Big News This Week and Snarky Comments to Go With It

I slacked off on the big Hollywood news this week. While everyone has writing about the Oscars since Tuesday I got my two cents in quick and spent the remainder of my time posting pictures of Tom Cruise. To each their own I guess. I'm going to take it easy for the rest of the weekend, but I was reading some of the big news stories over at Rotten Tomatoes and felt that some of them required some comment. So, in typical You Talking to Me? fashion:

• How's this for irony? After quitting as director of Spider-Man 4, leaving the studio with no other choice than the scrap the entire project and reboot the series, Sam Raimi is considering a reboot of his own for his next project. He's considering directing a reboot of The Shadow, which was made into a film in 1994 with Alec Baldwin that was basically a huge flop. Some will find this news disappointing because it interferes with the Warcraft movie (an adaptation of a popular video game series) that some hoped would be Raimi's next project. Personally, having never played the game I don't much care who directs Warcraft or if it ever gets made. This guy, on the other hand, might be a tad disappointed.
  
  
• Fast Five is apparently the title to the never ending Fast and Furious series. Vin Diesel and Paul Walker will be back once again. Okay, let me admit it: I loved the first two films (yes, you read correctly, the first TWO films), found the third forgettable and hated the fourth. The only way to possibly save this series would be to scrap Justin Lin as the director (who made the last two films and clearly isn't comfortable with story, character, logic, plausibility or great action sequences) and bring back Rob Cohen to the director's chair. Cohen is the one true director who understood that Fast and Furious is basically just a slick b-movie and had a lot of fun with the material while also delivering great car chases. All i can say for Justin Lin, who will be returning for the fifth film: Better Luck Tomorrow man. (Look it up).


• There's going to be an Enchanted sequel. No word yet on casting for the project. This is the kind of news that makes you want to phone up someone important at Disney and remind them of their direct-to-video sequel policy.


• Finally, Lee Ziotoff, the creator of MacGyver is planning a lawsuit against MacGruber, a feature length interpretation of the Saturday Night Live MacGyver parody sketch starring Will Forte. Reports are that Ziotoff is planning his own MacGyver movie and doesn't want the parody to interfere with his business. I'm not sure I buy that reasoning but regardless this is good news because, if the lawsuit goes through and MacGruber is shelved, we might owe Ziotoff a debt of gratitude considering there is about as many laughs in the trailer as there have been over the past few years of Saturday Night Live. See for yourself
  
  

More Spider-Man News

Here's a left hook for ya. Marc Webb, the dude who directed the totally awesome, knows-more-about-love-than-any-other-romantic-film-but-is-not-a-love-story 500 Days of Summer has been announced by Columbia Pictures and Marvel Studios as the man to reboot Spider-Man.

Commenting on the choice, a couple of studio brass told of how they believe Spider-Man to be a small, intimate tale of a boy who must come to grips with juggling the life of a teenager with the responsibility of being a superhero and wanted to find a director who could bring that element into sharp focus. In other words...they wanted someone who can remake Spider-Man 2, which was all of those things and more done to perfection. Honestly, sure, Spider-Man 3 kind of sucked, but no one will ever understand Spider-Man better than Sam Raimi.

Although I know Raimi can't pigeon-hole himself with the franchise for the rest of his career, he was already a veteran director when he took up the task of the first Spider-Man film and was, by then, known as a man who was always ahead of his time and knew how to push boundaries. Raimi in essence developed the contemporary comic book film look and feel to which all subsequent adaptations owe credit to.

So how do I feel about Webb? Well, he did the right thing in announcing that he respects what Raimi has created and doesn't just want to continue with that, but wants to take the franchise in his own new direction. Time will only tell what direction that may be. Webb has proven himself a gifted filmmaker with his debut film, but will he be able to handle a big budget, special-effects driven action franchise without being bullied by the big bad studio bosses? There is no doubt he will bring a unique spin to the human elements of Peter Parker and his relationships, but the whole idea of Spider-Man needing a reboot in the furst place still doesn't sit just quite right with me.

The Spider-Man reboot is planned for a 2012 release.

More Spider-Man Speculation

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With news that the main cast and crew have abandoned Spider-Man 4 earlier this week, with Sony now planning to reboot the franchise instead of continuing on with the sequel, rumours are now floating about what will become of the next movie.

One I read that interested me was that Sony has acquired a Spider-Man treatment that James Cameron once wrote many years ago before the first film was ever made and that he could possibly come on board as a director. This doesn't really make sense considering the studio, while toying with the idea of casting Anne Hathaway in the fourth film, ultimately decided that her price tag was too high and that the series could sell itself without such additional star power. It;s hard to say, but I'm willing to bet that after the astronomical success of Avatar, Cameron's going rate probably isn't so cheap these days. Yet, Cameron taking on Spider-Man is, if nothing more, an interesting thought.

The rumour that worries me the most is that Robert Pattinson of Twilight fame may become the new Spider-Man. This makes perfect sense from a marketing perspective, but if anyone out there at Sony is reading, I have only this to say:


PLEASE NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

Breaking Spider-Man 4 News

What's going on with Spider-Man 4? Here's what happened: I came on here to excitedly report that Perez Hilton was saying that John Malkovich would star in the fourth film as the villain The Vulture. Although The Vulture is not one of the more classic Spider-Man villains, especially when Dylan Baker has been hanging out in the background of the previous three films as Dr. Curt Connors, just waiting to become The Lizard. No matter, Malkovich is a great actor and Spider-Man has always been my favourite superhero. This was good news.

But then, when I went onto the Internet Movie Database to check if this information was good (Hilton is the man after all who falsely reported that Johnny Depp and Phillip Seymour Hoffman would play The Riddler and The Penguin respectively in the next Batman flick). I am then greeted by a front page headline that says, as reported by Nikki Finke and Mike Fleming of Deadline Hollywood, that director Sam Raimi and the whole cast of Spider-Man 4 are out and that, instead of going forward with the sequel, Sony will scrap the project and instead reboot the franchise.

I guess it's not surprising. It's no secret that Raimi had conflicts over the third and weakest Spider-Man film and rumours floated around incessantly whether he and his cast would even return for a fourth film due to their escalating salary demands. Now, word on the street is that Raimi felt that the script for the next Spidey flick sucked and thus would not be able to meet the deadline the studio set for him.

Hollywood Reporter is furthering the gossip surrounding the picture by reporting that the clashes are over the villain. Apparently the studio wasn't keen on the idea of The Vulture as the villain (who Raimi wanted to use instead of Venom for the third film) and instead wanted a romantic sub-plot involving The Black Cat and another villain on top of that. Many writers (some quite accomplished) have been commissioned to give it a try, but none could apparently make it work.

I don't know how I feel about this. On the one hand, maybe the franchise could use a new director. Raimi is a filmmaker whose work I highly respect and I know that Spider-Man 2 is still among the best comic book adaptations ever, but with the lackluster Spider-Man 3, maybe it's time he took the back seat and explore new options as he did with last year's Drag Me To Hell.

On the other hand, Malkovich would have been a stellar villain and the recent franchise reboots that have come out, more often than not, have sucked. It would also be horrible if the studio hired some hack action movie director who would bow to their every command and fill the thing up with meaningless wall-to-wall action and forget about the characters (as was the case with The Incredible Hulk reboot). If there is one thing to be said, it is that Raimi truly did love and understood Spider-Man and all of it's characters.

I'll probably have more to say about this as more information becomes available.