HOW I LIVE NOW (Cast News)

• HOW I LIVE NOW

Saoirse Ronan has signed on to play the leading role in How I Live Now, Variety reports. Set to be directed by Kevin Macdonald, the film will adapt Meg Rosoff's novel, officially described as follows:

Saoirse Ronan

Fifteen-year-old Daisy is sent from Manhattan to England to visit her aunt and cousins she’s never met: three boys near her age, and their little sister. Her aunt goes away on business soon after Daisy arrives. The next day bombs go off as London is attacked and occupied by an unnamed enemy.

As power fails, and systems fail, the farm becomes more isolated. Despite the war, it’s a kind of Eden, with no adults in charge and no rules, a place where Daisy’s uncanny bond with her cousins grows into something rare and extraordinary. But the war is everywhere, and Daisy and her cousins must lead each other into a world that is unknown in the scariest, most elemental way.

The novel will be adapted for the screen by Jeremy Brock (The Eagle, The Last King of Scotland) and Tony Grisoni (The Red Riding Trilogy).

Ronan appeared earlier this year in Hanna and can soon be seen in Violet & Daisy. She's also currently shooting Byzantium.

DEATH RACE 3 (UPDATE)

• DEATH BY A FILM, BUT IT IS SHOT RIGHT HERE IN SA!!

Universal Home Entertainment has provided us all of the details about its latest production: Death Race 3, filming in Cape Town, South Africa. The only reason why we doing this story is because it is being filmed in our country… But it is a straight-to-DVD film.

Luke Goss Star of Death Race 3

In this all-new original feature film from Universal 1440 Entertainment, hardened criminals race for their freedom in vicious new vehicles and face-off in the ultimate blood sport, when the popular Death Race is transported across the globe to the unforgiving and rugged terrain of South Africa.

Forced against his will to participate in this global TV spectacle, Frankenstein - the greatest Death Race driver of all time - takes on this ultimate challenge to not only save himself, but his pit crew as well.

The sequel finds Luke Goss reprising his role as Frankenstein; Danny Trejo, Ving Rhames, Robin Shou, Fred Koelher, Dougray Scott and Hlubi Mboya also star.

Here is the official synopsis: Convicted cop-killer Carl Lucas , aka Frankenstein, is a superstar driver in the brutal prison yard demolition derby known as Death Race. Only one victory away from winning freedom for himself and his pit crew, Lucas is plunged into an all-new competition more vicious than anything he has experienced before. Pitted against his most ruthless adversaries ever, Lucas fights to keep himself and his team alive in a race in South Africa 's infernal Kalahari Desert. With powerful forces at work behind the scenes to ensure his defeat, will Lucas' determination to win at all costs mean the end of the road for him?

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES 2 (Andy Serkis Speculates)

• RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES ON BLU RAY!!

The Apes have finally been released on Blu-ray DVD!! Want more good news?? Andy Serkis has been talking about the sequel that is in the works…

Andy Serkis Playin Caesar in a Oscar worthy Performance

The big question is whether James Franco or Freida Pinto will survive the virus that ravaged the world at the very end of the film (for those who missed that, it can be found in the end credits). Unfortunately, Serkis was not sure about the fate of Will and Caroline. "As yet, who knows?" he said. "No one really knows the nature of the sequel for sure. It's all being evolved as we speak. I don't even think there's a script at this point. But I'm deeply excited to see where it all goes. We all are."

Director Rupert Wyatt has hinted that the sequel will play like "Full Metal Jacket with apes." And while Serkis, a pro at keeping productions a secret, shied away from going into details about that, he did have this to say: "Obviously at the end of Apes, it's perfectly set up for the ascendancy of the species. Where we go from there should be rather extraordinary."

A lot of people have noticed some of the bread crumbs that was left in the film that has hinted to the sequel, especially the Icarus flight which goes missing (the same vessel from the original 1968 classic). It's a very, very minor subplot in the film – a blink and you'll miss it sort of thing. Serkis, who was eager to acknowledge this little in-film cookie, wasn't exactly sure how that will play out in the sequel. "All I know is that I'm in it, which is good," he said, jokingly. "But I'm not exactly sure the avenues they will pursue. But that is one element they made an effort to include."

While Rupert Wyatt seems hard at work on the sequel, I questioned Serkis about sitting in the director's chair one day, to perhaps helm his own Apes sequel. "Well … at the moment we're hoping that Rupert is directing. He did such a great job on the last one," Serkis said. "We're certain he's going to return, but who knows? Down the line, maybe. Directing is certainly an area that I'm deeply interested in. I have my own projects I plan to work on once The Hobbit is done. Plus I'm setting up a performance capture studio in the UK called The Imaginarium. And we have projects lined up that I'm going to be directing for them."

Jamie bell Playing Tinitn and Andy Serkis playing Captain Haddock

Some of these projects do include feature films, but, interestingly enough, Serkis also gave us a taste that might appeal to theater/dance enthusiasts. "What I'm really interested in developing is looking at performance capture in the live performance arts," he said. "It would be fascinating to have real-time avatars projected onto a screen during theatrical performances or dance routines. That's an area that's pretty much untapped."

So, if Serkis doesn't eventually step into the director's chair for an Apes sequel, he's got plenty of interesting work up his sleeve. You can see him next in The Adventure of Tintin, opening Dec. 21 2011, and The Hobbit, opening in December 2012. 

INDIANA JONES V (Speculation)

• INDIANIA JONES V

George Lucas

The good news is that a fifth Indiana Jones film is still in the works. The bad news is that no one's sure exactly how long it's going to take to see the light of day. Although Steven Spielberg recently told Entertainment Weekly that he and George Lucas had decided on a genre for a fifth adventure, Vulture caught up Lucas last night and learned that the story is still missing a crucial element: the MacGuffin.

"I mean, I know what it's about," Lucas said, "but I just have to find a MacGuffin that fits into the arena we're working in."

A term popularized by Alfred Hitchcock, a MacGuffin refers to a narrative element that drives the story forward. The Indiana Jones series is famous for making the MacGuffin the object of Dr. Jones' search. In the first film, it's the Ark of the Convenant, the second the Sankara Stones, the third the Holy Grail and the most recent the Crystal Skull. 

THE EXPENDABLES (Teaser Trailer)

• EXPENDABLES 2 -  Teaser Trailer

The Expendables are back and this time it's personal... Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone), Lee Christmas (Lee Statham), Yin Yang (Jet Li), Gunnar Jensen (Dolph Lundgren),Toll Road (Randy Couture) and Hale Caesar (Terry Crews) -- with newest members Billy the Kid (Liam Hemsworth) and Maggie (Yu Nan) aboard -- are reunited when Mr. Church (Bruce Willis) enlists the Expendables to take on a seemingly simple job. The task looks like an easy paycheck for Barney and his band of old-school mercenaries.


But when things go wrong and one of their own is viciously killed, the Expendables are compelled to seek revenge in hostile territory where the odds are stacked against them. Hell-bent on payback, the crew cuts a swath of destruction through opposing forces, wreaking havoc and shutting down an unexpected threat in the nick of time -- six pounds of weapons-grade plutonium; enough to change the balance of power in the world. But that's nothing compared to the justice they serve against the villainous adversary who savagely murdered their brother. That is done the Expendables way....


Cast Includes, Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Chuck Norris, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Liam Hemsworth, Jean Claude Van Damme, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (Interview - Producer & Director)

• THE DARK KNIGHT RISES

After a screening The Dark Knight Rises prologue footage, Chrostopher Nolan and Emma Thoms (Producer), spoke to IGN about the upcoming film and shared a few details about it, here is what they had to say:

IGN: Did you always want to introduce Bane sort of physically in the middle of an action sequence? I would imagine the first thought would be, "We'll introduce him in prison because that's what people associate him with." Can you talk about the genesis of how you wanted to introduce this character?

Christopher Nolan: Well, when you're thinking about opening a film you want to lead in a striking way and with a very striking number of character-driven views. So you're looking for a sequence that showcases this -- in the case of Bane -- his physicality and his aggression and devotion to his prize and this kind of thing. Those are all things that get wrapped up in there.

IGN: We know you selected Bane as the villain of this film because you wanted him to be a physical challenge for Batman. But he's a character that, frankly, I didn't really read up on until I heard that he was going to be in the movie. I knew that he was the guy who broke Batman's back, and that's kind of all I knew about him. But the more I read about him, the more I became kind of fascinated by him, that this is a guy who was raised in prison and all that. How much of that backstory, the elements that made him who he was, do you retain in the film? And if you don't, were you worried at all that that would be like getting rid of Bruce Wayne seeing his parents shot, that impetus for why he is who he is?

Bane Vs Batman

Nolan: Well, the liberating thing about dealing with a lesser known villain is you feel more creative freedom to embrace the elements of that character you feel can serve your story and ignore those that won't. But at the same time, we chose Bane because he has some very unique elements to who he is. As far as the emphasis to it in the film, I'm actually editing some right now, so you never quite know until it's done. But we certainly intend to do justice to it, to the character I've written and to the comics. And I think the significance of Bane, in our eyes, is his strength as an antagonist to Batman. Everything must serve that, including the nature of his past and how that will play into the story.

IGN: Gary Oldman said the other day something about the Harvey Dent Act. Is there a "Harvey Dent Act," an actual piece of legislation, and what can you tell us about sort of the shape that Gotham is in when we pick up the story eight years later?

Nolan: Well, that's funny, I didn't read that. But there is a piece of legislation, and we are dealing with a Gotham that's moved on. In the last eight years, it has come to revere Harvey Dent in the way that Batman intended at the end of the last film.

IGN: In Dark Knight, Gordon and Batman make this spur-of-the-moment pact to lie and say about Dent, "He wasn't that guy (Two-Face)." Will we see the repercussion of that pact play out in this film?

Nolan: (smiles) I don't think I want to answer that question.

And that was the end of the interview with Nolan, before they turned their attention to Emma Thomas.

IGN: Can you talk about the idea to start with Bane already being Bane. We don't know how he got there, but --

Emma Thomas: And I think in some ways it's kind of fun. In The Dark Knight we did the same thing when we introduced the Joker, and he was in mid-heist. And it very much, if you remember, it very much gave you the sense of who the Joker was. And I think the same thing goes for this prologue. Bane is already doing his thing, and you can see that he's a brute. He's a smart brute, but some things -- there's a real grandeur.

Anne Hathaway as Catwoman

IGN: I know you guys have worked with Tom on Inception so were you already thinking about Dark Knight Rises and Bane when you were doing Inception? Were you looking at Tom like, "Oh yeah. That's our guy." At what point in the process did you say, "Tom should be Bane"?

Thomas: We already knew that Bane was the villain when we were shooting Inception. And actually as we were shooting, we did talk about how, wow, Tom would be perfect for Bane. We talked about that pretty early on. The issue that we had was that Tom was going to be doing another movie. He was committed to be in Fury Road, and we knew he wasn't available. So every conversation that we had about how Tom was perfect to be Bane was sort of tinged with regret because we knew he couldn't be. So as soon as we found out that that movie had pushed we approached him.

IGN: We saw a little bit of the sizzle reel there at the end of the prologue. Are those highlights from the upcoming trailer, or is that just stuff that only people are going to see if they come to this IMAX prologue?

 

Thomas: I'm trying to think. We have a great trailer coming out, and there are a couple of things in the prologue that are in the trailer. But there's a lot of the trailer that isn't in the prologue.

IGN: At what point did you realize that you also wanted Catwoman to be in it? And were there any villains that you guys considered and cast aside? There was always speculation about Riddler.

Thomas: That's really a question for Chris in terms of who they thought of and tossed aside. In terms of the way the process works, even before went to start Inception, Chris and David Goyer had sat down and mapped out what the plot for what the story of this movie was going to be. And while we were shooting Inception, Jonah [Nolan], Chris's brother, was writing the script. So while we were shooting Inception, we knew exactly who the characters were. As for how they came up with who those characters were, that's a question for them.