The typical roster of options for your Iron Man trailer enjoyment: small, medium, large, 480p, 720p or 1080p.
It looks to me like Downey Jr. is pretty much proving perfect in this part - shame we only get the merest glimpse at anybody else, and then not even everybody else.
I doubt this will bomb, so even naysayers concerned about the absence of Tony Stark's alcoholism will have a sequel to, most likely, silence them.
The Comic-Con Iron Man clip has popped up online. See it before it's too late. And if anybody has a direct download link to share, all the better.
[EDIT: I found the clip on Rapidhsare as an Mpeg. Hurrah!]
My nephew is being christened today. Busy day for me. But I'll try to keep checking in.
Jon Favreau has adressed some Iron Man rumours in his latest MySpace update.
He says:
I've read that Sam Jackson and Hilary Swank are Shield agents and that I myself play a Vegas security guard. There is no truth to any of these rumors. (Well, maybe one is true.)
Can we determine which one? Well, there's one we can pretty much eliminate right off the bat. That's the Hilary Swank one - I've not seen anything than links her to Shield other than pure speculation.
As for the Security Guard - that came from Robin Leach, a normally very dependable source, I believe. Seems like a lock?
...but the Sam Jackson story came from Aint It Cool and they are very cautious when it comes to big pieces like this, these days at least. They didn't name a source, they didn't cast any doubt on the story, they simply put it down as pretty much a guarantee. I think they had something very solid to go on.
I'm 100% behind the Sam Jackson story being the one true rumour unless, somehow, he is playing Nick Fury in a pre-Shield incarnation. Is that possible? Let me know in the comments below.
Assuming Favreau isn't playing a security guard, we now have free reign to believe his other rumoured cameo: that he's the frontman of a KISS tribute band. And I really want to believe that one.
- Jon Favreau is making a cameo in Iron Man, and it was the very last shot of the shoot.
- The Darjeeling Limited is the opening night film of the New York Film Festival.
- A Psycho remake TV series? Yep.
- Randal Kleiser is part of a start-up planning to bring 3D images to mobile devices.
- The odds are in favour of a TMNT sequel, if not the quality of a TMNT sequel.
- Nicholas Sparks' Dear John is to be a feature film, adapted by Jamie Linden and with Channing Tatum attached to star. Okay - but what about John Sullivan's Dear John? You can have that one on me, Mrs. H.
- Uwe Boll has called Postal his 'final statement'. So I assume Far Cry and Bloodrayne 2 and 3 and whatever comes afterwards aren't even supposed to be statements at all.
- Kim Jee-Woon's The Good, The Bad, The Weird (missing an 'and' if you ask me) has changed financiers mid-production. The new team are CJ Entertainment, also in preproduction on Chan Wook Park's Evil Live.
- Death of a President's Gabriel Range is writing and will direct what sounds like a sort-of-Somersby, sort-of-Six Degrees of Seperation prodigal son drama.
- Mos Def is to produce and star in Bobby Zero. This one's about a social satirist come advertising copywriter (I wonder if he'll have a comic book gossip column too?). I like Mos Def a lot, and if he's that into this film, then I'm very interested.
- George Hickenlooper's next is to be Morning Spy, Evening Spy, an adaptation of the novel about a CIA operative obsessed with hunting down Osama Bin Laden.
- The Conan option has expired at Warners and it seems that New Line are to pick it up next.
- Starbucks are to hawk Arctic Tale in a return for profit points.
- Megan Fox has signed to appear in How to Lose Friends and Alienate People.
- The Franny K. Stein books are to become animated films.
- Michael Gilvary's spec script Transit has been snapped up by Thousand Words. The premise is simple: a fmaily on a road trip through the desert are hunted by criminals who stashed money in the family's car. Apparently, Gilvary did a recent rewrite on Rendezvous with Rama, which suggests that project might not be as conclusively dead as I had been assuming.
- The inevitable 300 spoof is to be 301: The Legend of Awesomest Maximus Wallace Leonidas, so Gladiator and Braveheart have clearly been tossed into the mix too. Rest assured that Troy is on the hit list also, and I assume a series of completely irrelevent films will be too (Borat again? Pirates of the Caribbean?)
- The Wall Street Journal are cautiously predicting big money success for Ratatouille.
- Cameron Diaz is to star in Richard Kelly's The Box. The film is adapted from Richard Matheson's Button, Button which has already been a Twilight Zone episode (in the 80s comeback series) where Mare Winningham had the role - and the story had been given a more satisfying, less daft ending (if you ask me). I've no idea how Kelly can spin this one out to feature length without making it mightily repetitive.
- Kevin Smith wants unknowns for Red State, which might actually really mean unkowns for once.
- The Hollywood Reporter are only just today covering Pool Rats being set up at Disney, despite the Mouse House registering the appropraite domain name weeks and weeks ago. Sigh.
- Carter Blanchard's spec script Near Death is about.... yep, you guessed it: spooky near death experiences. Fox Searchlight have taken the option.
- Marc Forster is developing, and may direct, Land of Roses. The film will be a drama about Ibrahim Parlak, a real-life Kurdsh Immigrant who campaigned to exonerate a falsely imprisoned terrorist.
- Sid Haig has been confirmed as appearing in the Halloween rehash
- Arthouse Films are to release The Cool School: How Los Angeles Learned to Love Modern Art. Jeff Bridges has narrted the film, which sounds just about perfect.
- The Cloverfield site URL is just redirecting to Paramount's homepage as I write, but any minute now (or hour, or day at least) it is going to go live, probably with a teaser.
- Jonathan Jakubowicz is to direct Queen of the South, all about a female, immigrant drug lord - a prettier Scarface. Apparently, Penelope Cruz, Jennifer Lopez and Eva Mendes are circling the lead role - I'd go for Lopez, personally.
- Arielle Kebble has signed to play one of the titular girls in A Tale of Two Sisters.
They're almost ready for business. Bookmarks at the ready.
- Stan Bush may not be on the Transformers soundtrack, but Transformers are on his new album.
- Codemonkeys might be a nice stopgap until Scott Pilgrim gets off of the ground.
- Principal photography on Iron Man is over. And it seems like the Hilary Swank cameo rumours are true.
- The Jordanian animation outfit Rubicon is going into production on a new Pink Panther TV series. This time, the approach is a Muppet Babies come Tiny Toons one with the Panther and his 'pals' rendered as kids. As part of the deal, Rubicon get to license MGM properties in the Middle East.
- Righteous Kill - the De Niro/Pacino team-up movie - is to be distributed by Overture Films in the North American territories. And it also seems that 50 Cent is joining the cast. Has anybody got Russell Gerwitz' script for this one? I've been told it's a real winner.
- Shia LaBoeuf is reteaming with his Disturbia director D J Caruso on Eagle Eye. From that title alone it sounds like the plot could be virtually identical, but apparently not. The original premise comes from Steven Spielberg, apparently. Here's Variety's summation: [LaBeouf will play] a young slacker whose overachieving twin brother has died mysteriously. When the young man returns home, both he and a single mother find they have been framed as terrorists. Forced to become members of a cell that has plans to carry out a political assassination, they must work together to extricate themselves. Not only does this put Caruso out of the running for the Wolverine gig, it might mean LaBeouf won't be taking the lead in Death and Me after all...
- Former porn auteur Gregory Dark has wrapped Little Fish, Strange Pond a curious-sounding serial killer comedy with Matthew Modine, Adam Baldwin, Liza Weil and Zach Galifinakas.
- Tom Cruise's links to Scientology (to put it mildly) have led to the German government prohibiting the filming of Valkyrie at any military locations. Paula Wagner has gone on the record saying "Aside from his obvious admiration of the man he is portraying, Mr. Cruise's personal beliefs have absolutely no bearing on the movie's plot, themes or content". Nice to know he admires a Nazi general so much. Ahem.
- Chimps in Spa -sorry, Space Chimps - is to be advertised via stickers on 100 million bananas, pineapples and salad packages.
- Gerard Butler, Idris Elba, Tom Wilkinson, Thandie Newton and Ludacris have all signed up to appear in Guy Ritchie's RocknRolla. Poor souls.
- Ian Shorr's Exempt spec script has a very interesting premise: a problem kid sent to a private school falls in with a bunch of 'diplobrats', foreign kids with diplomatic immunity from the law. No wonder Benderspink are putting it into production. Another year at these two colleges and I'll probably have seen everything that could possibly happen in this film, but it certainly does make for an interesting milieu.
- M.I.A fantasy film Neverwas is to crawl out straight to DVD in July.
- A YouTube clip promoting the next six months or so of Focus Features releases has popped up. All manner of interesting stuff gets plugged, not least of which is David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises but least of which is Atonement. I'd recommend you check the full clip out.
- Gary Oldman might quit acting. Perhaps. One day.
- You can see the Tumb... er, Batmobile. In action. The video is called Batman for Mancow.
- Queen Latifah and Adam Shankman seem to want Steve Martin for their All of Me remake. Will he do it again?
- I think we already knew Oliver Platt was going to be in Frost/Nixon but his role in Nip/Tuck is news. He certainly likes those /s.
- Nicole Kidman is the new spokesmodel for Nintendo.
- The US Masters of Horror season one box set is limited to 20,000 copies. More than enough?
- The Wizard of Gore is getting good notices. Good. I like Glover, I love magic and I'm okay with gore - I want this to work.
- Kreacher is somehow essential to the last Harry Potter book.
Kudos to Drew McWeeny, once again, for one hell of a scoop over at AintItCool. Apparently, Samuel L. Jackson will be taking on the role of Nick Fury for Marvel Movies, and today, he's on set shooting a scene as that character for the Iron Man movie.
A kind of cross-movie synergy between superhero movies has been a long time coming, but I can see it taking off in a big way within just the next two or three years. And I don't mean simply Avengers and Justice League style films, I mean special appearances from one character in another character's movie. Marvel have been manoeuvring on a business level in ways that have made this much easier, but there's always been the possibility of Superman in Batman, or vice versa, and I suppose there still is, even though Singer's film and Nolan's seem wildly incompatible.
I always got a kick out of Michael Keaton's Ray Nicolet appearing in both Jackie Brown and Out of Sight - not least because I love Michael Keaton. But I love Sam too, so even though I doubt very much that Iron Man will be anything like Out of Sight, much less Jackie Brown, this idea still appeals to me greatly.
- Aint it Cool have some new Transformers posters. They are, essentially, close ups of robot faces.
- A basic outline of the next Hulk film has appeared online.
- Alex Cox has written a piece for The Guardian about film stars turned directors. He doesn't think this can lead to success - and, of course, he doesn't mention Robert Redford anywhere in the piece. Quiz Show alone is living proof that Cox's argument won't stand. He also tears into One Eyed Jacks which is, in fact, really very good indeed. Even Ken Branagh has proven himself to be Cox's equal, if not superior, as a director. And don't get me started on Alex Cox's attempts to act...
- America Olivo is to appear in Iron Man as 'Dubai Beauty' - she says so on her official site. But... who is America Olivo anyway?
- Peter Jackson does a good job of making Halo sound dead but The Dambusters sound great in a new interview.
- Dana Gould's The Last Larry sounds a wee bit like Shaun of the Dead: the Series. More promisingly, he's writing Alternadad about a father trying to stay hip and cool in the eyes of his kids.
- New EU rules might curb the import of some American shows because they're simply too laden with product placement.
- Scorsese seems to be gearing up to shoot Silence in Japan.
- Stephen Susco has found a 'awesome' spoof of The Grudge, perhaps two and a half months too late.
- Two clips from Hostel 2 are up on the MTV Movies Blog, so if you're in the US, you can watch them... me... I just have to imagine. [EDIT: BllodyDisgusting have seven clips, and I can see those ones. Do they include the two MTV snippets?]
- Also at MTV, Daniel Wilson discusses Bro-jitsu.
- Joe Kosinski looks set to direct Logans Run. Bryan Singer has better things to do now, I suppose, than argue with Joel Silver. Previously, Kosinski has directed cut-scenes for video games, including Gears of War. I've seen those ones and... well, I'm not excited about this decision, I can tell you. But then, see... with Joel Silver calling the shots, what was I to expect?
- TVSquad have plenty of info on Heroes season 2. You might even call these bits and pieces spoilers, if you're delicate about that kind of thing.
- The lastest Sound of Young America is an interview with Marty Kroft. It's confirmed that Land of the Lost doesn't yet have a director attached, though Will Ferrel has definitely been cast.
- Spider-Man 3 is making lots and lots of money. And it is very good, so I'm glad but it is also... well, quite bad. Some all-time classic scenes (such as when Peter and Harry go back to Harry's house after he leaves the hospital - brilliant stuff; and the first time the Sandman tries to form out of grains) but a generally dodgy structure and some rough-and-ready looking scenes leads to a largely embarrassing final act.
- The IESB have some video of the Iron Man suit. Frankly, after the official image was unveiled the other day, the required standard of paparazzi snaps went way up - and this doesn't meet those new, higher requirments.
- Oliver Stone's TV spot that calls for the troops in Iraq to be withdrawn is now online. It probably isn't what you're expecting, and is all the better for it.
- Four Minutes beat bookies' favourite Perfume to the homegrown movie gong at the German Film Awards.
Entertainment Weekly have today revealed the first image of the Iron Man suit and have identified it as the mk. 3 build - you can see it above. A couple of weeks back, mk. 1 was showcased, which you can see below. This begs the question - what will mk. 2 look like?
Any guesses? Or is anybody proficient enough with photoshop to pull off a mash-up?
Scott Steinberg has been speaking to Next Generation about movie tie-in games, why they've typically been so very bad and why this is, apparently, going to change:
Hollywood really can throw a grenade to game companies; they'd throw a license grenade over the wall and game companies would have six months to build a game and market it. No surprise the game might not have been the greatest.
As publishers and the different movie studios are recognizing how important videogames are to the marketing of a film to the demographic, movie studios realise that they can't trivialise the interactive space.
In Iron Man’s case Jon Favreau is absolutely a gamer. They don’t want their property and their efforts to be attached to a trivialized game development effort so they’re very involved. The whole industry, both industries, have coupled together and have evolved or advanced their craft to a point where both are taken extremely seriously and that just wasn’t the case two years ago.
I think that videogames still have a lot to learn from movies. Imagine Spider-Man 3 devoid of 99% of the characterisation, human relatability, subtext, emotional content, thematic purpose and authorial point of view. That's roughly equivalent to what you'd get from a very good Spider-Man video game so far. But I'm hopeful - for games with more taste, better developed aesthetic sense and something to say. While people are still obsessing about existing genres, control systems and mathematical-graphical standards, however, this isn't going to happen.
Marvel and Sega have inked deals for videogame spin-offs of several upcoming Marvel movies. The games will be released day-and-date with the films.
The deal now includes Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Captain America and Thor. Should the greenlight never come for the Captain or the Norse God, the games will, apparently, still go ahead.
Rights to Avengers, Nick Fury and Ant Man films haven't been inked yet - which suggests Thor and Captain America are higher priority movies for Marvel right now. I fear we may never get to see Edgar Wright's Ant Man movie, this perhaps stokes the flames of that fear.
Will Wright's next film be his reteaming with Pegg and Frost? Will it be Scott Pilgrim? Them? Something completely different? Perhaps the box office for Hot Fuzz in the US this weekend will decide.
