Trials Fusion is a side-on motorbike game. It is not a first-person shooter. In fact it’s about sa far from a first-person shooter as you’re going to get. So it’s magic that you can take the game’s map editor and build a replica of Call of Duty: Zombies with it.
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Had League of Legends been released in the 90s, it might have been released on a floppy disk. Okay, make that a ton of floppy disks.
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This is the second time in two days I’ve seen a trailer for a game that’s about building a castle by hand then trying to knock someone else’s castle down. It’s a…weirdly niche kind of genre, when you think about it, but if this is the latest thing people are rushing to try their hands at, then awesome.
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Who is voicing Gamora and Yondu in the animated Guardians of the Galaxy series? Does Matthew Vaughn agree with the Kingsman: The Secret Service controversy? Which character is Jay Hernandez playing in Suicide Squad? Will Quicksilver be back in X-Men Apocalypse? Did Kevin Smith enjoy The Marvel Experience? Did someone 3D print their own Ant-Man helmet? Would Katheryn Winnick like to play Captain Marvel? Read about all this and more in today’s Superhero Bits.
Vanessa Marshall and James Arnold Taylor have joined the voice cast of Guardians of the Galaxy.
Matthew Vaughn responds to the controversy about the ending of Kingsman: The Secret Service.
40 images from the Agent Carter finale are now online.
Latino Review‘s El Mayimbe believes Jay Hernandez will be playing El Diablo in Suicide Squad.
Will Smith is excited he’ll get to define the global look and feel of Deadshot in Suicide Squad.
Comicbook.com noticed some Supergirl audition videos that may hint at the unconventional origin of her costume in the show.
These Avengers: Age of Ultron earphone “plugys” are cool, and provide a great look at the Iron Legion soldiers.
Despite yesterday’s rumor, Suicide Squad actress Cara Delevinge is not seeing a psychologist for help with the movie. She said so on Twitter.
Due to the amount of graphics and images included in Superhero Bits, we have to split this post over THREE pages. Click the link above to continue to the second page of Superhero Bits.
The post Superhero Bits: Suicide Squad, Ant-Man, Kingsman, Gotham, Captain Marvel, Agent Carter appeared first on /Film.
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Page 2 is a compilation of stories and news tidbits, which for whatever reason, didn’t make the front page of /Film. After the jump we’ve included 36 different items, fun images, videos, casting tidbits, articles of interest and more. It’s like a mystery grab bag of movie web related goodness.
Header Photo: MONDO TO RELEASE GREMLINS 2 PRINTS BY RHYS COOPER ON FEBRUARY 19, 2015
The Ultimate Dystopian Movie Timeline
Why Newt And Hicks Had To Die In ALIEN 3
Kick Ass Custom Motorcycle Helmets
50 Great Movies That Were Nominated For Zero Oscars
Jim Hemphill (The Trouble with the Truth) Talks Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper
The Terminator T-800 Mug Will Give Rise To Skynet
10 Examples of Hollywood Being Really Bad at Casting the “Ugly” Best Friend
5 AWESOME ITEMS FROM TOY FAIR 2015 TO PREPARE YOUR WALLET FOR
Doctor Who TARDIS Jewelry Box
100 Teens Flip Their Shit When Barred From ‘Fifty Shades Of Grey’
Watch: 66-Minute Compilation Of Saul Bass’ Famous Movie Title Sequences From Preminger To Scorsese
20 Great Underrated Early Performances From The 2015 Oscar Actor Nominees
Movie barcodes of all 8 Harry Potter films shows the color palette darken over time [OC]
The Rocky Road to the Making of the Fifty Shades of Grey Movie
“STEVEN SPIELBERG – Shot By Shot”
Directors’ Cuts: 12 Movies That Were Better When They Got Longer
The post Page 2: Gremlins, Star Wars, Terminator, Doctor Who, Harry Potter, Spielberg, GoT, 50 Shades, Wes Anderson, Up appeared first on /Film.
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One of the hottest tickets at this year’s Sundance Film Festival was the world premiere of Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief. It’s the latest documentary from Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney and it follows men and women who left the controversial religion as they reveal their thoughts on how it works. There’s dirt on John Travolta, Tom Cruise and tons of others. Peter reviewed the film at Sundance and now, ahead of its late March premiere on HBO, a Going Clear trailer is now online. Watch it below.
Thanks to Indiewire for the trailer.
Peter has his opinion on the film, which you can read here, and I mostly agree with. I came into the film as a pretty blank slate on scientology and after watching it, I now have a better understanding of what they’re all about. But I still don’t know everything. What I do know is that there are some very questionable practices happening behind the scenes and the film has some first hand accounts of it. It’s very worth watching.
Going Clear:Scientology and the Prison of Belief, premieres on Sunday, March 29 at 8 p.m. Here’s the official Sundance description:
Following Mea Maxima Culpa, his investigation into the Catholic Church, Academy Award-winner Alex Gibney turns his gaze to Scientology in Going Clear, based on the book of the same name by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lawrence Wright.
Gibney profiles eight former members of the Church of Scientology, whose most prominent adherents include A-list Hollywood celebrities, shining a light on how the church cultivates true believers, including their experiences and what they are willing to do in the name of religion. The film covers a broad range of material from the church’s origins—punctuated by an intimate portrait of founder L. Ron Hubbard—to present-day practices and alleged abuses as reported in the media.
The post ‘Going Clear’ Trailer: Alex Gibney’s Controversial Scientology Documentary appeared first on /Film.
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The following post was originally published on February 24th 2014.
Which board game movies should Hollywood make next? This week it was announced that Gail Katz (The Perfect Storm, Air Force One) had acquired the film and TV rights to Settlers of Catan, a very popular eurogame which while fun, probably wouldn’t make a great film. So I thought now is a good time to republish my list of the 11 board game movies Hollywood should make next.
The following article first appeared on /Film in February 2014:
Over the last year or so I’ve gotten sucked into the table top scene, and now have a board game addiction. I’m not talking about Monopoly or The Game of Life, but designer hobby board games that offer more strategy and theme than the games we all played as children.
Hollywood has dipped its toes into the board game movies a handful of times over the last few years. First with Battleship. It was such a huge bomb that Universal later dropped Monopoly, which was being developed for years by Ridley Scott. Universal released a horror/thriller adaptation of Ouija. Universal and Warner Bros are both fighting to make a movie based on the role-paying game Dungeons & Dragons. And most recently, 20th Century Fox has announced they are brining the popular role-playing card game Magic: The Gathering to the big screen with the help of Simon Kinberg.
There are many reasons Battleship failed but I think first and foremost the audience refused to take the movie seriously after hearing the title. The studio clearly greenlit the project hoping to turn massive brand recognition into tickets sold, but it didn’t take a genius to realize that the 1930 board game didn’t have enough story to warrant a movie adaptation. So much so that director Peter Berg made up his own “alien invasion at sea” construct.
So if Hollywood is going to develop board game movies, why not look at some board games that offer deeper storytelling, more interesting scenarios and compelling characters? The list I have put together after the jump includes a bunch of board games that you might not have heard of, but are popular in the tabletop gaming world. Each of them has something to offer Hollywood if they wanted to bet on concept and story vs. huge branding.
It should be noted that while the tabletop world is a niche market, the brand recognition might be the equivalent of developing an adaptation from an independent cult comic book series. For instance, The Walking Dead was selling around 25,000 copies of each issue when it was picked up for television adaptation on AMC. Some successfully produced strategy games like Pandemic are said to have sold hundreds of thousands of copies.
I have played all of the games I featured in this list – not only do they offer big screen opportunities, but all of them are great games. If you want to get into table top board games, any of these would be a good first buy. To make things easier, the following list is not in any order. (I do start off the list with my top choice.) If there were a board game on the market that should be made into a movie, it should be…
Mice and Mystics might be the deepest storytelling game I’ve ever played; it comes with a 58-page campaign storybook divided into 11 chapters of story-based missions. The tiny fantasy tale features mice heroes with magical powers and insect villains on the ground floor (literally) of an epic tale in a royal castle.
ONCE UPON A TIME In the kingdom of Owendale there lived a kind, but lonely, king who had no queen to help him rule the country or raise his son, Prince Collin. One autumn day an emissary arrived at the castle – the mysterious and beautiful Queen Vanestra. Before long, the King announced his intentions to marry Vanestra. And then the dark days came. ADVENTURE AWAITS. In Mice and Mystics players take on the roles of those still loyal to the king – but to escape the clutches of Vanestra, they have been turned into mic. Play as cunning field mice who must race through a castle now twenty times larger than before. The castle would be a dangerous place with Vanestra’s minions in control, but now countless other terrors also await heroes who are but the size of figs. … Mice and Mystics is a cooperative adventure game in which the players work together to save an imperiled kingdom. They will face countless adversaries such as rats, cockroaches, and spiders, and of course the greatest of all horrors: the castle’s housecat, Brodie. Mice and Mystics is a boldly innovative game that thrusts players into an ever-changing, interactive environment, and features a rich storyline that the players help create as they play the game.
The game was released in 2012 and very well received, selling over 30,000 copies (in the US alone) and winning three Dice Tower Awards. The game is a favorite of both families and adult gamers, making it perfect for an animated adaptation. The story by Jerry Hawthorne features wonderful imagery worthy of a DreamWorks or even a Pixar adaptation. I’m currently working my way through the game with my game group.
Mad Men co-star Rich Sommer recorded an audiobook of the “story moments” which is available for a small charitable donation. Plaid Hat Games have since released the Mice and Mystics: Heart of Glorm small-box expansion which adds six chapters to the story, and is working on a full expansion called Mice and Mystics: Downwood Tales which will take the mouse heroes out of the castle into the enchanted forest and introduce a new set of green lizard heroes and foes. So there is more stories that could be told in sequels.
Mice & Mystics is available on Amazon for around $52.
Two Rooms and a Boom is a hidden-role social role-playing game for six to 30 players. One player is a terrorist bomber, another player is the president of the United States, and the rest of the players are split into teams trying either to help the president stay alive or help the terrorist make the kill. The players are randomly given roles and placed into two separate rooms. The bomb is going to blow up in a specific amount of time, and the rooms are allowed to trade hostages a few times. The players are allowed to show their role cards to each other, but revealing your side or role to the wrong person could be fatal. If by the end of the game the President has avoided the room with the bomber, his blue team wins. If the bomber ends up blowing up the room with the president, the red team wins.
Many of the participants in the game are also given their own secret objectives – for instance, the President’s wife and mistress both want to end up in the same room with the president, and win if they accomplish that goal but not if both of them are in the room. One player in each room can be a spy, who has a card that makes it look like he is on the other team, but he is really a secret operative trying to gain information for the other team to use to win the game. Another player is an engineer who has the trigger for the bomb. He needs to find the bomber and get him the trigger before the countdown is over or the bomb won’t work.
The game is played in many game conventions around the world and was recently kickstarted for a retail release. For now, you can download and print the game for free from the creator’s website. The game is a ton of fun and very involved, unlike another hidden-role game, Werewolf, which has a player elimination each round and very few interesting extra player goals.
We’ve seen the scenario in movies and television in the past (most recently the season one finale of Homeland) but the concept has never been the entire subject of a feature film as far as I can remember. I could definitely see the idea turned into a real-time contained mystery thriller which could be accomplished on a Jason Blum-budget level. (Hey, it only takes a couple rooms on lockdown.) A big-screen adaptation might have to ditch the president for a lower key character who wouldn’t be recognizable by those stuck in the rooms.
Two Rooms and a Boom will be released later this year but you can download a print and play version to try yourself on TuesdayKnightGames.com.
Pandemic is one of my favorites, a cooperative strategy board game set in the near future when several virulent diseases that have broken out simultaneously all over the world. Players are disease-fighting specialists working together to treat disease hotspots while researching cures. Each player takes on a different role with different game abilities, and the team has to travel the world and prevent the spread of the diseases before Earth is saturated with them.
The game, designed by Matt Leacock, is a grand puzzle that requires both foresight and teamwork to win. Zman Games have since released two expansions: On the Brink, which introduces another virulent disease (as if Pandemic wasn’t already hard enough), and a bio-terrorist scenario. In The Lab introduces a scientific research laboratory (an extra board) where “scientists race against time to sequence diseases, take samples, and test cures” which adds to the realism of the theme.
The only reason this might not ever be made into a movie is because Steven Soderbergh‘s dramatic thriller Contagion is essentially a big screen version of this board game. Hollywood could look at the Bio-terrorist variant included in the On the Brink expansion, however, as a storyline option.
Pandemic is available at some Target stores or on Amazon for around $28.
The post Here Are 11 Board Game Movies Hollywood Should Make Next appeared first on /Film.
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Fifty Shades of Grey is exactly the box-office powerhouse Universal and Focus hoped it might be, with a $300m global take so far, and few signs of slowing down as the film goes into its second weekend. (That’s despite a low CinemaScore of C+, which would generally suggest a huge drop-off is on the way.)
That isn’t making a green light for the proposed Fifty Shades of Grey sequel, Fifty Shades Darker, come any faster. We’ve heard suggestions that Sam Taylor-Johnson, who directed the first film, won’t be back for the second. And now, as original author E.L. James jockeys for more control over the film version of her creation, screenwriter Kelly Marcel may be out as well, with James taking over screenwriting duties.
Variety reports that James wants to take, er, a firmer hand with the sequel, which is presumably the result of the many reported conflicts between she and Taylor-Johnson. Though even if she does write the first draft, Universal would probably reserve the option to hire another screenwriter to do revisions.
The official studio line on the situation is “the studio had always intended to sit down with the author after the film opened and discuss next steps and that has not yet happened,” which is the PR version of Pee-Wee Herman saying “I meant to do that” while picking himself up from a pratfall.
The sequel moves much more into overt thriller territory, with Cristian Grey doing more weird stalking, and Ana dealing with unwanted attention from her new boss. Without the lure of the unknown that the intro to BDSM provides the first film, the sequel will have to work even harder to distinguish itself if it wants to even equal the success of the first film, much less top it.
Another question is, following any behind the scenes reshuffling, whether or not the cast will be affected. Dakota Johnson really has to stick around, because she’s the prime redeeming quality of the film as-is. But if they wanted to re-cast the Christian Grey role, played in the first film by Jamie Dornan, there might not be too many complaints after his severe lack of chemistry with Johnson the first time out. Regardless, any scheduling delay is going to be problematic for them, as they put off other work until they know what’s up with this sequel.
Any cast changes are purely, totally speculative at this point. We’ll see if James badgers Universal into letting her write (which seems likely) and then who takes the director’s chair in the wake of that decision. Currently, Universal would love to have the film out next year, but a Valentine’s Day release may already be out of reach, and the scheduling will have to fall in line behind work on the screenplay.
The post EL James Wants More Control Over ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ Sequel appeared first on /Film.
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