Biopics of famous musicians don’t always translate to big box office, but the awards committees love them and there aren’t many big names in the business who wouldn’t jump at the chance to personify a musical icon. In the past decade we’ve seen Jamie Foxx and Reese Witherspoon nab Oscars for playing Ray Charles and June Carter Cash (respectively), Joaquin Phoenix get snubbed by the Academy for his fantastic performance as Johnny Cash in Walk the Line, and the further likes of Control, Nowhere Boy, Notorious, and Todd Haynes’ impressionistic Bob Dylan film I’m Not There. This August, Get On Up will bring the life story of James Brown to the big screen with Chadwick Boseman in the role, while Andre Benjamin plays the greatest guitar player in the history of rock (in my opinion) in the John Ridley (12 Years a Slave)-directed Jimi: All is by My Side.
The latest legend of music to get the big screen treatment is country great Hank Williams in I Saw the Light, to be directed by Marc Abraham, a well-known producer who made his feature directorial debut with 2008’s Flash of Genius. His credits as producer include Air Force One, The Rundown, Slither, Children of Men, The Last Exorcism and its 2013 sequel, Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake, and the recent Robocop remake.
Yet another TV spot that was premiered at the MTV Movie Awards, this one being for the Brett Ratner-directed new take on the legend of Hercules starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in the lead role.
The new Hercules includes some of the footage we saw in the first trailer, but there’s also some new shots in there to see as well. The movie will be released on July 25th and the video can be watched below.
The first trailer for Hercules, a revisionist take on the legend based on a Radical Comics title, has been released online.
The movie stars Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in the title role, and it is directed by Brett Ratner (Rush Hour, Tower Heist). The movie also stars Ian McShane, Rufus Sewell, Joseph Fiennes, Peter Mullan, John Hurt, Rebecca Ferguson, Ingrid Bolso Berdal, Aksel Hennie, and Reece Ritchie.
You can check out the first trailer for Hercules, as well as a poster for the movie, below.
Greetings true believers. You are holding in your hands (in a manner of speaking) the fourth spectacular issue of my ongoing article series The Ten Best Unproduced Comic Book Movie Scripts.
If you haven’t checked out my bloated, unwieldy nerdgasm of an introduction to the series as well as a complete week-by-week breakdown of clues to each entry on this list you may do so here.
This week I have selected a screenplay that is legendary in movie and comic geek circles for the sheer amount of hatred it inspired. These days it’s quite difficult to imagine a time when the filmmaker who went from churning out hit shows on network television to being handed the keys to two of the biggest blockbuster franchises in the universe took a shot at bringing arguably the greatest superhero who ever existed and was rewarded for his under-the-gun efforts with an incalculable amount of crap.
Fast and Furious 6 races into theaters on May 24th, but it’s confirmed sequel, Fast and Furious 7, may lose yet another vital piece of the Fast and Furious franchise. After Justin Linconfirmed that he would not be able to direct the seventh installment – due to scheduling constraints – James Wan quickly became one of the frontrunners to helm the film. Now there is word that Dwayne Johnson may not be able to reprise his role because of scheduling conflicts of his own.
Speaking to Collider, Johnson said that his shooting schedule with Brett Ratner‘s Hercules film and the projected shooting date for Fast and Furious 7 clashes with each other in a way that will make him unable to reprise his role.
Students of the Unusual™ comic cover used with permission of 3BoysProductions
The Mercuri Bros.™ comic cover used with permission of Prodigal Son Press