Variety was reporting that Warner Bros. was developing a live action/CG feature film starring Marvin the Martian back in 2008.
Marvin was created by Chuck Jones and made his debut in a 1948 Looney Tunes cartoon Haredevil Hare along with his Martian dog, K-9 although he is unnamed in this film. The character earlier known as Commander X-2 was often set to blow up planet Earth, only to be foiled by Bugs Bunny.
Producer Steve Crystal developed the pitch as a Christmas story, with Marvin coming to Earth to destroy Christmas but being prevented from doing so when he’s trapped in a gift box.
This time Alex Zamm (Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2) who has posted test footage from in-development Hong Kong Phooey live action movie also has posted footage from a more-promising, but shelved, Marvin the Martian hybrid movie on his Vimeo page.
The Marvin the Martian material is better,...
Marvin was created by Chuck Jones and made his debut in a 1948 Looney Tunes cartoon Haredevil Hare along with his Martian dog, K-9 although he is unnamed in this film. The character earlier known as Commander X-2 was often set to blow up planet Earth, only to be foiled by Bugs Bunny.
Producer Steve Crystal developed the pitch as a Christmas story, with Marvin coming to Earth to destroy Christmas but being prevented from doing so when he’s trapped in a gift box.
This time Alex Zamm (Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2) who has posted test footage from in-development Hong Kong Phooey live action movie also has posted footage from a more-promising, but shelved, Marvin the Martian hybrid movie on his Vimeo page.
The Marvin the Martian material is better,...
- 12/28/2012
- by Nick Martin
- Filmofilia
Daniel Barber ("Harry Brown") is in negotiations to helm "Substitution" for Alcon Entertainment says The Hollywood Reporter.
Ian Shorr penned the script described as a thriller in the vein of Hitchcock's "Strangers on a Train". The story centers on a substitute teacher who coerces a high school student in a murders-swapping plot.
Broderick Johnson, Andrew Kosove, Kevin McCormick and Steve Crystal are producing.
Ian Shorr penned the script described as a thriller in the vein of Hitchcock's "Strangers on a Train". The story centers on a substitute teacher who coerces a high school student in a murders-swapping plot.
Broderick Johnson, Andrew Kosove, Kevin McCormick and Steve Crystal are producing.
- 8/11/2011
- by Garth Franklin
- Dark Horizons
Following on the heels of his feature directorial debut, 2009's Harry Brown, Daniel Barber is now negotiating a deal that would hand him the reins to another thriller entitled Substitution. If talks go through, Barber would helm the pic for Alcon Entertainment and producers Broderick Johnson, Andrew Kosove, Kevin McCormick, and Steve Crystal. THR describes Substitution as Alfred Hitchcock's 1951 thriller Strangers on a Train meets the rigors of high school. Ian Shorr (Splinter) is currently penning the script which will see a substitute teacher coerce one of his students into a murderous scheme. I've yet to check out Harry Brown, so I'll refrain from commenting on Barber's capabilities as a filmmaker. That said, his short film The Tonto Woman was nominated for an Oscar for best live action short in 2008. That has to count for something, right?...
- 8/10/2011
- by Jason Barr
- Collider.com
Daniel Barber (Harry Brown) is in talks to direct Substitution for Alcon Entertainment. THR reports that the thriller will be in the same vein "as Strangers on a Train but in a high school setting." The script was penned by Ian Shorr and tells the story of a "asubstitute teacher who coerces a high school student in a murders-swapping plot." The proejct is being produced by Broderick Johnson and Andrew Kosove for Alcon, along with Kevin McCormick of Langley Park Productions and Steve Crystal.
Harry Brown was a really tense thriller, which starred Michael Caine. Based on Barber's work on that film I amm pretty sure he will be able to handle Substitution. What are your thoughts on this news?
...
- 8/10/2011
- by Tiberius
- GeekTyrant
Alcon Entertainment is in talks with Harry Brown director Daniel Barber to take on Substitution , a thriller in the vein of Strangers of a Train but in a high school setting. The story centers on a substitute teacher who coerces a high school student in a murders-swapping plot. Alcon's Broderick Johnson and Andrew Kosove are producing, as is Kevin McCormick of Langley Park Productions and Steve Crystal. Ian Shorr wrote the script.
- 8/10/2011
- Comingsoon.net
Alex Zamm (Inspector Gadget 2) will direct Marvin the Martian for Warner Bros..
Along with Zamm, writers Paul Kaplan (TV’s Big Wolf on Campus) and Mark Torgrove have been tapped to write the script.
Marvin the Martian will be a fusion of live-action and CGI animation, similar to 2003’s Looney Tunes: Back in Action, which was dismal failure for the studio.
Broderick Johnson, Andrew Kosove and Steve Crystal will produce the project.
Production is slated to begin sometime in 2010 with a release in 2011.
Looney Tunes: Back in Action starred Brendan Fraser and Jenna Elfman with appearances from Heather Locklear, Joan Cusack and Steve Martin. The film earned near $21 million domestically with a budget of $80 million. Ouch.
Along with Zamm, writers Paul Kaplan (TV’s Big Wolf on Campus) and Mark Torgrove have been tapped to write the script.
Marvin the Martian will be a fusion of live-action and CGI animation, similar to 2003’s Looney Tunes: Back in Action, which was dismal failure for the studio.
Broderick Johnson, Andrew Kosove and Steve Crystal will produce the project.
Production is slated to begin sometime in 2010 with a release in 2011.
Looney Tunes: Back in Action starred Brendan Fraser and Jenna Elfman with appearances from Heather Locklear, Joan Cusack and Steve Martin. The film earned near $21 million domestically with a budget of $80 million. Ouch.
- 12/24/2009
- Denver Movies Examiner
Alex Zamm (Inspector Gadget 2) will direct Marvin the Martian for Warner Bros..
Along with Zamm, writers Paul Kaplan (TV’s Big Wolf on Campus) and Mark Torgrove have been tapped to write the script.
Marvin the Martian will be a fusion of live-action and CGI animation, similar to 2003’s Looney Tunes: Back in Action, which was dismal failure for the studio.
Broderick Johnson, Andrew Kosove and Steve Crystal will produce the project.
Production is slated to begin sometime in 2010 with a release in 2011.
Looney Tunes: Back in Action starred Brendan Fraser and Jenna Elfman with appearcens from Heather Locklear, Joan Cusack and Steve Martin. The film earned near $21 million domestically with a budget of $80 million. Ouch.
Source: Hero Complex (La Times)
Related posts:‘The Strangers 2′ moves forward with French director American remake of ‘The Orphanage’ lands its director ‘Friday the 13th: Part 2′ lands its release date...
Along with Zamm, writers Paul Kaplan (TV’s Big Wolf on Campus) and Mark Torgrove have been tapped to write the script.
Marvin the Martian will be a fusion of live-action and CGI animation, similar to 2003’s Looney Tunes: Back in Action, which was dismal failure for the studio.
Broderick Johnson, Andrew Kosove and Steve Crystal will produce the project.
Production is slated to begin sometime in 2010 with a release in 2011.
Looney Tunes: Back in Action starred Brendan Fraser and Jenna Elfman with appearcens from Heather Locklear, Joan Cusack and Steve Martin. The film earned near $21 million domestically with a budget of $80 million. Ouch.
Source: Hero Complex (La Times)
Related posts:‘The Strangers 2′ moves forward with French director American remake of ‘The Orphanage’ lands its director ‘Friday the 13th: Part 2′ lands its release date...
- 12/22/2009
- by Reel Loop News Staff
- ReelLoop.com
Alcon Entertainment has acquired "Substitution," a thriller by Ian Shorr.
Steve Crystal, who came up with the story with Shorr and has a first-look deal with Alcon, is producing with Alcon's Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson.
The project follows an emotional high school senior who unwittingly becomes embroiled in a murder plot orchestrated by his substitute teacher.
Alcon senior development executive Steve Wegner is overseeing.
Crystal, who produces via his Charlie Co. shingle, is a one-time executive whose credits include serving as an executive producer on "The Missing."
Shorr has "Exempt" set up at Overture with Benderspink producing. He is repped by CAA and Benderspink.
Steve Crystal, who came up with the story with Shorr and has a first-look deal with Alcon, is producing with Alcon's Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson.
The project follows an emotional high school senior who unwittingly becomes embroiled in a murder plot orchestrated by his substitute teacher.
Alcon senior development executive Steve Wegner is overseeing.
Crystal, who produces via his Charlie Co. shingle, is a one-time executive whose credits include serving as an executive producer on "The Missing."
Shorr has "Exempt" set up at Overture with Benderspink producing. He is repped by CAA and Benderspink.
- 7/10/2008
- by By Borys Kit
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Seitz pitch puts Par in reverse
Insomnia scribe Hillary Seitz has sold a pitch to Paramount Pictures for an undisclosed sum. Former Imagine Entertainment executive Steve Crystal will produce, with Wendy Japhet, Paramount's newly appointed senior vp production, overseeing for the studio. The thriller pitch takes a reverse approach to one of Paramount's hit films from the '80s -- though the studio is attempting to keep the exact details under wraps in order to prevent competitors from stealing the concept.
- 4/2/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
The Missing
Something's missing in "The Missing".
Director Ron Howard's follow-up to his Oscar-winning "A Beautiful Mind" after he parted ways with "The Alamo", this murky, thriller-tinged Western has the terrain down cold -- from the wide-open spaces to the rocky vistas -- but beneath all the requisite genre trappings there's a vast, empty gulch where the affecting dramatic element should have been found.
Based on the novel "The Last Ride" by Thomas Eidson and adapted by Ken Kaufman ("Space Cowboys"), this story of a frontier doctor who is reluctantly reunited with her estranged father after her teenage daughter is abducted by a treacherous Apache more than slightly recalls the 1956 John Ford classic "The Searchers", but the derivative aspect isn't the major culprit.
Even with the ever-reliable Cate Blanchett and Tommy Lee Jones on hand, the picture seldom feels like anything more than a ride through a Western town set -- it's all rickety facade and scaffolding.
Although Columbia Pictures' marketing has wisely been playing up the thriller element in its TV ads and Howard's name carries some well-deserved weight, "The Missing" still looks to be a tricky sell, especially if it can't bank on year-end critic kudos.
Set in the untamed American Southwest circa 1885, the film wastes no time in establishing its unsettling tone as local healer Maggie Gilkeson (Blanchett) extracts an old woman's rotting tooth.
Soon after, a grisly, long-haired stranger called Jones (Jones) rides into her family's homestead seeking treatment. It turns out the visitor is none other than Maggie's father, who had abandoned her and her mother 20 years earlier to go and live among the Apaches.
The resentful Maggie wants to see neither hide nor ponytailed hair of him, but the two must become allies when her daughter Lilly Evan Rachel Wood) is kidnapped by the psychotic Pesh-Chidin (Eric Schweig), a spell-casting brujo, or male witch, who snatches teenage girls and sells them into Mexican slavery.
Of course, the ensuing trek to rescue Lilly -- in which they're accompanied by her younger sister, Dot (Jenna Boyd) -- is really about things like tolerance and reconciliation, and not just between father and daughter.
Wanting to have its politically correct cake and eat it too, Kaufman's annoyingly black-and-white script, with its borderline cartoonish characterizations, seems to be saying all Indians aren't bad ... but some are really, really bad.
Handed those sorts of archetypes, Blanchett and particularly Jones do what layering they can, but their characters haven't been given enough complexity to keep the viewer involved. With even less to work with, the supporting cast (which also includes Val Kilmer in a cameo as an Army lieutenant) are saddled with whatever version of good or evil they've been assigned.
Having always wanted to do a Western, Howard makes sure to get everything in, right down to the flaming arrows. And while he and cinematographer Salvatore Totino take full advantage of their New Mexico locations, very little of it carries any emotional weight despite the constant tug of composer James Horner's "Titanic"-sized score.
In the end, while Blanchett's Maggie comes back with what she was looking for, as well as something that she didn't know she had lost, the film emerges disappointingly empty-handed.
The Missing
Columbia Pictures
Revolution Studios and Imagine Entertainment present a Brian Grazer production in association with Daniel Ostroff Prods. A Ron Howard film
Credits:
Director: Ron Howard
Screenwriter: Ken Kaufman
Based on the novel "The Last Ride" by: Thomas Eidson
Producers: Brian Grazer, Daniel Ostroff, Ron Howard
Executive producers: Todd Hallowell, Steve Crystal
Director of photography: Salvatore Totino
Art director: Guy Barnes
Editors: Dan Hanley, Mike Hill
Costume designer: Julie Weiss
Music: James Horner
Cast:
Samuel Jones: Tommy Lee Jones
Maggie Gilkeson: Cate Blanchett
Lilly: Evan Rachel Wood
Dot: Jenna Boyd
Pesh-Chidin: Eric Schweig
Brake Baldwin: Aaron Eckhart
Kayitah: Jay Tavare
Honesco: Simon Baker
Emiliano: Sergio Calderon
Lt. Jim Ducharme: Val Kilmer
MPAA Rating: R
Running Time -- 130 minutes...
Director Ron Howard's follow-up to his Oscar-winning "A Beautiful Mind" after he parted ways with "The Alamo", this murky, thriller-tinged Western has the terrain down cold -- from the wide-open spaces to the rocky vistas -- but beneath all the requisite genre trappings there's a vast, empty gulch where the affecting dramatic element should have been found.
Based on the novel "The Last Ride" by Thomas Eidson and adapted by Ken Kaufman ("Space Cowboys"), this story of a frontier doctor who is reluctantly reunited with her estranged father after her teenage daughter is abducted by a treacherous Apache more than slightly recalls the 1956 John Ford classic "The Searchers", but the derivative aspect isn't the major culprit.
Even with the ever-reliable Cate Blanchett and Tommy Lee Jones on hand, the picture seldom feels like anything more than a ride through a Western town set -- it's all rickety facade and scaffolding.
Although Columbia Pictures' marketing has wisely been playing up the thriller element in its TV ads and Howard's name carries some well-deserved weight, "The Missing" still looks to be a tricky sell, especially if it can't bank on year-end critic kudos.
Set in the untamed American Southwest circa 1885, the film wastes no time in establishing its unsettling tone as local healer Maggie Gilkeson (Blanchett) extracts an old woman's rotting tooth.
Soon after, a grisly, long-haired stranger called Jones (Jones) rides into her family's homestead seeking treatment. It turns out the visitor is none other than Maggie's father, who had abandoned her and her mother 20 years earlier to go and live among the Apaches.
The resentful Maggie wants to see neither hide nor ponytailed hair of him, but the two must become allies when her daughter Lilly Evan Rachel Wood) is kidnapped by the psychotic Pesh-Chidin (Eric Schweig), a spell-casting brujo, or male witch, who snatches teenage girls and sells them into Mexican slavery.
Of course, the ensuing trek to rescue Lilly -- in which they're accompanied by her younger sister, Dot (Jenna Boyd) -- is really about things like tolerance and reconciliation, and not just between father and daughter.
Wanting to have its politically correct cake and eat it too, Kaufman's annoyingly black-and-white script, with its borderline cartoonish characterizations, seems to be saying all Indians aren't bad ... but some are really, really bad.
Handed those sorts of archetypes, Blanchett and particularly Jones do what layering they can, but their characters haven't been given enough complexity to keep the viewer involved. With even less to work with, the supporting cast (which also includes Val Kilmer in a cameo as an Army lieutenant) are saddled with whatever version of good or evil they've been assigned.
Having always wanted to do a Western, Howard makes sure to get everything in, right down to the flaming arrows. And while he and cinematographer Salvatore Totino take full advantage of their New Mexico locations, very little of it carries any emotional weight despite the constant tug of composer James Horner's "Titanic"-sized score.
In the end, while Blanchett's Maggie comes back with what she was looking for, as well as something that she didn't know she had lost, the film emerges disappointingly empty-handed.
The Missing
Columbia Pictures
Revolution Studios and Imagine Entertainment present a Brian Grazer production in association with Daniel Ostroff Prods. A Ron Howard film
Credits:
Director: Ron Howard
Screenwriter: Ken Kaufman
Based on the novel "The Last Ride" by: Thomas Eidson
Producers: Brian Grazer, Daniel Ostroff, Ron Howard
Executive producers: Todd Hallowell, Steve Crystal
Director of photography: Salvatore Totino
Art director: Guy Barnes
Editors: Dan Hanley, Mike Hill
Costume designer: Julie Weiss
Music: James Horner
Cast:
Samuel Jones: Tommy Lee Jones
Maggie Gilkeson: Cate Blanchett
Lilly: Evan Rachel Wood
Dot: Jenna Boyd
Pesh-Chidin: Eric Schweig
Brake Baldwin: Aaron Eckhart
Kayitah: Jay Tavare
Honesco: Simon Baker
Emiliano: Sergio Calderon
Lt. Jim Ducharme: Val Kilmer
MPAA Rating: R
Running Time -- 130 minutes...
- 12/8/2003
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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