Get The Big Picture -

'Transformers': Revenge of the Fakers

Last week, we were the first to bring you the phony but exceptional Dark Knight Returns poster featuring The Riddler. There's plenty of evidence to suggest that it was fan made, but still, it's quite the poster and quite the rumor starter.

Now we have fakes for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. G4 got its hands on them yesterday. It might be a little tougher to dismiss these, since the movie is less than a year away and we've already seen a Terminator Salvation poster, but the studio confirms these aren't real. Don't love the first one. Do love the second one.

You know, we talk about marketing a lot, and when we're dealing with movies as huge as The Dark Knight and Transformers, marketing is crucial to their success. I'm not as big on viral video as everyone else, because as soon as you categorize your marketing angle as "viral," it's suddenly not viral. But I can't think of a better way to generate the sort of widespread reaction to your movie than to just let these fan-made posters (and trailers, too) do the work for you. If I were the DreamWorks, I wouldn't have said a word about these posters, just as Warner and DC haven't made any comment about The Dark Knight Returns.

And if DreamWorks can't top the second poster in this set, then shouldn't they use it for reals?

Posted on Wednesday, August 20, 2008 at 09:56AM by

Colin Boyd in Posters, Sci-Fi, Transformers |

1 Comment

Tom Cruise, Sam Raimi Teaming Up for DC Comics' 'Sleeper'

There's bouncing back from adversity and then there's what Tom Cruise has managed to pull off in the past two weeks. In the middle of a fairly brisk period of headlines for the former top star in the world, his longtime friend and producing partner Paula Wagner bailed on their joint project of running United Artists. He has also seen his name scratched off above the title of the CIA flick Edwin A. Salt (only to see it replaced by the name Angelina Jolie), and his WWII film Valkyrie, which moved from late 2008 to early 2009 a couple months ago, has now moved back to 2008.

And then there's the matter of his borderline brilliant cameo in a recent comedy.

But the news keeps on coming for Cruise, who, separate from his deal with United Artists, has now expressed interest in three upcoming projects operating at rival studios. The Spyglass thriller Tourist was first, followed by the Universal/Working Title comedy Food Fight, and now there's the DC Comics adaptation Sleeper, which will be produced by Sam Raimi and his Star Road Entertainment.

The Hollywood Reporter has all the details, but we'll give you the highlights: Sleeper is a sci-fi comic that ran from 2003 - 2005. Should Cruise star in the film (and it's his interest that is reportedly moving the business end of the deal along), he would likely play "an operative whose fusion with an alien artifact makes him impervious to pain and allows him to pass it on to others through skin contact." That's right: He has Impervious Cooties. We all knew this day would come.

Here's another hot little detail: The film is the property of Warner Bros., which is in the news for its arm wrestling match with Fox over the rights to Watchmen. Because the studio may look at this as a franchise opportunity, they will probably be a lot more careful when it comes to the language of the contract.

The project sounds really interesting. Raimi has an eye for quality material, and frankly, the movies Cruise has chosen to do over the past few years all sound interesting at first; it's when you actually see a Lions for Lambs or a Vanilla Sky that things start to fall apart. Hopefully, the combo of Raimi and Cruise can attract a top-flight writer who understands the comic and how to transfer it to the screen, and then they can hope to find a director who can create the world that story needs to succeed. It's not enough to have a big name star wanting to do a movie anymore, particularly one with the names Marvel or DC etched on the side.

Posted on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 at 01:51AM by

Colin Boyd in Casting Couch, Tom Cruise, Comic Book Movies, DC Comics, Sci-Fi, Sam Raimi |

1 Comment

Four New 'Star Trek' Character Posters

io9 has given the world four new character posters for next year's Star Trek. I can't say I feel great about every single cast member, although I love the prequel concept, definitely think the right guy is taking over the franchise at this point (J.J. Abrams), and think it's absolutely the best way to spark new interest in a set of 40-year-old characters.

The first character posters, released just before Comic Con, featured Kirk (Chris Pine), Spock (Zachary Quinto), the evil Nero (Eric Bana), and Uhura (Zoe Saldana). Now we fill out the roster a little bit with, moving clockwise from top left, Scotty (Simon Pegg), Chekov (Anton Yelchin), Bones (Karl Urban), and Sulu (John Cho). Here's how the pieces fit together:

Click to read more ...

Posted on Sunday, August 10, 2008 at 01:24PM by

Colin Boyd in TV Adaptations, Posters, J.J. Abrams, Star Trek, Sci-Fi, Prequels |

2 Comments

New Photos from 'The Day the Earth Stood Still'

Of course, in a perfect world, we'd never have remakes or sequels. We'd have one movie that told the whole story perfectly, leaving no questions unanswered, no stones unturned, and there would never be a reason to revisit that idea again because the film is timeless and untouchable.

It doesn't work that way, and we're "treated" to remakes and sequels all the time. Often, these are lousy, although I don't think you could survey the entire landscape of unoriginal ideas and determine that the majority are without their merits. It gets a little tricky when filmmakers want to add something to the legacy of a classic film, say, for example, The Day the Earth Stood Still.

For a lot of us, myself included, it's one of the first great alien invasion movies and an important piece of science-fiction and pop culture. But I don't think anyone can say that it's not outdated. After all, it was released in 1951.

Many contemporary audiences, who might still find quite a bit to like about the basic story, would never be able to sit through the Robert Wise version, even though it informed many, many sci-fi movies that followed it.

The longer people go without seeing it, the less it will mean years from now. So we have two options moving forward: Either let The Day the Earth Stood Still slip further and further into the irrelevance or introduce it a new audience by offering a modern version. And so here we are, a few months away from the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still.

IGN has some great new photos from the film, and as a service to them, we won't share all of them here. Please check out the source to see them all. But this movie looks pretty damn ominous, if you ask me. Keanu Reeves plays Klaatu, the visitor from another planet. The film co-stars Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, John Cleese, Kathy Bates, and Jaden Smith.

The Day the Earth Stood Still invades on December 12th.

Posted on Friday, August 8, 2008 at 12:52PM by

Colin Boyd in Remakes, Sci-Fi, Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly, The Day the Earth Stood Still |

15 Comments

James Doohan's Rocket Couldn't Take Much More: Scotty's Ashes Still Earthbound

The BBC is reporting that "some of the ashes" of James Doohan, best remembered as Star Trek's inimitable chief engineer Montgomery Scott, did not reach their final destination after their failed launch into space. That's certainly not the sort of story you read about everyday. According to Doohan's son, the "some of the ashes" means that not all of the ashes were ever intended for galactic travel.

When Doohan died at the age of 85 three years ago, his will requested that his final resting place be in the final frontier, and since then, it's been harder to accomplish than you'd think. According to the Beeb, Falcon 1 was supposed to send the ashes of 208 people into orbit, but the reusable rocket disintegrated shortly after launching from Kwajalein Atoll, shooting its payload into the ocean.

You just can't use the phrase "shooting its payload" in the 21st Century with a straight face. Can't be done.

Falcon 1 is a creation of SpaceX, the company founded by PayPal's Elon Musk. Incidentally, that was what I always got my dad for Christmas growing up. He loved the smell of Elon Musk. The holiday gift set with the cologne, aftershave, and the soap-on-a-rope. I digress...

If I were NASA, I would've offered to put him on the Phoenix, or maybe hold out until the manned mission to Mars. I don't trust this Falcon 1. None of the their launches have ever made it into orbit, and we've kind of been able to do that for almost 50 years.

Short of a NASA voyage, why not plan a ceremonial launch into space to commemorate the premiere of next summer's Star Trek and have Paramount pick up the tab? There's an outside-the-box marketing idea.

Posted on Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 05:44PM by

Colin Boyd in Star Trek, Sci-Fi, Celebrity |