TServo2049

Wasn't this movie originally scheduled for some time in 2014? Does anybody know when photography actually wrapped for this movie? This is one of those movies that keeps getting kicked further and further down the road for seemingly no reason. Are there post-production problems or something? Was it just a movie that was approved by an outgoing executive and nobody wants to do anything with it?

That was the original date. I have no idea why it wasn't already on BOM (I swear it was before, but it disappeared?) or why they still have it as 1/13/17 when Dark Tower was announced for that date. Keith will be Keith, I guess...

In the year 2525 If man is still alive If woman can survive They may find... ...Avatar 2, now playing at a theater near them.

Mango is right - this needs to still be appealing, and not come off to audiences the same way they (however incorrectly) perceived John Carter: A generic grab bag of set pieces stolen from earlier films. Meaning, even if it is taking stuff from prior films, it needs to look good and (as Jay said) feel fresh while doing it, so that you don't concentrate on the fact that "Hey, this looks like X and that looks like Y."

As for why Universal has people rooting for it, here's my theory. (Warning, this is long and full of tangents.) Out of the big studios, Universal is one of only three studios (along with Disney and WB) that - during my 27-year lifetime - that has truly felt like a unified "studio", an entertainment "brand" and not just a company that happens to make movies. Much like how the old studios were built on their stables of stars, Disney/WB/Universal were the ones who thrived on franchises and "name" properties (including a few filmmakers and name stars who seemed mostly associated with one studio). As a kid, Disney was Disney, with all their classic and new animated properties and their theme parks and oodles of merchandise. WB was Batman, Bugs Bunny, Lethal Weapon, Clint Eastwood, Steven Seagal. And Universal had the oeuvre of Spielberg and his Amblin fiefdom on the lot - Jaws, E.T., Jurassic Park, Back to the Future, An American Tail - along with Ron Howard stuff like Backdraft and Apollo 13, the crapload of merchandise from the Monsters franchise (with Dracula, Frankenstein and co. being instantly associated with their Universal movie depictions) and King Kong, and the way they seemed to venerate the Universal stars (or Paramount stars whose films were now owned by Universal) and personalities of decades past - Abbott and Costello, Jimmy Stewart, W.C. Fields, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, the Marx Brothers, and the master of suspense himself, Alfred Hitchcock. And this was all tied together with Universal Studios, with the real working studio you could actually see up close, and all the theme park trappings built up around it. Universal was the live-action Disney, they were the working movie studio that was right in front of you, with a history of stars and a modern collection of franchises. And to this day, those three seem the only ones with a solid brand and identity. The other studios never really got there; they had disparate collections of franchises and faces you could associate with them - Columbia/Sony had Ghostbusters and Men in Black and Spider-Man, Fox had Star Wars (by way of Lucas) and Alien and Die Hard, Paramount had Star Trek and Mission: Impossible and Indiana Jones (also by way of Lucas) - but they just seemed to be companies who made movies. MGM had their legendary Hollywood legacy (even if they had to lease it from Ted Turner), but other than Bond, they had nothing new of any worth. (And after the late 90s, when WB bought Turner, MGM didn't even have the rights to distribute their own back catalog.) I'm sorry if I'm rambling, but the point is that I think Universal is one of the Hollywood studios that is still a true brand, like a sports team or a car. You don't see people rooting for Paramount or Sony in the same way as Universal, or Disney, or WB.

Hmm, maybe it was losing Marvel to Disney in 2012, and then DreamWorks Animation to Fox in 2013, and not having enough to replace them? If you add The Avengers to Paramount's total for 2012 and subtract it from Disney's, Paramount would have been in third place. And for 2013x you take the Marvel stuff away from Disney and the DWA stuff away from Fox, and add them to Paramount, they would have come out in first place. Paramount was in a slump from 2002-06, they got out of it largely through their acquisition of DreamWorks SKG (live-action), their distribution deal with DWA, and then the Marvel distribution deal. When they lost those, their fortunes reversed.

From what I understand, the film was somewhat rewritten after Farley died? This scene indicates the character was going to be somewhat different than the Myers version. (This scene isn't an exact 1:1 match with any of the scenes in the final movie, right?) But yeah, Myers' Scottish voice IS Shrek. Even if I don't care much for the movies these days, that voice is iconic.

Interesting! I wonder if Myers' non-Scottish voice will ever surface as well...

So with all these schedule slots filled up, I guess Sony has already accepted that The 5th Wave will inevitably disappoint and the rest of the books won't get filmed? And by scheduling this in January, I guess they intend to mercy-kill another Pascal-era leftover (that is no longer being directed by the person who spearheaded it)? At this point, you could spend the better part of a weekend marathonning all of the fantasy/sci-fi/paranormal-romance book series adaptations that stopped at the first film.

Aardman makes a good amount of money from commercials and licensing. Their profits fell in 2013, but I haven't heard anything bad about them since. Laika has a steady revenue stream from commercials, and Travis Knight has that Nike money. So both of them are able to stay afloat even if their movies don't set the world on fire. And these films' budgets are low enough that they don't take a bath. I can't find Shaun's budget anywhere.

Nobody will give a crap about this. I predict Walking with Dinosaurs numbers, max. If this even gets made. And the original Jumanji was harmless IMO. I liked it as a kid, even if it's a lot of nothing now. It's not Joe Johnston's worst movie (that would probably be the live-action segments of The Pagemaster?) And I saw part of Zathura once, it seemed decent enough. From the part I saw, it's possibly the best performance Kristen Stewart has ever given (even if that's not saying much)...

There are like five wide releases scheduled for that weekend now. Why is that weekend so crowded? I understand when it's Easter like in 2014, but it's not Easter next year. (The same weekend this year looked just as crowded until WB dropped Hillsong. The difference was that this year, the biggest movie on that weekend was Paul Blart 2.)

Are some kids really going back to school the first week of August? Really? In the immortal words of Randal Graves, what the fuck happened to this world?

Word up. Jin Kim's 2D character drawings are great - I loved the 2D stuff in the end credits.

Your opinion is in line with anyone else I've heard complaining about Cruise's kids in that movie. I've never heard anybody single out Dakota as the worse of the two before, I always thought the prevailing opinion was that Dakota was fine and the son was awful. That is one of the most out-of-left-field character resurrections I can think of. Jaws: The Revenge is the only non-kids/animated movie I can remotely compare it to (and even that wasn't actually in the American theatrical cut).

You actually thought Dakota Fanning was the worse of the two? I've never heard that one before, most of the complaints are about the brother.

They took it directly from the TV show. (And actually, how many of them did it? The first did it, the fourth did it with its "2010s end credits sequence at the beginning of the movie", even working in the motif of the fuse running through all the scenes, but I don't think II or III did it?)

Fuckin' A. All the me-too Cinematic Universes are gonna die. Marvel, DC, and Star Wars will survive, the rest are going to be lucky to get two films out before they die, or at least retreat back to more conventional concepts of franchise films/series.

The Robin Hood Cinematic Universe sounds like a better idea than the Transformers Cinematic Universe. I am still absolutely baffled that Paramount isn't going with the easiest crossover-play imaginable, and doing a shared Transformers/GI Joe Cinematic Universe. I wouldn't see it, but you'd think Paramount/Hasbro would have immediately thought "Hey, we have two tentpole franchises tied to toy lines from the same company, why not cross them over?" I mean, it's happened in several different iterations of the comics. EDIT: Someone else beat me to it. More proof that this is something you'd think the executives would have latched onto already.

Also, if daily estimates hold, yesterday broke the uninterrupted streak of Inside Out and Jurassic World occupying adjacent spots on the daily charts. 43 days, but yesterday JW may have grossed less than Paper Towns (the estimates are $70,000 apart). Today, PT is estimated to make $200k more than JW. End of an era...

That's not calendar grosses, it leaves out the money grosses by pre-July releases. Actual amount of money grossed in July is $1.18b.

I've seen this and Shaun, but not Hot Fuzz. (My brother and both my parents have seen it, my dad and brother recommend it. The one time I tried watching, I fell asleep because it was on at night, and watching TV after about 9 usually makes me drowsy, no matter how engaging the film would be if I were fully awake. I really need to find the time to watch Hot Fuzz.)

Gravity needs to be experienced on the big screen. Watching it on a small screen, it becomes easier to focus on little flaws and nitpicks because the huge immersive spectacle is reduced. (The same thing could happen to Interstellar, and that was already nitpicked to death IN theaters.) It's not like Apollo 13, where it's held up on the small screen because of the excellent character drama at its core, or 2001, where the philosophical questions and the amazing mood still hold up. I'm worried that Gravity could risk becoming like How the West Was Won, a huge success in its time that failed to hold up after its theatrical run because the grandiose scale was so diminished (whether through cropping to fit a TV, or reducing the image to fit inside the TV frame at its full width), and the scale and size was the main sell in theaters. And even that movie had a huge cast of characters, this is a 90-minute movie with two characters with characterization a that can come off as flimsy. WB should consider periodically re-releasing Gravity in IMAX for short engagements, or something. Maybe even just one-night-only screenings.

CA San Francisco Oakland San Jose All over the SF Bay Area (not listing everywhere) Santa Cruz Davis Lake Tahoe Nevada South Lake Tahoe North Carolina Concord (near Charlotte) Florida Orlando British Columbia Vancouver Kelowna When I'm on vacation, generally it's not to go to the movies, so I just haven't seen movies in a lot of places outside of where I live.

I watched Markiplier's Let's Play of the first game. FNAF doesn't scare me, it cracks me up because it's so stupid. I still wish this could be taken to its full potential and adapted as the slasher equivalent Meet the Feebles, with the robots stuffing a security guard into one of the Freddy suits on camera in full gory detail, played for uneasy laughs while still being terrifying. Fire up the DeLorean, go back to 1990 and hire Peter Jackson to direct this.