Movie Loop: August 2015

Monday 31 August 2015

Director Wes Ball Talks Maze Runner: The Death Cure

What will be in store for Thomas and the gang?

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Though the second film based off of James Dashner’s Maze Runner series, The Scorch Trials, is due in cinemas next week, director Wes Ball is already deep into preparation for the third, The Death Cure. And he promises that it’ll be another interesting twist on the series. Be aware of potential mild spoilers lower down the article.

The Scorch Trials, of course, finds Dylan O’Brien’s Thomas, Kaya Scodelario’s Teresa, Thomas Brodie-Sangster’s Newt and the other survivors of the Maze dealing with new challenges on the solar flare-ravaged ruined wasteland that makes up large chunks of Earth, and still unsure how to figure out shady organization W.C.K.D.’s motivations. The third looks like it’ll have its own style. “This next one will be cool because we’re gonna cut maybe a year later,” he Ball told Collider while out doing press for Scorch Trials. “Some things have happened off screen, which is gonna make the movie feel even bigger.

And despite no official word on the matter, it certainly sounds like he’ll be calling the shots. “We’re working on it right now, basically. And we’re actually gonna shoot in February and then release in the next February so it’ll be another tight run. We’re working to make it even better and even cooler, and doing the same thing we did on this last one where it’s a different movie. It’s gonna be a different kind of an engine, a different kind of genre almost and a different sort of colour palette and terrain.”

As for where it’ll shoot, it sounds like a move is on the cards from the New Mexico locales and studios that were home to the first two. “Probably Vancouver. It’s gonna be a very different movie. We’re not gonna be in the same kind of setting anymore. We’re gonna go a little bit more future, do something a little gritty, a little film noir almost.”

Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials arrives in the UK on September 10. And despite Ball’s pronouncement of a February release for The Death Cure, the UK date is currently listed as January 27, 2017, so he’d best get cracking.

from Empire News

Bryan Fuller On Hannibal's Possible Future

''The odds are less than 50/50, and not in our favour...''

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Hannibal, in its TV incarnation, has drawn to a close. With the third season announced as its final chapter – at least in current form – creator Bryan Fuller talked to HitFix’s Alan Sepinwall about the potential future for his vision of Hannibal Lecter, Will Graham and the rest of his stylish, goresome series.

The final episode – beware spoilers for those who have yet to watch it – saw Hannibal (Mads Mikkelsen) and Will (Hugh Dancy) teaming up to bait Francis Dolarhyde, (Richard Armitage) the self-styled Red Dragon, out of hiding and ended up in distinctly Sherlock Holmes/Moriarty style.

While Fuller didn’t divulge directly what might happen with our anti-heroes, he did speculate on potential future avenues for more of the story. “[Executive producer] Martha De Laurentiis is looking into financing for a feature film. The season four that we were going to tell is such a restart and reimagining that I still hope in some way that we get to tell a version of that, if not Silence Of The Lambs itself, as a miniseries. I would love to return this cast to the big screen from whence they came, and Hannibal Lecter to the big screen, from whence he came. It seems perfectly symmetrical.”

But he’s not thinking it’ll happen just yet, or even that way if it happens at all. Asked about the odds of a return on the big screen or via miniseries, he said, “I have no idea. I think they're less than 50/50, and not in our favour. But I'm curious to see how folks respond to the finale, and then also if that satisfies them? If that feels like ‘We got a conclusion to our story and it's wrapped up in a bow, and we don't need anymore,’ then the audience will dictate. But if the audience is still there for the show and still wants a continuation of that story, I'll continue looking for ways to give it to them.”

A big sticking point for now is the availability of the cast and crew – Mikkelsen, Dancy, Gillian Anderson, Laurence Fishburne and the other actors have other contracted jobs, and Fuller is part of the team working on the latest attempt to bring Neil Gaiman’s American Gods to TV at US cable channel Starz, everyone is busy. But hope remains. For our chat with Fuller about all things Hannibal, head here.

from Empire News

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 - Everything you need to know

via Total Film

Nicholas Hoult Will Be JD Salinger

For Danny Strong's Rebel In The Rye

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We’re more used to see him playing fictional folk in films such as this year’s Mad Max: Fury Road. But Nicholas Hoult is about to tackle a very different challenge – playing author JD Salinger, a real, if largely reclusive, person for writer/director Danny Strong in Rebel In The Rye.

Strong has adapted the script from Kenneth Slawenski’s biography of Salinger, JD Salinger: A Life., and the film aims to chronicle the life and mind of the secretive writer, including how he brought iconic tome The Catcher In The Rye from the depths of his brain. It’ll look at his youth, his time spent in conflict during World War II, finding love, enduring loss and years of rejection letters from The New Yorker, which fuelled chronic writer’s block but also helped him find his voice.

Black Label Media is backing the film, with the distribution rights set to be touted at the Toronto International Film Festival, which kicks off next week. Strong, who got his start as an actor, has become an accomplished writer of both films and TV, scoring two Emmy Awards along the way. He’s co-created TV hit Empire with Lee Daniels and directed an episode of the show. He’ll make his film directing debut with Rebel.

Hoult has Britpop music marketing satire Kill Your Friends due out on November 6, followed by X-Men: Apocalypse on May 19 next year. He’s also worked on Dark Places and Drake Doremus’ Equals, neither of which have UK release dates yet.

from Empire News