Posted on 05/05/2006 11:06:21 PM PDT by MadIvan
Sequels and franchises will dominate this summer as Tinseltown fights to lure people away from their DVDs and back to the cinema
WHAT can save Hollywood from another summer of dire sequels and box office catastrophes? Is it another documentary about exotic birds? Is it a story about a hijacked plane? No, silly — it’s Superman.
That, at least, is the hope in Hollywood, which collected only $3.6 billion (£2 billion) from American moviegoers last summer, its worst performance since 2001. Yet with summer releases accounting for up to 40 per cent of annual sales Hollywood is desperate for a caped hero to save the day.
“I told my wife somebody could have driven a car into my theatre and not hit anybody (last year),” complained one multiplex owner, at a recent movie industry conference in Las Vegas. “When you have a well-crafted, entertaining film that people will want to see, they will come out in record numbers.”
The National Association of Theatre Owners — and the rest of Hollywood — hopes that Superman Returns is such a film. It is due for launch in American cinemas on June 30. It will reach British cinemas a couple of weeks later.
The hype began this week with the first trailer for the movie, which will star a 26-year Iowan named Brandon Routh as the bumbling Clark Kent, who rips off his business suit to become the Man of Steel. Bryan Singer, the director, who made his name in Hollywood with the popular X-Men movies, justified casting a relatively unknown actor by saying that a known actor came with “baggage”.
“Superman is much larger than any actor. I wanted him to come just with the baggage of the superhero — that's enough history to contend with.” It was reported that James Caviezel was turned down by Mr Singer for the role of Superman because he was too famous after appearing as the Son of God in The Passion of the Christ.
The film’s star power will come from the other players. Lex Luthor, the semi-comic villain, will be played by Kevin Spacey, and the role of Superman’s crush — the ambitious Daily Planet news reporter Lois Lane — has been taken by 22-year-old Kate Bosworth.
It has been 68 years since Superman first appeared in Action Comics #1 (owned by DC Comics) and 28 years since the the first Superman film, directed by Richard Donner, who was already well-known for The Omen and The Twilight Zone. The production budget of the 1978 movie was $55 million. Superman Returns is expected to cost north of a quarter of a billion dollars.
The film — which has taken ten years and multiple writers to make — is an uncomfortable reminder of the fate of its original star, Christopher Reeve, who was paralysed from the neck down after a riding accident in 1995. After a long struggle with disability he died in 2004. His wife, Dana, died from lung cancer this year.
The trailer for Superman Returns begins with portentous music and the God-like voiceover of Superman’s father: “Even though you have been raised as a human being, you are not one of them!” It cuts to footage of Superman leaping through cornfields as a child, in homage to the original film.
Mr Singer has claimed that Superman Returns is not a sequel to the four movies in which Mr Reeve starred, although it begins after the battle between General Zod and his gang of Kryptonian villains. Superman has disappeared from Earth for six years while he searches for other survivors from his home planet. The plot involves him returning to Metropolis and resuming his identity of Clark Kent. He soon finds out that Ms Lane is in a relationship and has a son. The residents of Metropolis have learnt to live without Superman.
Although critics are generally more enthusiastic about this year’s roster of films, they have pointed out that the summer season is still dominated by franchises and sequels. Other big films of the summer include Mission: Impossible III and another X-Men instalment. There is also a remake of the 1972 hit The Poseidon Adventure, directed by Wolfgang Petersen.
“Everybody is concerned, but it looks like maybe the tide is turning,” Mr Petersen said about the 2006 release schedule. “We have been killing ourselves to get something really exciting out there.”
There are many other familiar-sounding summer releases, including remakes of sequels to Miami Vice, The Fast and the Furious and Pirates of the Caribbean. Later in the year there will even be a new James Bond film, Casino Royale. Original projects include The Da Vinci Code, based on Dan Brown’s bestseller book, starring Tom Hanks as the scholar who unravels the deepest secret of the Roman Catholic Church. Animated films — a huge genre, thanks to Shrek — will include Cars, from Disney/Pixar, and Over the Hedge, from rival studio Dreamworks.
Owners of film theatres are not betting everything on the boy from Krypton. Terrified that the public has exchanged nights out at the movies for nights in with DVDs and surround-sound home theatre systems, multiplexes are testing ways to make going to the movies more pleasant.
Ideas include offering electronic tickets via mobile phones and using technology to block mobile phone signals while movies are playing. Other ploys may include shortening pre-film advertising. In Hollywood the Arclight cinema lets moviegoers book seats as though they were on an airline and offers a bar service, espressos, digital projectors and a restaurant.
The cinema owners acknowledge that the most important factor is one over which they have no control: the quality of films. If the Man of Steel can’t save the summer blockbuster, they ask, then who can? The pressure is clearly being felt by Routh. “If I really sat down and thought about all the possible implications, the good, amazing things it could mean, you could go a little crazy,” he said.
Superman Returns was initially supposed to be directed by Brett Ratner, but he left the project after reported clashes with Warner Bros over casting. It is thought that actors including Ashton Kutcher, Brendan Fraser and Josh Hartnett were considered to play the man who is faster than a speeding bullet and more powerful than a locomotive. By 2001 McG (as Joseph McGinty Nichol is known) was tipped to direct, but he left in 2002 to make Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, returning to Superman in 2004. He left for good after reported disagreements over budgets and locations.
Mr Singer was chosen to replace him because the studio was impressed by Batman Begins and thought that the X-Men director could create the a similar noir atmosphere. The director also agreed to shoot the film in Australia. The Kent farm in Smallville was shot in Tamworth, New South Wales.
Superman Returns is expected to include footage of Marlon Brandon as Superman’s father from the original movie. General Zod will not appear because Mr Singer could not persuade Jude Law to accept the role and did not want anyone else to play it.
IS IT A BIRD...
#
The 1938 comic-book Superman's skills were relatively limited. He could lift a car above his head, leap an eighth of a mile and was vulnerable to all projectiles larger than an artillery shell
# By the 1980s Superman could fly into space, had x-ray vision, moved planets out of orbit and could survive a nuclear blast
#
The first Superman movie, which came out in 1978, starring Christopher Reeve, spawned three sequels in the following nine years as well as the disastrous 1984 movie Supergirl #
Between them, the films grossed $330m at the US box office alone #
The original Superman cost $110m to make, Superman Returns will cost $200m-plus #
The late Marlon Brando, who played Superman’s father in the first movie, will be digitally recreated to appear in this summer’s Superman Returns. Clark Kent’s home farm in the film was built on a sound stage, disassembled and moved to Australia where it was rebuilt
# DC Comics are releasing four comic books to explain the events that shaped Superman’s life between his last big screen appearance and Superman Returns
#
Studios are confident that Superman Returns will be a success — there are already plans for a sequel
COMING SOON TO A CINEMA NEAR YOU: THE SUMMER BLOCKBUSTER
Mission: Impossible III (opened yesterday) Tom Cruise returns to the screen as everyone’s second-favourite secret agent, Ethan Hunt. This time he abandons cushy retirement to battle a sadistic arms dealer, Owen Davian, (Philip Seymour Hoffman). M:i III, as it likes to be known, is the most expensive of the three Mission: Impossible films, with a budget of $150 million (£80 million).
The Da Vinci Code (May 19) The movie least likely to make it to the Pope’s DVD player might not have even made it into our cinemas if the recent court case had had its way. Copyright assured, the film of Dan Brown’s book looks easily set to recoup its estimated $125 million budget when it opens in a fortnight. Tom Hanks plays Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon; French actress Audrey Tatou is his cryptologist sidekick, Sophie Neveu.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (July 7) In one of the many sequels of the summer, Johnny Depp reprises his role as pirate Jack Sparrow. In debt to Davey Jones, he battles to save his soul from eternal damnation in the afterlife while trying to save the wedding of Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley).
World Trade Center (September 29) Oliver Stone directs the second of the year’s movies to dramatise the events surrounding the terrorist attacks on September 11, the other being United 93. The action is based on the true story of the last two people to be extracted alive from the World Trade Centre, officers John McLaughlin (Nicholas Cage) and William Jimeno (Michael Pena).
The Omen 666 (working title, June 6) Thankfully there have not been 665 Omen films since the 1976 classic about a couple who had the misfortune to adopt a satanic baby. This instalment, cleverly opening on 06.06.06, is a remake of the original and stars Julia Stiles, Liev Schreiber and Pete Postlethwaite.
Poseidon (June 2) The director Wolfgang Peterson gambled $175 million on this remake of the 1972 film The Poseidon Adventure, which cost $5 million and grossed $84 million in the US. As in the original, a boat capsizes and survivors clamber through the bowels of the ship to safety. Stars Kurt Russell and Richard Dreyfuss.
I dunno and don't care. I'm just hoping the Mr. doesn't make me watch it. I think the Kevin Spacey thing will be enough to turn him off it.
Larry Niven was right!
Hey, somebody else gets it. I never read a single Superman comic in which Lex cracked a joke, that I can remember. He was EVIL, period.
Lois with a child?
not going to work.
This is also the production that caused a big stink when they tried to make Jimmy Olson a homosexual.
They also tried to totally and completly change the superman outfit to something completly totally differnt.
I have no incentive to see this in the theaters or even rent or buy the DVD at this point.
The LAST thing I want to see is Superman PC.
Perhaps this is how hollywood accounting is going to bury all the losses they are about to suffer this year.
They inflate the cost of the movie and then hide the actual profits of other movies.
If this were wallstreet Hollyweird accountants would be in bigger trouble ant Enron.
The ones you mentioned all sound like over hyped duds based on the commericals I have seen.
Even the promo fluff is pushing me away from the drek.
Do you know of some other movies? Seems to me this year is going to be WORSE than last year for theater owners.
Its a fake promoted by deviants.
not funny.
I wait until a movie is released in DVD. About the same price, and you get to keep it--or turn it into a frisbee.
LOL! These are funny!
They make excellent drinks coasters too.
Regards, Ivan
Not absorbant but still protective.
It's awfully kind of AOL to continue to send them in the mail. Just when you think you've run out of coasters/frisbees, AOL comes through.
:-)
oooo, a 12-cent-er! Those were from my era.
One day, when I own a house with a large enough garden, I'm going to have a trap shooting kit made that will allow me to fire off the CDs that come in the mail for target practice.
Regards, Ivan
They were a dollar-seventy five when I started!
Oh I beg to differ.
You're such a young-un!
I'm not in the habit of emulating Socialists. And yes, I would like to have a large yard someday. ;)
Regards, Ivan
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