The CLOG - A Clevver Blog

It is no secret that Twentieth-Century Fox and Warner Bros. Pictures are in a heated legal battle regarding the rights to the soon to be released Watchmen film.  Considered to be the Citizen Kane of graphic novels, it has taken a long time to get made in large part due to the fact that many in Hollywood didn’t feel it viable as a film.  Hopefully, depending on the outcome of the legal dispute, we’ll all get to decide for ourselves when the film is released on March 6th.

The website Hitfix has recently received a letter from one of the producers of the film, Lloyd Levin.  You can read the letter in its entirety here, but the highlights are below.

Who is right? In the Watchmen dispute between Warner Brothers and Fox that question is being discussed, analyzed, argued, tried and ruled on in a court of law. That’s one way to answer the question - It is a fallback position in our society for parties in conflict to resolve disputes. And there are teams of lawyers and a highly regarded Federal Judge trying to do just that, which obviates any contribution I could make towards answering the “who is right” question within a legal context. But after 15 plus years of involvement in the project, and a decade more than that working in the movie business, I have another perspective, a personal perspective that I believe important to have on the public record.

…There’s a list of people who have rejected the viability of a movie based on Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s classic graphic novel that reads like a who’s who of Hollywood.

Through the years, inverse of the lack of studio faith has been the passionate belief by many many individuals…(who wanted) to see this movie get made and made right, donated their time and talent to help push the film forward…

In late spring of 2005…The response we got from Fox was a flat “pass.” That’s it. An internal Fox email documents that executives there felt the script was one of the most unintelligible pieces of shit they had read in years. Conversely, Warner Brothers called us after having read the script and said they were interested in the movie - yes, they were unsure of the screenplay, and had many questions, but wanted to set a meeting to discuss the project, which they promptly did. Did anyone at Fox ask to meet on the movie? No. Did anyone at Fox express any interest in the movie? No. Express even the slightest interest in the movie? Or the graphic novel? No.

Warner Brothers continued to support, both financially and creatively, the development of the movie. And eventually, after over a year of work, they agreed to make the film, based on a script that, for what it’s worth, was by and large very similar to the one Fox initially read and deemed an unintelligible piece of shit.

Shouldn’t Warner Brothers be entitled to the spoils - if any — of the risk they took in supporting and making Watchmen? Should Fox have any claim on something they could have had but chose to neither support nor show any interest in?

For the sake of the artists involved, for the hundreds of people, executives and filmmakers, actors and crew, who invested their time, their money, and dedicated a good portion of their lives in order to bring this extraordinary project to life, the question of what is right is clear and unambiguous - Fox should stand down with its claim.

Paramount Pictures has revealed the first one-sheet for the upcoming Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.  The film continues the story of the battle between the noble Autobots and evil Decepticons on Earth.  Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson all reprise their roles in the film and new Transformers are promised for the sequel.  The film is scheduled to be released on June 26th.

While sitting down with IESB.net to discuss his new film The Unborn, writer/director David Goyer discussed the effect the success of The Dark Knight has had on other DC Comics films being made at Warner Bros.

“A lot of the DC movies at Warner Bros. are all on hold while they figure out, they’re going to come up with some new plan, methodology, things like that so everything has just been pressed pause on at the moment,” says Goyer.  “It was the double header of both Iron Man and The Dark Knight coming out, so more than ever I think they’ve realized…I think DC was responsible for 15% of Warner Bros.’s revenue this year, something crazy like that, so they realized that comic books, it’s become a new genre, one of the most successful genres.”

This hold includes his own DC projects The Flash and Super Max.  Another superhero project Goyer is attached to write and direct that is on hold for much different reasons is X-Men Origins: Magneto.  Previously scheduled for release in 2010, Twentieth-Century Fox recently shelved the film pending the success of the upcoming X-Men Origins: Wolverine film starring Hugh Jackman scheduled to hit theaters May 1st.

Despite the tremendous success of The Dark Knight, Warner Bros. has had little success with some of DC’s other superhero staples.  Superman Returns was unable to recoup its $270 million budget at the North American box office and other high-profile titles like Wonder Woman have long been gestating.  For DC Comics to share in the overall success that Marvel Comics has had, it might be best for them to rethink their strategy for upcoming films.

On the first ever “Celebrity Apprentice” last season, winner Piers Morgan changed the way the game was played, winning millions for charity and setting the bar for all who follow. Now 16 new celebrities will rise to the challenge and once again it will be men versus women. The men include: Clint Black, Andrew Dice Clay, Tom Green, Scott Hamilton, Jesse James, Brian McKnight, Dennis Rodman, and Herschel Walker. The women include: Annie Duke, Natalie Gulbis, Claudia Jordan, Khloe Kardashian, Joan Rivers, Melissa Rivers, Brande Roderick and Tionne Watkins. All the celebrities will be vying for the coveted title as they fight for their respective causes.

“Last season’s ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ became one of the hottest shows on television — and this season will be even better,” said Trump. “We have an amazing cast of celebrities and we are looking forward to some fantastic entertainment.”

The 16 celebrities will compete in business-driven tasks around New York City using their fame, rolodexes and their business acumen to win weekly tasks, while ultimately battling with each other to stay out of the boardroom and avoid hearing those dreaded words “You’re Fired!” They’ll be subjected to long hours, grueling mental challenges, personality clashes and intense scrutiny — all without the help of their regular support system of agents, managers and personal assistants.

This season the competition is more cut throat than ever with a group of celebrities that will fight, tooth and nail, to win. Such intensity will result in flare-ups that, Piers Morgan says, “make his legendary fights with Omarosa look like a tea party.”

Ultimately they will face the judgment of Donald Trump and his advisors in the boardroom, which will include his children (and colleagues), Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. Also appearing in the boardroom alongside Trump will be his longtime associate and trusted colleague, George Ross.

The boardroom will feature a “rotating seat,” allowing a variety of famous business leaders and industry legends to join Trump in spirited judgment of the tasks. As with last season, winning celebrity teams will relish the opportunity to watch the losing team squirm in the boardroom from the comfort of their own war rooms.

When all is said and done, 15 celebrities will be famously fired and only one will emerge to become The Celebrity Apprentice.

Wii Sports has managed to dethrone a record that has been held by a titan of video games that was originally released in 1985 for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).  Super Mario Bros. has long stood as the best selling video game of all time with 40.23 million units sold.  Wii Sports has now sold over 40.24 million units and counting.

Both games have benefitted by being bundled with their corresponding consoles.  The NES was an immediate success when it was released in 1985 and Super Mario Bros. (the sequel to the 1983 arcade hit Mario Bros.) greatly contributed to its success.  Likewise, the Nintendo Wii has been a huge success since its launch in 2006, unable to keep up with deman even two years after its release.  Like Super Mario Bros., Wii Sports has greatly helped the success of the Wii.

Though Wii Sports is currently bundled in most consoles sold around the world, units in Japan and South Korea do not include the game.  Despite this, the game continues to sell incredibly well in both countries.  In Japan, Wii Sports is purchased with 45% of the Wii’s sold, proving the desirability of the game and the success of Wii Sports for the Wii.

With the success of the Nintendo Wii, Wii Sports should continue to increase its dominance as the best selling game of all time.  A sequel to Wii Sports, titled Wii Sports Resort that includes swordfighting, dog frisbee and wave racing is do out this spring.

The new year always brings along with it dozens of different awards and awards shows, but none are quite as entertaining as the Razzies.

Sort of the anti-Oscars, the Razzies — short for Golden Raspberries — have been nominating the worst of the worst since 1980.  Past winners of Worst Picture include Battlefield Earth, Basic Instinct 2, Showgirls, Catwoman, and most recently, Lindsay Lohan’s opus I Know Who Killed Me.

A Razzie insider (apparently there is such a thing) leaked the list of 2009 contenders for a Worst Picture nomination to MTV, and they are:

Speed Racer
Disaster Movie
Meet the Spartans
The Day the Earth Stood Still
High School Musical 3
The Hottie and the Nottie
Dungeon Siege
The Love Guru
Postal
Rambo
The Happening
Meet Dave
Witless Protection

A lot of quality contenders there. Good luck to all of them.

Director Robert Zemeckis is doing to A Christmas Carol what he did to The Polar Express, just this time with Jim Carrey as his guiney pig instead of Tom Hanks: Carrey plays a motion-capture animated version of Scrooge and the three ghosts who visit him in the Christmas ‘09 film, which also stars Gary Oldman (as Bob Cratchit, Tiny Tim, and Marley), as well as Colin Firth, Cary Elwes, and Bob Hoskins.

The official poster has yet to be released online, but this shot of Scrooge, possibly taken from a mock-up of the poster, was just leaked:

Unlike the character models in The Polar Express, which all actually looked like Tom Hanks, I can’t see much of the real Jim Carrey in this shot.  If Zemeckis is moving away from that style, it’s probably a good thing: I don’t think anyone would much appreciate a Tiny Tim that had the face of Gary Oldman.

The Dark Knight walked away with Best Movie and a bunch of other awards at the People’s Choice awards ceremony, which aired last night on CBS.  The only real surprises were matters of procedure: why are “Leading Lady” and “Female Movie Star” two different awards?  Does The Secret Life of Bees really count as an indie?  27 Dresses was supposed to be funny?  Really?  Check out the full list of winners:

Movie Awards

Overall: The Dark Knight
Action: The Dark Knight
Family: Wall-E
Comedy: 27 Dresses
Drama: The Secret Life of Bees
Independent: The Secret Life of Bees
Song from a Soundtrack: “Mamma Mia!” from Mamma Mia!

Actor Awards

Best Cast: The Dark Knight
Male Movie Star: Will Smith
Female Movie Star: Reese Witherspoon
Leading Man: Brad Pitt
Leading Lady: Kate Hudson
Funny Male Star: Adam Sandler
Funny Female Star: Tina Fey
Action Star: Will Smith
Onscreen Match-Up: Christian Bale and Heath Ledger
Superhero: Christian Bale

TV Awards

Drama: House
Comedy: Two and a Half Men
Animated: The Simpsons
Sci-Fi: Heroes

The fight between Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox over the rights to Watchmen continues as the film’s release date, March 6th, looms close.  Not wanting to miss the date they’ve spent the past year hyping, Warners has asked the current judge in the case to move up the hearing to as early as Monday.

Warners is particularly desperate because they’ve already lost the first round: on Christmas Eve, a judge declared that Fox has “at the very least” the right to distribute Watchmen.

Fanboys have been crying foul since the lawsuit began, saying it’s a case of sour grapes: Fox didn’t bother telling Warners they owned the rights to Watchmen until after filming was finished and the first trailer had been well-received when it was attached to The Dark Knight this summer.

Fox currently has the upper hand, but the release date could still hold if Warner Bros. hands out a massive settlement (tens of millions of dollars at minimum), which is probably what Fox was gunning for in the first place.

On a lighter note, Warners continues to pour money into Watchmen advertising, which now includes a series of soon-to-debut viral websites.  Check out the first one at TheNewFrontiersman.net, the site of a fictional newspaper that appears in the Watchmen graphic novel.

You don’t know who Garrett Hedlund is, but you’ve probably seen him — since 2004, he’s ridden a wave of supporting roles in high-profile movies like Troy, Friday Night Lights, Eragon, and Georgia Rule.

Well, okay, nobody saw Georgia Rule, but chances are pretty good you will end up seeing the long-awaited sequel to Tron, in which he just landed the starring role.

Not much is known about the project yet; test footage was shown to attendees at Comic-Con last summer under the title Tr2n, which was then changed to Tron 2.0, which might now be changed to just Tron — even though it is a sequel, not a remake.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Hedlund will play a man “pulled into the world of a computer” who then must trace the steps of the original 1982 film’s hero — Jeff Bridges, who will be back.  Olivia Wilde and Beau Garrett have also been cast; the screenplay is by Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis, two staff writers on Lost, while first-timer Joseph Kosinski will direct.

Other young actors up for the role Hedlund eventually got were Ryan Gosling, Chris Pine (Star Trek), and Michael Stahl-David (Cloverfield).

For those of you who were still wondering, yes, there is still a remake in the works for George Romero’s downright classic The Crazies.  In fact, it’s SO still on that they’ve got a special effects company all ready to get in and start the work–Almost Human FX, specifically.

For true horror aficionados, and FX junkies, this should come as some good news.  For the rest of you who are looking at me askance right now desperately wondering why you should care, let me fill you in.  If you’ve seen movies like Vacancy, Quarantine, Laid To Rest, or even the TV series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles lately, then you’re familiar with the work of Almost Human FX.

Almost Human FX has done some truly fantastic effects work–granted, Vacancy wasn’t exactly long on the special effects, but no one who has seen Quarantine can really deny that that sucker had some AMAZING effects going on.  But this is not the best news.  Sure, Almost Human FX is a solid company with an extensive resume, but the point is that The Crazies now has a production company attached.  This is a fantastic development, because it proves that the remake is quite on track.

I don’t know if you’ve seen the original lately–it’s classic Romero worthy of his Dead series–but it’s definitely got a dated look to it.  With good reason, too…it comes from the depths of 1973, for crying out loud.  But just looking at the rifles and the helicopters and the fashions of the day prove conclusively that this sucker is pushing antique territory.  I’m not being insulting to the upper end of the audience, either–anything fifty years old is technically considered antique, and The Crazies just turned thirty-six this year.  Odd, though…the remake is slated for release in 2010, so saith the IMDB.  You’d think they’d wait a bit and take advantage of an anniversary for extra publicity bonuses.

It’s just as well–I’m not the only one writing about it–because either way, I’m just glad to see Romero’s work get an update.  Hopefully, though, this won’t be another Dawn of the Dead.

Dwayne

You know…for a company that’s taken as much abuse lately as Disney has, I’m kind of surprised to see them pump out some good movies. The newest of which involves a recently-released trailer for Race to Witch Mountain, based on the low-grade films of the seventies of the same name.

Featuring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Annasophia Robb, Race to Witch Mountain involves a couple kids who might be aliens on the run from an intergalatic bounty hunter with a raftload of onboard weaponry who must get back to their ship which happens to be somewhere near Witch Mountain.

Okay, so there are some problems with it.  So the bounty hunter’s weaponry is apparently categorized by a charging whine before firing, which is probably a massive design flaw.  Can you see this actually being part of a design meeting somewhere?  “Hey, Zorgo…let’s make sure we warn everybody before this thing fires!” “What should we use, Margulak?  A siren?” “Naaah, we used that on the photon torpedoes.  Let’s just have it emit a whining noise while it initializes.” “Works for me. Let’s go get lunch!”

So there’s some other rather dicey sequences involved, like the kid / maybe aliens are talking to dogs and whatnot, but still, this looks like it might be a pretty decent movie.

Sure, we’re all a bit spoiled by out-of-nowhere surprise hit Pirates of the Caribbean, but we all remember The Haunted Mansion.  It’s strange to say but the evidence really seems to be bearing it out–Disney’s strength is no longer in cartoons.  Pixar pretty much destroyed any chance of Disney ever looking good in animation EVER AGAIN, but Disney can still clock out the occasional good live-action title.  The entire Pirates trilogy (possibly going on to full franchise) was too good to miss.

And if Race to Witch Mountain can hold it together, well, Disney may have just found its new millenium business model.  And only ten years in too…all riiiiight.

La Lohan, kids, is mightily perturbed.  From WENN:

Lohan fears she isn’t taken seriously by filmmakers because the last few turbulent years of her life - in which she was arrested for drink driving and spent time in rehab - tarnished her reputation as a serious actress.

No, seriously.  She’s afraid that the time she spent in rehab, fending off her wackjob father, pursuing ludicrous roles and being in general a party girl might be killing her career.

This is like being afraid of the water and living on a houseboat.

Honestly, Lindsay–this is no longer something to be afraid of.  If you’re afraid of it, you’re implying that it may not actually be happening.  The problem, of course, is that it IS HAPPENING.  Right this second. Let me say it nice and clearly in case you got another case of “heat exhaustion”: YOU ARE A HOLLYWOOD JOKE.

Okay, maybe I’m being too hard on Lindsay, but seriously–even The Smoking Gun backs me up on this one.  Sure, there’s some leeway here.  It’s said that Robinson pulled a total heel-face turn on this position just a couple months later, praising Lohan’s “professionalism” and insisting that she “doesn’t complain”, even after the well-publicized letter insisting that she acts like a “spoiled child”.  The whole thing makes me wonder if maybe ROBINSON was the one having problems with the heat.

But anyway…between the problems with the family and the troubles with the law and the whole ongoing Samantha Ronson debacle, it’s enough to make me a bit sad for Lohan.  Maybe she’s genuinely trying to turn her career around and is just facing an uphill battle from past mistakes.  Give her a bit of benefit of the doubt here…she might genuinely be trying.

Either way, girl’s got a long climb ahead.

Now, I personally consider it a great day when I can start off with a joke.  I’m one of those people who subscribes very firmly to the “laughter is the best medicine” approach to life–so deeply in fact that I believe I should be issued an honorary doctorate from somewhere because I am a laugh MACHINE.

Anyway, you’re almost certainly wondering by now, just WHAT is like having a plumber fix your car?

How about having Ellen DeGeneres offer to set up Anne Hathaway with a new boyfriend?

The worst part is, I’m not kidding.  Ellen, clearly lesbian, has offered to help hook up the recently jilted Hathaway following some spectacular drama involving her previous boyfriend’s con game involving real estate that he pitched on the strength of a picture of him with the Pope.  Apparently this worked quite well for a while until the authorities landed on him with both feet.  In a move that showed Hathaway’s then-boyfriend wasn’t exactly long in the brains department, he then tried to use that same picture of himself with the Pope to bargain for decreased jail time.

Nothing like hoping lightning can strike twice, huh?  Though in this case, Hathaway’s then-beau probably should’ve been more worried about it striking ONCE.  Notably, him.

It’s not like Hathaway is being real discerning at this point–in response to Ellen’s offer, she said her only real requirement at this point is that “he be law-abiding”.  To which I respond, Anne, I’m totally available right now, and I don’t even pull tags off mattresses.  But seriously, despite Ellen’s protestations that she’s “really good at it”, I don’t exactly think that the lesbian is in the best position to find anyone a man.

The next time recently-divorced Kate Hudson ties the knot–proving that celebrity marriages have an average shelf life better suited to fresh vegetables than an institution with serious religious overtones–look for her to leave a trail of enraged paparazzi pulling their hair out in rage and frustrated fury.

She’s ELOPING next time, she says.

Apparently, Kate Hudson just can’t stand things like her parents and future in-laws jamming their noses into things and trying to have their way. In fact, she even goes so far as to compare a wedding to a movie premiere with all the attendant egos butting heads.  Even the folks who try to stay out of things don’t quite manage to pull it off–listening to Hudson talk suggests that, when it comes to weddings, people have all the willpower of those fresh vegetables I mentioned earlier.

But on a stranger note: she’s got in-law drama before she even ties the knot?  Scuse me for chiming in as a marriage virgin, but wow–if your in-laws are already meddling in the wedding, don’t you think this bodes badly for the entire rest of the marriage?

From what I’ve heard and seen and witnessed on various horrible reality shows like Bridezillas, a wedding is a tough enough affair as it is without executive meddling, but is the solution really to run away from it all?  Come on, Kate–suck it up and talk it out with your folks and in-laws!  Welcome suggestions, sure, but at the end of it all it’s your big day–and your husband’s, of course–so you’ve got to have the final say.

Working things out like that will prove that your relationships have all the health benefits of, once again, those fresh vegetables I talked about already.

Hat trick on the metaphor!  Yay me!