Coverage of what is truly interesting in the film world

TOP STORY:

Iron Man Makes $201 Million: Trade Roughage 05/05/08

Karina Longworth
By Karina Longworth posted 4 months ago
  • del.icio.us
  • Technorati
  • Reddit
  • Ma.gnolia
  • YahooMyWeb
  • StumbleUpon
  • Iron Man had a huge weekend, grossing $104.2 in the States from Thursday night through Sunday, and a total of $201 across all international territories. And yet it appears that no one was interested in seeing anything else––overall, this weekend’s box office was down 13% from last year’s, when Spider-Man 3 had the best opening weekend ever with $151.1 million.
  • Production starts today on that Terminator sequel starring Christian Bale, and its makers are determined to deliver a box office-friendly PG-13. “The PG-13 has increased in intensity,” says Victor Kubicek, the film’s broker-turned-writer-producer. Imagine him saying that in an Arnold voice, and I think you’ll feel better about the whole situation. I did.
  • British production company Hammer Films will team with Spitfire Pictures to remake Let the Right One In, the Swedish vampire film that was all the rage last week at the Tribeca Film Festival, where it won the World Dramatic Narrative prize.
  • Maya Entertainment, a distributor known for targeting Spanish-speaking audiences in the U.S., has purchased Sleep Dealer, Alex Rivera’s sci-fi immigration drama which premiered earlier this year at Sundance.

Tribeca Lets Right One In: Trade Roughage 05/02/08

Karina Longworth
By Karina Longworth posted 4 months ago
  • del.icio.us
  • Technorati
  • Reddit
  • Ma.gnolia
  • YahooMyWeb
  • StumbleUpon
  • Let the Right One In Swedish vampire buzz magnet Let The Right One In took the top narrative prize at the Tribeca Film Festival last night. Shane Meadows’ Somers Town walked away with consolation acting prizes for its two young stars, and the extremely narratively confused My Marlon and Brando inexplicably won the Best New Narrative Filmmaker award. More Tribeca wrap-up stuff later today.
  • Variety says Iron Man “is looking like an ironclad winner” at the box office (for what it’s worth, the 8pm screening I went to last night was barely half-full), whilst Made of Honor, Patrick Dempsey’s return to headlining big-screen romantic comedies after a 20 year hiatus, hopes to “generate some counterprogramming coin.”
  • Comedian/Microsoft pitchman Demetri Martin has been cast in the lead role in Ang Lee’s next film, as the closeted gay man who accidentally invented Woodstock.
  • New Line has bought its first pitch since moving in with the corporate parents. Dan Mintner: Badass for Hire, a parody of films like Cobra and Predator, is being positioned as “an R-rated comedy in the spirit of Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle and Wedding Crashers, the kind of movie that ‘classic’ New Line was good at making and that the new iteration will be making as well.” Diablo Cody svengali Mason Novick will co-produce.