Tragedies often affect films with untimely footage and/or marketing. Usually it’s something like 9/11, a space shuttle disaster or a sniper on the loose that causes Hollywood to show its sensitivity by delaying film releases and pulling trailers from theaters. I can’t recall a situation when the death of an individual influenced an upcoming movie’s ads or content. Last night, though, out of respect to Michael Jackson, the makers of Bruno cut a scene featuring MJ’s sister, LaToya Jackson.

I haven’t seen the film so I can’t say how the scene played out, but it is odd how PC the filmmakers are being considering the intentionally offensive tone and focus of their mockumentary. Does it even have that much connection to MJ to be viewed as being in poor taste? And anyway, won’t most of the audience for this film be over MJ’s death enough in two weeks, when the movie opens in theaters?

Check out what the film blogs are saying about the cut after the jump:

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Sorry for the late posting of the Bloggery, but I’ve been traveling all day to a retirement community in Arizona, and as you might guess the Interweb isn’t the hottest thing in these parts (obviously the hottest thing is the temperature, but anyway…).

So, I’m a bit late in addressing the news about Universal making a Where’s Waldo film, but it is the most fun movie topic of the past 24 hours (plus), and I just can’t let it be passed up for anything else. Mostly I just want to call back the clip of the day from almost exactly one year ago where I spotlighted a Bourne Ultimatum parody involving everyone’s favorite hard-to-find world/time traveler. And the thing I find most interesting about this actual film-to-be is that Universal is the same studio that produces the Bourne movies. Could there be at least a crossover cameo from Matt Damon? I am certain that he’d be down for a little winking tribute to that excellent fake trailer.

After the jump, check out a roundup of other blogged responses to the Where’s Waldo movie:

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• The long overdue remake of Chan Wook-park’s Oldboy (which was based on a manga) has just fallen into surprisingly heavy hands. Steven Spielberg is now involved in some capacity and Will Smith will star as the vengeful kidnap victim. Will such populist dreammakers retain all that graphic violence? Will Universal (and mainstream audiences) be okay with such a disturbing reveal at the end? Is it really necessary to remake such an internationally crossed-over title in the first place?
• Universal apparently wants to continue in the musical business following its success with Mamma Mia! However, while an adaptation of In the Heights might be great, there’s no way it’ll do even a tenth of the business that Mamma has done across the globe.
• An adaptation of the recent LA Times‘ series on the 1940s LAPD organized crime task force could be pretty cool, but Warners may want to title it something other than Gangster Squad, which sounds a little too much like Monster Squad. Mickey Cohen’s got nards!
• Obviously Madagascar 2 will be #1 this weekend, but is Variety really correct to speculate that Soul Men might only be big with African American audiences? Never mind Bernie Mac’s pre-death crossover successes. But no mention of the celebrity death cult that was constantly referenced when The Dark Knight was opening?

It’s Halloween, a time when sales of candy and rentals of horror movies spike off the charts. Candy has been around since the time of the ancient Egyptians, but the horror film is barely 100 years old. The genre is enjoying a resurgence in popularity over the past several years: right now you’ve got Saw V in wide release, Let The Right One In in limited theaters, the vampy teen Twilight coming up in a few weeks and True Blood making waves on HBO. Studios can’t seem to go more than a few months without releasing some sort of a zombie flick, and vampires are coming back into their own.

But what was the first real horror film? Before movies existed, people had to get their scares from books and the local newspaper, but now you can just switch on cable and tune into NBC’s Chiller channel for instant scares. Check out a brief history of the horror movie after the break, and look just how far we’ve come.

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• After being on track to be as perfect as the first film, Iron Man 2 has received a monkey wrench in the form of a recasting: for unspecified reasons (money), Terrence Howard will not reprise his role of Jim Rhodes, aka the future suited-hero War Machine, allowing Don Cheadle to replace him. While the same (or better) level of actor will be involved, the remodeling of the part is sure to be a little discomforting.
• Universal will be the new distributor of DreamWorks films in a deal that everyone expected to happen. But just because it was inevitable doesn’t change how perfect the relationship is. For one thing, their Earth and moon logos fit together so well. And as a team, they’re like Elliot and E.T. riding that bike across the sky (but which studio is in the basket?). Sorry if that only makes sense to me.
• Who knows what the markets will be like when the film is released, but Fox appears to be fast-tracking the sequel to Wall Street, titled Money Never Sleeps, which will see Michael Douglas’ Gordon Gekko released from prison into an unrecognizable financial world. 21 screenwriter Allan Loeb will be rewriting the film so expect the world to also be unrecognizable to most on Wall Street, as all the Asian traders will presumably be replaced by whites.
• In news that is probably only exciting or interesting to me, the National Association of Theater Owners is breaking away from the dog and pony show known as ShoWest to begin a new yearly convention for the exhibition business. Hopefully NATO can use this opportunity for better progress in the industry before the studios turn it into just another celebration of Hollywood.

The casts and crews of The Mummy: Brendan Fraser Must Do Huge Business Internationally and Death Race show off their wares. Yay, unnecessary sequels and remakes! (Yes, Karina wrote this intro.)

Highlights:

–Sam Raimi says another Evil Dead movie is “in the wheelhouse.” If you’re not familiar with it, that expression means “being very close to accomplishing a goal.”

–Two surprise clips of Drag Me To Hell were shown; one was good/funny, the other awful.

–Sid and Marty Krofft say H.R. Puffnstuf will be turned into a movie after Land of the Lost, and “Sigmund and the Sea Monsters after that.”
–Brendan Fraser is apparently perennially hopped up on over-the-counter cold medicine.

–Joan Allen swears a lot in Death Race.

Full live blog after the jump!

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• Spike Lee has spent his own money to acquire Time Traveler, “a memoir by Ronald Mallett, one of the nation’s first African-Americans to earn a Ph.D in theoretical physics.” He’ll co-adapt and direct.
• David Gordon Green’s The Pineapple Express will screen at the Just For Laughs Film Festival on July 19, three weeks before Sony opens the stoner comedy wide.
• Passchendaele, a Canadian WWI drama about the famous muddy battle, will open the Toronto Film Festival.
  
• Universal will release the second Da Ali G Show theatrical spin-off, Bruno, on May 15, 2009, a date already occupied by the sequel to The Da Vinci Code.

Two days after the Universal Studios fire, there are a lot of rumors going around as to the extent of the damage. A FishbowlLA tipster from a revival house in Alabama fed the blog an email that they say came directly from Universal, warning that “nearly 100% of the archive prints kept” on the lot went up in flames, and as a result, the studio “will be unable to honor any film bookings of prints that were set to ship from here.” The tragic details after the jump.

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As if Toy Fair 2008 wasn’t reminding us enough about the intermingling of Hollywood and the toy and game industry, Hasbro and Universal had to go and announce a six-year partnership, which will result in at least four (mostly) board-game-inspired feature films. It wasn’t that surprising, considering the success of Transfomers and the anticipated success of G.I. Joe, both of which are based on Hasbro properties, and the still-shocking news from last summer that Ridley Scott is developing a Monopoly movie (not to mention that Hasbro had previously announced its intentions while switching from CAA to William Morris last year). Plus, this comes as a perfect follow-up to the recent Mattel/CAA team-up.

Personally, I’m wondering why the deal is so exclusive against brands that aren’t board games (Stretch Armstrong being the exception). I would love to see movies based on Mr. Potato Head, Lincoln Logs and Easy-Bake Oven. And as far as the games that aren’t getting any love, I’d be interested in movies based on Guess Who, Mouse Trap, Jenga and Risk (the Australians take over the world!!). Like me, the rest of the blogosphere has gone ga-ga for alternate ideas. Also, a lot of bloggers have been overly critical of the deal and have had some harsh responses to the list of properties that were optioned for the partnership. Check out some of my favorites after the jump.

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• With the WGA strike looking almost certain to begin by the end of the week, new complications seem to arise every minute.  Now two studios, Universal and New Line, have forbidden contracted scribes from complying with the WGA’s “script validation program.” It’s a rule insisting that, in the event of a strike, writers must submit evidence of all projects-in-progress to the guild. New Line sent a letter to their writers, which flat-out stated that adhering to the WGA rule wil be considered “a breach of your writing agreement.” The AMPTP has already ruled that the WGA rule is illegal; WGA, natch, disagrees. More here.
• Heath Ledger and Sean Penn are in talks to star in Terrence Malick’s next film, Tree of Life. The project has been in development for years, but of course, nobody knows anything about it. Except, at one point, it was going to star Colin Farrell and be shot partially in India, and neither of those things are happening anymore.
• Rebecca Miller (wife of Daniel Day-Lewis, and his director in The Ballad of Jack and Rose) will direct Julianne Moore, Winona Ryder and Robin Wright-Penn in The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, based on Miller’s novel. The plot concerns a dutiful wife” (presumably Wright-Penn?) “whose husband falls for a younger woman” (Ryder?), “freeing her to explore her buried sensuality and leading to a ‘a very quiet nervous breakdown.’”

• Juno screenwriter Diablo Cody has sold a pitch to Universal for a film called Girly Style, which The Hollywood Reporter describes as “a female-driven comedy set at a college.” Mason Novick, who Cody recently described on her blog as “totally my Rene Angelil,” will produce.
• A suspect has been arrested for stealing “computers, photographs and documents” from the set of the fourth Indiana Jones movie. The criminal mastermind was nabbed after contacting a number of movie blogs and offering the loot for sale.
• Sarah Polley and Adrien Brody have been cast in Splice, a sci-fi thriller about genetic engineering to be directed by Vincenzo Natali. Natali recently helmed a segment of the omnibus Paris, je t’aime.

Link: Why Hollywood Movies Prefer to Premiere in New York.

“But the real reason is that New York’s the home base for the burgeoning, always-hungry celeb-photo press, guaranteeing coverage…The joke is that I don’t think you have to show the movie. If you say “red carpet”, they’ll come, they’ll take the pictures, they’ll ask the same questions, and they’ll go home”

This reminds me of a great article I read in The Times a couple of weeks ago about the recent decline in the box office. In the article, Mr. Lynton of Sony said he would be focused on making, “only movies we hope will be really good.” Mr. Shmuger, of Universal, said the he intends to reassert “time and passion” in movie production. He goes on to say that some of his own summer movies should have never been made.

It is evident to me that Hollywood is willing to blow off their audience if it does not effect their bottom-line. But now, audiences are no longer taking Hollywood’s crap and are forcing them to actually think about making quality films. They are no longer fulfilled by the empty experiences of the multiplex. As audiences are turning away from the multiplex, what will we do now for our film watching experience?

Dave