What’s up, Contenders? Terry Malloy here reporting live from the Waterfront.
Many of you may be aware that the internet is large. As is the film industry. News items from the latter are popping up on the former every couple of minutes. In The Action-omicon, I’ll be trying to cull some of the most interesting tidbits of action film news from around said enormous internet and share them with you AICN readers. These news items will mostly be stuff that is cool to me, and I imagine will be cool to some of you as well.
Kurt Russell Is Set To Star In A Movie! And It’s Title Is BONE TOMAHAWK!
JoBlo’s Arrow In The Head is reporting that Kurt Russell is set to star in what will be his first major screen role since TOUCHBACK, which is a movie I had never heard of until I went to look this stat up online. But really, for most of us, this will be the first time we’ve seen Russell on the big screen since DEATHPROOF. I couldn’t be more excited.
Russell in TOMBSTONE (1993)
The film is called BONE TOMAHAWK and part of the plot synopsis shared over at AITH says that Russell will play an old west lawman who must team up with Richard Jenkins (!) and some other dudes to rescue some folks from… wait for it… troglodytes.
So what we’ve got here is an amazing sounding cast, mixing up the Western genre (which Russell is pretty well established in) by subbing out villainous Native Americans or villainous Whitey with villainous prehistoric sub-humans. I think I would travel across the Oregon Trail with only my wits to protect me if it meant I could see this movie now.
Attached to write and direct is S. Craig Zahler, who I am entirely unfamiliar with. Anyone seen anything this guy has done?
New International Trailer For G.I. JOE: RETALIATION
Earlier this week, THR’s Heat Vision blog shared a new international trailer for G.I. JOE: RETALIATION, which is (I believe) the first peep we’ve heard from this film since it was unceremoniously pulled from the Summer 2012 line up just weeks before it was set to premiere.
I personally don’t see ALL that much difference between the footage we see here and the stuff we saw in the trailers for the Summer 2012 version. I would have bet money that a new trailer would have featured WAY more Channing Tatum, but good old C-Tates doesn’t seem to be in any new footage that I can identify here.
Regardless of the lack of Tatum, I still think this movie looks like a lot of fun, and for whatever reason, the ominous pulling of the film this past Summer has done nothing to temper my anticipation for this one. Maybe it has something to do with how much I enjoyed the toys in the ‘80s, the first film, and Dwayne Johnson?
What do you all think? Is G.I. JOE: RETALIATION going to be a real American hero?
Post Script: If a third G.I. JOE films is ever greenlit, can a brother get a little Serpentor up in there?
The Guy Who Co-Wrote PULP FICTION Is Bringing Us To CASTLE WOLFENSTEIN
I have to confess that if you said the name “Roger Avery” to me, I wouldn’t immediately know who you were talking about, which is kind of strange since he co-wrote RESEVOIR DOGS and PULP FICTION with Quentin Tarantino and has gone on to direct his own features as well, including KILLING ZOE and THE RULES OF ATTRACTION.
Well, it seems Avery may be the man who finally brings us a film adaptation of popular computer game series WOLFENSTEIN. Avery is signed on to both write and direct.
I don’t think this necessarily sounds like GREAT news for someone like Avery, but it does sound like great news for the WOLFENSTEIN property. I’m pretty sure the guy who partially cooked up PULP FICTION can make something fun out of a video game that essentially boiled down to endlessly shooting Nazis and monsters inside of one enormous castle. And I’d like to think that 2012 may finally be the year of the video game adaptation. But we’ll just have to wait and see.
I personally had a blast playing the earliest iterations of WOLFENSTEIN on my computer as a kid. That was the first time I ever saw a first person shooter game and it kind of blew my mind. Not to mention that the game had a wicked sense of humor AND let you kill a cybernetic Hitler.
Count this as one video game adaptation I’m pretty excited to check out. What do you all think?
I saw this story in multiple places, but I’m pretty sure We Got This Covered was the first place I saw it, and they cite IndieWire for the story.
RIDDICK Lands An R Rating
JoBlo’s Arrow In The Head also reported earlier this week that the next installment in the adventures of Richard B. Riddick would come with an R rating attached!
I view this as good news all around. For one thing, I pretty much love both previous RIDDICK features and I’m proud to shout that from the mountain tops. People toss around words like “bloated” and “ridiculous” when talking about THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK; but I would raise you all a “Dame Judi Dench” and a “King Conan Closing Shot” and rest my case.
At any rate, a new RIDDICK film is coming, and it sounds like a more stripped down film ala PITCH BLACK. It also has Karl Urban returning and BATTLESTAR GALACTICA’S Katee Sackhoff in a featured role. So to recap: R rating, stripped-down-to-elementals plot, Katee Sackhoff. I’m in. You?
Action-y Tidbits
- Director Simon West and star Jason Statham are remaking HEAT, but the Burt Reynolds one, not the Michael Mann one.
- V/H/S 2 is coming, and one of the directors attached to the anthology horror film is THE RAID’S Gareth Evans! Via Movies.com
- Collider reported this week that Millennium Films has confirmed THE EXPENDABLES 3.
- British sniper film TOWER BLOCK will be getting US distribution through Shout! Factory...
...along with fellow British film COCKNEYS VERSUS ZOMBIES.
And I’m Out.
Terry Malloy AKA Ed Travis
