Tag: Sam Raimi

At the Golden Globes last month, it was like a summit meeting for super-hero cinema. Robert Downey Jr. presented an award, strangely chipper and shaggy Christian Bale accepted one and Christopher Nolan sat near the stage not far from Anne Hathaway, who within a few days would be announced as the latest star to visit the filmmaker’s Gotham City. Jeremy Renner, Chris Hemsworth and Scarlett Johannson were among the representatives of the Marvel universe, while the man who will soon change into the Hulk for Marvel, Mark Ruffalo, smiled and said he was pretty happy to be at a career juncture where he’ getting award nominations for mature fare like “The Kids Are All Right” but also ramping up for a green movement that will put his visage on Slurpee cups and the toy aisles of the world. “I’m just enjoying everything; it took me 20 years to get here ...

EXCLUSIVE It’s been almost a year since Sony Pictures announced it would overhaul the mega-successful “Spider-Man” franchise, opting to replace director Sam Raimi and stars Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst instead of keeping them on for a fourth installment in the wall-crawler’s adventures. But Dunst, who played Mary Jane Watson in the last three Spidey films, says she never saw the move coming and still can’t quite figure it out. “I mean, everyone was coming back, and they were casting a villain,” the 28-year-old said while promoting her role in the upcoming crime drama “All Good Things.” “I knew it wasn’t ready to go, but I knew they were working on it. And they decided not to, so — you know what, it was only sad because we didn’t know the last one was going to be our last. So we ...

Will the next “Spider-Man” film be based on the Marvel Comics series “Ultimate Spider-Man,” by Brian Michael Bendis, which has an especially young Peter Parker and lots of classroom angst? Sounds like it in this latest report from John Horn on Company Town, our sister blog.   A few days after Sony Pictures said it was postponing production on “Spider-Man 4” because of creative concerns, the studio on Monday said it was sending the entire franchise in for a major overhaul without star Tobey Maguire or director Sam Raimi involved. Sony said the next Peter Parker film will also be released a year later than originally scheduled, with the fourth installment in its blockbuster franchise (worldwide gross to date: nearly $2.5 billion) now set to premiere in the summer of 2012. In a back story twist reminiscent of the evolution ...

FOUR FRANCHISES AT A CROSSROADS   Talk about heroic: Four film franchises, one decade, more than $10 billion worth of theater tickets sold. And more than that, in their very best moments, each of these franchises shown above delivered sparkling adventure and escapism for moviegoers. Now, though, with the decade winding down and all four franchises sitting a nice tidy trilogy, the question must be asked: Isn’t three the magic number? Do we really need a fourth movie from any of these aging popcorn enterprises? Clearly, all of them will be written up in the Hollywood history books but right now the indelicate must be asked: “How can we miss you if you won’t leave?” Last week we gave you an in-depth report on this quartet of mega-franchises and their quests for a fourth visit to theaters. We told you how “The Hobbit“ must escape the the towering shadow of “The Lord of the ...

FOUR FRANCHISES AT A CROSSROADS: PART TWO This week we’re taking a look at four major trilogies from this decade that are looking to add a fourth film despite substantial challenges — not least among those challenges the skepticism of moviegoers who may wonder if some of these Hollywood vehicles are running on empty. You can find the other three installments of the series right here.   “SPIDER-MAN” The story so far: Not that long ago, the standard assumption in Hollywood was that there were only two superheroes with enough general-audience appeal to carry a film franchise — Superman and Batman. That changed in May 2002 when ”Spider-Man“ swung into theaters and grabbed $115 million domestically in its opening weekend, setting a new record at the time. Unlike the wholesome and invulnerable Man of Steel of Metropolis or the handsome billionaire prowling Gotham City alleys, this spindly masked man was a high-school nerd bitten by a ...

They are four of the biggest franchises in Hollywood history and each is at a major crossroads. This week the Hero Complex will look at “The Lord of the Rings,” “Spider-Man,” “X-Men” and “Pirates of the Caribbean” and size up their future as they attempt to move past their original trilogies and into a new decade. Tuesday ”Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit“: How can Guillermo del Toro possibly match up to Peter Jackson’s magical conquests ($2.92 billion in global box office and 17 Oscars including best picture, best director and best adapted screenplay)? At least he has Jackson on his side … Wednesday “Spider-Man“: Director Sam Raimi and stars Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst are back for more and that’s no surprise considering “Spider-Man 3“ had the highest-grossing opening weekend of the wall-crawling films — and went on to make $891 million worldwide. Still, the last film got ...

I first met Sam Raimi on the set of the first “Spider-Man” film and my memory of him was as an exceedingly polite filmmaker who asked if I might consider not mentioning that he was smoking cigarettes because he was worried that he might be setting a bad example for youngsters. I didn’t have any idea that day in downtown Los Angeles that Raimi’s superhero franchise would make Hollywood history by ushering in this modern era of massive and faithful comic-book adaptations. He’s at work now on the fourth film in the franchise but his attention at the moment is on his return to horror with “Drag Me to Hell.” Gina McIntyre, our horror specialist here at Hero Complex, caught up with the filmmaker for this cover story in today’s Los Angeles Times Calendar section. – G.B. Sam Raimi does not seem like a ...

Hero Complex contributor Gina McIntyre recently sat down with Sam Raimi to talk about his upcoming return to the horror genre, “Drag Me to Hell,” set for release later this month. She also quizzed the director on the status of other projects, too, namely the next “Spider-Man” installment and the long-discussed remake of his feature debut, “The Evil Dead,” which stands as an indie-horror classic. Check back here for the “Drag Me to Hell” piece, but in the meantime here’s the wallcrawler update… G.M.: What’s the status of “Spider-Man 4”? S.R.: The next installment begins shooting, I believe, in February 2010. As far as we’re concerned, that’s no time left because they need so much time to work on the screenplay, casting is long, the storyboarding and the shots are very, very complicated. There’s a lot of animation, there’s a lot of character design, ...

It’s time for a Finally Friday edition of Everyday Hero, your daily roundup of handpicked fanboy headlines from across the fanboy universe… "THE PRISONER," BACK IN CUSTODY: The best news you’ll read today comes to us from Maria Elena Fernandez, the Los Angeles Times television reporter who is covering the Television Critics Assn. tour events here this week. Fernandez reports that "The Prisoner," that strange classic of British television, is being revived by some impressive talent: "On a high from its award-winning, critical darlings ‘Mad Men’ and ‘Breaking Bad,’ AMC is remaking ‘The Prisoner,’ the TV cult classic from the 1960s. The original series, co-created  by Patrick McGoohan, was influenced by Cold War politics. The new version, produced by Trevor Hopkins (‘Dracula’), reflects 21st Century issues, such as liberty, security and surveillance, while keeping the original’s paranoid, tense tone. The ...

Hero Complex brought you an exclusive, in-depth piece yesterday on the future of Stan Winston Effects, the storied special-effects house founded by the late, great wizard of Hollywood. Now Gina McIntyre, who writes about horror for the H.C., brings us a chat with Greg Nicotero, another master of movie mayhem and the executive producer of a new documentary about the artistry of horror that airs tonight on Starz. If your DVD library contains multiple copies of the “Evil Dead” films, this one’s for you. The documentary “Starz Inside: Fantastic Flesh” features interviews with the makeup artists responsible for creating some of the most gruesome moments in horror cinema: Dick Smith, Tom Savini, Rick Baker, Rob Bottin and Howard Berger and Greg Nicotero of KNB EFX, the Van Nuys-based shop that, during its 20 years in business, has amassed a lengthy ...