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Tag: john-c-reilly

  • Here’s the First Photo of John C. Reilly and Steve Coogan in ‘Stan & Ollie’

    Here’s the First Photo of John C. Reilly and Steve Coogan in ‘Stan & Ollie’

    eOne

    It’s always a bit dodgy trying to channel another famous actor, but John C. Reilly and Steve Coogan look the part in the first photo from “Stan & Ollie.”

    The film, about the classic comedy team of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, will premiere as the closing night film at the BFI London Film Festival on October 21.

    “Stan & Ollie” focuses on the comic duo’s farewell tour across Britan and Ireland in 1953.

    Shirley Henderson plays Ollie’s wife Lucille, and Nina Arianda plays Stan’s wife Ida. Danny Huston costars as comedy film pioneer Hal Roach, who also gave us “Our Gang” (aka “Little Rascals”).

    The festival’s artistic director, Tricia Tuttle, praised the film as “beautiful tribute to cinema’s early comedy odd couple” and “a truly funny and touching story about a tender lifelong friendship.” She added, “Jon Baird’s film is also a must for movie fans, exploring the twilight years of two megawatt performers who had a meteoric rise to fame. These two prove that true comic timing is eternal, and it’s a perfect end to the festival.”

    It’s currently slated for a January 11, 2019 release in the U.K. No word yet on a US release date.

    [Via Variety]

     

     

     

  • 10 Things You Never Knew About ‘Step Brothers’

    10 Things You Never Knew About ‘Step Brothers’

    Columbia Pictures

    It’s been ten years since Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly starred in “Step Brothers” and reminded us that they’re one of the great comedic duos of our time. And somehow, we doubt Brennan and Dale have grown more mature over the last decade. Celebrate this milestone by enjoying some fun trivia you might not know about this modern comedy classic.

    1. A car light advertising Hugalo’s Pizza can be seen in Brennan and Dale’s bedroom.  Hugalo’s is the company Ferrell’s character Ricky Bobby worked for in 2006’s “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby” after losing his job as a race car driver.

    2. Director Adam McKay first conceived the film while editing “Talladega Nights,” after overhearing someone in the editing room mentioning “bunk beds.”

    Columbia Pictures

    3. While the part of Derek ultimately went to Adam Scott, both Jon Hamm and Thomas Lennon were considered for the role.

    4. The Sword that Brennan shows to Dale is a replica of the one used by Adrian Paul in 1992’s “Highlander: The Series.”

    CBS Television Distribution

    5. Both Ferrell and Reilly actually performed their respective parts during the big musical number. Reilly had previously learned to play the drums while working on 1995’s “Georgia.”

    6. Mary Steenburgen plays Ferrell’s mother in the film, despite only being 14 years older than Ferrell in real life. She previously played stepmother to Ferrell’s character in 2003’s “Elf.”

    New Line Cinema

    7. Actor Richard Jenkins only realized late into production that he had once worked for Reilly’s father in Chicago and, in fact, had met Reilly before when Reilly was four years old.

    8. The rough cut of the film clocked in at a whopping five hours, but McKay managed to trim the final version down to just 98 minutes.

    Columbia Pictures

    9. The high school where Brennan and Dale perform at the talent show is named after the actual school McKay attended, Great Valley High in Pennsylvania.

    10. Director Adam McKay shared his plans for a potential “Step Brothers” sequel in 2011 in an interview with Screen Junkies, revealing that one of the brothers will have gotten married and had children. However, both McKay and Ferrell have downplayed the possibility of a sequel in recent years.

  • 21 Things You Never Knew About ‘Boogie Nights’

    In the age of HBO’s “The Deuce,” “Boogie Nights” looks like a time-honored masterpiece, but when the sprawling period epic about the golden age of porn filmmaking opened 20 years ago this week (on October 10, 1997), moviegoers didn’t exactly embrace it.

    The subject matter was still too skeevy to draw mainstream or even art-house audiences, yet not nearly explicit enough to draw the trench coat crowd. “Most people don’t share my moral sense,” writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson explained in 1999, “which is, ‘I’ll masturbate, but I have to clean it up very quickly afterwards.’” No wonder “Boogie Nights” wasn’t exactly a hit.

    Nonetheless, it earned three Oscar nominations, made a serious leading man out of Mark Wahlberg, gave Burt Reynolds his best role of the last 35 years, put Anderson on the map, and gave early career boosts to Philip Seymour Hoffman, John C. Reilly, Don Cheadle, and Thomas Jane.

    These days, “Boogie Nights” evokes double nostalgia, both for the disco 1970s, lovingly recreated in the movie’s costumes and soundtrack, and for the 1990s, when Hollywood studios still nurtured indie directors and let them realize their visions instead of plucking them fresh from Sundance and assigning them to direct CGI blockbuster franchise sequels.

    “Boogie Nights” had a famously fraught production history, including some life-imitates-porn moments and a near-fistfight between Reynolds and Anderson. Here are some of the things that, uh, went down.
    1. Anderson (above, right) grew up in the Valley and was, as a teen, obsessed with the porn industry existing all around him. He was still in high school when he made his first movie, a 32-minute short called “The Dirk Diggler Story,” a “Zelig”-like mockumentary about a fallen porn star. In addition to the protagonist, several other characters and much of the dialogue would find their way into “Boogie Nights” a decade later.

    2. The Dirk Diggler of Anderson’s “Boogie Nights” screenplay bears a strong resemblance to legendary porn actor John Holmes, and not just in terms of length. There’s Holmes’ rise to fame via the series of “Johnny Wadd” thrillers (echoed in Dirk’s “Brock Landers” movies), his biographical documentary directed by a colleague (“Exhausted,” the inspiration for the movie that Julianne Moore‘s Amber makes about Dirk), and his alleged involvement in the Wonderland drug murder case (the inspiration for the whole nightmarish sequence involving Alfred Molina‘s Rahad Jackson).
    3. New Line wanted to be the next Miramax, and they needed their own Quentin Tarantino. After seeing Anderson’s first film, “Hard Eight,” they thought he might be it. They decided the director’s phone-book-sized script about a guy with a 13-inch penis was edgy enough, as long as he agreed to keep it under three hours and keep the rating down to an R.

    4. Anderson initially wanted Leonardo DiCaprio to star as Dirk Diggler, but the actor begged off, citing his commitment to star in “Titanic.” But he recommended his “Basketball Diaries” co-star Wahlberg. “You know,” Anderson joked, “Mark came to me and said, ‘I’ve got an inch on Leo.’ I said, ‘Really?’ And he showed it to me. And then I hired him.” Years later, DiCaprio would cite turning down “Boogie Nights” as his “biggest regret.”
    5. The role of Jack Horner, the porn filmmaker who becomes a surrogate father to Dirk and an ad hoc family of cast and crew members, was hard to cast. Before hiring Burt Reynolds, Anderson considered actors as diverse as Albert Brooks, Harvey Keitel, Bill Murray, Jack Nicholson and Sydney Pollack.

    6. Warren Beatty expressed interest, but he ultimately acknowledged he just wanted to be associated with the project because the 59-year-old star saw himself more as Dirk. (“I think he was joking and not joking,” Anderson mused.)7. Samuel L. Jackson, who’d played the villain in “Hard Eight,” turned down the role of Buck Swope, the porn actor who dreams of selling stereos. His response to the script, Anderson recalled, was “What the hell is this?” After Moore vouched for the young director, Cheadle took the part and turned it into a career-boosting showcase.

    8. There were a number of real-life porn actors in the cast, mostly as extras, though Nina Hartley had the biggest part as the emasculating wife of Little Bill (William H. Macy). Anderson hired them to help make sure he was depicting the porn world accurately, but sometimes, things got a little too much like the real thing. Hartley would often walk around the set in the nude because that’s what she was used to doing on porn sets, even though it unnerved Anderson’s cast and crew. She also wondered aloud why she couldn’t just have sex in her sex scenes, since she found simulating sex much more complicated. During one scene, some of the actors and crew claimed she and her partner really were having sex, but she insisted later that his penis wasn’t venturing where everyone thought it was going; it just wasn’t taped to his thigh like it should have been.
    9. Like her character, Heather Graham (Rollergirl) seldom took off her skates, even when cameras weren’t rolling.

    10. Speaking of penises, the movie’s most famous special effect was the prosthetic Diggler that Wahlberg shows off in the final scene. The first one that the make-up team built was John Holmes-sized, but it just looked too huge to seem real, so they built a shorter one, still large enough for Marky Mark to hide his actual funky bunch inside.
    11. In fact, the make-up artists built several, in case of breakage. Wahlberg also whipped it out during the sequence where Dirk and Amber are shooting a sex scene; it doesn’t appear on camera then, but Wahlberg wanted to get a rise out of Moore. Most of the time, however, the package shown straining against the confines of Dirk’s bellbottoms is just a woman’s stocking filled with birdseed. The propmakers left the stocking in a warm trunk, where its seeds started to sprout, so they had to make another one.

    12. During one scene where Little Bill grumbles about having caught his wife being sodomized by another man, Macy repeatedly muffed his line and said it backwards: “My f**king wife has an ass in her c**k.” Anderson decided he preferred the mistake and kept it in the film.
    13. While Anderson allowed Macy and others to ad lib, he insisted that Reynolds stay on script. Reynolds became irked and felt that the relatively inexperienced director wasn’t giving him the respect he deserved as a veteran movie star. The two men argued loudly, and Reynolds swung a fist that might have hit Anderson in the face had a crew member not held back his arm.

    14. Why is Molina the only actor in his scene not distracted by the firecrackers going off at random intervals? Because he’s wearing a hidden earpiece piping in “Sister Christian” on a continuous loop.
    15. If the song “You Got the Touch,” which Dirk records during his dubious effort to branch out into music, sounds familiar, it’s because it originally appeared on the soundtrack of the first “Transformers” movie — the 1986 cartoon, that is. Dirk’s other song, “Feel the Heat,” was composed by Anderson and Reilly.

    16. Avant-garde satirical film director Robert Downey Sr. (yep, Iron Man’s real-life dad) shows up in a cameo as the record label executive. With Downey’s permission, Anderson cribbed the kid setting off firecrackers from Downey’s 1969 movie “Putney Swope,” as well as Buck Swope’s last name.
    17. Anderson had to submit the film to the MPAA 18 times, cutting a few frames each time from scenes the ratings board found too risqué, in order to avoid an NC-17 rating and earn the R rating he was contractually obliged to deliver. In the end, the difference between NC-17 and R turned out to be only 45 seconds worth of film. “I don’t miss it at all,” Anderson said of the snipped footage.

    18. Still, Anderson’s cut was over three hours long, making both test audiences and executives at New Line restless. Studio co-founder Bob Shaye made his own two-hour cut of the film and screened it for a test audience in Pasadena. Before the screening, the then-unknown director walked among the viewers in line and bad-mouthed his own film, saying, “This movie sucks. You’re gonna hate it. This movie sucks,” so that Shaye’s cut would earn even lower test scores than his own. Eventually, both sides reached a compromise, resulting in a 155-minute release. Among the lost scenes: Dirk learns his parents have been killed in a gruesome car crash, which is then briefly shown on screen.
    19. “Boogie Nights” reportedly cost $15.5 million to make. It earned back $26.4 million in North America and another $16.7 million overseas.

    20. The Academy nominated “Boogie Nights” for three Oscars: Best Original Screenplay, Best Supporting Actress (Moore), and Best Supporting Actor (Reynolds). It was shut out of all three categories.
    21. In 2015, Reynolds said that, to this day, he still hasn’t ever watched “Boogie Nights” all the way through, and that he turned down an offer to appear in Anderson’s follow-up, “Magnolia.” “I’d done my picture with Paul Thomas Anderson, that was enough for me,” he said. Wahlberg, who recalled Reynolds trying an Irish accent for his role in rehearsals, said in 2014 that he believed Reynolds’ evident ill will toward what could have been his career comeback role had consequences. “He would have won the Oscar,” Wahlberg said, “had he not dug such a hole for himself.”

  • 6 Things You Need to Know Before You See ‘Kong: Skull Island’

    King Kong roars and punches his way back into theaters with “Kong: Skull Island.” But don’t expect the same old story of “Girl meets Ape” this time around. The new and improved Kong is a very different beast, with lots of monsters that will become very acquainted with his fists.

    So sit back and allow us to break down everything you need to know before watching “Skull Island.”

    1. It’s a Reboot
    King Kong is one of the oldest characters in Hollywood, and he’s been rebooted quite a few times over the years. “Skull Island” is just his latest freshening-up. This new movie isn’t directly connected to any of the past Kongs, whether it’s the original 1933 “King Kong” or the 2005 remake. It’s a fresh start for both moviegoers and the giant ape himself.

    2. You’ve Never Seen a Monster Movie Like This Before While “Skull Island” is rebooting the franchise again, it’s not simply recycling the same plot. Rather than culminating with Kong being dragged to New York and making his fateful skyscraper climb, this movie looks to be set almost exclusively on Skull Island. Fans will get a much closer look at the deadly Skull Island ecosystem and the various beasts Kong must battle to maintain his throne. So, if you like your fights of the ape-vs.-evil lizard thing variety, then Christmas comes early for you this year.

    3. Think “Apocalypse Kong”See that poster above? The one that should be hanging on your wall right now? It’s a Kong-ified version of the iconic poster from the classic Vietnam film, “Apocalypse Now.” And that’s a hint to the level of action and direction of story on display here.

    “Skull Island” shares one thing in common with 1976’s “King Kong” in that it takes place in the 1970’s Hopefully that’s all the two share in common…

    The 1973 setting is crucial. It gives the main characters a leg-up in terms of the weapons and technology they’re able to bring to bear against Skull Island’s vicious inhabitants, but it’s not so far in the future that it’s impossible to believe there could still be a hidden island full of dinosaurs and giant apes. Plus, “Skull Island” is said to have (at times) a kind of psychedelic, very “Apocalypse Now”-inspired vibe.

    4. It Stars Loki and Captain MarvelThe would-be blockbuster wisely upgrades the cast of human characters, too. Most of them are soldiers or scientists, rather than hapless tourists in search of fame and fortune.

    Tom Hiddleston stars as James Conrad, a disillusioned Vietnam War vet who’s hired on as a hunter-tracker for the expedition. Samuel L. Jackson plays Preston Packard, the leader of a helicopter squadron known as the Black Devils. Brie Larson plays Mason Weaver, a war-time photographer, who ends up literally in Kong’s clutches — after developing a sort of respect for the beast.

    The cast also includes John Goodman, as the member of shady agency MONARCH responsible for the expedition to Scary Monster Death Island, and John C. Reilly.

    5. Kong Is Not a Bad Guy
    He may be a giant ape, but Kong has always been treated as more of a tragic, misunderstood hero than a true monster. That approach doesn’t appear to be changing here.

    He’s being presented as the last survivor of a race of giant apes who were wiped out by Skull Island’s more bloodthirsty inhabitants. Over the course of the film, our heroes will come to learn that Kong is their ally, not a beast to be exploited.

    6. Yes, it Shares a Universe With Godzilla Thanks to Marvel Studios, shared movie universes are all the rage. “Skull island” is not only rebooting the King Kong franchise, it’s also a crucial building block in Warner Bros. and Legendary Entertainment’s “MonsterVerse.” It’s basically a big-budget commercial paving the way for Kong and the Big Guy (above) to share the screen. (There’s even an end-credits tag ensuring that.)

    This shared universe was born with 2014’s “Godzilla.” Following the release of “Skull Island” and 2019’s “Godzilla: King of the Monsters,” the MonsterVerse will culminate with 2020’s “Godzilla vs. King Kong.”

    We don’t know what will cause these two titans to clash, but we fear for anyone caught in the middle of that brawl.

    “Kong: Skull Island” hits theaters Friday. Get your tickets now.

  • ‘Kong: Skull Island’ Director Dives Deep Into Easter Eggs, Miyazaki Monsters, and His ‘Metal Gear Solid’ Movie

    Whatever you think “Kong: Skull Island” will be, it’s not. It’s not the metaphorically minded adventure of the 1933 version or the emotional rollercoaster of Peter Jackson‘s 2005 remake. (It is also nothing like the two films from the ’70s or the movies that teamed Kong with Godzilla. The less said about those, the better.) Instead, “Kong: Skull Island,” is an all-out war movie. It never leaves the island, never brings Kong back to the mainland. It’s just a bunch of people, on Skull Island, having their asses handed to them. And it is awesome.

    Part of what makes “Kong: Skull Island” so awesome is that it’s set immediately after the conclusion of the Vietnam war, when a shadowy government organization called Monarch (one of the things that connects this film to 2014’s “Godzilla” reboot) piggybacks on a Landsat expedition to map the island. That’s how a mercenary (Tom Hiddleston), a war photographer (Brie Larson), and an embattled soldier (Samuel L. Jackson) end up facing down King Kong and a host of Skull Island’s nastiest monster inhabitants. Oh, and John C. Reilly shows up as a pilot shot down on the island during World War II who has since learned to live with the natives. It’s all very cool.

    And it was all the brainchild of Jordan Vogt-Roberts, a young filmmaker best known for the Sundance sensation “Kings of Summer.” I got to chat with the director when he was in town promoting “Kong: Skull Island,” and we talked about John C. Reilly’s jacket, the design of the creatures (and natives), the Hayao Miyazaki influence on the film, and whether or not his big-screen version of beloved video game “Metal Gear Solid” is still coming.

    Right off the bat let’s talk about Easter eggs. John C. Reilly has “for your health” written on the back of his jacket. Is that a reference to Steve Brule? Can you confirm?

    [Laughs] Ironically, it is a Steve Brule Easter egg but it was originally designed as a reference to “Akira” and the jacket they wear in “Akira.” It just happened to brilliantly coincide with the “For Your Health” Steve Brule reference. I remember when I showed the jacket to John he said, “You know that’s a Steve Brule thing, too?” And I said, “Yeah and it’s also an ‘Akira’ thing.” So he said, “All right, well people are going to go nutty for this.” I said, “All right.” In a normal world, my instinct would have been, Ah, that’s too close. But I thought, No, this is perfect. The fact that the original “Akira” reference lines up with this thing in John C. Reilly’s life is too good to pass up.

    And the insignia on the front of his jacket looks like the monsters on the island. I’m assuming that’s intentional?

    That is intentional. And it’s a reference also to “Taxi Driver.” If you look at the patch that Travis Bickle wears on his jacket in “Taxi Driver,” it says “King Kong Company.” If you side-by-side the two images you see the similarity.I would love to spend this entire interview talking about John C. Reilly’s jacket, but we should talk about other things, too. It was your decision to set the film in 1973, right? Can you talk about what the project was when you got it and how it evolved?

    When I got it, they came to me and said they were going to do a new “King Kong” movie and my first response was, “That’s awesome, I love ‘King Kong.’” And then my second response was, “Why?” They had a script that took place in 1917 that was a very cool script by Max Bornstein, who’s a very talented writer. But it just didn’t make sense why it should get made. And Kong was barely in the script. It was originally conceived as a “Jurassic Park” movie, and Kong is like the T. Rex. Like, it’s not necessarily his movie. Max is amazing and that script is super cool; it just didn’t make sense for me to be like, “Oh, I can direct this movie.” So they said, “What movie would you direct? How would you make it relevant?”

    I went away for the weekend and thought about it and started doing research and looking into different time periods. I saw that, in the early ’70s, NASA started launching satellites that were mapping the Earth. They called it the Landsat Program. I was really obsessed with that as an incredible way of discovering something in a time when you believed things could still be discovered. I immediately upon thinking about the ’70s started thinking about choppers and napalm and Hendrix playing and “Apocalypse Now” with King Kong. It’s a Vietnam movie with monsters. I thought, I would watch the sh*t out of that movie. My friends would watch the sh*t out of that movie. There were so many thematic reasons that were bigger answers to that as to why it was the ’70s, too.

    So I went back to Legendary and pitched this Vietnam creature feature, and I thought I was going to get laughed out of the room. I thought they were going to say, “What? No!” And the cool thing about Legendary and Warner Bros. was they said, “Let’s do that!”

    The movie is very political and it’s very stylized. Were you surprised at how much you were able to squeeze into what is obviously a big tent pole movie?

    Well that was all a long process. From the beginning, it was very important to me that if we were going to play around with the imagery of Vietnam, we had to have a message. We had to have a comment on the war. Not everyone necessarily agreed with that, but I was like, “We cannot play with imagery that is this charged just to make a popcorn movie. There needs to be a message here as well.”

    As far as style goes, I was very surprised, but I can sit here and say that my style and my voice is in this film and I’m super proud of that. I think the thing that’s missing from big popcorn movies is that they don’t have a soul and they don’t have a voice. And I think audiences want a point of view. I think that’s the one way that films can truly separate themselves from TV and all the other noise and all the other content being created. That’s the one thing movies really have, that when they excel a movie with a voice that suddenly feels different, you think, Wow, that’s a revelation.

    So I’m really proud of how much of it is in there. Luckily I had great producers who ultimately backed me on that, but it wasn’t an easy process necessarily. You’ve really got to run through the gauntlet and just stick to your guns.Was it hard maintaining that voice while also being a part of this larger ecosystem of movies that King Kong is a part of?

    Yes, it was difficult to maintain that, but, like I said, I ultimately had great people who backed me. There’s a lot of things in the movie and a lot of people’s favorite moments that I think are people’s favorite moments because they’re left of center or subversive or off-kilter, and anytime you do something like that you’re stepping outside the box and there are a lot of people you have to make comfortable with that as you go. So it was not an easy, “Oh, yes, of course all this weird humor is going to be in here and all this style is going to be in here.” If I was ever going to do a Director’s Cut, there’d be 10% more style in the movie. I’m super proud of the movie but it is what it is at times.

    And Legendary and Warner Bros. were really great because I said to them, “I feel like people are very cautious and weary of all of this franchise stuff.” So many of these movies have scenes in the middle of the movie that have nothing to do with the movie you’re watching and they only exist to set up some larger franchise. And that’s a shame because you’re diluting your own movie. There’s a lot of people who will go to this movie and have no idea it connects to “Godzilla.” And Kong is an icon. He is film history. He deserves to be treated as his own standalone film. They were great about hearing that, saying, “Let’s tell the best version of this story so that when King Kong and Godzilla fight, you give a sh*t about him because you love that movie.”

    Let’s talk about the design of Kong for a second, because what’s so interesting is that he’s much more of a man-in-suit design. Can you talk about getting away from the more primate look and embracing something more stylized?

    One of the very first things I did when I got signed on was say that I wanted to make him a biped again, like the ’33 version. I wanted to make him a movie monster again, where he has exaggerated proportions and was not just a big ape or monkey or gorilla but had his own, almost cartoony proportions. I wanted to take him out of the biped that walks like a simian and more like one that is a god. I wanted to make him more upright and this combination of a man and a beast and a god. So he would carry himself with a nobility and a pride and a sense of being regal but there’s a sadness because he’s the lonely protector of this place.

    Another fascinating design aspect is the natives of Skull Island. You shied away from the primal man we saw in the most recent “King Kong,” and I wanted to know where the face-paint came from. It almost looks like a circuit board.

    It took a long, long, long time to nail the design of that stuff. It was really important for me because a lot of the Kong films do have these racist stereotypes of what these villagers are. I wanted to completely flip that on its head. And I’m also a child of 8-bit video games and circuit boards and things like that. Because as soon as you give soft edges to this paint it just felt very traditionally tribal and like you’d seen it before. I liked the idea of it feeling anachronistic and futuristic. Because I wanted the villagers to feel more evolved than us. They had a better understanding of themselves and their symbiosis with the island. I loved the idea of the paint because for me it wasn’t just decorative but also served as a form of language. It also served as a form of camouflage. I loved the idea that it served these multi-purposes.Some of the creatures on the island, like the giant ox, feel very Miyazaki-y. Was that on purpose?

    Yes, absolutely. It took a long time and we had thousands of drawings of creatures. We knew where we wanted to go with Kong, but we didn’t want to do dinosaurs on the island. Peter did such a good job with dinosaurs and the ’33 one did that and “Jurassic World” did that. I felt like we’d seen it before. I went through so many designs with so many artists and that creature was the design that really broke it open for us. Suddenly Miyazaki and “Princess Mononoke” and this sense of beauty and spirituality and this slightly heightened mythical feel was created. That broke open the door for the design of what these other creatures should be. If Kong is the god of the island then these other creatures are the gods of their own domain. And I loved that. I loved that idea and I love Miyazaki and I think there’s a lot of “Princess Mononoke” in this movie.

    Is “Metal Gear Solid” still brewing, or have you moved on to other things?

    “Metal Gear Solid” is absolutely still brewing. We’re working on the script and that is one of the most special, idiosyncratic properties on the planet for me. There’s not another franchise on this Earth that I would rather shepherd into existence because Kojima’s voice is so special and pure and it would be so easy for Hollywood to misinterpret what that property is. Luckily, we have great producers on that. Nailing the walking philosophies as these characters exist and nailing the feeling of tension and dread you get as you’re caught and every step you take you go further and further into the belly of the beast as you’re sneaking around. You’re nailing the feelings that that game makes you feel and putting that in a movie is so exciting to me. That is still on. We need to get the script right and we need to get the script right in a way that honors what the game is and honors Kojima’s voice and breaks the curse of video game movies.

    “Kong: Skull Island” is out everywhere this Friday.

  • 15 Vital ‘Kong: Skull Island’ Questions Answered on the Set

    Samuel L Jackson as Lt. Colonel Packard comes face to face with Kong in KONG: SKULL ISLANDFor a movie so shrouded in mystery, the cast of “Kong: Skull Island” sure was chatty.

    That’s what we learned when Moviefone, along with a small group of reporters, was invited to the Hawaii set of “Skull Island” back in December 2015. (Although, nowadays, you could say the gargantuan gorilla flick is “formerly shrouded in mystery,” since our eyes have since been exposed to a number of jaw-dropping trailers and TV spots.)

    Still, thanks to the ample access we were granted to the movie’s stars and filmmakers on the set of “Kong: Skull Island,” we were able to compile more than a few revealing details about the simeon spectacle that have, until now, remained under lock and key.

    In quick, convenient asked-and-answered style, here are 15 very important questions we got answered on the set of Warner Bros. and Legendary’s “Kong: Skull Island.”

    1. What is “Kong: Skull Island” about?

    Remember Peter Jackson’s 2005 “King Kong“? Remember how the only part of the movie you really remember is the time they spent on the island finding Kong, encountering all types of dangerous, awesome creatures? Remember how you wished they’d never made it back to New York and the whole movie was spent on that island? Well, they heard you, and they made a movie for you.

    More specifically, “Skull Island” is about a team of scientists, soldiers, and assorted explorer types who seek to survey an uncharted Pacific island in 1972. Each person on the team is venturing to the island for different reasons — some well-intentioned, some nefarious. Once they reach the island, however, all hell breaks loose (in this case, hell’s name is “Kong,” and he puts the smackdown on their helicopters), and the team’s mission of exploration turns into one of “we need to get off of this island before it kills us.” Need more clarity? Watch the trailer.Clear enough? Let’s move on.

    2. How does “Skull Island” start?

    While on the set, we were shown some stunning concept art, one of which featured Kong, larger than life (naturally), looming over two WWII soldiers standing on a cliff. One of the film’s producers, Alex Garcia, keyed in on this specific image, and used it to paint a vivid picture of the film’s opening sequence.

    “We open on the aftermath of a World War II dogfight,” he revealed. “A pilot crash lands on this island. A U.S. pilot, you know, crawling, stands up, sees another plane crash. It’s the plane he’s been fighting with. A Japanese pilot starts running at him. They get into a death duel running through the jungle. You know, two mortal enemies going to kill each other until they’re interrupted by this seemingly impossible much larger force that literally — they’re on a cliff face here — that literally plants his hands down and comes up and everything of their world — the warring factions, the whole war, all of that — is instantly nullified by this guy. We cut out of that and come into the ’70s.”

    Hooked? Yeah, that’s the point.

    3. When is “Skull Island” set?

    As previously mentioned, the film is set in 1972, during the Vietnam War, and there’s a very specific, rather ingenious reason as to why they set the movie during this very tumultuous time. Producer Garcia delivered this insightful bit of backstory:

    “[Director] Jordan [Vogt-Roberts] came in with this idea of setting the movie in the early 1970s, at the dawn of the Landsat program,” he revealed. “The Landsat program is a real program that was formed to start utilizing satellites to map the surface of the Earth. It’s the first time we ever did that, and, in that mapping, they discover a previously uncharted island that is surrounded by weather patterns, storm systems — it’s incredibly difficult to reach, and incredibly difficult to even ascertain its existence because of the storm systems and weather abnormalities and all of that.”

    Sound like the perfect setting (and set-up) for a monster movie.

    4. Where is “Skull Island” set?A giant, bloody handprint adorns the cliffside of a mountain on SKULL ISLANDWell, the answer to this one is in the name of the movie: the “previously uncharted” Skull Island, which is located somewhere in the Pacific Ocean — seemingly somewhere in Southeast Asia, but maybe not. As Garcia explained, Skull Island isn’t just uncharted, it’s a world unto itself — one with the kinds of flora and fauna scientists have only dreamed about.

    “It’s an entirely unique ecosystem,” he told us. “A team of people come together to go and survey this island. We will discover, through the course of the movie, that some of them may have had more knowledge than others. They may have actually understood that something was there, even if they didn’t know exactly what. The movie essentially becomes, thematically, about the collision of the modern world and myth. Science is now debunking all myth, but what if some myth actually was true?”

    For those worried that “Skull Island” is going to be mired by long sequences of exposition and scientific explanations, Garcia says you have nothing to worry about: “It’s an adventure movie at its core, about this group of people who are confronted with the seemingly impossible on this island and have to survive it.”

    5. Why do they go to Skull Island?Bill Randa (John Goodman), Captain James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston), Weaver (Brie Larson), and Marlow (John C. Reilly) explore the boneyard in KONG: SKULL ISLANDOn the face of it, the team is going to “survey the island,” but there wouldn’t be much of a movie if that were true. Pretty much every member of the team has a different reason for going — some noble, some not.

    Garcia commented briefly on the mixed makeup of the team: “This group is led by Conrad, who’s played by Tom Hiddleston. Conrad is a tracker out of the war — British tracker, S.A.S. [Special Air Service], who’s brought in by … a team of Monarch operatives, which is the organization in ‘Godzilla,’ who are kind of a shadowy presence in the movie, who sort of jumpstart this expedition. It’s a Landsat expedition officially, but John Goodman, who plays the guy from Monarch [Bill Randa], is sort of pulling the strings in the background. We come to realize, obviously, that they knew much more than they let on, initially.”

    Oscar-winner Brie Larson also forces her way onto the trip, and, as Garcia pointed out, she’s got a motive all her own.

    “Brie Larson plays a photographer who sort of convinces her way onto the expedition because she believes that there’s something else going on,” he revealed. “She thinks it’s some military thing related to, probably, the war. She has conspiratorial notions of it. She has no suspicion that it’s what it actually ends up becoming, but when she hears there’s an expedition going with military support she weasels her way onto it in order to get a story — and gets the story of a lifetime, obviously.”

    Let’s hope she — and her camera — survive the trip.

    6. How much Kong are we going to get in “Skull Island”?Kong is ready for battle in KONG: SKULL ISLANDFrom what we gathered, a lot — both in terms of size and screen time.

    “Unlike Godzilla, we meet Kong pretty quickly in our movie,” producer Garcia divulged. “They start the survey, they’re coming over the island — very quickly — and they’re dropping these seismic survey instruments that function almost like charges. They land, and rumble, and create waves that they then measure, and they disturb the peace, quite frankly. The sheriff of the island, Kong, rises up and has a whole confrontation with the choppers.”

    Essentially, Kong is the giant, destructive gorilla equivalent of your 80-year old neighbor yelling “Get off my lawn!”

    7. Are there monsters/creatures other than Kong on Skull Island?Captain James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston) encounters a water buffalo in KONG: SKULL ISLANDUm, hell yes.

    As you’ve likely seen in the trailers and TV spots, Kong is not alone on Skull Island. While we popped our peepers on concept art for a number of creatures (some far more dangerous than Kong), director Vogt-Roberts and producer Garcia only spoke about a few (hey, they’ve gotta leave some surprises), but what both emphasized was the importance of each creature feeling native to the environment rather than simply being scary or awe-inspiring.

    “If Kong is the god of this island, we wanted each of the creatures to feel like individual gods of their own domain,” Vogt-Roberts explained. “[Hayao] Miyazaki‘s ‘Princess Mononoke’ was actually a big reference in the way that the spirit creatures sort of have their own domains and fit within that. So a big thing was sort of trying to design creatures that felt realistic and could exist in an ecosystem that feels sort of wild and out there, and then also design things that simultaneously felt beautiful and horrifying at the same time.”

    Secondary to the creatures’ environmental authenticity was their originality, as Vogt-Roberts expressed: “My biggest qualm with a lot of movies that I watch is, I feel like I’ve seen it before. So we just really wanted to go out of our way to, especially with the other creatures, design things that felt sort of unique to our movie and can exist on the island.”

    A great example of what Vogt-Roberts was going for was delivered by Garcia, who described a sequence in the movie (briefly revealed in the trailer), in which the explorers accidentally incite a battle with some of the island’s longest-legged residents: “It’s a bamboo forest they go through, and we’re with them in the bamboo and they’re hacking their way through it — and then we discover that, actually, in and amongst the bamboo, are these giant daddy long leg-like spiders whose legs look like bamboo and they are hiding in it, camouflaged. The guys inadvertently start chopping their legs, and the spiders start attacking, and there’s a big gunfight with them.”

    8. So, who does Samuel L. Jackson play?Samuel L Jackson as Lt. Colonel Packard stares down Kong in KONG: SKULL ISLANDSamuel L. Jackson plays Lt. Colonel Packard, who, Garcia said, “is the colonel who leads the helicopter squadron, which is one of the most illustrious squadrons out of the war. He’s never lost a man, which is why, when Kong bangs down those choppers, to him it’s soul-crushing.”

    It isn’t long before Packard makes destroying Kong his life’s mission, which Jackson likened to a very familiar literary character:

    “It’s a drive. It’s very akin to Ahab and the whale,” Jackson explained. “At a certain point, you gotta stand up to this thing that has done so much destruction to you and your people, and he has this idea that this thing is not what’s going to save humanity, ’cause that’s what everybody else’s idea is. This is the thing that’s standing between us and these other things that are a threat to humanity. We’ve evolved to the point that we’re the line in the sand. This thing’s not the line in the sand — we are. If us in our infinite, advanced technology, and mental state can’t stop a mindless, gigantic ape — then our evolution has been for naught.”

    In summary, Jackson is playing the movie’s chief (human) antagonist.

    9. How big of a deal is Tom Hiddleston’s character?Captain James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston) and Weaver (Brie Larson) cautiously explore the boneyard in KONG: SKULL ISLANDAs mentioned above, Hiddleston plays Captain James Conrad, a S.A.S. Operative who trained with American forces in Cambodia. He’s also a survivalist and a tracker.

    As Hiddleston put it, “he’s the guy you send in to find missing persons if a plane or a helicopter has crashed in the jungle because he has a special tracking ability.”

    Conrad is also a man in search of a mission. When Goodman’s character comes along and offers Conrad a job, he can’t resist, as Hiddleston explained: “Bill Randa, who works for Monarch, comes to find him in a back alley somewhere, and he says ‘We need you on this mission.’ [Conrad] says, ‘What’s the mission?’ [Randa] says, ‘Well, you know, we’re making a map of an island in the South Pacific and we need someone with survival skills. We need someone with your ability.’ And he’s like, ‘That sounds sufficiently shady.’”

    Money is money, so Conrad comes onboard. “He’s there kinda skeptical, and he takes the money and then they get to the island and there’s a huge prehistoric ape on the island,” Hiddleston continued. “I think that’s where, suddenly, Conrad’s been kind of spiritually asleep or sleepwalking. He wakes up and, suddenly, his very unique and special skill kicks in and he becomes indispensable to the team.”

    If you want to see Tom Hiddleston play an action hero, “Kong: Skull Island” is for you.

    10. And Brie Larson, what’s her character’s deal?JOHN GOODMAN, JOHN C. REILLY and BRIE LARSON on the set of KONG: SKULL ISLANDBrie Larson plays Weaver (just Weaver), a photojournalist with an activist streak.

    “I play a journalist,” Larson told us. “A photographer who ends up joining this cast of characters. I have my own sort of motive as to why I’m here. That’s the interesting thing about this movie. It’s a group of misfits that are all coming from different angles looking at the same thing. So I come in as kind of a background person, one who’s just there to take photos. And, as it progresses, I have to get a little bit more hands on.”

    From the perspective of Packard, Jackson’s character, Weaver is a threat. If the island’s monsters don’t get Weaver, Packard will. Or he’ll try, maybe.

    “Brie, to me, is a photojournalistic Jane Fonda,” Jackson grumbled. “She’s sort of responsible for the image that goes back home that causes people to have specific reactions to those soldiers, so [she’s] not so favorable with me.”

    11. What about John C. Reilly’s character?

    John C. Reilly plays Marlow, the American soldier seen in the aforementioned opening to the movie (he didn’t want to go to the island; he’s stranded there). He’s made friends — or, at the very least, has a positive relationship — with Skull Island’s natives, which has clearly helped him survive for as long as he has. Also, as producer Garcia revealed to us, he ended up befriending his Japanese foe, Gunpei, who, by the time the survey team arrives, has already been “killed by another creature on the island.”

    12. What role does Monarch play?John Goodman as Monarch's Bill Randa in KONG: SKULL ISLANDGoodman’s Bill Randa is the driving force behind the expedition. The filmmakers were tight-lipped about the larger role Monarch plays in “Skull Island,” and even tighter-lipped about how the events of the story are tied to other Monarch-entrenched movies.

    Garcia did go as far to say the filmmakers ensured that the events of “Skull Island” in no way “conflict or directly negate” anything in 2014’s “Godzilla,” in which Monarch plays a heavy role.

    13. Who else is in the cast?

    “Kong: Skull Island” boasts a very strong ensemble cast. In addition to the previously mentioned Hiddleston, Larson, Jackson, Goodman, and Reilly, the movie also stars Jing Tian, Toby Kebbell, John Ortiz, Corey Hawkins, Jason Mitchell, Shea Whigham, and Thomas Mann, many of whom we saw either roaming around the set or filming. Oh, also monsters — but we didn’t see any of those.

    14. Who dies?

    Probably a lot of people. The crazy weather patterns surrounding Skull Island and the destructive nature of its inhabitants aren’t exactly conducive to survival.

    15. Does anyone make it off Skull Island?

    Who knows?! The only clue we have is that producer Garcia isn’t ruling out a sequel.

    “If we pull off this island feeling like a really distinct and unique place, absolutely it could be revisited later in the timeline, for sure.”

    To find out who makes it off the island (if anyone), “Kong: Skull Island” hits theaters March 10th.

  • Top Rated Movies That Parody Other Movies

    team america world policeCall them spoofs or parodies — or just call them “Scary Movie, Part 246” (really, they’re only up to Part 5) — parody flicks are great because they remind us of everything we love about movies in the most ridiculous ways possible. And also because they involve stuff like the chicken launched from a bow and arrow in “Hot Shots! Part Deux” and the full-on musical number about the Spanish Inquisition in “History of the World: Part I.” Either way, these are the movies that made ridiculousness a force to be reckoned with, and an absurd reminder that if you build it, they will make fun of it.

    ‘Wet Hot American Summer’ (2001)

    The hazy summer romances. The stuck-up camp counselors. The jorts. “Wet Hot American Summer” has all the summer camp movie staples you’d expect from a send-up, but it also has kitchen cooks who make love to refrigerators, an awesome 1980s-inspired musical sequence that’s so on-point you won’t believe it’s satirical, and one of the best, most manic ensembles to ever grace a cult comedy.

    No wonder everyone returned 14 years later for a series, “Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp.” Let’s never go that many summers without Camp Firewood again.

    ‘Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story’ (2007)

    “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story” is a different beast, and that’s exactly why it takes its place in the parody pantheon. It’s a super-specific spoof — satirizing the overwrought music artist biopic — that plays things just as straight as its source material, and it’s that contrast that makes it a cult classic. When national treasure John C. Reilly‘s Dewey croons “In my dreams, you’re blowing me … some kisses” and his partner dryly sings back, “You can always come in my back door” in their faux-country duet, you know that the line has been walked across. Hard.

    ‘Team America: World Police’ (2004)

    Trey Parker. Matt Stone. Crazy puppets. Kim Jong Il lisping out a power ballad.

    Do you need more convincing than that? If so, consider that you might not have even realized “Team America: World Police” — an all-marionette action movie about special ops taking down a North Korean dictator — is a parody. You definitely know it’s ridiculous, wonderfully vulgar political satire, but it’s not just politics it sends up: Jingoistic actioners from the likes of Bay and Bruckheimer? Check. Action classics from the ’80s? Check. Creepy ’60s Saturday morning puppet shows? Double-check.

    ‘Not Another Teen Movie’ (2001)

    After a half-dozen or so “Scary Movie” iterations and “Meet the Spartans,” you might be ready for “Not Another Spoof Movie.” But “Not Another Teen Movie” works because it mines from the deepest well of material — the well of hormonal, angst-ridden, but oh-so-pretty high school flicks. We’ve had teen movies since James Dean started chain smoking, which makes it easy for “Teen Movie” to explore everything from the “surprisingly” smart and sensitive jock to the token black friend. If you catch it while channel surfing, it might even take you a minute or two to realize it’s satire.

    ‘Black Dynamite’ (2009)

    “Black Dynamite” wasn’t the first blaxploitation parody — that honor goes to the equally fantastic “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka,” from the heyday of the ’80s spoof — but it needs more love. When “The Man” kills his brother, Michael Jai White‘s titular Dynamite takes on stereotypical Fu Manchu-inspired villains, rough streets, funk music, and Richard Nixon, learning the secret origins of Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles along the way.

    “Dynamite” isn’t just explosive in its fist-driven flurry of witty dialogue and sight gags, it explodes with its embrace of the subgenre, complete with an intentionally cheap look and so-bad-it’s-awesome over-acting. As Complex puts it, “‘Black Dynamite’ just might be the funniest new millennium movie that hardly anyone ever talks about.”

    ‘The Naked Gun: From the Files of the Police Squad’ (1988)

    All right, modern parody movies are great, but you have to recognize the classics now and then.

    From “Airplane!” to “Scary Movie,” director David Zucker and brother-slash-partner Jerry form a Holy Trinity of parody movie directors right alongside Mel Brooks. Hard as it is to pick just one, “The Naked Gun” takes the cake for its prime-era Leslie Nielsen and insane quotability. Like the best spoofs, “Naked Gun” eats its targets alive — in this case, those targets are all things cop movie — with an endless barrage of sight gags and quips rather than tight storytelling. And when you see a hospital bed eat a man alive or Nielsen don a human-sized condom in the name of safe sex, you’ll know why it’s still remembered, two sequels and an impending reboot later.

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  • John C. Reilly Confirms ‘Wreck-It Ralph 2’

    Premiere Of Walt Disney Animation Studios' "Wreck-It Ralph" - Red CarpetTalk of a sequel to 2012 animated hit “Wreck-It Ralph” has been ongoing for years, but now, titular star John C. Reilly has confirmed that the film will indeed happen.

    Reilly reportedly revealed the news during a recent interview with Irish radio program RTE Arena, a scoop that was shared by the show’s producer, Penny Hart, on Twitter. “John C Reilly announced at the interview today that he has signed on for Wreck it Ralph 2!” Hart wrote.


    That’s great news for fans of the clever flick, which centered around video game character Ralph (Reilly), who wanted to transform from a villain into a hero. The Oscar-nominated film featured lots of winking references to beloved video games including Pac-Man and Super Mario Bros. (Mario himself is never featured, though Bowser shows up to a villains support group), as well as sending up newer sensations like Candy Crush (the world of Sugar Rush, where Sarah Silverman‘s character Vanellope lives).

    Way back in 2012, Silverman, Reilly, and director Rich Moore said that a sequel was a certainty, though nothing ever materialized from those promises. But with Reilly’s recent announcement, it seems that work on “Wreck-It Ralph 2” will finally begin.

    We can’t wait to see what’s in store for Ralph, Vanellope, and the rest of the crew. Stay tuned.

    [via: Penny Hart, h/t HuffPost Entertainment]

    Photo credit: Getty Images

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