Rosewater Trailer Hits The Web

Gael Garcia Bernal runs into trouble in Iran

Usually found cracking wise and dishing out snark about American politics and other subjects from behind his desk at The Daily Show, Jon Stewart took a sabbatical last summer to film his directorial debut, Rosewater, which he adapted from Maziar Bahari’s best-selling memoir. The trailer for the film is now online courtesy of Apple.

Gael Garcia Bernal stars as Bahari, a Tehran-born journalist who has settled outside of his home country, gotten married and is eagerly awaiting the birth of his first child. In June 2009, he accepts an assignment to return to Iran and interview Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the challenger to president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the upcoming elections.

With vote rigging rife and protests rising against the corrupt regime, Bahari is initially hesitant to get involved, but then shoots footage of street rioting for the BBC. He’s arrested and spends 118 days being interrogated and tortured by a man who identifies himself as “Rosewater”.

As Bahari’s wife and the international media leading the campaign to secure his freedom, he’s offered the chance for release on bail if he promises to spy for the government…

Rosewater is set for release in the US on November 7, but doesn’t yet have a UK date.

from Empire News

Ricky Gervais says David Brent film is “almost a musical”

Ricky Gervais has been discussing what we can expect from his forthcoming David Brent movie, with the comedian describing the project as “almost a musical”.



“Yeah I’m gonna do it,” confirms Gervais. “It’s really different. It’s another fake documentary about what he’s doing now, and what he’s doing now is sort of repping.”



“But he hasn’t let go of this dream of being a rock star and he’s got a lot of songs together and he’s got a young band together that he’s paying through the nose for and they’re just sort of ripping him off. They’re sort of session musicians so he’s losing money.”



“He has to cash in a pension, he does a little tour he wants the record companies to come along to. Obviously he thinks it’s like Scorsese following the Rolling Stones around, this documentary team, but it’s really sort of a Where Are They Now documentary… it’s almost a musical, really.”



And as to when we can expect to see the finished article, Gervais is aiming for a two-year process before getting the film to cinemas…



“I’m writing it now, I’ll probably film it next year. We’re talking 18 months to two years again. It can certainly have a theatrical release around the world. But we’re not talking ‘blockbuster’. We’re probably talking an under 10 million dollar movie. I’m not making a Hobbit movie here.”



Exciting times for the Brentmeister General, then. Go and get the guitar…

via Total Film

Robert Downey Jr. describes Guardians Of The Galaxy as best Marvel movie yet

With Guardians Of The Galaxy recently passing the $500 million mark worldwide, Robert Downey Jr. has taken the opportunity to praise the film, and hail it as one of Marvel’s best offerings to date.



“Galaxy in some ways is the best Marvel movie ever,” says Downey. “And it’s odd for someone with - on occasion - an ego the size of mine to actually say that!”



In addition to that, Downey is full of praise for how the studio’s long-term plan have allowed it the chance to bring some of its lesser-known characters to a much wider audience...



“We’re talking about how the Iron Mans and the Thors and the Captain Americas and the Avengers movies have afforded Marvel the opportunity to essentially take what was a third-tier, minor, kind of upstart bit of potential from one of their comic-books series and say: ‘Look!’”



All of which means the pressure is back on Downey and co, when Avengers 2: Age Of Ultron opens in the UK on 24 April 2015. Over to you, chaps…

via Total Film

Chloë Grace Moretz says Kick-Ass 3 is unlikely to happen

Chloë Grace Moretz has been discussing the possibility of a third entry in the Kick-Ass franchise, and has described another sequel as unlikely after the second film’s disappointing box office take.



“Sadly, I think I'm done with the character,” says Moretz of her iconic role as Hit-Girl. “Hit-Girl was a very cool character, but I don't think there will be any more movies.”



“You make these movies for the fanboys, but nowadays everyone seems to pirate them rather than watch them in the movie theatre. Kick-Ass 2 was one of the number-one pirated movies of the year, but that doesn’t help us because we need box office figures.”



“We need to prove to the distributors that we can make money from a third and a fourth movie - but because it didn’t do so well, we can’t make another one. If you want more than one movie, everyone has to go and see movies at the cinema. It’s all about the numbers in the theatre.”



Indeed, with the film only just scraping past the $60 million mark worldwide, it seems unlikely that we’ll see a third outing for Hit-Girl and co., but we’ll be keeping our fingers crossed nonetheless. After all, C-bomb spouting, pre-teen heroines don’t come along every day…

via Total Film

Daniel Radcliffe stars in new trailer for Horns: watch now

A new full-length trailer has arrived for Alexandre Aja’s Horns, in which Daniel Radcliffe plays a bereaved lover on the hunt for his girlfriend’s killer.



Unfortunately for him, the small-town community in which he lives has already decided that he is responsible, and has made him a pariah accordingly.



However, when he suddenly sprouts a strange pair of horns, Radcliffe discovers he can make people confess their darkest secrets, and getting to the bottom of the truth doesn’t seem quite so hard after all…



Take a look at the new trailer, below…







Whereas the first trailer contained a few lighter moments, this one is all about the intensity, both of Radcliffe’s love for his girlfriend and his desire to bring her killer to justice. He’s a man on a mission…



Directed by Aja, adapted from Joe Hill’s novel and co-starring Juno Temple, Max Minghella and Kelli Garner, Horns will open in the UK on 29 October 2014.

via Total Film

Charlie Hunnam taking title role in Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur

Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur looks to have found its leading man, with Deadline reporting that Charlie Hunnam is in final negotiations to join the production.



Hunnam will play the titular monarch, and will join Idris Elba, who has already been cast as his mentor in a role similar to (although not explicitly described as) that of Merlin.



Meanwhile, Variety is also reporting that Elizabeth Olsen is the frontrunner to play the female lead, who we would assume to be Guinevere, Arthur’s queen.



With a script having been penned by screenwriter Joby Harrold, it has been suggested that the first film will introduce a series of six big-screen adventures, although clearly that will depend on the success of the initial outing.



Directed by Ritchie, King Arthur will open in the UK on 22 July 2016.

via Total Film

Exclusive First Look At Marco Polo

Marco? Polo!

Explorer, trader and inventor of swimming pool hide-and-seek games, Italian adventurer Marco Polo is the subject of a new TV miniseries that charts his 13th century exploits. The show lands on Netflix on December 12, and, like a merchant laying their spicy wares at our feet, it has some first-look stills revealing the Oriental treasures in store. Click on the photos for a closer look. {Marco Polo Stills} The Venetian, whose permanent Gap year took him as far as China and was recounted in his epic travelogue The Travels Of Marco Polo, is played by newcomer Lorenzo Richelmy. The ten-part series, produced for the on-demand service by Harvey Weinstein and company, will see his traveller discovering that the intriguing and betrayals of Kublai Khan’s court is even more fiddly to negotiate than whatever A-road connects Venice with Ancient Mongolia.

Joining Richelmy are Zhu Zhu (Cloud Atlas’s Megan Sixsmith) as alluring siren Kokachin, Benedict Wong as Khan and Twin Peaks’ Joan Chen as his empress.

Kon-Tiki co-directors Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg have directed the first two episodes from scripts penned by show creator John Fusco. His previous screenplays for Young Guns, Young Guns II, Thunderheart and Hidalgo, among others, have had a distinct Western flavour. Marco Polo's December air date is the time to find out whether he's translated any of that into a genre-mash of yak stampedes and Mongolian stand-offs.

from Empire News