Iron Man Now Gold, Marvel Greenlight Orgasm, & Heaven Can Wait For Peter Jackson...

Oh Yeah, He Can Fly!  Iron Man Rockets To $201M Worldwide!

(comingsoon.net)                  The ComingSoon.net Box Office Report has been updated with studio estimates for the weekend. 

Paramount Pictures and Marvel Studios' Iron Man exceeded all expectations, earning a massive $104.2 million during its opening weekend domestically from 4,105 theaters and $104.2 million since debuting Thursday night, averaging $24,543 per site. Internationally, the film has also earned an incredible $96.7 million in 57 countries since it began opening Wednesday, putting its worldwide total at $201 million after just five days! 

The comic book adaptation, directed by Jon Favreau and starring Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Terrence Howard and Jeff Bridges, was the 10th biggest opening of all-time and the fourth biggest for a superhero movie. Among nonsequels, it came in behind only the first Spider-Man, which opened with $114.8 million. As far as May openings, Iron Man came in at #8, just behind X-Men: The Last Stand's $102.8 million when you look at the three-day figure (not counting Thursday night). Financed by Marvel Studios and distributed by Paramount, the movie cost about $150 million to make and $75 million to market.

Although Iron Man had a big opening, overall business was down 15% from the same weekend last year, when Spider-Man 3 had its record debut of $151.1 million.

Terminator Salvation Targeting PG-13 Rating

(Variety.com)                     With production starting today on Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins, producers at the Halcyon Co. say they aim to deliver a PG-13 movie to Warner Bros. for release on May 22, 2009.

The "Terminator" series is one of the highest-grossing R-rated franchises of all time, with the first three films having grossed more than $1.03 billion worldwide. "The ratings have changed," said Halcyon co-founder and co-CEO Victor Kubicek, a broker-turned-writer-producer. "The PG-13 has increased in intensity."

A family-friendly rating opens many doors, including a "Terminator Salvation" licensing deal for action figures with Playmates Toys.

"Our merchandising program will be the largest to date for 'The Terminator,' " said Halcyon co-founder and co-CEO Derek Anderson, ex-owner of ad agency In the Mix, who adds that he had not discussed the possibility of an R-rating with Warners. "We won't force it. We are carrying on in the tradition of the mythology, with an exciting approach to the action. If we can make a compelling film to reach the widest audience, why wouldn't we do it?"

Halcyon has already launched Halcyon Games to create a "Terminator" game for release at the same time as the movie. "The first three games were all bad," Anderson said. "The core fans are screaming for something fresh; they won't be just playing the movie."

Set in post-apocalyptic 2029, an adult John Connor, played by Christian Bale, leads the war to save humanity from the killing machines. Sam Worthington, Anton Yelchin and Moon Bloodgood co-star.

 

Marvel Studios Sets Four More Release Dates!

(Marvel Entertainment)                               Marvel Entertainment released their first quarter report to its shareholders this morning to coincide with the announcement about the success this past weekend of Marvel Studios' first production Iron Man, which grossed an estimated $104.2 million domestically and over $201 million worldwide. The announcement included an update of Marvel Studios' feature film slate with the already-rumored Iron Man 2 announced for a release on April 30, 2010, followed by three more movies for the summers of '10 and '11. Matthew Vaughn's Thor is set for a release on June 4, 2010, and The First Avenger: Captain America (the working title) will kick off the summer of 2011 on May 6, followed by the highly-anticipated and foreshadowed The Avengers scheduled for July 2011. (Edgar Wright's Ant-Man is also listed as being in development with no release date set.)

With that in mind, one can start expecting a lot more announcements in the coming months about creative teams and casting for those movies including who might direct the Captain America and Avengers movies. (Whomever plays Steve Rogers AKA Captain America presumably will be making two movies at once.)

Mission Impossible 4 Ramping Up?

(moviehole.net)              Sounds like Tom Cruise and Paramount may be about to kiss and make up. According to MSNBC, The United Artists head honco is in talks to star in another "Mission Impossible". Cruise and Paramount CEO Sumner Redstone had a very public falling out in 2006, when the studio ended its longstanding relationship with Cruise's production company, which he runs along with Paula Wagner. However, Cruise and Redstone have reportedly been spotted dining together recently in Los Angeles. Cruise has said previously that he'd love J.J Abrams to direct another installment.

Is Pixar Above The Law?

(Reuters)                    A former Pixar Animation Studios chief financial officer, expecting a stock options backdating suit by U.S. regulators, may argue that Pixar's board, outside lawyers and auditors approved backdating long before she was hired, a source familiar with the case said.

Ann Mather, who served as Pixar's chief financial officer through mid-2004 and now sits on Google Inc's board, on Monday divulged that the Securities and Exchange Commission may sue her for backdating at the animation company.

Mather's attorney said earlier this week that there was no basis for an SEC lawsuit against her.

She will have an opportunity to present a defense to the SEC, if she chooses, before the agency decides whether to file suit against her.

Options backdating, a practice in which option grant dates are changed retroactively to allow recipients to reap greater profit, is not illegal as long as it is properly disclosed and accounted for in financial statements.

Pixar is among more than 200 companies that have disclosed internal audits or government probes surrounding options practices. The Wall Street Journal reported Pixar had engaged in backdating as early as 1997.

"What (the policy) said was, 'We look back over the last few months and pick the date that has the lowest stock price. This is in an internal document and discussed very openly -- this is not a big secret what they were doing," said a second person familiar with backdating at Pixar but not approved to speak on the record about it.

An audit of Pixar conducted by new parent Walt Disney Co found backdating of options grants but cleared then-Chief Executive Steve Jobs and anyone then associated with the company of "any intentional and deliberate acts of misconduct," according to a securities filing. 

 The first person familiar with the case said the SEC is likely to allege that Pixar's stock options granting process was set up by the company's 1996 proxy to allow routine backdating of options and that Mather, hired in 1999, should have alerted auditors KPMG that accounting charges needed to be taken.

The Pixar board, which included former CFO Lawrence Levy and outside legal counsel Larry Sonsini, was signing off on backdated options that were dated, in some cases, months earlier, via "unanimous written consent" forms, said the source, who has seen internal Pixar documents.

Pixar, which had no general counsel during much of Mather's tenure, turned to its outside law firm, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, which had vetted the policy, and to KPMG, to approve extraordinary stock grants usually to top executives, the source said.

The company's stock options administrator would occasionally forward to the board memos from managers requesting options for employees, as well as stock charts with the lowest price circled, the source said.

On grants that deviated from this practice, Mather requested advice from Wilson Sonsini and was "repeatedly assured that there was no problem," the source said.

The SEC regional office in Los Angeles did not return calls seeking comment. A spokeswoman for Wilson Sonsini had no comment on Pixar or Mather on Friday.

Heaven Can Wait for Peter Jackson

(darkhorizons.com)               Flicks.Co.Nz reports that Peter Jackson's "The Lovely Bones" ceased filming due to a rift between Jackson and his art director over the best way to depict Heaven.

A large portion of film takes place in that mythological/spiritual realm where the main character Susie Salmon looks down on her family after her murder.

The Wellington crew apparently are having a break while the creative differences are sorted out. The project has undergone some visible arguments before, notably Ryan Gosling being replaced by Mark Wahlberg several days before filming began at Jackson's behest.

'Xavier Institute for Higher Learning' Enrolling Now

(darkhorizons.com)                "Gossip Girl," "Chuck," and "The O.C." producer/creator Josh Schwartz tells Black Book Mag that he's been enlisted to pen one of the "X-Men" spin-off scripts.

The film will center on the other teenage characters attending the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning, and Schwartz is ready to bear the brunt of criticism from comic fans - "I'm very well aware that I'll be bludgeoned by purists, but I love its mythology, and it comes with a pretty hefty paycheck. It's not like I'm adding new characters like Toaster Head, or anything like that."

Schwartz also doesn't hold back his other opinions in the interview - "The Hulk looks like it's going to be terrible... [Brett Ratner] didn't have a lot of credibility going in to the third X-Men movie... Bryan Singer got a free pass on Superman Returns because of his work on X-Men."

Early Computer Animation Screening

(tate.org.uk)              The Sunday evening screening will be a celebration of the inspiring technical and aesthetic advances of early computer animation, including key historical figures. 

UBS Openings is an exciting programme of events and activities which form part of the partnership between Tate Modern and UBS, a global financial services firm, over three years.   

Media Partner: Metro

Tate Modern 

Free, no bookings taken

Tickets available on a first come, first server basis Friday 23 - Sunday 25 May from ticket and information desks. 

Source:    http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/thelongweekend2008/14715.htm

Michael Bay talks Transformers 3, 4 and 5

(slashfilm.com)              To add more fuel to the Transformers sequel fire: Michael Bay told the press at the Asia junket/press confrence for Transformers that they would make a Transformers 3, 4, 5 if the reaction (ie box office) is good enough. So it looks like Transformers fanboys will just have to see the movie 8 or 9 times to guarantee a sequel.

Disney Animation 2010: Rapunzel

(disneylies.com)            With the 2010 release of Rapunzel, Disney will only have four common fairy tales left to make feature films out of (The Princess and the Pea, Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and Plato's Republic). Knowing that they nearing the end, Disney is pulling out all the stops on this one, using cutting-edge computer animation and filming the entire production in something called Hair-O-Vision.

Originally, Rapunzel was to be titled Rapunzel Unbraided, but an episode of Mythbusters dealing with the usefulness of hair for climbing proved that braided hair was actually stronger than unbraided hair, climbing wise, and if Rapunzel was going to have braided hair, they couldn't promise that she would be unbraided (for legal reasons).

"Tech Incubator" For The VFX Biz

(venturebeat.com)                   Steve Perlman, the man behind tech incubator Rearden, is a serial entrepreneur with more than 30 years' experience in the tech industry. He built his first computer from a kit during high school in 1976. He developed graphics at Atari and worked as a principal scientist at Apple, leading the development of a variety of multimedia technologies, including QuickTime. His string of start-ups includes General Magic, Catapult Entertainment, WebTV (sold to Microsoft for more than $500 million) and Moxi Digital. Since 2000, he's been investing in new technologies at Rearden. The company, named after the company Rearden Steel in Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" novel, is working on a wide range of R&D in a variety of fields and spins out start-ups as the R&D approaches commercializaton. Perlman believes that swinging for the fences, solving deep problems through years of research, and learning from mistakes is the only way to keep Silicon Valley moving forward. I was happy to have a chance to sit down with him at Web 2.0 and find out more about his business.

VB: How exactly does Rearden work?

SP: Rearden is an incubator. We've been around since 2000. What we do is take a look far forward into the future. We see a need for a technology or a production technique. We set out how to solve a problem. At that early stage, we won't know how to solve it and won't know how big the market will be when it's solved. So, unfortunately, at that stage, you can't bring in outside financing. We fund the companies ourselves. Most of the things we've tried have worked. A few don't. But that's fine. We learn from them. It very often takes years before we can show the technologies work. At that point, we build a large team and bring in outside funding. Then we move to product release. Some businesses stay within the Rearden fold and operate as cash businesses. We also cross-pollinate across all of these different companies. It's not just ideas but people transferring from one company to another. A lot of the R&D that is gained from one company feeds into another.

VB: Can you give me an example of that cross-pollination?

SP: Ice Blink Studios did the art work for four feature films. That could be low tech. But those films were high-tech. They were "War of the Worlds," "Monster House," "Polar Express," and "Beowulf." We learned how to develop techniques for very large-budget films. We learned about the film business, like how they are financed, developed, distributed and sold. All that feeds into basic technologies we developed, like Contour Reality Capture, which is used to capture faces with our Mova start-up.

There were a lot of things we tried that worked for faces but were not optimized for the way people work on a production set. We had to learn about how almost all of the cost for traditional motion capture of faces and bodies for animations in films came from cleaning up the data that you captured. We had to make sure that whatever we did was as automated as possible in cleaning up the data. That seems obvious now. We came up with something that made it easier for the actors. We applied phosphorscent make-up to their faces. The cameras could capture every dot on the actors' faces. It was comfortable enough. Now we don't have to clean up a lot of inaccurate data. Then we talked to the video game folks, who are right behind the film folks in special effects. We bring high-quality stuff from films that is applied to games. Right behind the game people are web people doing Flash animations on web sites. These Flash animations are moving forward and you used to be able to only do them on a video game machine seven or eight years ago. You see a trailing effect. Rearden Studios does audio and visual editing. Mova does motion capture with Contour.

More:   http://venturebeat.com/2008/04/30/an-interview-with-reardens-steve-perlman-on-investing-in-rd/

'Transformers 2 Shooting' at University of Pennsylvania

(slashfilm.com)              /Film reader S. McGruff informs us that Michael Bay will be filming sequences for Transformers 2 at the University of Pennsylvania:

    I've been reading for a couple months and love the site. Not sure if this is newsworthy but you can decide. I'm a student at the University of Pennsylvania and a few of my friends involved in student government told me that Transformers 2 will be shooting on campus in one of the nicer fraternities this summer. Im guessing these scenes will involve Shia/Jonah at college. Michael Bay was also seen on campus a few weeks back, so I guess that sort of confirms that the film will be partially shot here. Thought you might like to know.

Source:   http://www.slashfilm.com/2008/05/02/transformers-2-shooting-at-university-of-pennsylvania/

'Daniel X' To Battle Alien Outlaws

(cinematical.com)             We've gotten so very many young heroes fighting in the realms of fantasy; magic, vampires, secret worlds -- you name it, they're everywhere. Now it looks like we're getting a new sort of teen hero, one of the science fiction sort. Variety reports that New Regency has picked up the rights to an upcoming young-adult novel by James Patterson called The Dangerous Days of Daniel X.

It sounds like a funky action adventure story. Daniel X follows "the adventures of a conflicted yet extraordinary teen who yearns to discover secrets about himself and his family as he battles alien outlaws who threaten life on Earth." Will he do all his battling on Earth? Will he jet off into space? We'll have to wait and see since the book doesn't hit shelves until July. But some time after that, we should expect not only more Daniel X books, but also a graphic novel and this upcoming flick.

Hopefully this will do better than Jumper, which Regency recently co-financed. As of now, there is no word on who will adapt the story. Between this and Star Trek, it looks like the big screen is about to get a lot more space-filled.

Lucasfilm Race Car at the Indianapolis 500

(videobusiness.com)                Blockbuster and Lucasfilm are co-sponsoring an Indiana Jones race car, as part of an exclusive chain promotion fueling the franchise's next May 22 theatrical installment.

Star racer Marco Andretti will drive the Indy car at the Indianapolis 500 on May 25, following a 10-city tour of the car through this month at Blockbuster outlets. The car will be unveiled today at a Los Angeles Blockbuster, with Andretti in attendance.

Dubbed "#26 Team Indiana Jones Presented by Blockbuster," the car will kick off its tour at a chain outlet in Las Vegas on May 4.

Other stops include Phoenix on May 6; Denver, May 9; Dallas, May 11; Chicago, May 14; Detroit, May 15; Philadelphia, May 17; New York, May 18; and Indianapolis, May 21. The chain's Web site www.blockbuster.com has information on exact times and locations.

At Blockbuster outlets nationwide this month, customers can purchase exclusive merchandise tagged with the slogan "Indiana Jones at the Indianapolis 500."

"Team Indiana Jones" marks Blockbuster's first foray into the motorsports industry, and the chain intends to stay aligned with Andretti to continue to hype both theatrical and rental films.

Andretti added, "The Indy 500 is the biggest, most exciting race in the world, so it's the perfect place for Blockbuster and Lucasfilm to celebrate the world's favorite action hero in his new film."

'Creature from the Black Lagoon' Design Complete

(shocktillyoudrop.com)                   Breck Eisner meets ShockTillYouDrop.com in Pasadena to talk NBC's Fear Itself, and his episode The Sacrifice (more on that later), and the only thing echoing through this writer's skull is: Creature from the Black Lagoon, Creature from the Black Lagoon... Yes, the long-mooted remake to Universal and Jack Arnold's 1954 film.

Myriad directors have dipped their toes into the property, but were not committed enough to dive right in. That is, until Eisner had his named attached to an update nearly three years ago, working from a script by Gary Ross. The waters have been seemingly calm on the Creature front since then leading some to suspect Universal's attempts to float another Gill Man adventure were mere pipedreams. But the truth is, Eisner is reworking Gary Ross' screenplay right now. In fact, he took time off from that task just to meet us today.

"We scouted the movie last year but got shut down when the writers strike happened," Eisner explains to us. "We had a crew in the Amazon where we're going to shoot all of the exteriors. We're shooting in Manaus, Brazil and on the Amazon in Peru. I want it to be authentic. I'm a big fan of Werner Herzog and Fitzcarraldo. Herzog got that authenticity. He shot in Manaus. So, we scouted for a month. There's this place called the Forest of Mirrors, because there are so many lagoons on a thousand mile green carpet river, and we found the lagoon we're going to shoot in."

Eisner is also currently prepping a remake of George Romero's The Crazies which he'll shoot before Creature. "I want to get that film done, get it into post-production then head to the Amazon for 'Creature.' Oddly, I'm waiting on the height of the Amazon river before we start shooting - it drops 50-feet in October and November. But we've got the boat set and everything ready to go."

The new Creature will take place in a contemporary setting, and, will feature a mixture of CG and practical FX. "The Creature has been designed, we've spent six months designing him." Eisner says Spectral Motion has built a maquette based on an appearance created by Mark "Crash" McCreery (Jurassic Park, Pirates of the Caribbean). "We went top shelf on it. It's very faithful to the original, but updated."

Asked if he was turning the Creature into a huge action spectacle like Universal's Mummy films, Eisner expresses a noted reverence for the studio's atmosphere-soaked originals like James Whale's Frankenstein and George Waggner's The Wolf Man. "We debated tone a thousand times. For me tone is the most interesting thing a filmmaker has and so the Creature is a creature, it's not a monster. That's my number one thing about the movie. We're not going to turn him into a monster. He's still going to be empathetic, he's still going to be deadly, he's still going to have a misguided means of expressing his interests in a woman, but it's uniquely the Creature. It's empathy for a deadly creature and tone plays a big part of that." Still, Eisner knows full well Universal is aiming for summer movie fare so, "it will deliver of action and excitement, but I want it to be scary. The Creature was scary when it first came out in '54 - it's not scary today - but that's what updating means to me, updating the tone of the original."

Visit the Forest of Mirrors: 

Downey To Bulk Up For Iron Man 2 

(moviehole.net)           According to IESB, Robert Downey Jr will be filming the sequel as early as next year. "Downey's trainer, Brad Bose, told the IESB that he starts training with Downey just after this final premiere in LA (Downey has had a few months off in between going to work on Ben Stiller's TROPIC THUNDER). Then, he will have him ready to wear the suit again in just 5 months. This time around he wants to put an extra 10 pounds on the actor, for a little more bulk."

Spielberg's Robo-Spiders Jump from Screen to Reality for US Army

(hollywoodtoday.net)              (HollywoodToday) 5/4/08 — If you thought armies' of robotic spiders were creepy enough in Steven Speilberg's "Minority Report" starring Tom Cruise, then you're in for a real shock because these surveillance spiders of fortune are real and coming to an army near you.

With plans in the works for robo-spiders, robo-bugs, robo-snakes and even robo-dragonflys packing cameras and sensors, these slithering and flying armies will potentially detect radioactive as well as chemical and biological weapons on the frontlines by the end of year.

And the potential applications for these swarmers are mind boggling as they can ultimately track down evildoers at a lower cost than even police dogs. Hollywood Today conjectures that the bot-surveillance and bomb sniffing applications could quickly spread to airport security and polices forces across the country.

So who's buying and selling this creepy militia? According to the Daily Mail in the UK, BAE Systems just inked a $38 million deal to develop these new robo-soldiers for the US Army.

BAE's program manager Steve Scalera described the robo-cops mission as "enhanced awareness of eyes and ears" in wartime. "The creatures have external sensors. They can be tossed out into a building or a cave or even a pile of rubble and then send images back to the troops. The idea is to get a number of these working together – some tiny, some maybe up to a foot in length, and all going into a building together carrying out different tasks. Eventually we hope to have animals flying and slithering."

The new five-year program could have robo-crawlies on the ground within six months and as the price goes down each could cost about $200 each to make.

Robotics on the battlefield isn't a new concept for the US Army they've been pursuing it for sometime as part to their Future Combat Systems program. For instance the Predator, a pilot-less aircraft has often been the eyes and the ears for US forces and has even delivered missiles.

Also, iRobot, the Roomba and Scooba vacuum people announced a contract last year to supply the Army with PackBots, robots that can lift 30 pounds, climb stairs and roll over rubble, rocks, mud and snow.