Forget about Don Cheadle replacing Terence Howard as James Rhodes / War Machine in Iron Man II, which smells a lot like the “we’ll threaten to replace Tobey Maguire with Jake Gyllenhaal” tactic that Sony used for Spider-Man II –– Hollywood has been doing this for years. It was bad enough back in the days of television with Dick Sargent replacing Dick York in Bewitched, but now it’s becoming pretty commonplace for producers to replace actors in iconic roles. Although now it’s more common due to monetary concerns, which seems to be what has taken Howard out of the War Machine suit, it’s also common to see an actor ankle a role because they don’t like the source material, or the direction the character is taking. We’ve put together several different re-castings, which all happened for a variety of reasons: money, dissatisfaction with the script, test audience reactions, and actors just growing tired of playing the same character. Check them out after the break.
…Read more
Legendary six-time-Oscar-winning make-up artist Rick Baker joined stars Benicio Del Toro and Emily Blunt to bring us the first footage of Universal’s new version of The Wolfman. And it’s a period piece.
Highlights:
- The origins of the remake stem from Del Toro’s Lon Chaney Jr. fandom.
- It looks like “Francis Ford Coppola’s The Wolfman”
- Of course, Anthony Hopkins would be more welcome as Van Helsing again
- At least it will likely be R-rated, as it looks quite bloody
- Baker honors Stan Winston by labeling his death “the end of an era”
- Blunt is apparently into two-headed dudes
Check out the full liveblog transcript after the jump.
…Read more
MTV reports that Anthony Hopkins is getting ready to play Alfred Hitchcock in a film about the making of Psycho. IMDbPro has scant additional details: the film is in the script phase, and it will eventually be directed by Ryan Murphy, a TV writer who directed last year’s Running With Scissors. Helen Mirren will co-star as Hitch’s wife Alma.
This makes two slice-of-Hitchcock’s-life projects in the works, after Number Thirteen, which stars Dan Fogler as the young Hitchcock, and which I wrote about here. Psycho was shot on the Universal backlot, so hopefully the Hopkins film will at least touch on Hitch’s decadent steak-and-wine lunch ritual at the Universal commissary.
Semi-related: Jim Emerson’s entry on the Psycho shower scene for The House Next Door’s Close-Up Blogathon.
