Tagged: film

Marketing The Dark Knight After Heath Ledger’s Death

  • News
  • January 25, 2008

There’s been a lot of talk about how the death of Heath Ledger will affect The Dark Knight, but there hasn’t been much response from the studios or producers thus far. Will million-dollar plans get scrapped? Will posters featuring The Joker be removed and/or discontinued? Will they scrap the entire film and just start all over again from scratch??

Okay, so the last question was never really an issue, but you get the idea.

Well, we wish we had all of the answers for you, but we don’t. Instead, we have this article from The Wall Street Journal that manages to get a few quotes from powerful people about the marketing plans for The Dark Knight. However, what really caught our eye about this article was the comprehensive look it provides at the marketing timeline for the film and how all of the bits and pieces fit into a much grander puzzle.

At the defaced Harvey Dent Web page, fans could get a code that allowed them to remove a piece of the overlying image. As more fans participated, Mr. Dent disappeared pixel by pixel, displaying the first official photo of Mr. Ledger’s Joker: a grim white face appearing out of the darkness with dead eyes and an erratic, ruby smile carved into his cheeks.

Not only does it have a long list of sites you can visit for all of the film’s viral-marketed fun, but it also places the information in semi-chronological order – so you can trace the course of the viral campaign at your own pace.

Conan Continues On

  • News
  • January 25, 2008

Conan the Barbarian may be 75 years old, but he can still kick the butts of comics’ youngsters all over town.

From a new coffee-table book and a growing interest in his 1970s stories to the possibility of a new feature film and an upcoming series relaunch, Publishers Weekly provides a nice look at the goings-on in the world of Conan with this recent article.

Among the notable Conan-conscious events set to take place in ’08 is the aforementioned relaunch of Dark Horse Comics’ Conan series, with the current series ending in March at issue #50 and then a new series, Conan the Cimmerian, beginning in June. The new series will be written by ComicMix’s own Timothy Truman and illustrated by Tomas Giorelloand and Richard Corben. It will be edited by Philip Simon.

“With Conan 47–50, readers will see Conan has come to the end of his carefree years as a thief. He’s about to enter the mercenary years. But first, he decides to take a trip back to his homeland, Cimmeria,” Truman said. “His first wanderings into the lands south and east of Cimmeria have been filled with all sorts of nastiness and betrayal and have left a sour taste in his craw. So, he decides to pay a visit back home—just like most teenagers after they take their first stab at the world. (No pun intended, of course.) When he gets there, he finds that he views the place with different eyes, and that people are the same all over.”

The PW crew also chats with Paul Sammon, the writer of the recently released Conan the Phenomenon, a coffee-table hardcover compendium of all things Conan, and investigates the possibility of another Conan feature film.

Ledger Death Leaves Imaginarium Uncertain

  • News
  • January 24, 2008

According to SciFi Wire, the sudden death of actor Heath Ledger has thrown at least one film into a state of limbo. Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus recently wrapped filming in London, but Ledger was expected to play one of the lead roles in the film.

According to the SciFi Wire report, Ledger’s involvement was a key factor in raising the money necessary to produce the film. Imaginarium‘s producers have yet to issue a statement regarding the film’s future.

 

 

Cloverfield Easter Eggs?

  • News
  • January 24, 2008

cloverfield_poster-3235109Okay, so I’m the last person in the world who hasn’t seen Cloverfield. I can deal with that, because I’m a professional – that’s what we do. But for everyone who has seen the film, SciFi Wire has this great little piece about some of the Easter Eggs hidden throughout the film.

Sure, there are definite spoilers in this one, but since I’m the only person in the world who has to worry about them, you can knock yourselves out, folks.

Take for instance, this comment from director Matt Reeves about a certain shot described earlier in the article:

"The thing about that shot is that almost nobody sees the shot, but once you see the shot and the thing in it, you’ll never stop seeing it."

*Sigh*

Free Jumper Comic Preview

jumper-3944718Oni Press is offering a free 23-page preview of the comic tie-in to Jumper, the upcoming big-screen adaptation of the Steven Gould novel. The film stars Hayden Christiansen and Samuel L. Jackson.

From the description of Jumper: Jumpscars:

For centuries Jumpers have lived among us — special individuals with the ability to teleport or "jump" nearly anywhere in the world. For almost as long, the Paladins, a secret and powerful order, have protected us from these dangerous and unpredictable individuals, sacrificing everything to keep humanity safe!

The comic tie-in will be available February 13, while the film opens the following day.

 

Iron Man/Hulk Film Crossover Announced

  • News
  • January 21, 2008

Marvel Studios appears to be sowing the seeds for an Avengers film with the latest news regarding this summer’s Incredible Hulk. William Hurt, who portrays General Thaddeus Ross in the film, revealed to MTV that his character will appear in a scene with Iron Man, played by Robert Downey Jr.

Hurt went on to discuss a few other key scenes in the film – including some that the more spoiler-conscious might want to avoid.

"I don’t know how it’ll work," Hurt admitted, saying it was a thrill to appear as General Thaddeus Ross during Downey’s scene. "I know it’s weird [to work with a character from another movie], and to know it’s a device. We did something; I don’t know what that’s going to be like [to watch]."

 

Hooray For Ray Harryhausen, by Ric Meyers

  • News
  • January 20, 2008

What a relief! Fellow audio-blogging ComicMixer Mike Raub put it in perspective for me as soon the credits ended on Cloverfield: “What ever happened to science?” he asked. “Remember the good old days when movie characters would actually think about why something was happening rather than immediately whip out the heavy artillery?”

Well, Mike, my friend, I do, I really do, because this week I got two new, colorized, long-delayed, two-disc special editions from the “Ray Harryhausen Presents” line: It Came From Beneath the Sea and, especially, Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers. In the latter film, particularly, smart people do courageous things to foil an attack from the stars, and the literate, logical, talk – so absent in Cloverfield – would do Mr. Spock proud.

But first things first. It Came from Beneath the Sea arrived first, in 1955, with a Godzilla-esque tale of a nuclear-radiated giant octosquid attacking San Francisco. The following year saw the release of Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers, which was succinct and accurate in its title. Both are being re-released on DVD now because Ray supervised their colorization, and Sony has done a nice job of presenting them in both their original B&W as well as colorized forms, with a “ChromaChoice” toggle so you can go from one to the other with ease.

Only one problem with Ray supervising the coloring: the monsters look great … but the people often also look like they’re made of clay … or used a scoonch too much liquid tanner. All in all, however, it’s one of the more successful colorization jobs, and rarely too distracting. Besides, what with Ray’s Dynamationalized characters, the whole thing has a nice sheen of artificiality anyway, which the colorization folds nicely into.

 

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Sneak Peek at X Files 2

  • News
  • January 18, 2008

20th Century Fox has provided Comingsoon.net with photos of Mulder and Scully from the set of The X Files 2, along with a brief explanation of the much-anticipated film’s plot.

"The film will dump the long-running ‘mythology’ plotline — that aliens live among us and are part of a colonizing effort."

More photos to be found at Comingsoon.net.

Cloverfield Mysteries Continue With New Manga

  • News
  • January 17, 2008

You’ve got to hand it to the marketing crew behind Cloverfield – they’ve managed to successfully stoke the fires under the J.J. Abrams-produced monster movie to an amazing degree while keeping the ‘Net rumor mill relatively spoiler-free. The level of online curiousity regarding the film is so high, in fact, that some sites have even ventured outside the U.S. to advance their quest for more Cloverfield clues.

Case in point: The strange path to (and revelations within) Cloverfield: Kishin by the crew at Comic Book Resources:

"As seen in the Cloverfield trailers, a character called Rob is set to leave New York City for a new job in Tokyo, and is celebrating his departure with friends when the Cloverfield monster first attacks.  In a blog posting, Rob revealed he’d be working for Slusho! Brand “happy drink.” It’s later revealed on Rob’s blog that Slusho is owned by Tagruato, a giant oil conglomerate.  What connection Tagruato has to the giant monster or the attack on New York City is unknown and likely to be revealed in the film, but it was the Tagruato brand-name and logo that caught our eye."

… and the investigation continues:

"After consulting with Cloverfield experts, we soon found ourselves navigating the website of Kadokawa –a major manga publisher in Japan, known for books like Sgt. Frog, X/1999, Cowboy Bebop and others, as well as the leading manga magazine Newtype – where we discovered a manga featuring a boat with the Tagruato logo plastered on the side. This certainly piqued our interest, but as we here at CBR don’t speak or read Japanese, we enlisted the aid of some people who do, Audrey Shiomi and Justin Clemons, who helped decipher the 22-page comic."

You can find out what they discovered over at CBR, but keep in mind that it’s the journey, not the destination, when it comes to the quest for Cloverfield info.

 

Enterprise Unveiled in New Star Trek Photo

trek1-9596003Moviefone recently posted the first photo from the upcoming Star Trek feature film. The shot depicts a somewhat grainy U.S.S. Enterprise.

The first trailer for the J.J. Abrams-helmed Star Trek is expected to be shown during this weekend’s premiere of another much-anticipated Abrams project, Cloverfield.

 

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