Yes, it seems Jerry Bruckheimer and David Ellison (brother of Megan, son of Oracle founder Larry) are serious about making Top Gun 2. They’ve hired writers Zack Stentz and Ashley Miller to work on the script (a boy named Ashley! Can you imagine?). Stentz and Miller previously wrote a draft of X-Men: First Class that was re-written by Jane Goldman (Kick-Ass), and wrote Thor with Don Payne (but weren’t asked back for the sequel). It’s hard to say what Stentz and Miller’s contribution will be, but with Bruckheimer producing it’s safe to say that it’s going to suck.

The Variety report doesn’t offer any details on plot, but last year Tony Scott offered some possible details in an interview with Hitfix. Speaking of Tony Scott, Unstoppable is on cable right now, and man, if you ever wanted to watch two guys try and fail to stop an easily-stoppable train for two hours, I highly recommend it.

“I’m not waiting for a script. I’m going to do my homework. I’m going down to I think it’s Fallon, Nevada, down near New Mexico and it’s a whole different world now,” Scott says. “These computer geeks — these kids play war games in a trailer in Fallon, Nevada and if we ever went to war or were in the Middle East or the Far East or wherever it is, these guys can actually fly drones.  They are unmanned aircraft.  They operate them and then they party all night.”

Ooh, I hope it’s still about nerds playing on computers. That sounds super glamorous.

HOT FLIGHT CONSULTANT: “Lieutenant, I just really want to hear about the Mig sometime.” (*winking sexily*)

MAVERICK: “Well, why don’t you come by some time and we’ll… discuss.”

CUT TO: Two hours later, at Maverick’s apartment

Mav offers her bong load, they pass out playing xBox.

Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t know what to make of this Variety article, because it says “nothing is set in stone,” and some of the facty statements are prefaced by awesomely unattributable phrases like “it’s said,” but it seems to suggest that Paramount might shoot Transformers 4 and 5 back-to-back. No matter who said it, the fact that anyone might want to do that seems newsworthy in itself. Try to figure this out with me.

Hasbro chief Brian Goldner said during a Monday third-quarter earnings call that the toymaker is in “active discussions” with Paramount, Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg on how to move forward. Sources close to the planning process tell Variety two films could be headed into production.

Yes, an exec at a toy company is active in pre-production discussions for a film. Sad as that is, it’s even sadder that none of us are surprised.

Paramount is considering lensing its fourth and fifth films without pause. Nothing is set in stone, but screenwriter Ehren Kruger is said to have an idea for the next installments that the studio is high on, and has only begun engaging with writers.

And he wrote the second and third ones, so I’m sure this will be just as great.

Read the rest of this entry »

A few days ago, a judge threw out a suit by an EOD soldier against the makers of The Hurt Locker, saying that the film version of the guy was different enough to be “transformative,” and refuting the guy’s assertion that the film had somehow slandered his reputation. But since Hurt Locker writer Mark Boal had been embedded with the plaintiff’s unit (hehehehe…), the suit at least made sense. Today, we learned of Michael Alan Rubin, a California man who is suing the makers of The Hangover II, who he’s never met, saying they stole his life story. Because that makes sense. What kind of lawyer would even take this case?

Rubin is representing himself in the case…

Ahh, it’s all becoming clear…

According Rubin’s federal lawsuit, filed last week in Calfornia, he married a Japanese woman named Tamayo in 2007 in Japan. Together, the couple honeymooned in Thailand and India where differences started arising over Rubin’s financial condition. During the honeymoon trip, Tamayo refused to share a hotel room with the luckless plaintiff.

In India, Rubin says he met a Bollywood producer who gave him work as a leading actor on several films. At which point, Rubin wanted to turn his experience with Tamayo into a feature film, so he wrote a script entitled Mickey and Kirin and allegedly deposited a copy with the Writers Guild of America. He later heard from a Hollywood friend about Hangover II, the story of some Asian misadventures by Americans on the road to a wedding.

“The production of Hangover 2 is not a complete ‘literary’ or ‘artistic’ works of the Hangover Defendants as credited in Hangover 2,” says the complaint. “In fact, the production of Hangover 2 was a result of infringement of the Plaintiff’s treatment ‘Mickey and Kirin’ and exploitation of the private real life of Plaintiff in an insulting manner.” [THR]

“First they stole my life story verbatim! Then they insulted me by changing all of the events and details! And your honor, may it please the court, I’d like to ask that the jurors cover their heads in tinfoil to keep from being influenced by my neighbor’s parrot, who’s always had it in for me, and can change people’s thoughts. He’s very sneaky.”

Read the rest of this entry »

The Oscars are a mere four months away, so of course that means it’s time to prognosticate. After a series of studio campaigns rife with glad-handing and handjobs, which films will The Academy choose to honor this year with a nomination? I have no f*cking clue considering that most of the current favorites aren’t available to screen yet for peons such as myself, but I sure as hell can analyze other people’s opinions to form my own.

Horse porn, 9/11, white people defying intolerance, and tinker tailors are just a few hot button subjects explored in this year’s likely Academy Awards contenders. There’s so much Oscarbaitin’ goin on you’ll need a wet towel to wipe off the praiseful pull-quotes flying at your face. Oscar loves nothing more than a hot load of 5 out of 5 stars. So allow me to officially kick off FilmDrunk’s 2012 Oscar coverage by breaking down which films I believe will get a nod next year.

Read the rest of this entry »

Picture unrelated. ...We think.

An unnamed actress is suing IMDB for a million dollars after she says they revealed her age. She says she never revealed her age and that IMDB obtained it from her credit card information and posted it publicly without her permission. Oh come off it, Jennifer Aniston, everyone knows how old you are.

…actress is demanding $1 million from Amazon.com, accusing the company’s popular movie Web site, IMDb, of revealing her age by using her credit-card information.
The actress, who filed the federal suit in Seattle as “Jane Doe,” says she was keeping her age a secret because if Hollywood producers knew how old she was, she’d get fewer roles.
“In the entertainment industry, youth is king,” the suit says.
“If one is perceived to be ‘over-the-hill,’ i.e. approaching 40, it is nearly impossible for an up-and-coming actress, such as the plaintiff, to get work.”
The woman’s exact age isn’t listed in the suit. It says she is living in Texas.
She claims in the suit that IMDb, which is owned by Amazon, got her private information in 2008, when she subscribed to the site’s pay service, IMDbPro.
“Shortly after subscribing to IMDbPro, plaintiff noticed that her legal date of birth had been added to her public profile … revealing to the public that the plaintiff is many years older than she looks,” the suit says. |NYPost|

Yeah, well Dominican shortstops don’t like revealing their true age either, but what happens when you get out there on the casting couch and pull a hammy? These productions have to know what kind of risk they’re getting into. It doesn’t matter how old you think you look, the closer to 40 you get, the more liable you are to blow out a rotator cuff on your producer-handjob arm, and that’s just a bad situation for everyone. I feel bad for IMDB, who were just trying to protect their producers. But good for this broad, who’s probably going to make more on this suit than she ever did on residuals.

Meanwhile, I think the 23-year-old actresses of the world should band together and file a class-action suit against Cameron Diaz for stealing all their roles of “fresh-faced secretary” and “hot, young teacher.”

Poor Shia LaBeouf recently suffered the indignity of getting ground and pounded on the curb by a shirtless fat dude outside a bar called Cinema Public House in Vancouver. Worse, it appears to have been non-consensual. You can see the video below. There isn’t much back story, but according to TMZ, both Shia and the guy had been kicked out of the bar minutes early. The video picks up with Shia on his back getting flabby punches rained down on him, when some bystanders intervene. They tap the fat guy on his shoulder and he almost falls down, so I’m going to go out on a limb and say that he was completely butthoused. As Shia appears to be.

Read the rest of this entry »