good old college-try reports Variety. This time with a $90 million budget and, the looks of it, not this two-film adaptation bullshit like we kept hearing under the Hughes and Robinson incarnations. Been there, done that, and we've heard this before with this property. Shall we start our watches and time when this third attempt falls apart?

- Speaking of WB and their "bleak" future without the boy wizard, Vulture is hearing David Yates (the British helmer behind the last four Harry Potter flicks) is being flown out to Burbank and shooting the shit with the likes of big-cheese Jeff Robinov about working his magic on The Stand. In a move echoing what he did with Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows, their intentions are to split Stephen King's epic into a film-trilogy, which as a fan of that particular book, I can say is justified. Yates isn't committed, mind you, and mulling through other projects with the Brothers Warner including Cicero, an Al Capone "origin story" with Tom Hardy attached and Fables, based on the Vertigo comic-book about various characters from fairy-tale folklore living in Manhattan.

John Carter Trailer Is Damn Good

Given its influence over the decades from Star Wars to as recently as Avatar, it will be interesting to see how audiences' react to John Carter, formerly John Carter of Mars and A Princess of Mars before that.

I know everyone is nerdgasming over the prospects of Brad Bird moving from animation to live-action directing. But me personally, I've been anticipating Andrew Stanton more going off his strong work on Wall-E and Finding Nemo, Pixar's finest efforts in my opinion. Maybe I'm being hokey, but off this newly-released trailer (The movie is due out March 9, 2012) feels like they're taking me to a place I've never been to before.

And at the end of the day, isn't that the point of these fantasy, escapist epics?