BP Oil Spill Getting the Big Screen Treatment

Honestly, I'm surprised it took this long.  Yesterday, Summit Entertainment and Participant Media acquired the rights to the New York Times article Deepwater Horizon's Final Hour which chronicles the tragedy on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that led to one of the largest environmental disasters our country has ever seen, the BP oil spill in the Gulf.  The article written by David Barstow, David Rohde, and Stephanie Saul was published on December 25, 2010 and immediately sought after by Hollywood.

According to the press release, the film adaptation will be written by Matthew Sand with an emphasis being placed on depicting "the courage of those who worked on the oil rig and the final minutes leading up to the disaster" rather than the aftermath.  Hit the jump to read the full press release and a link to the original article.

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Bill Paxton Wants a 3-D 'Twister' Sequel

Bill Paxton would like to make a sequel to Twister, which...whatever. I think at this point, the storm chaser shows on Science or Discovery could beat any fake drama Hollywood could muster, but Paxton is nonetheless strongly considering a return to the scene of the crime.

He tells Premium Hollywood he wants to do a 3-D film, a sequel that could "explore it in a more enthralling way, getting into more of the history and the lore, more of a darker version of the first one." I tend to think, minus the 3-D thing, 2012 has kind of laid bare all the global destruction we need to see for a while, but Paxton is taking this rather seriously.

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Movie Review - '2012'

2012 Starring John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Woody Harrelson Directed by Roland Emmerich Rated PG-13

A common complaint leveled at movie critics, almost exclusively with big budget blockbusters, is that we expect them to be something they're not. True, not everything tries to win Oscars and bad acting and writing can often be overlooked, but some films are so bad even on the basis that they should be evaluated that you can only forgive so much in the interest of entertainment. Within its own little universe, 2012 really only wants to create the apocalypse to end all apocalypses, and it's pretty successful at it, frankly. Director Roland Emmerich is The Master of Disaster, having helmed a few movies that put human civilization on the brink of extinction from one cause or another. There's always an unlikely hero, seldom a likely one, and familiar monuments get demolished rather convincingly through computer animation. There's always a scientist who knows how it will play out, and somehow amid all of this, there's romance in bloom. As you might suspect, 2012 is loosely inspired by the end of the Mayan calendar, which goes dark in December of that year. Some of the scientific theories at work here exist, although they may be shady. Still, unless you know these things going in, it seems fairly plausible: The sun is basically cooking the crust of the Earth and eventually - say, December 2012 - it will finally give way and everything will start to move uncontrollably. You probably don't know there are nearly 10,000 earthquakes a day because most of that movement is so minor you never feel it. But it's always moving, and we know California is overdue for "the big one." So why not? Now, in Emmerich's world where all this is set in motion, does the movie work? More often than it doesn't, and that might be a surprise. Considering his film is over two-and-a-half hours long, it holds together pretty well. That doesn't mean 2012 doesn't have its problems or that the things our survivors live through are in any way acceptable, but the movie just keeps rolling on, and when Emmerich does slow down so we can catch our breath, these characters aren't that bad.

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Emmerich's Thinking Two 'Independence Day' Sequels

A lot about a future Independence Day movie (or two) depends on this weekend. Director Roland Emmerich might have a hit with 2012, and if it does well enough, he might be able to jump-start the long-dormant ID4 franchise. I'm surprised there was no sequel three or four years after the original; it was, after all, the second biggest movie of all time when it was released (behind Jurassic Park).

Of course, if Will Smith is involved, the decision is much simpler for Fox, and Emmerich says that if there is more to come, it will be part of the Willennium. But here's something we haven't heard before: Multiple sequels. Emmerich tells MTV, "What we want to do in the next - it's actually two movies - we want to do a bigger arc." He even has a title in mind, which you're free to despise: "ID4-Ever, Part I and II, maybe?"

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Roland Emmerich Talks 'Independence Day' Sequel

Telling Latino Review that "there's a very really good great story, a very cool one" for a possible Independence Day sequel, director Roland Emmerich says a follow-up has been in negotiations for some time now.

The Master of Disaster has 2012 in theaters next month, but there has been talk about this sequel (or at least a sequel) to Independence Day for years and years. It was one of the ten biggest movies of the 1990s, so you'd think sequel talk would be a natural, although some of the other blockbusters in that same category from the previous decade were one-and-dones, too. The big question is what to do about Will Smith. He was not the world's biggest movie star in 1996, so if he were to come back for a sequel to the movie that solidified his standing as a box office draw, somebody would be backing the truck up, as Emmerich notes:

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