Universal Pictures and 20th Century Fox have bailed on Peter Jackson's big-screen adaptation of Microsoft's hugely popular video game, Halo, casting a shadow over the franchise's future. According to Variety, Universal and Fox were to pay Microsoft a $5 million advance for the film rights by October 15th. Microsoft also stood to earn up to 10 percent of the movie's box office gross and other related income; likewise, Jackson and his team were due to receive a hefty upfront salary and a cut of the film's profits. On the eve of that deadline, amid unconfirmed reports that the film's budget was skyrocketing ($145 million according to a report in the Los Angeles Times) Universal, acting on behalf of both studios, requested Jackson and his team take a pay cut. When they balked, the studios walked away from the project. Microsoft said they are committed to go forward with Jackson and his team in place. Universal and Fox have declined to comment.
The Halo video game follows the super-soldier Master Chief as he battles to save mankind from an alien race. The title has sold more than 5 million copies since it was first released in 2001. The movie -- a large production replete with complicated special effects -- was scheduled for a summer 2008 release. Alex Garland, who wrote The Beach and the zombie hit 28 Days Later, is the key writer on the screenplay for Halo. Jackson and Microsoft Game Studios are collaborating with Bungie Studios to create and develop a new Halo adventure to follow-up on next year's Halo 3 and timed to accompany the movie's release.
Aside from the Halo franchise, Jackson is executive producing Dambusters, an effects-heavy remake (no shock there!) of the World War II aerial battle drama, also due out in 2008. As a director, Jackson is adapting Alice Sebold's ghost story, The Lovely Bones, which is set for a 2007 release. As for future projects, he recently optioned Temeraire, a set of fantasy novels about dragons in the Napoleonic Wars. Jackson has also expressed the desire to one revisit Middle Earth to film the The Hobbit. However, MGM has a number of legal issues to sort out regarding the rights before that project can proceed.
Everything’s Gone Green, written by Canadian novelist Douglas Coupland, captured the best Canadian feature film prize at this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival. The film, directed by Paul Fox, was Coupland's first story written specifically for the screen. For his work Fox, picked up a $12,000 cash award. The festival jury said the movie possessed "skillful storytelling, eloquent visual style, and a genuine sense of humour." The movie centres on a slacker who is tempted into a money-laundering scheme while working for a lottery magazine.
The audience award for most popular Canadian film went to the documentary Mystic Ball, directed by Torontonian Greg Hamilton. The 83-minute film follows a Canadian man on a journey deep into the little known culture of Myanmar, still known as Burma, and its traditional sport, chinlone. Chinlone is a unique combination of sport and dance, a team sport with no opposing team. The focus is not on winning, but on how beautifully you play the game. Mystic Ball also won the special jury prize for best Canadian feature in May at Toronto’s Hot Docs Festival.
More than 150,000 people attended this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival, which featured 353 films from more than 50 countries.
Paramount Pictures announced on Monday that Oliver Stone will direct a movie about the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan The film will be based in part on "Jawbreaker," a recent memoir chronicling the U.S.-led assault on the al Qaeda stronghold in Afghanistan's Tora Bora region and the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
Stone and Paramount optioned the rights to "Jawbreaker" several months ago but kept the deal quiet until now to prevent their previous collaboration -- "World Trade Center" from being caught up in the controversy surrounding the memoir, which suggests the U.S. military bungled a chance to get bin Laden. "World Trade Center" avoided political overtones by focusing on heroics of two cops -- played by Nicolas Cage and Michael Pena -- who became trapped in the rubble of the Twin Towers after hijackers crashed airliners into the buildings.
Stone called it "the least political film I've made" and insists his objective with "Jawbreaker" will be to "create compelling drama, not a polemic." "It has the potential to be very exciting. There's a lot of action and a thriller element that we're still trying to bring out," Stone told Variety. "I'm not looking to make a political movie, but it always seems to come down to that with me."
This could prove to be a bigger challenge as the subject matter selected for this film is bound to spark debate about the Bush administration and its war on terror. Adding fuel to the fire is Stone's choice of Cyrus Nowrasteh, the producer-writer behind ABC's controversial miniseries "The Path to 9/11," to write the second draft of the "Jawbreaker" screenplay. Nowrasteh was criticized by leading Democrats who claimed the ABC miniseries was filled with inaccuracies and distortions that painted the Clinton administration as slow to confront the threat of Islamic militants prior to the Sept. 11 attacks.
No production date for the "Jawbreaker" film has been set, and there was no word on casting decisions. The book was written by Gary Bernstein, a CIA officer who led the so-called "Jawbreaker" paramilitary unit that helped topple the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. His most controversial assertions is that bin Laden was present at Tora Bora during the U.S.-led assault on the region in 2001 but managed to slip away. His account contradicts public statements by President George W. Bush and retired Army Gen. Tommy Franks, former commander of the U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, that U.S. officials were never certain bin Laden was at Tora Bora.
Stone has won best director Oscars for Born on the Fourth of July and Platoon, and a best adapted screenplay honour for Midnight Express.
Popular film critic Roger Ebert has written an article about his rehab from cancer and missing out on the Telluride and Toronto film festivals. He writes candidly and it makes for an interesting read. The article is available on RogerEbert.com. He was able to write a review of the movie "The Queen", his first review since beginning cancer treatment, after an "Ebert & Roeper" producer brought him a copy of the movie on DVD. He plans to continuing doing occasional reviews until he's fully recovered.
Ebert has been a film critic at the Chicago Sun-Times since 1967. He won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1975, the same year he teamed up with Gene Siskel of the rival Chicago Tribune to launch their TV show. Siskel died in 1999. Ebert has co-hosted the show with fellow Sun-Times columnist Richard Roeper since 2000.
The full trailer for Ghost Rider starring Nicolas Cage is out. The movie is slated for a February 16th release. If you cannot view the embedded video, please check the links below it.
Over a hundred teenagers in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, were involved in a "fight club" and routinely assembled to fight each other until they were stopped recently by the local authorities. Police became aware of the club when they responded to a complaint of disorderly conduct near the Captain Cook Monument. They found a group of teens - ranging in age from 14 to 18 - had gathered there for the fights. According to the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary, the Corner Brook club organized through the Internet, making use of a website where young people would post their willingness to fight. Once a list of names was compiled, a date and location were announced for the fights. The site also encouraged spectators to attend the matches for a fee.
It is believed that the activity has only been happening for a few weeks in the Corner Brook area, but Friday's gathering wasn't the first "fight night" scheduled. Fight clubs in other communities sometimes videotape their fights and post them on popular sites such as YouTube.com. Police in Arlington, Texas, recently arrested five teens for being part of an organized "for-profit" group that taped and sold violent street fights.
These type of groups have been discovered in a number of Canadian and American communities since the release of the 1999 film Fight Club. The movie, which starred Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, told the story of a group of men who got together to participate in brutal fist fights, which for them acted as a twisted form of therapy. The club soon turned into an anarchist militia group and conducted terrorist-like operations. Unfortunately, the larger point of the film, that we need to question specific portions of modern society such as consumer greed and overreliance on therapy and drugs to deal with problems, is often lost by those that fixate on the violent fights.