RoboCop 1987 Returns + Crimson Peak Cast: Del Toro-Chastain Collaboration

RoboCop 1987 with Nancy Allen and Peter Weller.

‘RoboCop’ 1987 special screening featuring Nancy Allen & Peter Weller + Paul Verhoeven

RoboCop, the 1987 original directed by Paul Verhoeven, and starring Peter Weller and Nancy Allen, will have a special screening at 12 noon on Saturday, May 18, at the Harmony Gold Theater in Los Angeles. The screening and reception, which will be hosted by Allen, Weller, and Verhoeven, will also feature a Q&A and autograph session. (Image: 1987 RoboCop Nancy Allen, Peter Weller.)

Proceeds from the hefty $75 (general) / $125 (VIP) tickets will go to weSPARK, described as “an organization that enhances the quality of life for cancer patients, family and friends by providing multiple services designed to help heal the mind, body and spirit.”

The Harmony Gold Theater is located at 7655 W Sunset Blvd., in Hollywood. Tickets can be purchased here. For more information, visit www.westpark.org.

‘Robocop’ 1987 & 2014

Besides Nancy Allen and Peter Weller, the 1987 RoboCop features veteran Dan O’Herlihy (1954 Best Actor nominee for Luis Buñuel’s Adventures of Robinson Crusoe), Ronny Cox, Kurtwood Smith, Miguel Ferrer (son of Oscar winner José Ferrer and Rosemary Clooney, and George Clooney’s cousin), Robert DoQui, and Ray Wise.

Directed by José Padilha, the 2014 RoboCop remake stars Joel Kinnaman (seen in David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), Abbie Cornish (seen in Zack Snyder’s box office dud Sucker Punch), Michael Keaton (Batman), Jennifer Ehle, Jay Baruchel, Gary Oldman, Samuel L. Jackson, Jackie Earle Haley, Michael Kenneth Williams, Aimee Garcia, Zach Grenier, and Marianne Jean-Baptiste. RoboCop 2014 is scheduled to open in February 2014.

RoboCop 1987 actress Nancy Allen

RoboCop was Nancy Allen’s biggest box office hit; yet, Allen is best known for her collaborations with Brian De Palma: a supporting role in Carrie (1976), with Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie; and leads in Dressed to Kill (1980), trying to figure out who killed Angie Dickinson, and Blow Out (1981), opposite John Travolta.

Additionally, among her nearly 30 features, Nancy Allen had a supporting role in Steven Spielberg’s box office bomb 1941 (1979), and leads in Glenn Jordan’s The Buddy System, opposite Richard Dreyfuss and Susan Sarandon, and Stewart Raffill’s The Philadelphia Experiment (1984), with Michael Paré.

According to the IMDb, Allen’s sole movie appearance in the last twelve years was in Chris LaMont’s comedy-drama thriller My Apocalypse / Quality Time (2008), featuring Corin Nemec, Bruce Weitz, John de Lancie, and Gail Strickland.

Nancy Allen, Peter Weller 1987 RoboCop photo: Orion Pictures / MGM.

Crimson Peak cast addition Jessica Chastain: Guillermo del Toro collaboration.

Jessica Chastain to join Guillermo del Toro haunted-house movie Crimson Peak

Jessica Chastain, two-time Academy Award nominee and all-around peripatetic actress (something like 328 movies in the last three years), is in “final negotiations” to join the ever-larger cast of Guillermo del Toro’s haunted-house thriller Crimson Peak. If all goes well, Chastain will be seen alongside The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug / Star Trek: Into Darkness’ Benedict Cumberbatch, Pacific Rim / Queer as Folk‘s Charlie Hunnam, and Chastain’s The Help co-star Emma Stone. Of course, in case all those names do indeed end up in the film.

According to Justin Kroll’s Variety report on Jessica Chastain’s Crimson Peak casting, the plot details of the Legendary Pictures production (possibly to be distributed by Universal) remain a mystery. Could it be Robert Wise’s The Haunting meets Jack Clayton’s The Innocents? Juan Antonio Bayona’s The Orphanage meets Paranormal Activity 1, 2, 3, and/or 4? John Hough’s Legend of Hell House meets James Whale’s The Old Dark House, which wasn’t really haunted but might as well have been? Who the devil knows?

As per the report, del Toro and Lucinda Coxon (Wild Target) are currently rewriting the original screenplay (will that end up with an “original story” credit?) by del Toro and Matthew Robbins (Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, Dragonslayer).

Jessica Chastain movies

Jessica Chastain, who turned 36 last March 24, has been quite busy in the last few years. Among Chastain’s 15 movies since 2008 are John Madden’s The Debt, with Sam Worthington and Helen Mirren; Ralph Fiennes’ Coriolanus, with Fiennes and Gerard Butler; Al Pacino’s Wild Salome, with Pacino; and Tate Taylor’s The Help, with Emma Stone and Bryce Dallas Howard.

Also: Terrence Malick’s Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or winner The Tree of Life, with Brad Pitt and Sean Penn; John Hillcoat’s Lawless, with Shia LaBeouf and Tom Hardy; Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty, with Jason Clarke and Joel Edgerton; and Andrés Muschietti’s Mama, with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, and executive-produced by Guillermo del Toro. (See also: “Jessica Chastain & Ang Lee image.”)

Besides the potential Crimson Peak, upcoming Chastain releases are Ned Benson’s combo The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: His and The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Hers, a sort of Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage meets Christine Edzard’s Little Dorrit meets Waris Hussein’s 1973 television movie Divorce His – Divorce Hers (Richard Burton was “his”; Elizabeth Taylor was “hers”): a heterosexual couple’s marriage as seen through the eyes of each spouse. In the The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby cast: James McAvoy, Ciarán Hinds, William Hurt, Viola Davis, Isabelle Huppert, and Bill Hader.

Jessica Chastain’s two Oscar nominations were for The Help (as Best Supporting Actress) and for Zero Dark Thirty (as Best Actress). The winners were, respectively, Octavia Spencer, also for The Help, and Jennifer Lawrence for Silver Linings Playbook. Chastain did, however, win a Best Actress – Drama Golden Globe for Zero Dark Thirty, and won what seemed like hundreds of North American critics awards for her multifarious performances in 2011. (See also: Image of Jessica Chastain with Amanda Seyfried.)

Next in line for Jessica Chastain are Liv Ullmann’s film version of August Strindberg’s Miss Julie (Anita Björk made her mark in the 1951 film version), to co-star Colin Farrell, and possibly, David Yates’ Tarzan, (also possibly) featuring Alexander Skarsgård in the title role. Additionally, the IMDb lists American Darling, an adaptation of a Russell Banks novel to be directed by Denis Villeneuve, as another possibility.

Catching Fire trailer: Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen.

‘Catching Fire’ trailer: Jennifer Lawrence Katniss Everdeen an ‘invincible’ threat

The Catching Fire trailer – or rather, teaser trailer – is now available online. This year’s Best Actress Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook) is back as Katniss Everdeen, the futuristic gladiator who has become a threat to the system. Why? Because Katniss wins. And winning is bad because people worship winners (a.k.a. heroes), and that means they’ll start worshiping Katniss and want to emulate her and become winners all – or something along those lines. (Please scroll down to check out the Hunger Games: Catching Fire trailer.)

“Because of her, they all pose a threat,” says Donald Sutherland’s President Snow to Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Plutarch Heavensbee. “Because of her, they all think they’re invincible.”

The exchange between Sutherland and Hoffman – both acting quite actorishly in the Catching Fire trailer – is revealing. Katniss must be destroyed. Or her image must be destroyed. But Katniss isn’t dead yet, so she finds time for a little drama, a little fighting, and even a little kiss (probably to be nominated for the MTV Movie Awards 2014 in the Best Kiss category).

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire cast

Directed by Francis Lawrence (I Am Legend, Water for Elephants), The Hunger Games: Catching Fire features Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Sam Claflin (as Finnick Odair), Jena Malone, Elizabeth Banks, Alan Ritchson, Stanley Tucci, Willow Shields, Amanda Plummer, Jeffrey Wright, Lenny Kravitz, Lynn Cohen, and Toby Jones. Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire, Salmon Fishing in Yemen) and Michael Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine, the upcoming Tom Cruise sci-fier Oblivion) are credited for the screenplay, based on Suzanne Collins bestselling novel.

See The Hunger Games: Catching Fire trailer below.

Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire photo: Lionsgate Pictures.

Marisa Tomei.

Marisa Tomei & Hugh Grant romantic comedy in the works

Marc Lawrence’s as-yet untitled, New York-set romantic comedy starring Hugh Grant and Academy Award winner Marisa Tomei began principal photography yesterday, producer Martin Shafer announced. (Image: Marisa Tomei.)

The plot is as follows (from the film’s press release):

In 1998, Keith Michaels (Hugh Grant) was on top of the world – a witty, sexy, Englishman in Hollywood who had just won a major screenwriter’s award. Fifteen years later, he’s creatively washed up, divorced, and broke.

With no other options, he takes a job teaching screenwriting at a small college in Binghamton, New York. Although the idea of teaching is less than thrilling, he hopes to make some easy money and enjoy the favors of impressionable young co-eds. What he doesn’t expect to find is romance with a single mom (Marisa Tomei) who’s gone back to school.

The Hugh Grant-Marisa Tomei movie is shooting in and around New York City, in addition to location work in Binghamton, New York. Besides Grant and Tomei, the film features Bella Heathcote, Chris Elliott, J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney. Shafer is producing with Liz Glotzer for Castle Rock Entertainment. FilmNation Entertainment is handling international sales for all territories outside the U.S.

Shafer, Glotzer and Castle Rock Entertainment recently produced Richard Linklater’s Bernie, starring Jack Black and Shirley MacLaine; Friends with Benefits, with Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis; and Whit Stillman’s Damsels in Distress. Additionally, they executive produced Richard Linklater’s upcoming Before Midnight, which reunites Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy in the third installment of the series that began with Before Sunrise.

Marisa Tomei movies

Marisa Tomei movies include Jonathan Lynn’s My Cousin Vinny, with Joe Pesci, and for which Tomei won a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award; Richard Attenborough’s Chaplin, starring a pre-Iron Man, pre-Sherlock Holmes Robert Downey Jr in the title role, and featuring Tomei as comedienne Mabel Normand; Ron Howard’s The Paper, with Michael Keaton, Robert Duvall, and Glenn Close; Michael Winterbottom’s Welcome to Sarajevo, with Stephen Dillane and Woody Harrelson; and Todd Field’s In the Bedroom, starring Sissy Spacek and Tom Wilkinson, and for which Tomei received her second Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination.

More recently, Marisa Tomei was featured in Glenn Ficarra and John Requa’s Crazy, Stupid, Love., with Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Steve Carell, and Julianne Moore; George Clooney’s The Ides of March, with Clooney and Gosling; and Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, with Mickey Rourke and Evan Rachel Wood, and for which Tomei received her third Best Supporting Actress nod.

Divergent: Tony Goldwyn to play Tris’ father. Images shows actor-director Goldwyn on the Conviction set.

‘Divergent’: Tony Goldwyn Joins Cast

Tony Goldwyn, whose acting credits range from Ghost to the television series Scandal, has joined the cast of Summit Entertainment / Lionsgate’s movie adaptation of Divergent, Summit announced today. Currently filming in Chicago under the direction of Neil Burger (The Illusionist, Limitless), the futuristic action-adventure tale is based on author Veronica Roth’s bestseller.

In the role of Andrew, the father of the young Divergent Tris, Tony Goldwyn will be joining The Descendants’ Shailene Woodley (as Tris), Theo James, and Academy Award winner Kate Winslet (whose credits range from Titanic to The Reader). Also in the Divergent cast: Ray Stevenson, Maggie Q, Mekhi Phifer, Jai Courtney, Miles Teller, Zoë Kravitz, Ansel Elgort, Ben Lloyd-Hughes, Ben Lamb, Christian Madsen, and Amy Newbold.

Divergent‘s screenwriter is Vanessa Taylor (Game of Thrones, the Meryl Streep star vehicle Hope Springs), though Evan Daugherty (the Kristen Stewart fantasy adventure Snow White and the Huntsman) wrote the film’s “original draft.” Red Wagon Entertainment’s Douglas Wick and Lucy Fisher are the producers, along with Pouya Shahbazian.

Tony Goldwyn movies

Besides Jerry Zucker’s Oscar-nominated Ghost, which starred Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore, and Whoopi Goldberg, Tony Goldwyn’s other screen credits include Alan J. Pakula’s The Pelican Brief, opposite Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington; Oliver Stone’s Nixon, with Anthony Hopkins and Joan Allen; The Last Samurai, with Tom Cruise; and, more recently, Dennis Iliadis’ The Last House on the Left, with Garret Dillahunt.

‘Divergent’ release date

Divergent is scheduled to open in North America in what Summit calls “The Hunger Games slot”: March 21, 2014. Directed by Gary Ross, and starring Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, and Liam Hemsworth, Lionsgate’s The Hunger Games had one of the biggest opening weekends ever at the domestic box office; the sequel, the Francis Lawrence-directed The Hunger Games: Catching Fire opens Nov. 22 – the old Twilight slot. Distributed by Summit Entertainment, the Twilight movies starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, and Taylor Lautner have grossed more than $3 billion worldwide.

‘Divergent’ plot

Divergent is targeting a similar demographic group to those that flocked to The Hunger Games and the Twilight movies: young adults – in this case, of both genders – who are fans of Roth’s novel about a world in which people find themselves labeled and stuck in groupings based on their personalities. Unlucky Tris Prior is a Divergent, who soon discovers that her particular label is deemed dangerous and should be destroyed.

Tony Goldwyn Conviction image: 20th Century Fox.

Joss Whedon: The Avengers 2 filming dates. Image: Joss Whedon on the 2012 The Avengers set.

‘The Avengers 2’ Filming Dates

The Avengers director Joss Whedon has told ET.com that The Avengers 2 will begin filming in February 2014, from a screenplay Whedon himself wrote. The writer-director added that The Avengers 2 plot is rooted on ideas that came to his head before he began working on the (ultimately) billionaire blockbuster. (Please scroll down to check out the brief video interview with Joss Whedon.)

“I didn’t think I was gonna do the second one,” Whedon, somewhat curiously, remarked, “but I had an idea for it before I had figured out the first one. You go into a movie not assuming that there’s going to be [a sequel]. I’ve seen plenty of movies that were the first part of the trilogy that never happened and it’s terrible … You don’t save anything for the trip back.”

But really, how could anyone, anywhere, at any time actually expect The Avengers to end up as the stand-alone Grand Hotel of Marvel super-heroes?

The Avengers grossed $1.51 billion at the worldwide box office, nearly 60 percent of that amount coming from outside North America. As sequels – especially blow ’em up 3D sequels – tend to perform exceedingly well internationally, expect The Avengers 2 to a) outgross the original b) earn at least two-thirds of its gross at the international box office.

The Avengers 2 release date

The Avengers 2 is scheduled to come out on May 1, 2015. Expected to return for the Avengers sequel are Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Chris Evans as Steve Rogers / Captain America, Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow, Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark / Iron Man, Jeremy Renner as Clint Barton / Hawkeye, Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner / The Hulk, Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill, and Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. The Hurt Locker‘s Anthony Mackie is a possible addition to the Avengers 2 cast, playing Sam Wilson / The Falcon.

For all it’s worth, The Avengers won three MTV Movie Awards this past weekend: Movie of the Year, Best Villain (Tom Hiddleston as Loki), and Best Fight.

Joss Whedon movies

Besides his television work (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Dollhouse), Joss Whedon directed the thriller Serenity (2005), a box office disappointment ($38.6 million worldwide according to figures found at Boxofficemojo.com) starring Nathan Fillion and Gina Torres, and the Shakespearean comedy Much Ado About Nothing (2012), featuring Fillion and The Avengers’ Clark Gregg. Next in line is the TV movie Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., starring Gregg as Phil Coulson.

Joss Whedon on The Avengers set image: Marvel / Disney.

Lionsgate new logo: More clouds than there are in heaven

Earlier today, Lionsgate unveiled its new corporate logo – cloudy with a chance of box office hits? – at the CinemaCon theatrical convention held in The Colosseum at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. According to the studio’s press release, the new logo “kicked off Lionsgate’s introduction of its upcoming feature film slate to the theatrical exhibition community.”

The new Lionsgate logo was designed by Devastudios, under the direction of Lionsgate Chief Marketing Officer Tim Palen. Among Devastudios’ recent design projects are Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel, which stars Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, and Russell Crowe; Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby, with Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, Tobey Maguire, and Joel Edgerton; DreamWorks Animation’s The Croods, featuring the voices of Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds, and Nicolas Cage; Gore Verbinski’s The Lone Ranger, with Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer; Noam Munro’s 300: Rise of an Empire, with Lena Headey, Eva Green, and Rodrigo Santoro; David Soren’s Turbo, with Ryan Reynolds and Paul Giamatti; and the Paramount 100th Anniversary Logo.

Lionsgate movies’ box office

As for Lionsgate, which annexed Summit Entertainment last year, the studio’s grossed $1.24 billion at the domestic box office in 2012, thus becoming, as per the press release, “the first nontraditional major studio to break the billion-dollar mark at the domestic box office in a single calendar year.”

Thanks to Gary Ross’ The Hunger Games, starring Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, and Liam Hemsworth, and especially to Bill Condon’s The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2, starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, and Taylor Lautner, Lionsgate’s movies brought in over $2.5 billion at the global box office last year.

A curiosity: Back in the mid-to-late 1920s, the relatively minor Warner Bros. studios became a force to be reckoned with following their use of sound in movies such as Don Juan, starring Drew Barrymore’s grandfather John Barrymore, and The Jazz Singer, the first (part-)talking picture, starring Al Jolson. Lionsgate, for its part, has become a force to be reckoned with following their use of young-adult fare in movies, as can be attested by The Hunger Games and, via Summit, The Twilight Saga, not to mention the upcoming Ender’s Game and Divergent.

Upcoming Lionsgate movies

Upcoming Lionsgate releases include Justin Zackham’s The Big Wedding, featuring Amanda Seyfried, Robert De Niro, Diane Keaton, Susan Sarandon, Katherine Heigl, Robin Williams, Topher Grace, and Ben Barnes; Francis Lawrence’s The Hunger Games: Catching Fire; Neil Burger’s Divergent, with Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Kate Winslet, and Tony Goldwyn; Gavin Hood’s Ender’s Game, with Harrison Ford, Abigail Breslin, Hailee Steinfeld, Asa Butterfield, and Ben Kingsley; Louis Leterrier’s Now You See Me, featuring Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, Michael Caine, and Morgan Freeman; and Dean Parisot’s Red 2, starring Helen Mirren, Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Mary Louise-Parker, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Anthony Hopkins.