Corona | Coming Attractions

Stephen King's The Dark Tower to be three movies and two TV series

It's a creative deal like no other: Universal Pictures and NBC Universal Television have agreed to work with director Ron Howard, producer Brian Grazer and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman on a complete telling of Stephen King's seven volume book series The Dark Tower. The plan is for Howard to direct the first movie in the adaptation, which will be followed by a season's worth of television episodes that continue the story. That in turn will be followed by a second movie (again continuing the Dark Tower story) and a second season's worth of TV episodes, except this time the story will move back in time and feature a younger actor playing the main character, gunslinger Roland Deschain. Finally, all will be revealed and wrapped up in a third and final theatrical movie.

Did I mention to you that this was an ambitious plan?

James Cameron going native in 3D

The director of the top two highest-grossing films in the history of show business wants to go to Brazil and film an indiginous people in their environment. James Cameron has announced his intentions to visit the Xikrin-Kayapo tribe and shoot some material about the tribe's way of life and their opposition against a government dam that could put their homeland under water.

Watch this trailer for Hobo With a Shotgun before you eat

I've written about Hobo With a Shotgun before and what got me interested in seeing it originally was Rutger Hauer armed and distressed. Now I can add another reason to want to see this grindhouser: people getting 'sploded in new ways.

Is it too early to start the Kick-Ass 2 hype?

Comic book writer Mark Millar is a marketing genius. He's been able to build up hype about himself and his projects, giving them what every movie producer and/or comic book creator wants: visibility with the public. Specifically, visibility with the online crowd. That in turn can be used to show Hollywood people higher on the money food chain that there's enough interest to get one of Millar's projects greenlit. It's a proven strategy, one that the Scottish-born writer has used time and time before.

At summer's end The Last Exorcism squeaks out ahead

The final week of August is the near-last gasp of the summer. Technically there's one more week to go until the school year starts up and the box office can't rely on the free schedules of kids, teens and the college-aged crowd to make money during the mid-week. But even so, a $21.3 million dollar opening for The Last Exorcism is an amazing feat for Lionsgate. The budget for this shocker was reportedly under $2 million dollars (update: Bloody Disgusting says it's more like $8 million.) I'm guessing that the marketing budget must be somewhere between $10 - 15 million so at this point Lionsgate execs are high-fiving each other like The A-Team at the end of a mission.

Toy Story 3 crosses the one billion dollar mark

Today Toy Story 3 earned its first ten figure dollar bill, pushing the worldwide take of the film to one billion dollars. The watermark isn't just significant for Disney and Pixar because the movie is now the animation house's highest grossing Pixar film ever but that Toy Story 3 is the second movie released by Disney in 2010 to earn $1 billion at the box office.

Half-Life game creators only want themselves to make the movie

One of the most coveted properties today in gaming is Valve's Half-Life franchise. Released in 1998, this first-person shooter borrowed story elements from The War of the Worlds, Alien and Stephen King's The Mist and to give us not just a strong action gameplay element but an equally as compelling storyline. In the game you play a scientist who tries to halt the invasion of an other dimensional alien force.

Marvel's Iron Fist movie gets a writer

News on an interesting development for a Marvel Studios project involving a secondary tier superhero emerged yesterday on Deadline. If you know your comic book roster then the name of Iron Fist should ring a bell. If he doesn't, don't worry so much about it. Like I said, Iron Fist is not a major superhero on the Marvel scene -- but then again, how many of the general public knew that Blade hunted vampires in the Marvel U. before his movie came out?

Paul Verhoeven tackles Islam, colonial rule, adultery and psychic powers

Paul Verhoeven, that crazy as a fox Dutch director who gave us Basic Instinct, Starship Troopers, RoboCop and Arnold Schwarzenegger pulling a tracking device from out of his nose in Total Recall, hasn't given us a movie in four years. He's about to rectify that.

Katie Holmes takes a job from Adam Sandler

One of the saddest duties I perform as a writer for Coming Attractions is notifying you of a new Adam Sandler project in development. I don't care if Grown Ups made $150 million dollars domestic; eating McDonald's isn't good for you either. Yet, here we are with a couple of Big Macs.

Heaven's Shadow falls upon Warner Bros.

David Goyer is a likeable guy. He's fought his way up from being a writer for shlocky horror movies in the 1990s to a respected producer/director/screenwriter. Not every film he makes is a winner but having credits on Batman Begins and The Dark Knight kinda rounds things out.

Piranha sequel in development

When's the last time you saw a movie studio excited about one of its film's making $10 million dollars on its opening weekend? I'm guessing that it may have been a year that began with "19".

Ice Age director barks for Monster Dogs

Chris Wedge has been interested in making a movie about Lives of the Monster Dogs for over a decade. Back in 1998, when Kirsten Bakis' book first came out, Wedge read it and thought that it would make for an interesting movie. Now that he's minted in the eyes of Hollywood, he's picked up the screen rights and is developing Monster Dogs under his WedgeWorks production company.

The Expendables secures a second weekend at #1

The second-to-last weekend of August 2010 went down like this:

Imaginary Enemies has friends

One day after DreamWorks Animation moves a step forward on one of their gestating projects comes word of another new idea hatching at the studio. Imaginary Enemies is about the creatures that little children once believed in, now come back years later when the youngsters are all grown up and ready to get some revenge for all the acts of trouble they were blamed for back then.