Action Movie News Round Up: May 20th, 2012
Official production has begun on the Tomb! Stallone will play security expert Ray Breslin, Arnie, who has been spotted on set sporting a white goatee, will play a mysterious prisoner. So mysterious, in fact, that the several different places are reporting several different names for the character. Sam Neill has also joined the film as the prison medic. – Digital Spy
Here’s the official press release for the film;
PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY UNDERWAY ON
THE TOMB
Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson,
Jim Caviezel, Amy Ryan, Vincent D’Onofrio, Vinnie Jones, Sam Neil Lead Cast
Mikael Håfström directs the action-thriller now shooting on location in New Orleans
NEW ORLEANS, LA MAY 10 – Production is underway on Summit Entertainment’s The Tomb. Directed by Mikael Håfström, the action-thriller is an Emmett-Furla Films/Mark Canton production. The producers are Atmosphere Entertainment’s chairman Mark Canton, Randall Emmett, George Furla, Robbie Brenner and Kevin King-Templeton. Co-financed by Emmett-Furla Films and Summit Entertainment, The Tomb is being filmed on location in the New Orleans area. Summit Entertainment, a LIONSGATE company, holds worldwide distribution rights and will release the motion picture in North America.
Written by Miles Chapman for the screen, with a rewrite by Jason Keller, The Tomb follows Ray Breslin (Stallone), the world’s foremost authority on structural security. He’s analyzed nearly every high security prison. After being framed by persons unknown, all of Breslin’s ingenuity and expertise are about to be put to work in the most challenging test he’s ever faced: escaping from a high-tech prison facility that’s design is based on his own protocols.
Arnold Schwarzenegger plays Emil Rottmayer,a complex inmate with multiple shades of gray. He’s the guy who fights to keep the prisoners from losing their humanity in their darkest hour as they struggle together to stay alive.
Jim Caviezel plays Hobbes, the warden of the Tomb. This is the type of prison facility that deals with inmates that no government wants on its books. The lead guard of the maximum-security facility, Drake, is played by English actor and retired footballer Vinnie Jones.
Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson plays Hush, Ray Breslin’s right-hand man and high-technology expert. Buttoned-down with street lurking just below the surface, Hush is aptly named because when he speaks, it is just above a whisper…but it’s a whisper with attitude and edge that can turn from soft to drop dead serious in the blink of an eye. Vincent D’Onofrio plays Lester Clark, Breslin’s business partner and CEO of B&C Security, their independent security company hired by the Federal Bureau of Prisons to test the integrity of their maximum-security facilities nationwide. Amy Ryan plays Abigail Ross, jack-of-all trades and one of Beslin’s closest confidants at B&C Security. Sam Neil is cast as Dr. Emil Kaikev, the prison doctor embedded within the Tomb, who is sympathetic to Breslin’s plight.
Håfström’s previous writing/directing credits in his native Sweden include: the gripping coming of age drama Evil, which was nominated for an Academy Award® in 2004 for Best Foreign Language film; the thriller Drowning Ghost; and the drama Days Like This, which won Sweden’s Guldbagge Award for Best Screenplay. His films have been invited to festivals around the world and, at home, Håfström has received multiple Guldbagge nominations, with Evil winning the Award for Best Direction and Best Screenplay.
The behind-the scenes film making team of The Tomb includes director of photography Brendan Galvin (Immortals, Behind Enemy Lines, Flight of the Phoenix), production designer Barry Chusid (Source Code, 2012, Aliens in the Attic, The Day After Tomorrow) and costume designer Lizz Wolf (The Expendables and The Expendables 2, Rambo, Dreamgirls, Suspect Zero, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of The Black Pearl, Armageddon, Traffic).
Special effects are supervised by Michael Lantieri (Alice in Wonderland, Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, The Hulk, Minority Report, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest) and visual effects are supervised by Chris Wells (300, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Live Free or Die Hard). Elliot Greenberg (Chronicle) is editing. The sound mixer is Richard Schexnayder (Red, The Expendables, Jonah Hex) and stunts are coordinated by Noon Orsatti (The Expendables 2, American History X, Conan The Barbarian).
The executive producers of The Tomb are Nicolas Stern, Bill Chase, Stefan Partirosyan.
Schwarzenegger and Stallone will next be seen on screen together in The Expendables 2, which is currently in post-production and will be released this summer by Lionsgate. Schwarzenegger recently wrapped filming The Last Stand, also for Lionsgate, produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura and directed by Jee-woon Kim.
Screen Daily reports that Jason Statham, (who will one day be referred to as SIR Jason Statham, mark my words) has been cast in Homefront. The film will have Ol’ Stubblehead playing a DEA agent who moves to a small town in pursuit of a quiet life. Gary Fleder, known more for dark thrillers than action films will direct based on a script by two time Academy Award nominee, this guy:
Roland Emmerich’s White House Down has found it’s leading actor in the form of Channing Tatum. If you’re a religious person, pray Antoine Fuqua and Gerard Butler beat them to the punch with their competing Die Hard in the White House film Olympus Has Fallen. –
Hollywood Reporter.
The Cobra Special Forces Facebook page have released the first photo of RANT, erm, I mean Cobra Commander from the film G.I. Joe Retaliation. It is yet to be 100% confirmed who is playing him in the film.
Beyond Hollywood have a much better poster and an assortment of images from Jean-Claude Van Damme’s upcoming Six Bullets.
We know Robert Rodriguez loves to work fast. So much so that Machete Kills and Sin City 2 have their first posters. Dimension Films have also given out a release date for Sin City 2, October 4th 2013. So far it’s known that Mickey Rourke, Rosario Dawson, Jessica Alba and Michael Madsen will return. The film will also be shot in 3D.
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CBM
Dolph Lundgren and Scott Adkins will reteam for the third time on Legendary, a pulpy adventure flick set in China to be shot in 3D. Seems kind of like a step back for both of them though. See if you can’t make hide nor hair of the press release at Scott Adkins’ website. Hopefully this will serve as an audition tape for Dolph Lundgren to get cast as Zoran Lazarević in an Uncharted film.
Michelle Monaghan has joined and Pierce Brosnan can be confirmed for The Coup. About a family caught up in the middle of a military coup overseas, Monaghan will of course play the mother. – Deadline
Michael Beihn and Hitman/The Divide director Xavier Gens will team up once again on The Farm. The film is about a burned out man who must protect his farm from a greedy corporation as well as an unseen inhuman force. Think, Mr. Majestyk with a Predator. –THR
Sci-fi wunderkind Duncan Jones will move into our territory with a biopic of James Bond creator Ian Fleming. For those who don’t know, Ian Fleming, before creating James Bond, was in actuality a badass secret agent who fought in WWII, in a badass crack commando unit, commissioned by Winston Churchill, alongside Christopher Lee and the real world inspirations of Ms. Moneypenny and Vesper Lynd. –THR
When it comes to scenery chewing you just can’t beat Nicolas Cage. The man is beloved the world over for his insane antics. When it comes to sleepwalking through a role for a paycheck and somehow still managing to be more entertaining than 90% of the cast, you just can’t beat Mickey Rourke. What happens when you mix those two elements together? We’ll find out in the upcoming action revenge film Marble City, which will be directed by Midnight Meat Train’s Ryuhei Kitamura. According to him, the film promises “vengeance on a road filled with rage, bullets and ultra-violence.” Sounds like Drive Angry 2. Which can only be a good thing. – Empire
Aint It Cool have exclusively debuted the poster for Isaac Florentine’s newest film Assassin’s Bullet.
In the most unnecessary news piece you’re ever likely to read in one of these, John Woo’s classic (I assume, still haven’t seen it, but everyone loves it) The Killer will get an English language remake. The new updated plot is as follows;
Set in present day Los Angeles, Jef, a highly skilled contract killer falls in love with the only living witness to his latest job, a female singer (Sarah Yan Li) who was blinded during the hit. Meanwhile, Detective Vaughn, the cop assigned to investigate Jef’s hit, has a chance to save his reputation when he correctly, and fatefully, suspects Jef to be the killer, but after witnessing Jef display an act of heroism, Vaughn’s perceptions of right and wrong begin to change.
Thanks to Deadline and Kain424.
More John Woo remake news, but thankfully this time he’s directing. He will remake 1963’s Youth of the Beast, now retitled to the less odd and more Steven Seagal DTV sounding Day of the Beast. The film will feature a shady westerner stuck between a global turf war between Yakuza and Cold War Russian mobsters. Sounds like The Stath’s recent film Safe and hopefully with someone awesome as him as the westerner, and not to mention should they need Russian badasses, we can recommend two. HINT HINT;
(Funny anecdote: When Kain PMed me The Killer remake news, I opened the Deadline link, my phone had condensed the address bar to deadline.blahblah/bruno…john-woo…remake…cannes/ and I thought Bruce Willis had been cast in the lead of Day of the Beast. Needless to say the reveal was heavily disappointing.)
Finally the action world was shocked this week to hear of Jackie Chan’s retirement from action cinema. On a personal note, I had written something of a farewell letter to him that I was going to post. Thankfully he cleared up the matter on Facebook and it turns out, he is not retiring from action films, but rather, he will no longer be doing crazy stunt work in his action films. After more than 30 years, I think it’s safe to say he’s earned the right to pick up an assault rifle (Or man a .50 cal) and lay waste to goons the easy way. While I admit, I haven’t seen as much of his filmography as I should’ve, my favourite film of his remains John Woo’s The Hand of Death (Or if you prefer it’s more awesome title Countdown to Kung Fu). Check out Kain424’s breakdown of it here.
Jackie, from me and no doubt the rest of the AOBG users, thank you for all those years of destroying your body for the betterment of badass cinema. Enjoy the easy days ahead.