Twilight parody goes serious with $500-million lawsuit against Summit Entertainment and Lionsgate Pictures
Late spring/summer 2013 news: Twiharder, not the son of Twilight and Die Harder but just Another Twilight Parody, reportedly had a planned late 2012 release date to coincide with the release of Summit Entertainment/Lionsgate Pictures’ own The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2, the final installment in the Twilight movie franchise. But at the time, Summit/Lionsgate felt it would be unhealthy to have Kristen Stewart (as Bella Swan-Cullen), Robert Pattinson (as Edward Cullen), and Taylor Lautner (as Jacob Black) fighting off not only the mean-spirited Volturi, but also micro-budget parodists. As a result, a cease-and-desist letter was sent to the Twiharder producers at Between the Lines Prods.
But never say Die, Twiharder, Die! Like Dracula risen from the grave, they’re back – at a less-Hollywood-friendly New York federal court, too, bringing with them a 219-page complaint and a demand for $500 million in damages from Summit/Lionsgate, whom they accuse of “anti-competitive” practices and abuse of intellectual property law, claiming that the Hollywood studio’s cease-and-desist letter scared off potential distributors.
Twilight parody vs. Twilight: Fair Use Doctrine
According to EW.com, the lawsuit asserts that Twiharder clearly falls under the Fair Use Doctrine, which protects the rights of “independent filmmakers, parodists and other ‘counter-cultural’ artists who create separate or derivative works that may be related to, inspired by or comment upon the pop culture events that dominate the national Cineplex and, by extension the attitudes, perspectives and behaviors of the populace.”
And whether you love and/or hate Twilight and any or all of those associated with the literary/movie series, you can’t deny that the Stephenie Meyer-created romantic-fantasy tales have become a worldwide cultural phenomenon.
There’s more to the Twiharder lawsuit: Between the Lines Prods. accuses Summit/Lionsgate of registering trademarks for more than a dozen Twilight-related names, “thereby multiplying the universe of potential infringers exponentially.” They claim that the studio’s intent is “to utilize the ‘tentpole’ model as a leveraging mechanism to prop up a full-scale, 360-degree IP monopoly in which all the statutory rights granted by the Copyright Act simply become interchangeable with (and/or subsumed by) the statutory privileges granted by the Trademark Act.”
In other words, if you manage to get Fair Use Doctrine protection to create a Twilight-related work, you may still be infringing on Summit/Lionsgate’s Trademark rights.
Recent The Hobbit precedent
Although Summit/Lionsgate may have been inspired by the Walt Disney Studios, which ferociously (and in the views of some, unjustly, unfairly) guards its properties, there have been other such fights in the past.
In fact, as recently as last December, Warner Bros. succeeded in halting the direct-to-DVD release of Joseph J. Lawson’s parody Age of the Hobbits, claiming that it would have (very stupid?) people mixing it up with Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which hit the world’s screens at that time. The key issue here was the name “Hobbit”; hence, Age of the Hobbits is now known as Clash of the Empires.
Of course, if lawsuit comes to counterlawsuit, Summit/Lionsgate – especially following The Hunger Games and Breaking Dawn – Part 2 – have enough cash to buy out the entire U.S. Justice System. The studio’s fiscal 2013 revenue, for instance, topped $2.71 billion.
But things will likely not reach that far. After all, the Twilight movie franchise is a thing of the past; even if Twiharder finds any DVD distributors willing to make the parody available, it could have an even tougher time finding an audience than the M. Night Shyamalan-Will Smith collaboration After Earth.
And it remains to be seen whether or not Summit/Lionsgate will be willing to hand out any sort of compensation to Between the Lines Prods. Having said that, one thing is for certain: The $500-million lawsuit against the studio has brought infinitely more attention to Twiharder than it would have enjoyed merely by coming out at the same time as Breaking Dawn – Part 2.
Twilight movie parodies
Twiharder was directed by Giorgio Caridi, from a screenplay by leading men John Gearries (The Young and the Restless) and Christopher Sean (The Bold and the Brave). Both Gearries and Sean also executive-produced the film, using funds out of their own pockets.
Previous Twilight parodies include Craig Moss’ direct-to-DVD Breaking Wind (2012), featuring Heather Ann Davis, Eric Callero, and Frank Pacheco; and Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer’s Vampires Suck (2010), featuring Jenn Proske as Becca Crane, Matt Lanter as Edward Sullen, and Chris Riggi as Jacob White.
Somewhat surprisingly, the $20 million budget Vampires Suck bit a not-unimpressive $80.5 million chunk out of the worldwide box office. In Germany, for instance, Vampires Suck was a bigger box office hit than Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief and Up in the Air.
John Gearries, Tanya Zoeller, Christopher Sean in Twiharder poster: Between the Lines Prods.
Jonathan Rhys Meyers in The Tudors.
Jonathan Rhys Meyers to star in Star Wars: Episode VII?
Jonathan Rhys Meyers is “in talks” to star in J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars: Episode VII, according to Latino Review. Best known for his role as King Henry VIII in the Showtime series The Tudors, which also features upcoming Man of Steel Henry Cavill, Rhys Meyers has already been featured in one Abrams movie: Mission: Impossible III (2003), in which he supported Tom Cruise.
At this stage, it’s unclear which role he would play in Star Wars: Episode VII, now a Walt Disney Studios production. The next installment in the blockbuster franchise is reportedly to continue the Star Wars saga where Return of the Jedi left off.
Having said that, in case Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Billy Dee Williams, and Anthony Daniels (perhaps a little rustier?) are indeed returning to the Star Wars fold, then Episode VII must begin a few decades after the conclusion of Return of the Jedi. Filming of the next Star Wars movie should commence next year in the United Kingdom, so it can be ready for release in 2015.
To date, Jonathan Rhys Meyers’ most renowned movie role is that of the ambitious social climber in Woody Allen’s unofficial An American Tragedy/A Place in the Sun remake Match Point (2005).
Jonathan Rhys Meyers The Tudors image: Showtime | HBO.
Gravity explodes as George Clooney and Sandra Bullock go flying
George Clooney and Sandra Bullock become the victims of an unfortunate incident while watching the sun rise. Skin cancer? Nope. Following an explosion, Clooney and Bullock literally go flying as something has collided against their space shuttle. See, they’re watching the sun “rise” from way up there.
Now, although the Gravity special effects look just fine – visually, the film is reminiscent of sequences found in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey – it’s hard to imagine what looks like a minimalist solar-system drama getting shortlisted for the Best Visual Effects Academy Award when the competition is bound to include, among other bombastic fare, titles like World War Z, Pacific Rim, and Iron Man 3.
Gravity was directed by Y Tu Mamá También and Children of Men’s Alfonso Cuarón. The supporting cast includes several meteorites (or debris?) and a couple of space suits.
Of note: Before George Clooney was cast, Gravity’s veteran astronaut was to have been played by Robert Downey Jr. Prior to Sandra Bullock’s casting, the space-traveling newcomer was at some point or other to have been played by Angelina Jolie, Marion Cotillard, Scarlett Johansson, Blake Lively, or Natalie Portman.
The Gravity screenplay was written by Alfonso Cuarón and his son Jonás Cuarón (Year of the Nail). And if any U.S. critic dares to tell us that Gravity either has or lacks gravitas, off with their head!
Gravity’s North American release date is Oct. 4, nearly a year after its originally scheduled November 2012 launch.
Pacific Rim trailer: The kaiju.
Pacific Rim trailer: Jaegers fight Kaiju to save humankind from extinction – but why bother?
Michael Bay’s Transformers 5 (or 6 or 7, sorry, lost count) has a new trailer – er … scratch that. Let me start again: Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim has a new trailer. Before you check it out, remember that every similarity between del Toro’s Pacific Rim and Bay’s Transformers movies (and Matt Reeves’ Cloverfield and Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds and Peter Berg’s Battleship and Gareth Edwards’ upcoming Godzilla remake and TV’s The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and …) is a mere coincidence. After all, the Pacific Rim screenplay (credited to del Toro and Travis Beacham) is based on an “original story” – a.k.a. film treatment – penned by Beacham. Now, check out the Pacific Rim trailer below. (Image: Pacific Rim movie star Kaiju.)
Pacific Rim Trailer insights
So, what does the new Pacific Rim trailer tell us about the film’s plot and characters? Well, the trailer opens with the following line: “We always thought alien life would come from the stars, but it came from deep beneath the Pacific.” In other words, no Pacific Rim-mer has ever watched any Japanese monster movie or Spielberg’s War of the Worlds or Eugène Lourié’s The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.
As for any profound insights into plot and characters – you must be kidding. In fact, watching the Pacific Rim trailer made me wonder if Guillermo del Toro’s latest will feature any recognizable narrative or three-dimensional human beings, 3D glasses notwithstanding. For the trailer is all about the giant Transformers robots – er … the Jaegers, who will fight the monsters from beneath the sea, a.k.a. Kaiju, to the death. Or to the last scrap of rusty metal. Nothing else matters.
A feast for the eye, a pain in the ear
I doubt it that Pacific Rim will get Academy Award recognition in the acting categories or for Best Original Screenplay – though one never knows with the Academy – but Oscar nods for Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Sound Recording are all but guaranteed.
Say what you will about the film’s plot and acting (if any), but Pacific Rim looks like a feast for the eye and torture to the ears. Tell me you’re not impressed by the Kaiju vs. Jaeger fights. One they’re done with one another, they’ll also be done with the urban area where they’ve performed their oversized boxing match. And chances are that once they’re done, you’ll be a little more hard-of-hearing as well.
Anyhow, here’s hoping Pacific Rim will offer at least a bit of irony. The kaiju are defeated, millions of humans (even those along the Atlantic) cheer in unison believing themselves safe from extinction – as the polar icecaps keep on melting away at an ever faster pace. As the old saying goes, the apocalypse must go on.
Pacific Rim cast and release date
The Pacific Rim cast includes Charlie Hunnam, Ron Perlman, Idris Elba, Academy Award nominee Rinko Kikuchi (Babel, 2006), Clifton Collins Jr., Charlie Day, Max Martini, Heather Doerksen, and Robert Morse. At one point, Tom Cruise was considered for a key role, but didn’t pan out. Too bad, as Warner Bros. could then have sold the (reportedly) $150 million budget Pacific Rim as a sequel (to War of the Worlds).
Pacific Rim is expected to come out on July 12 in all three North American countries, the U.K., and several other European territories.
Shia LaBeouf sex scene in Nymphomaniac with Stacy Martin.
Nymphomaniac: Shia LaBeouf sex scene
A PG-rated (okay, PG-13-rated) still – or publicity shot – from Lars von Trier’s (reportedly) sexually explicit Nymphomaniac: Vol. I, starring Shia LaBeouf and newcomer Stacy Martin, was recently posted on the film’s website and elsewhere online. Note that any body parts that could even remotely be considered risqué were either left on the cropping-room floor (e.g., Shia LaBeouf’s crotch – in fact, most of LaBeouf’s body) or carefully concealed by clever lighting or equally clever hair placement. Now, don’t go blaming Lars von Trier for all this circumspection; Nymphomaniac’s U.S. distributor Magnolia Pictures is likely the one that doesn’t want to offend the sensibilities of the Prudish & Proud crowd.
Each month, Lars Von Trier will be releasing teasers from Nymphomaniac’s various chapters. In the film (a.k.a. Nymph()maniac), Charlotte Gainsbourg plays a woman named Joe (no relation to MGM’s 1943 movie A Guy Named Joe), who reminisces about her countless sexcapades.
In Chapter 2, Shia LaBeouf plays Jerôme while Stacy Martin is the younger Joe. It’s a long and tortuous route from Michael Bay to Lars von Trier, and here’s wondering if Jerôme will sound as if he was born and raised in Los Angeles. (Just checked the Nymphomaniac Chapter 2 preview, which you can see below; LaBeouf sounds like your typical English guy with a French name.)
And here’s Lars von Trier’s brief “Nymphomaniac Chapter 2 (Jerôme)” synopsis:
“Love is just lust with jealousy added.” Though love is a shallow feeling in the eyes of the cynical nymphomaniac, young Joe is met by forces penetrating her armoured defences. His name is Jerôme.
Shia LaBeouf heads Nymphomaniac cast
The Nymphomaniac cast includes the aforementioned Shia LaBeouf, the star of Michael Bay’s Transformers movies, in addition to Oliver Stone’s box office disappointment Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps and Robert Redford’s The Company You Keep; Charlotte Gainsbourg, daughter of 1960s and 1970s icons Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg, one of the stars of Lars von Trier’s Melancholia, and a Cannes Film Festival Best Actress winner for von Trier’s Antichrist; and Stacy Martin, who, according to the IMDb, has also been cast in Heidi Greensmith’s Barking at Trees.
Also in the Nymphomaniac cast, as per the IMDb: Stellan Skarsgård, Christian Slater, Jamie Bell, Uma Thurman, Willem Dafoe, Connie Nielsen, Jean-Marc Barr, Mia Goth, Udo Kier, Sophie Kennedy Clark, Michael Pas, Caroline Goodall, Jesper Christensen, Hugo Speer, Kate Ashfield, and Saskia Reeves.
Nymphomaniac release date
In the U.S., Nymphomaniac is expected to come out sometime in 2014; according to online reports, it opens in Denmark on Christmas Day 2013. Unfortunately for those involved in the production, chances are that Lars von Trier’s latest will not be screening at the Cannes Film Festival. But Cannes’ loss may turn out to be Berlin’s gain.
Shia LaBeouf Nymphomaniac sex scene with Stacy Martin image: Magnolia Pictures.
Channing Tatum to direct Magic Mike 2?
Channing Tatum may co-direct the sequel to his 2012 sleeper domestic hit Magic Mike. Unlike the original film, directed by Academy Award winner Steven Soderbergh (Traffic, 2000) and loosely based on Tatum’s own experiences as a stripper, the star of The Vow and 21 Jump Street told The Hollywood Reporter that the concisely titled (at least for now) Magic Mike 2 “will be a road-trip movie, and it will essentially be the movie that everyone thought the first one was going to be: crazy and fun and less slice-of-life and less drama. The first one, we had to make not so cheesy and campy; this one we are going to swing for the fences.”
Channing Tatum adds that either he and producing partner Reid Carolin will co-direct the fence-swinging Magic Mike 2, or the job will go to frequent Steven Soderbergh collaborator Greg Jacobs, one of the producers of the original Magic Mike.
Curiously, although Steven Soderbergh has officially retired from directing movies, he apparently is still willing to work in some other capacity on a film set. In his THR interview, Channing Tatum explains that Soderbergh “said he would shoot it; he would DP it” – i.e., he’d be the Magic Mike 2 cinematographer.
Channing Tatum & ‘hero’ Genghis Khan
Now, much more interesting than anything about Magic Mike 2 is Channing Tatum’s interest in Genghis Khan, one of his “heroes.”
Sergey Bodrov, whose Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Khan was (somewhat strangely) nominated for the 2007 Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award, gave Tatum a book on the Central Asian conqueror whose hordes spread terror in much of central Asia and eastern Europe in the early 13th century.
Bodrov and Tatum, in fact, met to discuss Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Khan, apparently as a possible vehicle for the American actor as “at that time, he hadn’t decided he was going to use an Asian actor because Genghis Khan is rumored to have had freckles and green eyes and red hair because he was more from northern Mongolia. Back in the day, the Mongolians didn’t have the dark features they have today.” Be that as it may, Japanese actor Tadanobu Asano ended up playing Temudjin – later known as Genghis Khan.
But would Channing Tatum have been believable as Genghis Khan? Well, if Anthony Quinn, Jack Palance, and Gerard Butler can play Attila the Hun, why not Channing Tatum as an all-American central Asian conqueror? And let’s not forget that in Henry Levin’s Genghis Khan (1966), the title role went to an Egyptian: Omar Sharif.
According to the IMDb, another Genghis Khan is in the works, to come out in 2014. RZA is to be the film’s director, from a screenplay by John Milius, whose credits range from the revered Apocalypse Now to the reviled Red Dawn (1984).
Besides Channing Tatum, the original Magic Mike cast includes Alex Pettyfer, Matt Bomer, Olivia Munn, Matthew McConaughey, and Joe Manganiello.
Channing Tatum Magic Mike image: Warner Bros.
When does Avatar 2 come out?
If all goes as planned, James Cameron’s Avatar, the late 2009/early 2010 blockbuster that spearheaded the (currently dwindling) popularity of 3D movies, will have no less than three sequels. Sigourney Weaver had said as much a while back: Three movies, filmed concurrently à la Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies.
And here come James Cameron and Avatar distributor 20th Century Fox, announcing that the three sequels will be released as follows:
- Avatar 2 (not to be confused with Avatar: The Last Airbender or Avatar: The Legend of Korra or online thumbnail avatars) will reach theaters in December 2016, a full seven years after the original.
- The second sequel (or third Avatar movie) will come out in December 2017.
- The third sequel will come out in December 2018.
At least for the time being, the Avatar sequels will be written by James Cameron himself, alongside collaborators Josh Friedman (War of the Worlds), Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver (Rise of the Planets of the Apes, the upcoming Jurassic Park IV), and Shane Salerno (Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, Armageddon).
Of note, Cameron will apparently be much too busy getting all Avatared out to have any time to direct Angelina Jolie at Sony Pictures’ proposed Cleopatra.
Ah, the irony, if…
Irony of Ironies: if somewhere along the way Fox decides to release one or more Avatar sequels only in 2D in the United States and Canada.
Admittedly, that’s not likely to happen even if 3D goes totally bust at other studios. And that is also not all that likely to happen, as 3D movies continue to perform remarkably well in the international market – the current bread and butter, or rather, dumplings and stroganoff – of mega-budget Hollywood productions.
The original Avatar cast features Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, Giovanni Ribisi, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, and Wes Studi.
Avatar box office
If you believe that inflation exists only on Pandora, Avatar is the biggest box office hit since dinosaurs ruled the Earth. (Pre-Triassic box office reports are unavailable.) But once you realize that movie ticket prices usually go up every year (and that 3D surcharges inflate grosses in relation to actual ticket sales), Avatar’s $760.5 million earned in the U.S. and Canada lands it at no. 14 (not considering 3D surcharges) on the inflation-adjusted chart, with about $794 million.
James Cameron’s environmentally conscious sci-fi fantasy trails more than a dozen titles, among them Gone with the Wind, Star Wars, The Sound of Music, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, and Cameron’s own Titanic.
Now, in large part thanks to population growth, and economic and political developments that have led to the recent emergence of major international markets such as Russia, China, Mexico, Brazil, and South Korea, Avatar is quite possibly the biggest international box office hit ever. It’s too bad that international figures for worldwide blockbusters such as Gone with the Wind, Ben-Hur (both 1925 and 1959), The Ten Commandments, Doctor Zhivago, and The Sound of Music remain unavailable.
Mel Gibson, Antonio Banderas ‘confirmed’ for The Expendables 3
Mel Gibson and Antonio Banderas have been “confirmed” as the latest The Expendables 3 cast members, according to TheWrap, quoting a Sylvester Stallone representative. The Expendables 3 is to be directed by Patrick Hughes, from a screenplay by Stallone and Richard Wenk. (Shocking, but these things actually do have scripts.)
Mel Gibson’s most recent star vehicles, Martin Campbell’s 2010 thriller Edge of Darkness (box office) and Jodie Foster’s 2011 psychological comedy-drama The Beaver (box office) were major commercial disappointments in the U.S. and elsewhere.
In the 1980s, Antonio Banderas was an edgy actor in edgier Pedro Almodóvar comedies and dramas (e.g., Law of Desire, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!). After going Hollywood in the early 1990s, Banderas dumbed down his output, becoming a mainstream performer in fare like Spy Kids, The Mask of Zorro, and Assassins, opposite Sylvester Stallone.
The Expendables 3 is expected to hit U.S. and Canadian screens on Aug. 15. As per online sources, besides Sylvester Stallone, Mel Gibson, and Antonio Banderas, the cast includes Dolph Lundgren, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Jackie Chan, Wesley Snipes, Steven Seagal, and, so as to lure the under-60 crowd, Resident Evil’s Milla Jovovich and The Twilight Saga’s Kellan Lutz.
Also: A few days ago, it was announced that Harrison Ford would replace Bruce Willis, with whom Stallone has had a public spat via Twitter, calling the Another Day to Die Hard star “greedy and lazy.” Best known for Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark and their sequels, Ford once upon a time was a Best Actor Oscar nominee for Peter Weir’s 1985 crime drama Witness.
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