Tag: Peter Jackson

‘District 9’s Poster is Just as Cool as its Trailer

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Late last week, we brought you the teaser for Neill Blomkamp’s ‘District 9.’Â   It is an awesome teaser that I still stand by contains the best shot I’ve seen all year.

Today, we bring you the film’s teaser poster.   It’s pretty impressive, but that spaceship Photoshopped in the top, right corner is a bit flaky.   The rest of the poster doesn’t need it, and it just looks goofy.   Plus, I think the less we see of the alien ship, the better.   Remember seeing the aliens in ‘Indepence Day’ for the first time?   Remember seeing the ‘Cloverfield’ monster for the first time?   I think Peter Jackson and crew should follow suit with this film and its aliens/spaceship.

Source: Yahoo! Movies

‘District 9’ Teaser Features Most Amazing Shot of the Year… So Far

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That’s some old-school, George Lucas shit right there.   Of course, when I mention in the header that the teaser for ‘District 9’ features the most amazing shot of the year, I’m not even talking about that amazing shot you see above.   Check out the teaser to see what I mean.

Peter Jackson presents this film written and directed by Neill Blomkamp about an alien species who is forced to live in the slums of South Africa after coming to Earth.   The teaser makes the film look like it’s got a documentary feel with face-to-face interviews with people about the aliens.

You can check out the teaser in glorious HD over at Apple.

‘District 9’ comes out on August 9.

First Image from Jackson’s ‘Lovely Bones’

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For those of you familiar with director peter Jackson’s pre-Middle Earth period and have seen his ‘Heavenly Creatures’ then you know what potential his new adaptation of Alice Sebold’s best-selling novel ‘Lovely Bones’ will likely hold.

Shown above is the first still released from the movie which is about a young girl who is murdered and watches over her family and her killer from Heaven as she struggles to balance her need for revenge versus her desire to help her family heal from their loss.

The film, which has had more than it’s shares of trials and tribulations during production, is set to hit theaters on December 11, 2009.

[source: USA Today]

Jackson and Del Toro Talk a Little ‘Hobbit’ Format

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Empire magazine sat down with directors Peter Jackson and Guillermo Del Toro for their 20th Anniversary issue due out next week.   In the interview, the directors discuss ‘The Hobbit,’ and their approach to spanning the story across two films.

Here’s what they had to say:

“We’ve decided to have The Hobbit span the two movies, including the White Council and the comings and goings of Gandalf to Dol Guldur,† says Del Toro.

“We decided it would be a mistake to try to cram everything into one movie,† adds Jackson. “The essential brief was to do The Hobbit, and it allows us to make The Hobbit in a little more style, if you like, of the [LOTR] trilogy.†

There has been speculation that the second of these two films would be an original story that gapped ‘The Hobbit’ with the ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy.   That, apparently, is not the case, and the story played out in ‘The Hobbit’ will span two films.

What do you think?   Is there enough story in ‘The Hobbit’ to span across two different films?   Should they have set the second film to tell an original story that bridged the two different stories?   What are you overall thoughts on Del Toro taking over the reigns from Jackson?   Let us know by commenting below!

Source: Empire Online

Principal Photography Starts on ‘Tintin’ With Lead Actors and Title Announced

Paramount Pictures and Sony Pictures Entertainment announced today the start of principal photography on the 3D motion capture film ‘The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn’ directed by Steven Spielberg. Â  The companies also made the announcement that Jamie Bell had been cast as Tintin and Daniel Craig co-stars as Red Rackham, the film’s villain.

Here’s the full press release:

Paramount Pictures and Sony Pictures Entertainment have announced the start of principal production in Los Angeles on the 3D Motion Capture Film ‘The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn,’ directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Jamie Bell (‘Billy Elliot,’ ‘Defiance’) as Tintin, the intrepid young reporter whose relentless pursuit of a good story thrusts him into a world of high adventure, and Daniel Craig (‘Quantum of Solace,’ ‘Defiance’) as the nefarious Red Rackham.

Bell and Craig are joined by an international cast that includes Andy Serkis, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Gad Elmaleh, Toby Jones and Mackenzie Crook.

‘The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn,’ from a screenplay by Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish, is produced by Spielberg, Peter Jackson and Kathleen Kennedy, is the first in the series of 3D motion capture films based on the iconic character created by Georges Remi, better known to the world by his pen name “Herge” and is due for release in 2011. Executive producers are Nick Rodwell, Stephane Sperry and Ken Kamins. Paramount Pictures will release domestically and in all English speaking territories and Asia, excluding India. Sony Pictures Releasing International will distribute the film in Continental Europe, Eastern Europe, Latin America, India and the remainder of the world.

The second feature in the series is scheduled to be directed by Jackson, with a potential for a third film as well.

Eighty years ago, Herge introduced the world to a unique cast of characters who have been embraced by readers of all ages. The Adventures of Tintin – a series of 24 books, the final unfinished adventure was published after Herge’s – death became Herge’s life’s work. The first adventure was published in 1929. Over 200 million copies have been sold worldwide. The popular series has been translated into 70 languages and still attracts thousands of new fans each year.

Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson will bring Herge’s stories to life employing state-of-the-art performance capture technology developed by Jackson’s Weta Digital.

Source: Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment

Frost and Pegg board ‘Tintin’

There were rumblings about this back in the Fall over at /film, but Ain’t It Cool News has confirmed that Simon Pegg and Nick Frost will be joining the cast of ‘Tintin’ for Steven Spielberg. The two will be playing Thomson and Thompson, who, in the Tintin series, are a couple of detectives who may be twins, but can only be told apart by the shape of their mustaches. The film is going to be 3D performance capture, so the fact that Pegg and Frost look nothing alike shouldn’t be a problem.

Also joining the cast is Andy Serkis, who will play Captain Haddock, Tintin’s best friend.

Production is allegedly supposed to start in roughly a month on the $135 million project, which is being co-financed by Paramount and Sony. Spielberg will direct the first film, while Peter Jackson will step in and helm the second. The first film is scheduled to hit sometime in 2010.

What do you think? Are Frost and Pegg good choices for Thomson and Thompson? Who do you think should play the titular character? Is it a little creepy that a young reporter’s best friend is a whiskey-swilling sea captain? Â  Let us know by commenting below!

Source: AICN

Jackson, Del Toro Writing ‘Hobbit’

E! is reporting that Peter Jackson just can’t kick his Hobbit habit. After a fruitless eight-month search for the perfect scribe, the Oscar-winning Lord of the Rings overlord and his handpicked Hobbit helmer, Guillermo del Toro, have decided they’re the best men for the job of adapting J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth prequel into two films.The duo will get a big assist from Jackson’s fellow LOTR Best Screenplay winners, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens. Jackson and del Toro took over the writing chores after both of their schedules opened up. Because of their shared love and familiarity with the material, both agreed to pen the project rather than having a hired gun take a stab at it. After settling a bigger lawsuit over LOTR profits, Jackson came aboard as an executive producer overseeing production on two features based on The Hobbit and other Tolken writings.


In April, he tapped del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, the Hell Boy films) to take over the directing chair. Del Toro is moving to New Zealand for five years to shoot both Hobbit movies back-to-back.

The first installment will follow a young Bilbo Baggins on a quest to find a treasure guarded by the evil dragon Smaug with the assistance of an itinerant wizard Gandalf and a party of 13 dwarves. The second installment will use storylines Tolkien suggested in The Hobbit that set up events in The Lord of the Rings and will take place during the 60 years between the two books.

Del Toro has also been in touch with LOTR principals Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen and Andy Serkis about reprising their roles as Gandalf, Aragorn and Gollum, respectively. The filmmakers have also talked to Ian Holm, who played the older Bilbo in LOTR, but the 76-year-old actor’s participation depends largely on his health. Should he not be able to play the titular character, del Toro has reportedly been mulling the possibility of having him narrate the tale. Production on the two-parter is slated to begin in late 2009, with the first Hobbit movie hitting theaters in 2011and the sequel in 2012.

Meet the Makers: Early Films of Peter Jackson

[Jackson was born on 31 October 1961 in Pukerua Bay, New Zealand, an only child to Bill and Joan Jackson, both of whom were immigrants from England. As a child, Jackson was a film fan, growing up on Ray Harryhausen films as well as Thunderbirds and using his parents’ Super 8 cine-camera. Citing King Kong as his favourite film at age 9, he attempted to remake it with his own stop-motion models.Jackson started his career in film as a fanatical hobbyist, creating small films with simple technical means and with the help of his friends. He had no formal training in film-making, and was turned down for a job with the National Film Unit, the government body which produced publicity and tourist films about New Zealand.] — from Wikipedia

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