Expendables

The Expendables
Directed by	Sylvester Stallone
Produced by	Avi Lerner Kevin King Templeton John Thompson Robert Earl
Written by	Sylvester Stallone
Starring	Sylvester Stallone Jason Statham Jet Li Dolph Lundgren Eric Roberts Mickey Rourke Steve Austin Terry Crews Randy Couture David Zayas Gary Daniels
Music by	Brian Tyler
Studio	Lionsgate
Distributed by	Lionsgate Films (U.S.) California Films (Brazil)
Release date(s)	April 23, 2010 April 23, 2010
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$70 million

The Expendables is an upcoming 2010 action film directed and written by Sylvester Stallone. Filming began on March 28, 2009 in Brazil, New Orleans and Los Angeles and is expected to be released on April 23, 2010. "The Expendables has a seventy million-dollar budget," says Stallone's co-star Dolph Lundgren, "and it's an old-school, kick-ass action movie where people are fighting with knives and shooting at each other." The film pays tribute to the blockbuster action films during the 1980s and early 90s, as the film includes action veterans from those decades (such as Stallone himself, Bruce Willis, Dolph Lundgren, Arnold Schwarzenegger, etc.).

Plot

A team of highly-trained and dangerous mercenaries known as "The Expendables" led by Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone) and consisting of, Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), Bao Thao (Jet Li), Gunnar Jensen (Dolph Lundgren), Hale Ceasar (Terry Crews) and Toll Road (Randy Couture). They are hired by the mysterious Mr. Church to overthrow General Garza (David Zayas), dictator of the island of Corza near Brazil who has caused devastation for over 20 years. Even with the help from an arms dealer, Tool (Mickey Rourke), the challenge won't be as easy as they thought. In their way is crooked CIA agent, Monroe (Eric Roberts), his psychotic bodyguard (Steve Austin), former British expendable (Gary Daniels) and General Garza's personal army.

Production

Production began on March 3, 2009 and filming began on March 28 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and other locations included Mangaratiba, Niteroi, Guanabara Bay, and Parque Lage. Filming ended April 25. Filming continued later on May 11 in Elmwood and Downtown, New Orleans, Louisana which included French Quarter, St. Peters Street, Fort Mccomb, Claiborne Avenue and the Interstate 10 Overpass. Filming officially ended on July 1st, 2009. There will be a pick-up that will have a scene filmed with Arnold Schwarzenegger in Downtown, Los Angeles, California. On June 2nd, West Coast Customs Street Customs have built 3 customized 1955 Ford F100s for Sylvester Stallone for the film. One was built for a crash scene, the second for green screen, and the third for Stallone to keep. The budget for the film was going to be in excess of $100 million, but was lowered to $70 million. The budget drop would cause some expensive action sequences to be cut.

Jean-Claude Van Damme was personally offered a role by Stallone, but turned it down. This reportedly led to Dolph Lundgren being cast instead. The role accepted by Forest Whitaker was originally conceived as a role for Wesley Snipes but later rewritten for Whitaker. Due to a scheduling conflict prior to filming, Forest Whitaker was replaced by Curtis Jackson (aka 50 Cent) for the role of Hale Caesar. Due to negative fan reactions, he was then replaced by former NFL player Terry Crews.

Stallone wanted Sandra Bullock to play the role of Agent Diane Lickson yet Bullock's schedule did not work with the film, and she could not participate.

Ben Kingsley was offered the role of Monroe before Eric Roberts was cast. The role may be combined with that of Agent Will Sands.

The role of the man who hires the Expendables, Mr. Church, has been very difficult to cast. Initially offered to Schwarzenegger, he declined in favor of a smaller cameo in respects to his political career. The role was then offered to Kurt Russell whose agent replied that he was not interested in "Ensemble acting at the moment.", Stallone is looking to find a big action name to cameo as Mr. Church with rumors suggesting that the role has been offered to friend and fellow former Planet Hollywood co-owner Arnie, although he is apparently tied to the filming of A Couple of Dicks. On May 29, 2009, the script under went a few re-writes which ultimately excluded Brittany Murphy's character. Steven Seagal was also asked to play a cameo role, but turned down the offer due to negative connections with the producer Avi Lerner Hispanic actor Danny Trejo was rumoured to play Emmanuel, but on June 15, he revealed that he was not even cast for the role. Instead, he is currently in the works with Robert Rodriguez's Machete. Sandra Bullock was also rumored to have a role in the film, but revealed that she didn't even know about the project. Despite the news, she did express interests in working in another action film and would like to work in the film, it just depended on the story line.

Cast

• Sylvester Stallone as Barney Ross a.k.a. "The Schizo", a long-time veteran Expendable and the leader of the team. He struggles with his social life. The only valuable possession he acquired in his life is his custom pickup truck.
• Jason Statham as Lee Christmas, a British American Expendable second in command and former S.A.S. soldier also an expert at using Close Quarters Combat with knives. Lee, although a tough guy in his work, he struggles in society's atmosphere as he has trouble when dealing with women.
• Mickey Rourke as Tool, an arms dealer and tattoo parlor owner who helps the Expendables and is one of the first and former Expendables from Ross's old team.
• Jet Li as Bao Thao, a Chinese American Expendable who was a former mercenary in China and a master at Hand-to-hand combat Thao also has dreams of having a successful and peaceful future.
• Dolph Lundgren as Gunnar Jensen, a German Expendable who is an expert at Sniping and a war veteran who also has a knack for making strange violent humor. Jensen also shares a hate-love relationship with Ross, his long time friend and doesn't get along with Bao.
• Terry Crews as Hale Caeser, an Expendable and Bao Thao's best friend. He is also a Weapons specialist
• Charisma Carpenter as Lacy, Lee Christmas's fiancee
• Eric Roberts as Monroe, a rogue C.I.A agent who is trying to prevent the Expendables from killing General Garza
• Steve Austin as Dan Paine, a bodyguard for Monroe and a former Marine
• Randy Couture as Toll Road, a long-time Expendable from Ross's old team with Tool and a skilled Demolitions expert. Just like Ross, he's also considered a
• David Zayas as General Garza, the Dictator
• Giselle Itié as Sandra, a young island native woman
• Gary Daniels as The Brit, a former Expendable who is General Garza's main henchman and wants to go to war against the Expendables as revenge for kicking him out of the team
• Lauren Jones as Cheyenne, Tool's girlfriend
• Nick Searcy as Agent Will Sands
• Amin Joseph as the leader of a group of Pirates of Somali that challenge the Expendables
• Arnold Schwarzenegger In a cameo role.
• Bruce Willis in a cameo role
• Senyo Amoaku as the second in command of the Pirates of Somali that challenge The Expendables.
• Ravi Shankar as a cameo role

Music

Brian Tyler has been selected to compose the original musical score for the film. Tyler is popular for his excellent action scores, and also scored Sylvester Stallone's Rambo in 2008, which most likely led to Stallone's decision to choose Tyler to compose another film for him.

Schwarzenegger To Cameo In Stallone’s Expendables

Arnold Schwarzenegger is set to make a cameo appearance in Sly Stallone’s 80s-throwback-actioner THE EXPENDABLES. Add this to the casting of Mickey Rourke and Danny Trejo (the big, scary Mexican dude in everything from CON AIR to GRINDHOUSE), and Stallone finds himself with one of the most anticipated films of the year.

They join the already impressive cast of Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Forest Whitaker, former UFC Champion Randy “The Natural” Couture and Eric Roberts (replacing Ben Kingsley).

Arnie will only be shooting for one day, and will be playing himself. Presumably in politician mode.

The movie follows a group of “expendable” mercenaries (Stallone, Statham and Li) ordered to South America to overthrow a ruthless dictator.

Van Damme was offered a role too, but (stupidly) turned it down. Here’s what he told Total Film -

“Stallone gave me a part in his next movie. But I ask him about the subject, about the story.”
“He said, ‘You’re gonna make lots of money.’ I don’t want to hear that, I want to hear what was my character. He was unable to tell what it’s going to be.”
“[Stallone said:] ‘You know, uh, well, the fighting will be good.’ [So I said:] ‘Sly, what is my character?’ So I didn’t do the movie.”

Hmm.

After enjoying the retro mayhem that was RAMBO I’m pretty amped up for this one.

Source: Rope Of Silicon

Centurion

First Look At Neil Marshall’s Centurion

One of my favorite horror movie directors at the moment is Neil Marshall. His credits include the sublime Dog Soldiers and The Descent. His latest film is called Centurion and is the story of an ancient warrior woman out for revenge against the Romans who have wronged her.

Empire has the story -

Marshall dealt with military mayhem in Dog Soldiers, women forced to violence in The Descent and Scotland-set carnage in Doomsday and is combining all three in his fourth feature, a relentless action-adventure set in AD 117 (63 years before the events of Gladiator).

“Etain is kind of revenge incarnate,” says the writer/director, speaking to Empire exclusively on set. “Her family were butchered by the Romans, she had her tongue cut out by the Romans, she’s had a hell of a time and she’s out for Roman blood.”

“She’s quite furious,” agrees Kurylenko. “Because one sense is not there – she can’t speak – all the others are more developed. She sees very well and hears very well: she is an animal!”

Kurylenko stars alongside Hunger’s Michael Fassbender, who plays the title character, stranded behind enemy lines, and a superb roster of established and up’n’coming talent, including Dominic West, Noel Clarke, David Morrisey, JJ Feild and Riz Ahmed (soon to be seen in the rather excellent Brit-grit thriller Shifty, out April 24).

Centurion is being produced by Slumdog Millionaire Oscar-snaffler Christian Colson and Robert Jones (Run Fatboy Run) and Empire has visited its sets in both Scotland and Surrey and witnessed the action and intensity up close, so expect regular updates online and in the magazine, in the build up to its release (likely to be later this year).

These are the first details I’ve seen for this movie and my interest is definitely piqued. Marshall is batting a perfect score [Doomsday? - ed.] as far as I’m concerned so I’m willing to give anything he makes a shot.

The Box

Richard Kelly’s The Box - Poster & Details

Richard Kelly burst onto the indie scene when his micro-budget horror/sci-fi Donnie Darko became a cult favorite on DVD (he even made stars out of Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal while he was at it). However, his much grander follow-up Southland Tales was by all accounts muddled and tedious (though I can’t personally comment having not seen it). Well, Kelly seems to be going back to his roots with a smaller production this time. Called The Box, it is the story of a couple that come into the possession of a box (surprise, surprise) that can bestow upon its owner $1 million dollars, with the downside being that it will simultaneously kill an unknown person, somewhere in the world. To ratchet up the tension even more, the couple have only 24 hours to resolve their moral dilemma and decided whether they want to activate the box.

The poster for the film has just debuted on the web today and can be seen above.

From AintItCool -

I read an early draft of the script to Richard Kelly’s THE BOX a looooonnnggg time ago and found it to be pretty damn good. Dark, dark stuff there and then the movie cast up, shot and posted all on the quiet. Soon we’ll start seeing more promotional stuff from it, leading up to the release in October. Now the poster has hit, which Kelly has posted to his MySpace page. It’s a fine studio poster, definitely gets the point across without giving anything away, but at the end of the day it’s still a big head poster.

Personally I think it is a pretty awful poster. I am surprised to see that they are not trying to cash in on Kelly’s previous success (no mention of Donnie Darko) perhaps the studio is worried that Southland Tales flopping means that Kelly has lost his good will with the public. Still, from the poster, the average punter is going to assume it is just a run-of-the-mill Hollywood horror/thriller possibly with a torture-porn bent (that tagline ‘you are the experiment’ sounds like something out of a Saw movie) and are likely to completely ignore it. Hopefully the trailer will sell the movie to the public better.

Burlesque

Christina Aguilera To Be Seen In ‘Burlesque’

Unfortunately that’s just a movie with the title of Burlesque.

Christina Aguilera will make her screen debut for Screen Gems in “Burlesque,” a contemporary musical that Steven Antin will direct. Antin wrote a script that was revised by “Erin Brockovich” scribe Susannah Grant.

Aguilera will play an ambitious smalltown girl with a big voice who finds love, family and success in a Los Angeles neo-burlesque club that appears to be right out of Bob Fosse’s “Cabaret.”

…

“I couldn’t be more excited, as this was a project written with her in mind,” Screen Gems topper Clint Culpepper said.

Deal comes on the heels of Screen Gems benefiting from the star power of another songstress, Beyonce Knowles, who toplined thriller hit “Obsessed.”

My initial thought here is ‘bad, bad idea’. Casting someone with next to no acting experience in your movie has ‘wrong move’ written all over it. I don’t even recall the name of the 50 Cent movie but by all accounts it was a waste of celluloid.

It looks to me like they want to make a contemporary Moulin Rouge, but they are forgetting the important ingredients in that film’s success; two insanely talented leads and a visionary director in Baz Luhrmann.

Regardless, I’m sure this film will be a hit with 12 year old girls and middle-aged men for two very different reasons so I’m sure it will make money in the end.

Source: Variety

AVATAR

Concept Art For James Cameron’s Avatar

Shrouded in mystery and promising to be a revolutionary piece of cinema, James Cameron’s Avatar is more highly anticipated than…something highly anticipated.

The man stormed the Academy Awards in ‘97 with Titanic and hasn’t made a movie since, but now he’s returning to his Aliens/Terminator sci-fi roots and we finally have our first peek at the concept art for Cameron’s new world.

Whilst these are undeniably cool, they are faintly reminiscent of designs we’ve seen in recent films…the top picture in particular looks like one of the exoskeletons from The Matrix Revolutions in the middle of Skull Island from Jackson’s King Kong. But then, expectations are so much higher when every single filmmaker to have had a glimpse at the project literally promises that the movie will blow your mind.

How awesome will all this stuff look in 3D?

Avatar - First Behind The Scenes Picture

I don’t think that it would be very controversial for me to claim that James Cameron is the director of some of the greatest sci-fi action movies ever made including Aliens and Terminator 2. He is also the director of the most successful movie ever made: Titanic. Ever since Titanic, Cameron has taken a step back and concentrated exclusively on IMAX documentaries and is just now returning to narrative cinema with Avatar, an epic space opera that Cameron has been attempting to get made for a number of years.

The LA TIMES has the first official AVATAR behind the scenes image. It doesn’t show much, and I’m hesitant to state that what is behind Cameron and Sam is “Set” because as far as I know - that’s just the specialized transport vehicle insides that he rides to work in each day. BUT - having said that… it does FEEL like a Cameron bit of Science Fiction set work. Go click above and then talk about AVATAR fucking your eyes in 2009.

Just so you don’t have to go through all the effort of clicking a link, I have inserted the picture below.

I know there’s not much to go on here but what are your first impressions? To me it looks very reminiscent of Aliens which is definitely not necessarily a bad thing, but it is certainly not what was hoping for from this movie. I hope he has not been pressured to make the movie more commercially viable.

Alice In Wonderland

Tim Burton To Direct ‘Alice In Wonderland’

What with Sweeney Todd looking like a crasher for a ton of end of year awards, Burton is moving ahead with his adap of Lewis Carroll’s classic kiddie mind-bender Alice in Wonderland.

Scheduled for an early 2008 shoot, this will be filmed under the Disney banner and shot in that glorious new fangled 3D malarky. Mr Bonham-Carter said “I’ve never seen a version where I feel like they got it all. It’s a series of weird adventures, and to try to do it where it works as a movie will be interesting”

For me Burton’s been the sort of director whose movies I’d go and see regardless, although that’s been tested with the spectacular but ultimately poor Planet of the Apes and the more recent style over substance Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but I still think he has enough juice left in him to make a really tripped out wander down the rabbit hole.

By: Twisted Mango

Crispin Glover Cast In Burton’s Alice in Wonderland

By Anna Wilczek

Crispin Glover is the latest intriguing actor to be cast in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. The line-up already includes Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, Helena Bonham-Carter as the Red Queen, Anne Hathaway as the White Queen and Mia Wasikowska as Alice.

Glover will play The Knave of Hearts, who, in the original book, is put on trial in front of the Queen for stealing jam tarts and then defended by Alice as the evidence becomes increasingly absurd.

Burton plans to combine live-action and motion capture to recreate the chaotic and bizarre world of Lewis Carroll’s novel, which is something that Glover will doubtlessly excel at having recently played Grendel in Beowulf.

One of the most underrated performers in the business, Glover hasn’t been given the parts he deserves since his signature role as George McFly in Back To The Future. In fact, he has been in some appalling movies recently (Epic Movie comes to mind). It’ll be nice to see him cut loose in something more credible.

Johnny Depp To Play Mad Hatter In Burton’s Alice In Wonderland

One of the movie industry’s most successful partnerships continues to go strong as Tim Burton teams up once again with Johnny Depp for the remake of Alice in Wonderland.

Fresh from the success of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street, Burton has chosen Depp to play the Mad Hatter in the multi-million pound live action remake, which will be shot in 3D. The Lewis Carroll adaptation, which is to begin production next year, will be Depp’s seventh movie with Burton. He will be starring alongside Australian actress Mia Wasikowska, who has been cast as Alice.

The Burtonised Alice will be financed by Disney, and should hit our screens in Summer 2010.

Now, who is willing to bet money that Danny Elfman – film score composer frequently attached to Tim Burton’s movies, especially those which have starred Johnny Depp (except Ed Wood and Sweeney Todd) – will also be involved in the project?

Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland - Concept Art

Concept art and character portraits have been unveiled for Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland, including Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, Anne Hathaway as The White Queen and Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen.

This re-imagining of the Lewis Carroll classic will feature characters from both Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, while combining live action, motion capture technology and stop motion.

Johnny Depp’s role as the Hatter is his seventh collaboration with Burton in one of cinema’s most fruitful director/actor partnerships. It’s under Burton’s direction that Depp has been allowed to demonstrate what a versatile actor he is, from the shy awkwardness of Edward Scissorhands to the maniacal, bloody excess of Sweeney Todd.

And it looks as though this project will give Burton a chance to really explore his dark and wild imagination. That alone should make this film well worth seeing when it’s released on March 10th 2010. Although, haven’t we seen the Mad Hatter somewhere before?… -