Move over Paddington, politeness has had its day. The rootsier end of the bear spectrum, Ted, is back with a new poster for Ted 2 in which he’s executing what can best be described, pre-watershed, as “the one pawed shuffle”. Click below for a look at him in, erm, err, action. {Ted 2 Teaser Poster} It’s more of the same, poster-wise. Seems that Antonioni-esque sequel in which Ted embarks on an existentialist journey in pursuit of meaning in his furry life never quite reached the drawing board. Hold tight for more ursine misadventures involving booze, drugs, strippers and more, stronger drugs.
Plot details are still under wraps at this point, with shooting underway in Boston, but early world is that Ted gets into some legal scraps that see him call on the help of Morgan Freeman’s famous civil rights lawyer. It seems that the bear is fighting a ground-breaking legal battle to have a child with his human girlfriend.
Seth MacFarlane returns to direct, star, voice the bear and co-write the script with regular partners Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild, while Mark Wahlberg is back as John Bennett. Amanda Seyfried takes the female lead and Liam Neeson and John Slattery are also joining the fun.
The first Ted made $550 million worldwide. After A Million Ways To Die In The West flopped hard, MacFarlane will be hoping hard for more of the same. It lands in the US on June 26 before arriving UK side of the pond on July 10.
She's won an Oscar for The Help and now Octavia Spencer is heading back in time for another story of pioneering women in tumultuous times by signing up for 19th century biopic Seacole.
According to The Hollywood Reporter's scoop, her old producer from The Help, Brunson Green, has enticed her into taking the role of Crimean War-era doctor, Mary Seacole. Despite all the usual strictures of her race at the time - an inability to vote, lack of civil rights - she made a name for herself with her pioneering approach to medicine, saving countless soldiers' lives in the process. Among them she came to be known as 'Mother Seacole', a saving angel whose reputation grew to rival even that of Florence Nightingale.
"Mary Seacole was a dynamic, complex and charming woman, and, knowing Octavia and her immense talent, there is no one better to embody this impressive and courageous historical figure," elaborates Green.
Sounds like a fascinating tale, especially when you consider Seacole's long travelogue preceding her arrival in Balaclava. Her voyages took her from home in Kingston, Jamaica to Cuba, Haiti and the Bahamas, as well as Central America and Britain. All this was recounted in her beautifully-titled 1857 memoir The Wonderful Adventures Of Mrs. Seacole In Many Lands.
This one should get underway soon, with the project being hawked around the Berlin Film Market. Next up for Spencer, meanwhile, is race drama Black Or White alongside Kevin Costner and as head of the Amity faction in follow-up-to-Divergent, Insurgent .
The Entourage movie seems to have been in the pipeline longer than Bishop at the end of Aliens, but it’s finally hoved into view, switched on Hollywood’s transmitter and piloted in a dropship’s worth of supermodels, partying and consequence-free balcony golf. None of those things feature in this new still from the film, but what it does have is a typically immaculate Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven) about to fill another swear jar as he tries to ignore that pristine bong below his nose. If this is something you might be interested in, click on the image below for a closer look. {Entourage stills} Promising all the celeb cameos and, according to director creator Doug Ellin, “filled with as many good-looking people as [possible]”, Entourage picks up with Vince Chase (Adrian Grenier) trying his hand at directing a take on Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde. But will it be an Aquaman-style success story or a Medellin-y catastrophe?
Ari, meanwhile, the best thing in the show for its entire seven-year HBO run, is now bringing his apocalyptic temper to bear as head of Warner Bros., where he presumably divides his time between greenlighting Hobbit movies and being enormously rude to Lloyd.
We think our correspondent, who sadly won’t be cameoing in the movie despite taking their best super-yacht shorts along to the shot, filed this month’s On Location report from a Hollywood hot tub. Hopefully they’ll come back one day too.
Entourage is out in the US on June 5, before heading to UK cinemas two weeks later.
He’s had a big success with his first English language film, as The Imitation Game has seen big box-office success and lots of awards talk. Headhunters director Morten Tyldum must be hoping he’ll have the same luck with a potential first Hollywood studio job: finally getting science fiction romance Passengers off the ground for Sony.
The story of a spaceship transporting thousands of human colonists to a distant planet, Passengers chronicles what happens when a malfunction causes one of them to be rudely awakened 90 years before anyone else. Unable to fix the situation and seemingly doomed to spend his time dying alone, he decides to take the unusual and controversial step to wake up a fellow passenger. Can love bloom in the echoing confines of the ship? Possibly, though we’d imagine his intended is probably going to be fairly annoyed at the imposition...
Jon Spaihts’ script has been cruising through development for a while now, around since at least 2010 and nabbed in a big deal by The Weinstein Company at Cannes in 2012. Since then, it has burned through several potential actors including Reese Witherspoon, Keanu Reeves and Rachel McAdams, with Game Of Thrones director Brian Kirk aboard at one point. The rights became available last month and Sony, along with power producer Neal Moritz, jumped in with an offer. Tyldum is now in early talks to direct and if he takes the gig, he’ll have to hire his own cast. Given the clout of The Imitation Game, we doubt he’ll have much trouble.
He’s had a big success with his first English language film, as The Imitation Game has seen big box office success and lots of awards talk. Headhunters director Mortem Tyldum must be hoping he’ll have the same luck with a potential first Hollywood studio job: finally getting science fiction romance Passengers off the ground for Sony.
The story of a spaceship transporting thousands of human colonists to a distant planet, Passengers chronicles what happens when a malfunction causes one of them to be rudely awakened 90 years before anyone else. Unable to fix the situation and seemingly doomed to spend his time dying alone, he decides to take the unusual and controversial step to wake up a fellow passenger. Can love bloom in the echoing confines of the ship? Possibly, though we’d imagine his intended is probably going to be fairly annoyed at the imposition…
Jon Spaihts’ script has been cruising through development for a while now, around since at least 2010 and nabbed in a big deal by The Weinstein Company at Cannes in 2012. Since then, it has burned through several potential actors including Reese Witherspoon, Keanu Reeves and Rachel McAdams, with Game Of Thrones director Brian Kirk aboard at one point. The rights became available last month and Sony, along with power producer Neal Moritz, jumped in with an offer. Tyldum is now in early talks to direct and if he takes the gig, he’ll have to hire his own cast. Given the clout of The Intimidation Game, we doubt he’ll have much trouble.
