I really thought some­one was hav­ing a go at me when I heard they were mak­ing a Smurf movie. Maybe its just me, but I hated the car­toon when I was a kid. When­ever my younger brother would watch it on Sat­ur­day morn­ings, I would root for Gargamel.

Any­way, just so you don’t think I am “hav­ing a go” with you… May I present, from the bow­els of the Inter­net… The one… The only… Smurf Teaser Trailer:

The offi­cial web­site of the train wreck that will be the Smurf Movie can be found at www.smurfhappens.com.

Oh Smurf Me!!! There’s NO way I’m going to see this Smurfin’ movie!

Prob­lem: the third film in trilo­gies tends to be the worst: God­fa­ther Part III, Spider-Man 3, X-Men 3, and arguably Return of the Jedi and Return of the King. With “Bat­man 3″ con­firmed and direc­tor Chris Nolan finally com­ment­ing on his plans to helm the film, I thought it would be a good time to give some thoughts on this pend­ing third act of Nolan’s Bat­man saga.

• Story:  First, in order to suc­ceed, this movie has to do some­thing no other super­hero fran­chise has truly had the guts to do: close the book. Bat­man 3 needs to feel like the final chap­ter of Nolan’s Bat­man story — par­tic­u­larly since we know Nolan isn’t com­ing back for a Bat­man 4, and we can’t risk another direc­tor com­ing in and screw­ing up every­thing good that Nolan estab­lished (à la Joel Schumacher’s Bat­man and Robin). 
• Theme: To do Bat­man 3 right, I think Nolan needs to go back to an idea in Bat­man Begins to bring the tril­ogy full-circle: the idea of becom­ing a leg­end. If this is the last part of Nolan’s Bat­man saga, I think we need to see the ful­fill­ment of Bat­man as an urban myth and incor­rupt­ible ideal. It’d also be nice to see him do a lit­tle detec­tive work for once.
• Cast­ing: DiCaprio or Gordon-Levitt. They’re both in Incep­tion. I’m plac­ing my bet right now that one of them will be in the next Bat­man movie.

• Vil­lain: This is the one every­body talks about the most. Nolan’s pretty much con­firmed that Joker won’t make a reap­pear­ance in Bat­man 3. To be hon­est, I don’t really care who the vil­lain is, as long as it makes sense for the story. Talia al Ghul, Rid­dler, Hush, and Hugo Strange — any of them would make sense for this story. But we prob­a­bly won’t get any of them because every­body seems to want Riddler.

• Love Inter­est: If we have to have one, Talia al Ghul makes a lot of sense. Cat­woman wouldn’t be impos­si­ble, but her back-story would need some tweaking.
• Side­kick? There should NOT be a kid in cir­cus tights help­ing Chris­t­ian Bale solve mys­ter­ies. So Robin’s out as a side­kick — but not nec­es­sar­ily removed as a char­ac­ter. For exam­ple, I’ve always liked the idea that Bat­man would take in an orphan because he needs to give a kid the child­hood that Bruce Wayne was never allowed to finish.

• Film Title: The Dark Knight Returns. It grabs the atten­tion of every­one who skipped Bat­man Begins but went to see Dark Knight, and it pleases the Comicon-demographic with a lit­tle lit­er­ary reference.

(Via Words­Finest.)

It seems that the res­i­dent sor­cerer of NYC’s Green­wich Vil­lage will be the next char­ac­ter from the Mar­vel ros­ter to get the big screen treat­ment. That’s right — a movie for Doc­tor Strange is in the works! Accord­ing to Dead­line, Mar­vel Stu­dios has hired Thomas Don­nelly and Joshua Oppen­heimer, the writ­ing team behind the upcom­ing reboot of Conan (the sword-wielding Bar­bar­ian, not the NBC refugee) to pen the leg­endary mystic’s live-action debut. How­ever, with their recent $4 bil­lion acqui­si­tion of Mar­vel, this film will also appar­ently be the first that will be released under the ban­ner of Disney.

Besides being involved with a draft of Jon Favreau’s upcom­ing Cow­boys and Aliens, the writ­ing duo of Don­nelly and Oppen­heimer have also penned the screen­play to the upcom­ing film adap­ta­tion of Uncharted: Drake’s For­tune. (They wrote a video game movie? …Oh, boy.) At this point, details are scarce. How­ever, it is worth not­ing that Doc­tor Strange’s name did come up in the recent news regard­ing Mar­vel poten­tially look­ing to release a series of short films star­ing some of its lesser-known char­ac­ters. The release under the Dis­ney ban­ner is actu­ally a given, con­sid­er­ing that Mar­vel Stu­dios’ dis­tri­b­u­tion part­ner­ship with Para­mount is down to four more films before Dis­ney would then take the helm. It is assumed that those four will be Thor, Cap­tain Amer­ica: The First Avenger, The Avengers, and finally Iron Man 3. While other Mar­vel prop­er­ties like Run­aways and Ant-Man remain on the back-burner, it will be inter­est­ing to see how films after the Para­mount deal will take shape. If the rumor about the short films holds true, then per­haps the chang­ing of the release strat­egy of some of these lesser-known Mar­vel comic films may coin­cide with Dis­ney tak­ing the helm of distribution.

As far as the pos­si­bil­i­ties for Doc­tor Strange as a movie, it could have the poten­tial to be the most unique comic book film ever. Once a promi­nent and some­what arro­gant sur­geon, Stephen Strange’s med­ical career ended with a dev­as­tat­ing car acci­dent that deprived him of his abil­i­ties. Filled with guilt over the plethora of per­sonal tragedies of in his life, he trav­eled to the Far East seek­ing to learn of mys­tic pow­ers to fix every­thing that was wrong in his life. Instead, he found his call­ing and was trained to be a mys­tic hero defend­ing Earth against evil invaders from another dimen­sion. He’s been a fix­ture in the Mar­vel Uni­verse ever since.

Strange has the poten­tial to be an excel­lent film, as long as the com­plex­ity of his char­ac­ter is retained. The orig­i­nal comic released in the early 60’s was clearly influ­enced from youth subculture’s preva­lent inter­est at the time in psy­che­delia and East­ern Mys­ti­cism. The idea of the Mar­vel staff being high on mush­rooms while pro­duc­ing the series was a long-running rumor. (Which was denied emphat­i­cally.) The film, there­fore, must con­tain the quirk­i­ness that embod­ied the comics, while cast­ing a lead who can express the grouch­i­ness and reluc­tance to hero­ism shown in Strange’s jour­ney towards his des­tiny. In other words, he has to be kind of a pompous and sar­cas­tic douche, yet be one that at the same time main­tains a cer­tain swag­ger and lik­a­bil­ity. If you ask me, House’s Hugh Lau­rie is tailor-made for that role. But, of course, we’ll see.

What’s your take on Doc­tor Strange? Can it work on the big screen? Is it too weird for aver­age moviegoers?

(Via G4 TV — The­Feed.)

It seems that Mar­vel may be plan­ning to throw a big curve-ball in the realm of its comic book films that could give some of the “B-Team” of its ros­ter a chance to finally shine in the­aters along­side their A-List brethren. Accord­ing to Latino Review, a trusted source is telling them that the recently-unified Marvel/Disney jug­ger­naut are plan­ning to make a series of 10-minute fea­ture films star­ring “sec­ondary” Mar­vel heroes like (by their exam­ple,) Black Pan­ther, Luke Cage, and Dr. Strange.

The Mar­vel Uni­verse of the big screen con­tin­ues to grow at a rapid rate. While it’s been a legacy of mega-hits (Spider-Man, Iron Man, X-Men,) it’s also no stranger to the con­cept of fail. (Dare­devil, Ang Lee’s Hulk, and just about any Pun­isher movie.) The idea of short films was actu­ally dis­cussed a few months ago on CHUD. How­ever, if LR’s source is telling the truth, then it could have the poten­tial to change the model by which comic films are released. It could be an excel­lent oppor­tu­nity to not only expand the con­sis­tent canon of the Mar­vel Movie Uni­verse that we’re finally see­ing take shape in the Avengers movies, but it could also be a help­ful way for the stu­dio to gauge the ever-changing moods and tastes of the movie-going audi­ence. If you’re a stu­dio who’s not will­ing to risk $150 mil­lion to find out if peo­ple would pay to see — let’s say, Moon Knight at the­aters, then a far less risky $20–40 mil­lion ven­ture of a 10-minute short would seem like a great com­pro­mise between a money-making project and fan­boy placation.

While this is still very much just a rumor, it actu­ally makes the field of comic films a poten­tially more lively place where the pos­si­bil­i­ties are nearly end­less. The thought of going to the the­ater to catch not only a fea­ture, but the lat­est “Mar­vel Short” evokes a very old-school kind of feel to a time (long before my time, I might add,) when a trip to the the­ater was an event filled with orig­i­nal short films and car­toons rather than just the same old trail­ers we see online and on TV. They’re always talk­ing about revving-up the movie indus­try, well this would be a nice start!

Source: Latino Review

(Via G4 TV — The­Feed.)