The cast of "Terminator Salvation" just keeps getting better.
Helena Bonham Carter is in talks to play the "lead villain" -- we're hoping for a super cyborg -- in the next installment of the franchise, according to AccessHollywood.com. If all works out, she'll do battle with Christian Bale (John Conner) and Bryce Dallas Howard (John's wife, Kate Conner).
McG ("Charlie's Angels") will direct the upcoming "Terminator," which is set in post-apocalyptic 2018 and follows John Connor as he leads the human resistance against Skynet and its army of Terminators.
The British actress is no stranger to playing the villainess; she last appeared as the meat-pie-making murderess Mrs. Lovett in "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" and will reprise her role as the witch Bellatrix Lestrange in "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.”
--Denise Martin
Photos: Top, Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix Lestrange in Warner Bros. Pictures' fantasy movie "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix." Courtesy: Warner Bros. Entertainment.
Right, Actress Helena Bonham Carter at her home in North London in 2006. Courtesy: Associated Press/Sang Tan
While preparing the big-screen update of "Get Smart," director Peter Segal got an interesting bit of trivia from his visual effects supervisor. According to a friend who once worked in the CIA, the Cone of Silence, the original series' bit of poorly designed spy-tech, had been used in the early '70s in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. "It was a plastic device that people got under and they played music so they could have conversations and not be wiretapped. It didn't work very well," Segal says. Segal wanted to give the device an updated look -- a silvery, stretchy beam of light. On the set, the new cone was just a small metal device that emitted a blue light. In post-production, a CGI electronic beam was added, that, Segal says, would "bounce off the ceiling and surround anything that was a heat source -- i.e. a body." To get the full comedic effect, Segal took the half-page scripted scene and let the actors run wild, ending up with an original cut of the scene over eight minutes long.
Steven Spielberg may direct a big-screen adaptation of the upcoming 10-book children's series "The 39 Clues."
Spielberg and DreamWorks have secured the rights to the "multiplatform adventure series" revolving around the world's most powerful family, the Cahills. The source of their power is a mystery that kids can solve by assembling the 39 clues hidden throughout the world and throughout history.
The first batch of trading cards and and an online game will released in September along with the with the first book. The rest of the books and cards will roll out over the next 24 months.
And here's the real prize: Kids who solve the mystery get $10,000.
Focus Features is giving a chance to African filmmakers with a $10,000 leg up on their next short. The boutique studio has established the Africa First Program, which will help finance short films made by native Africans and shot in continental Africa. Kisha Imani Cameron ("Sometimes in April") is spearheading the initiative.
"As an independent producer myself, I'm always listening for new voices," Cameron said. "Filmmakers selected for grants will retain the copyrights to their projects as well as artistic, budgetary and editorial control. But throughout the process -- and, ideally, beyond -- the team at Focus will lend them support."
Five awards of $10,000 will be made this year. Submissions are due July 15. More details are available at filminfocus.com/africafirst.
Peter Parker is swinging back into the muliplex—but not for a while.
“Spider-Man” producer Laura Ziskin said the fourth installment in the web-slinging superhero series is tentatively scheduled to arrive in May 2011.
In remarks Thursday to theater owners from California and Nevada, Ziskin said there was no finished screenplay, but that she and Sony Pictures were hopeful “Spider-Man 4” could be ready in three years’
time.
The first three movies comprise one of the most successful franchises in modern Hollywood history, grossing a combined $2.5 billion worldwide. Neither star Tobey Maguire nor director Sam Raimi is yet committed to work on the next installment. But Sony has paid Marvel to renew its rights.
Before she tackles the next “Spider-Man,” Ziskin is producing a one-hour fundraiser for
cancer research that will be shown commercial-free on ABC, NBC and CBS on Sept.
5.
Ziskin, a cancer survivor, showed the several hundred exhibitors a new
theatrical public service announcement directed by David Fincher (“Fight Club”)
that promotes Ziskin’s cancer cause, Stand Up to Cancer.
Taking it to the legal mattresses, Mario Puzo's estate filed a $1-million lawsuit today against Paramount Pictures for allegedly cheating "The Godfather" author's heirs out of proceeds from a Corleone-inspired video game.
According to the suit, Paramount and Puzo, who died in 1999, agreed that he would receive a "significant share" of "audiovisual" products derived from his Mafia saga. Puzo's son and executor, Anthony, contends in the suit that "The Godfather" video game is covered by the deal because it includes characters from the films.
"You hear them. You see them. That's audiovisual to me," said the estate's lawyer, Bert Fields.
Stan Winston, an Oscar-winning visual effects artist, has died at age 62.
Winston died at his Malibu home Sunday evening after a seven-year struggle with multiple myeloma, according to a rep from Stan Winston Studio.
"Stan died peacefully at home surrounded by family," a spokeswoman said.
Winston won four visual effects Oscars and earned multiple nominations. His first Oscar was for James Cameron's "Aliens" (1986). Winston later won two Oscars for "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" (1992) (visual effects and makeup) and 1993's "Jurassic Park." (See Stan Winston's Creature Features, by LAT's Patrick Kevin Day.)
Phil Tippett, who shared a visual effects Oscar with Winston on "Jurassic Park," noted that Winston was one of the best in the business.
"Stan contributed to some of the greatest -- fantastic movie characters in motion picture history," Tippett said. "His loss is a great one and he will be missed."
Producer Gale Ann Hurd, whose latest blockbuster "The Incredible Hulk" opened this weekend, wrote in an email to the Los Angeles Times:
I was first introduced to Stan in the early 1980s
by his mentor, the great make-up artist, Dick Smith. Jim Cameron and I had
initially approached Dick to create the Terminator. Dick wanted us to meet Stan
Winston, his protégé, and convinced us that he was doing us a favor by turning
us down. Dick was right. Stan’s unique ability was to bring unique, non-human
characters to life, so that the audience accepted them as living, breathing
beings. Stan was also, simply put, the nicest man in the business. Not only
was he a legend, redefining character make-up and armatures, but Stan’s joie de
vivre made collaborating with him an absolute pleasure. I will miss him more
than I can say. My heartfelt sympathy to his loving family, Karen, Matt and
Debbie.
In lieu of flowers, Winston's family is requesting that donations be made to his charities of choice.
Francis Ford Coppola and his daughter Sofia Coppola posed for the Annie Leibovitz-lensed Journeys campaign for Louis Vuitton's line of travel bags, a still from which (above) has been wending its way around the internets for the past week or so.
The shot was set up in the Argentinian countryside, outside Buenos Aires, where Francis Ford Coppola is directing "Tetro," a film about Italian immigrants that Coppola described to the Guardian as a "great old-fashioned movie" about "fathers, sons and brothers, a bit Tennessee Williams, a bit Rocco and His Brothers" with "Elia Kazan-style acting."
Sofia Coppola's next known project is a television campaign for Miss Dior Cherie that will feature model Maryna Linchuk and air this Fall, according to Women's Wear Daily.
A controversial push by the Screen Actors Guild to defeat a recent accord negotiated by a rival union has touched off an open rebellion within Hollywood's largest actors guild.
New York members of SAG's national board took the unusual step of openly criticizing their own leaders over a recent decision to launch an "educational campaign" against a recent contract negotiated by the smaller American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.
Citing what it said are shortcomings in the federation's accord, SAG's national executive committee - which includes the top officers of the union - narrowly voted approval last week to spend more than $100,000 in an effort to persuade 44,000 dual members to vote down the agreement.
But in a statement, the New York members said the action was not authorized by SAG's full-board and represented a "unconscionable attempt to interfere with the internal business of a sister union" that will "forever tarnish our image as a union."
The New York Division represents about 26,000 of SAG's 122,000 members and holds 14 seats on SAG's 71-member national board. Members of the guild's regional branches in Chicago and Georgia have voiced similar objections to SAG's campaign against the AFTRA deal, underscoring deep rifts inside SAG that could weaken its leverage at the bargaining table.
SAG's contract expires June 30, but talks with studios have ground to virtual halt since AFTRA announced an agreement that was modeled on one negotiated by Hollywood's directors and writers. AFTRA's 70,000 members won't vote on the contract until July 7.
Although the agreement includes some pay raises for actors, SAG leaders say its failed to meet several of their objectives, including securing an increase residuals for actors from the sale of DVDs and giving them a say over how products are pitched in television shows.
"Mongol," the first film in a proposed trilogy about the life of Genghis Khan, is notable for its hundreds of horses and extras battling it out on the steppes of Kazakhstan. But to really bring the era to life, filmmaker Sergei Bodrov relied on art director Dashi Namdakov's heritage in the ancient Mongolian tradition of darkhans (blacksmiths), which helped him use lifetimes worth of experience to create the film's weaponry. Namdakov describes the swords Temudjin (the future Khan) uses in the film as a combination of "artistic fantasy and scientific publications." Though the design of the weapons were accurate to the 12th and 13th centuries, in reality those weapons were quite plain. Namdakov looked back even further -- to the 1st century -- for decorative ideas, which he combined with his own artistic style. Weapons for the lead actors were hammered and hand-processed in Namdakov's art studio in Moscow, where he used bronze and silver to decorate. Lest anyone think Namdakov has superhuman abilities, he admits the rest of the weapons used by the 1,500 extras were made in China, using modern techniques.
