The Point Radio: Will Fans Accept JLA WAR and VAMPIRE ACADEMY?
Transcript
The Point Radio It's my prob, taking a successful fantasy property and moving it over to another medium can always be a little risky, especially for the fans. We talk more to the folks behind Vampire Academy about what their followers can expect on the big screen.
Plus DC's Justice League War. Is it RJLA or something different? Let's get to The Point. This is The Point. The Point Radio.
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DC's newest direct to DVD release Justice League War is based on the new 52 version of the JLA. But there are some differences. What are they? Well, we asked director Jay Olivia.
It's not a direct adaptation like I've done with Dark Knight Returns. It's loosely adapted for Wong Pumawat, what Jim Lee and Geoff Johns had done in the original, I think issues one to six. So there are moments that are from the comic, but there's other things that we've kind of changed a little bit and elaborated on.
Of course, we've added Shazam into the mix. But overall, I think it's one of the things where fans who have read the comic will enjoy the film and fans who've never read the comic might be interested to go back and read the actual original source material. As a new frontman, stepping in for Bruce Timm is James Tucker, who's in charge of keeping
the direct DC features on track. Well, it was a chance to do something new. They asked me when Bruce decided to focus on Green Lantern and do some other projects. And they asked me to take over. I didn't know if this is what we were going to be doing.
So that kind of came after the fact. But I was happy that that was the direction we were taking because it was totally different from what Bruce and those guys had done before. And I like world building and stuff. So it's kind of a nice opportunity to have continuity amongst movies between the movies.
And yet the Batman will feel, Son of Batman will feel totally different than Justice League. But it's kind of like comics in a way where they're connected but not connected. Like Justice League comics, totally different from Batman comics, yet Batman's involved. James admits that in Justice League War it is a little different from what we saw in the comics.
Yeah, I mean, I worked on Justice League with Bruce in Justice League Unlimited and I didn't want to go back and do exactly that. But when I read the New 52 Justice League, I could see they were trying to kind of break down the Justice League and not make it something where you instantly knew what to expect. So we kind of took that aspect of it and ran with it and kind of pushed everyone's personalities
into different areas. So if the fans are expecting pretty much a carbon copy of the TV series, they're not going to get that. It's going to be a little edgier and definitely more violent, I have to say. So it's not like they're, it's not super friendly.
But overall, he's pleased with the direction. Yeah, I love Flashpoint. I loved how Flashpoint turned out because that was very unexpected. Like even to me, we did, when we went into it, we didn't really, we didn't really know if we were going to be able to pull it off and, you know, but the kernel of that story
is somehow, has a lot of heart. And this one to me is a lot of, it's like a romp. It's got a, it's got a lot of action, got a lot of excitement. It feels like a big blockbuster summer movie within our budget. But, so it's a totally different movie.
Like I said, I want each movie to feel like it's, its own genre of movie. Like it's not, they're not all of the same, you know, intensity. Recently DC announced that future projects, including Batman and JLA features, would all exist in the same continuity. But James said that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to look alike.
Because of the Batman and the son of Batman and Justice League are in the same universe, they will share the same art style. But that doesn't mean they'll look just alike. So it's subtle. There's things with color we do.
The BG style will be slightly different. Our Batman will be definitely noir-ish as opposed to Justice League, which is a lot cleaner and more like a summer blockbuster, you know. As in the past, Andrea Romano is in charge of choosing the actors involved with the project. And she still takes that job very seriously.
You know, if they grew up reading the comic books, in their head they heard a voice. And I'm supposed to find that voice that makes everybody happy. And so it's a very hard responsibility. I take it seriously. I figure if I can please myself because I'm very, you know, critical of that.
That if I do a good job and I'm satisfied, then hopefully the majority of the fans will. So as far as a wish list of future projects, J.Olivia has a few. I'd love to do a Gotham by Gas like. One of the movies that I want to do is an Arkham Asylum one, but I want to do Batman, it's basically Batman game of death where you just, it's Batman, the silence taken over
by the inmates and Batman's fighting his rogues gallery all the way up to Joker. Like it's like the video game, but to me I would just do it. To me that would be pretty fun. It's Justice League War, available on Blu-ray and on video on demand. As always, here we go with the latest in pop culture.
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Right now it looks like the Lego movie is poised to be the second biggest animated film as far as advanced ticket sales go, only surpassed by Toy Story 3 a couple of years ago. Of course we'll find out more in the next couple of days as the box office numbers come in. The Lego movie opens in theaters this weekend.
It's official now AMC will be the home of the new Preacher series. It'll be written and produced by Seth Rogen, but at this point in time it's reported that Rogen will not appear in front of the camera in the show. Rogen will be teamed with his writing partner Evan Goldberg who also worked with him on Superbad Pineapple Express and last summer's This is the End.
Even better news is the announcement of Steve Kaitlin, a showrunner. Kaitlin most recently known as the showrunner for Breaking Bad. It's always interesting to look at the list of books that are selling on Amazon and in bookstores outside of the usual comic store graphic novel sales reports we give you every couple of weeks.
Top 10 best selling graphic novels in this arena include a lot of anime starting at number 10 with Naruto volume 63 at number 9, Monster Misumi volume 2, Attack on Titan volume 2 is at number 8, Batman volume 3, Death of the Family from DC at number 7, a pair of Walking Dead books next, Walking Dead Compendium number 2 is at number 6, at number 5 the first volume of that series and at number 4, Walking Dead volume 19.
Number 3 best selling graphic novel Attack on Titan volume 1, Attack on Titan volume 10 holds the number 2 spot and the number 1 best seller is Naruto volume 64 from Viz. In a move that obviously is the start of something Hulu will include a YouTube original from the Geek and Sundry channel on their network it's a new series called Cap'r about three immortals and their human roommate.
There will be 9 episodes that are already appearing on YouTube the first two will be available and then more will follow in the weeks after that. There's also talk that a lot more of the Geek and Sundry material will appear on YouTube in the weeks to come. After 8 seasons, Psych is wrapping it up on the USA Network at the end of the current
run of episodes. The finale will be coming in a few weeks and will be followed by a special live Q&A with the cast right after that last episode. The finale airs on March 26th on USA however there are talks that the characters from the show may continue in another venue to be announced later in the year.
If Angeline Lilly has been added to the cast of the Marvel and Van movie although we're not sure exactly what character she's playing it probably won't be Janet Van Dine and more than likely will be some again love interest for Paul Rudd's character. At feelings reinforced with the fact that Michael Douglas will be playing some version of Hank Pym in the movie.
In a week that saw DC and Marvel swap high level editors there's been another crossing of the street. This time in the talent department John Hormita Jr. surprisingly will be moving to DC and when he's there he'll be drawing the ongoing Superman title beginning sometime over the summer.
When that change takes place by the way Geoff Johns will be moving in as the regular writer on the Superman title. The point, the point. Vampire Academy is a best selling series of young adult paranormal romance novels done by author Rochelle Mead.
Rochelle came to the set of the new film based on her books and I asked the cast members what that was like. Actress Lucy Fry. I remember the first thing that I asked was what it was like to see like she you know dreamed up all herself and to see your imagination made physical and real and she said that what
the main difference was is that everything was much grander. The book going into a more kind of Hollywood world I guess everything becomes like characters are all looking really beautiful and the costumes are all amazing and the big, the school was huge and just amazing like a decadent is that the word for it? And yeah she just was really amazed to see everything so glorious that it was so polished
and beautiful and I think that she was quite overwhelmed on her day on set to see that everything had come to life and see Rose and Lissa and Mia and Dom and everyone standing in front of her. Each of the cast has worked hard to interpret the characters in a way that will be familiar to the fans but bring life to them as well.
Actor Dominic Sherwood who plays Christian. I feel a kind of similar sort of thing towards Christian in a weird way that he has his kind of sarcasm and he has his like sardonic nature that is very much a mask for kind of the pain that he's feeling for how degradated he was in school and all of the things that happen with his parents and so on that I feel it's a similar sort of thing with Mia and with
Sammy and her character that it is one of those things that's like when you're a teenager you do have to put up certain walls that kind of defend you from like what can be very mean spirited and very effective when you're young and you're growing so I admire the fact that he kind of finds Lissa and a kindred spirit in Lissa and manages to kind of overcome it and open up for the first time.
I talked to pretty much the whole cast about any changes between the book and the film that fans have to get ready for. I feel like there aren't any changes where like the audience who have read the book are going to be like, oh man, why have they done that? Do you know what I mean?
Like I feel like we, and even Rochelle said herself, like she was very happy that the story has stayed very close to the novel so I'd like to think that we've kept close enough that people aren't going to be outraged with what we've done. Yeah, of course there's lots of little things that are left out and little things that are added for it to make sense in a movie format which you know people are going to feel hard
to accept that because it's going to be a bit different but like we said before, hopefully people will open up and realize that it's got to be different to be a movie. Yeah, writer Dan Waters is just, I mean he wrote Heather because he's phenomenal writer and hilarious. And he, I think just did, no.
He talked about me like that's why I had the fuck button. He did the greatest job of incorporating as much as he put it from the book and also putting sort of his own spin on it with being just a writer of something like Heather and really understanding what it is to be in that teenage world. So with six Vampire Academy books out there so far, there's a lot of story to tell.
And Tom said he's more than ready to jump into a sequel anytime. It's a very difficult thing when we've put so much work in so much. You don't want to have any expectations? Yeah, but for me it's really difficult to not be like, oh I know what Christian does in number two.
Like I know what happens, it's really cool but then it's difficult for us to be like, just keep it on a level until we know exactly what's going on and we don't want to kind of get our hopes up but you know it's one day at a time for me personally like and then hopefully people kind of enjoy what we did and we can be like, right, number two, let's do it, let's move on.
Of course there are plenty of comparisons between Vampire Academy and Twilight and should the film get that kind of recognition? Is the cast ready for it? I talked to Zoey Deutsch and of course Dominic Sherwood. If that's the case then that means this movie was a big success and people enjoyed it.
It made people feel things and they spent their money well. They enjoyed what they saw and they enjoyed the art and therefore we've accomplished what we wanted to you know. So in that sense if you can, for me if I can look at it from that perspective opposed to the word fame or celebrity or whatever blanket you put that situation under, I think it's
a little bit easier to deal with. Yeah it would be like a kind of semblance of success. Like we set out to do this job and we're obviously all aiming to get the same result and if that were to happen, if we were lucky enough for people to kind of take it on as well as that then that to us would be like, count on the back guys, you did it.
Vampire Academy goes from novel to big screen in theaters right now. That doesn't look right now but when we're back we'll be talking with the folks at Star Cross, the new CW series that hopes to succeed where tomorrow people just might not have. In the meantime plenty of pop culture for you 24-7 to get the point radio. Find free laptop or desktop at getthepointradio.com or on any mobile device, Android or Apple
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