Battleship

A few years ago, Hollywood was all about board games, but with the disaster that was Peter Berg’s “Battleship” and the one-two punch that was “Twilight” and “The Hunger Games,” studios have now pinned their hopes on the YA-market. This morning sees two new images, one from an already successful franchise and the other from one of the many hopefuls looking to hit big. First up is a new poster for the “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” that eschews the costumed pageantry of the earlier posters and instead leans on the only image the studio will ever need, Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss with a bow and arrow. The “Hunger Games” sequel will hit IMAX and regular theaters later this year, on November 22nd. [Hitfix] Now that the “Twilight” series is over (for now), Summit is hitching their future to another YA series, “Divergent,” and now they’ve released a photo (via EW) to get your hearts pumping faster. There’s really not much to the photo, just a bunch of dour-looking young adults wearing...

EXCLUSIVE: Not since John Carter and Battleship has a big-budget movie gotten more bad press for its production woes than World War Z, the Marc Forster-directed adaptation of the Max Brooks zombie-apocalypse novel that stars and is produced by Brad Pitt. I was shown the movie this week, and not even in the 3D format that will be ready by its June 21 release. Each time I told someone I’d seen it, the response from industry insiders was a version of, “Well, just how bad is it?” I’m no reviewer but I can honestly say that it’s better than good; try a rocking, smart, pulse pounding big scale pandemic with raging zombies, tension and the kind of hero star turn Pitt hasn’t done in a long time. Paramount invited me and a handful of others to see it, as they begin the daunting campaign of rehabilitating the film’s battered image. I don’t know if I would have written anything had I hated the movie, but it’s easy for me to write this because I consider myself a connoisseur of zombie fare, and this stacks up very favorably. A solidly detailed Vanity Fair article that bared the production challenges and how an entire third act was tossed and re-shot created major blow back. It got ... Read More »