Moviefone Editorial

Tag: todd-phillips

  • Alec Baldwin Drops Out of ‘Joker’ Movie Just Days After Joining It

    Alec Baldwin Drops Out of ‘Joker’ Movie Just Days After Joining It

    Alec Baldwin Mission Impossible Fallout
    Paramount

    No joke, Alec Baldwin has dropped out of the “Joker” movie that he reportedly only joined a few days ago.

    On Monday, Deadline reported that Baldwin was set to play Thomas Wayne, Batman’s dad, in director Todd Phillips’s film opposite Joaquin Phoenix as the titular villain. The cast includes Robert De Niro, Frances Conroy, Marc Maron, and Zazie Beetz.

    But Baldwin himself threw cold water on the casting report earlier today on Twitter:

    USA Today confirmed with the actor that he dropped out due to scheduling conflicts.

    “I’m no longer doing that movie,” he said. “I’m sure there are 25 guys who can play that part.”

    Production begins on Sept. 10, so Phillips had better find a replacement soon. Not much is known about the movie, other than that it is a “gritty character study.” But Baldwin’s tweet seems to confirm rumors that Thomas Wayne will be portrayed as a “cheesy and tanned businessman who is more in the mold of a 1980s Donald Trump.”

  • It’s Official: Joaquin Phoenix’s ‘Gritty’ Joker Movie Is Happening, and Filming Soon

    It’s Official: Joaquin Phoenix’s ‘Gritty’ Joker Movie Is Happening, and Filming Soon

    Joaquin Phoenix, HerWarner Bros.

    Joaquin Phoenix finalized his deal to play The Joker in DC’s upcoming origin story.

    So it’s really happening.

    With DC/Warner Bros.  it’s rarely clear what’s official and what’s just rumored — especially with all of the back-and-forth reports about Jared Leto’s Joker vs. Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker.

    But The Hollywood Reporter says Phoenix recently closed his deal, and filming on the origin story will begin in New York this September. There’s no release date yet, but THR speculated that Warner Bros. could put it on the release calendar as early as next year.

    This Joker standalone — whose title has yet to be revealed –was co-written by Todd Phillips, who is also directing. The studio has apparently described it as an “exploration of a man disregarded by society [that] is not only a gritty character study, but also a broader cautionary tale.” It’s being compared to a crime drama.

    A few months ago, sources told TheWrap this Joker movie would “portray Batman’s arch-nemesis as a failed 1980s comedian who becomes the clown prince of crime after bombing with audiences.”

    This Joker movie  is said to be separate from the DC Extended Universe of “Justice League” and Jared Leto’s Joker in “Suicide Squad.” THR said it’s meant to be more experimental in tone than the DCEU films, and also less expensive with a roughly $55 million budget.

    Jared Leto still reportedly has that  solo Joker movie in development, so as of now it doesn’t sound like Joaquin’s film will definitely replace Jared’s.  Joker fatigue is a possibility for audiences, but it depends on how the films differentiate from each other, and when each one arrives in theaters. (If the Jared Leto one happens at all.)

    Are you excited about this? Joaquin Phoenix is an exciting actor, and if he was intrigued enough to say yes to this project we’ll give it the benefit of the doubt. For now.

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  • Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker Would Be a Failed Comedian in ’80s Origin Movie: Report

    See what can happen when you heckle the wrong comedian?

    Pieces are coming together for Warner Bros./DC’s Joker origin story, not starring Jared Leto. Joaquin Phoenix is reportedly close to a deal to play the Joker in director Todd Phillips‘ movie.

    “Insiders” told TheWrap that this Joker movie “will portray Batman’s arch-nemesis as a failed 1980s comedian who becomes the clown prince of crime after bombing with audiences.” (Talk about thin skin — you become a supervillain ’cause of a tough crowd?)

    As TheWrap noted, this direction does tie the film to Martin Scorsese. Fans were surprised to see the legendary director’s name come up as a producer of the film, alongside Phillips as director/producer of “The Hangover” and “War Dogs.”

    Scorsese directed the 1982 dark satire “The King of Comedy,” starring Robert De Niro as deranged aspiring stand-up comedian, Rupert Pupkin.

    TheWrap’s insiders said this new Joker origin story will include nods to Scorsese’s film. There’s also a graphic novel tie in “The Killing Joke,” which showed the Joker as a struggling stand-up comedian who snapped after “one bad day.” Phoenix is 43-years-old, so this sounds like less of the typical youth-centric origin story and more about an adult man losing his sh*t.

    There’s already a warning in TheWrap‘s story that — despite production aiming for a mid-to-late 2018 start — there may be a delay for rewrites. Those rewrites are said to be happening right now, with Phillips and Scott Silver (“The Fighter,” “8 Mile”).

    Since the film is still in the writing and rewriting stage, and Phoenix isn’t completely confirmed yet, the direction could shift along the way. That would hardly be new for the DC world, even if this would be separate from the DCEU movies and fall under the new banner.

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  • 16 Things You Never Knew About ‘Old School’

    “Earmuffs!” Cover your ears if you’re too young, but if you’re of a certain age, you’ll be astonished to hear that it’s been 15 years since “Old School” enrolled at the multiplex.

    Released on February 21, 2003, the modern-day answer to “Animal House” made Will Ferrell into a bankable movie star, put future “Hangover” director Todd Phillips on the raunchy-comedy map, helped coin the phrase “Frat Pack” to describe the loose brotherhood of movie comedy stars that included Ferrell and Vince Vaughn, and introduced a variety of bizarre hazing rituals to American college fraternity life.

    Like midterm exams, “Old School” keeps reappearing, at least in rotation on cable. Still, as often as you’ve watched it, there’s much you may not know about the college comedy. So read on and study carefully; there may be a pop quiz later.
    1. “Old School” was actually Phillips’ third movie about hard-partying college students. The first was his 1997 documentary “Frat House.” Phillips took that movie to the Sundance Film Festival, where he met fabled comedy filmmaker and “Animal House” producer Ivan Reitman. Reitman turned Phillips toward comedy and produced his next two films, campus farce “Road Trip” (2000) and “Old School.”

    2. The idea for a movie about three early-middle-aged men trying to return to their irresponsible fraternity days came from Phillips’s friend, ad man Court Crandall. He earned a story credit on the film, though the final screenplay was written by Phillips and his writing partner, Scot Armstrong.
    3. Armstrong and Phillips wrote the part of Bernard with Vaughn in mind, having been impressed by his comic performances in movies like “Swingers” and “Made.” But Vaughn had done such a good job of establishing himself as a serious dramatic actor that the studio didn’t want him for “Old School.” “They didn’t think I could do comedy!” Vaughn marveled in 2015. “Todd really had to push for me; I think he even told them to watch me on Letterman, to see that I could be funny.”

    4. That’s Phillips, by the way, playing the guy who knocks on Luke Wilson‘s door early on and says, “I’m here for the gangbang.”
    5. Patrick Cranshaw had been acting in films for 50 years before “Old School,” but it was his role as lube-wrestling frat brother Blue that finally made him famous at age 84. He died three years later, but not before hearing countless fans greet him with Ferrell’s line, “You’re my boy, Blue!”

    6. The three leads (Wilson, Vaughn, and Ferrell) teased each other on set. Wilson recalled Ferrell telling him he was sorry he hadn’t yet seen Wilson’s performance in “Legally Bland.” Wilson shot back with a warning that “you might just want to keep one foot back in TV just in case this whole movie thing falls through.”
    7. The house that Wilson’s friends transform into the home of their new fraternity is a real residential house located on Pasadena’s Bushnell Avenue, on a two-block stretch that has been used for locations in several Michael J. Fox movies. The same house appeared in “Back to the Future Part II” (Biff steals a kid’s ball and tosses it onto the house’s balcony), while down the street are George McFly’s 1955 home from the first “Back to the Future” and the house where the 1955 Lorraine lived in that movie — a house that was also where Fox’s character lived in “Teen Wolf.”

    8. The college scenes were largely shot in Los Angeles at UCLA and USC. There’s one helicopter shot of the campus, however, that may look familiar. It’s actually flyover footage of Harvard University, which Phillips recycled from “Road Trip,” though no ground scenes in either film were shot at the Cambridge, Massachusetts campus.
    9. Who’s the wedding singer who inserts subliminal profanities into the lyrics of Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart”? It’s Dan Finnerty of The Dan Band, an act that became the toast of Hollywood nightclubs by performing a repertoire of songs made popular by female singers. A comic who’s married to Kathy Najimy, Finnerty would perform similarly inappropriate songs in Phillips’s “Starsky & Hutch” and “The Hangover.”

    10. Also, the church where Ferrell gets married showed up again two years later in Vaughn and Owen Wilson‘s “Wedding Crashers.”
    11. The last day of the shoot was devoted to the Mitch-a-Palooza party, the one that starts with a surprise performance by Snoop Dogg and ends with Ferrell streaking through town. Ferrell had already shot the streaking sequence — and yes, he ran naked for real, apparently horrifying local lookie-loos who had no idea they were going to be treated to full frontal Ferrell — but he needed some liquid courage to drop trou in front of the rap icon. “To actually be in front of Snoop Dogg that close naked,” Ferrell said, “that was more intimidating than anything.”

    12. Snoop Dogg so wanted to play Huggy Bear in Phillips’s upcoming adaptation of “Starsky & Hutch,” that the director was able to persuade the rapper to cameo as himself in “Old School” as a condition for landing the role he coveted in Phillips’ next movie.
    13. After his scene was complete, Snoop summoned Vaughn to party in his trailer. Wilson was miffed to find out about the revelry later; apparently, no one had invited him.

    14. The budget for “Old School” was reportedly $24 million. It made back $76 million in North America and another $11 million abroad.
    15. “Old School” not only made Ferrell a breakout star, but it also led to the coining of the term “The Frat Pack” to describe the group of comic actors and frequent collaborators that included Ferrell, Vaughn, Luke and Owen Wilson, Ben Stiller, Jack Black, and others.

    16. In 2006, Armstrong wrote a script for a sequel, “Old School Dos,” that would have sent the trio of aging frat boys on spring break. Ferrell and Vaughn nixed the idea as being too much of a retread. Wilson, however, was game, though he said he understood Vaughn and Ferrell’s position. “As funny as those guys are, they are pretty damn thoughtful and would hate to squander the goodwill of the first one with one where it just seemed like the studio was just trying to cash in.”

    Indeed, in 2016, Wilson was still game, saying, “I, of course, would do it at the drop of a hat.”

  • Why ‘Ben-Hur’ Is the Finish This Disappointing Summer Movie Season Deserves

    You know the box office has become an arena of misguided drama when the most intense conflict is the bitter battle for third place.

    With “Suicide Squad” threepeating at the top of the chart (with an estimated $20.7 million) and last week’s surprise hit “Sausage Party” holding on to second place (with an estimated $15.3 million), the real contest was among the three new wide releases — ‘War Dogs,” “Kubo and the Two Strings,” and “Ben-Hur” — contending for the bronze medal.

    This particular chariot race was extremely close, with “War Dogs” claiming an estimated $14.3 million, “Kubo” an estimated $12.6 million, and “Ben-Hur” an estimated $11.4 million, just $19,000 ahead of the second-weekend results for “Pete’s Dragon.” (It’s possible, when the dust clears on Monday morning and final numbers are released, that the Disney remake could pull ahead of the Biblical epic remake.) It’s like that old joke about scholarly fights in academia: that the struggle is so vicious because the stakes are so low.

    After all, what we have here is three new movies that possibly could have done a lot better if not for some bad decisions, most notably, releasing them in the dog days of August, when blockbuster season is spent and kids are starting to go back to school. But it’s not just timing. Here’s why none of this weekend’s new wide releases could do better than third place and $14.3 million.

    1. Political Satire Is a Tough Sell
    That’s true no matter what time of year it is.

    “War Dogs” stars Jonah Hill and Miles Teller and director Todd Phillips (of the “Hangover” trilogy) can bro up the comedy all they want, but in the end, it’s still a message movie, one that’s trying to get viewers to drink wheat-grass juice after plying them with beer. Given a choice between the lowbrow but high-minded antics of “War Dogs” and the simple, raunchy hot dog comedy of “Sausage Party” (also co-starring Hill), which do you think the target audience for “War Dogs” would choose?

    2. Todd Phillips Is No Adam McKay.
    Yes, McKay went from directing goofy Will Ferrell comedies to making “The Big Short,” a semi-serious political satire that was a decent-sized hit and earned Oscar nominations — winning for Best Adapted Screenplay. Then again, his movie was released in December, when it was more likely to be taken seriously, and it had more star power (Brad Pitt, Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling).

    Also, his movies had long had a satirical undercurrent, from “Anchorman” (sexism is idiotic) to “Talladega Nights” (xenophobia and homophobia are idiotic) to “The Other Guys” (the real crooks are on Wall Street), while the underlying message of Phillips’s movies, from “Old School” to the “Hangover” series, has always been Let Bros Be Bros. So he may not have been the best-poised director to pivot to more politically engaged fare.

    Finally, while both “Big Short” and “War Dogs” are based on true stories, the former told its tale using a unique and innovative structure, while the new movie borrows its narrative framework from “Goodfellas” and Hill’s own “The Wolf of Wall Street.” So it was a given that critics were going to be meh about “War Dogs” (it got a 59 percent fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes), though judging by its CinemaScore grade (an unenthusiastic B), audiences felt the same way.

    3. Not Everyone Likes (or Wants) LAIKA Movies
    The inventive stop-motion animation studio is beloved by critics, but audiences have been slow to embrace LAIKA’s defiantly weird style. Movies like “Coraline” and “The Boxtrolls” have been cult hits at best. The Japanese tale told in “Kubo” is the studio’s most exotic story yet, and despite ubiquitous marketing and a star-studded voice cast that includes Matthew McConaughey and Charlize Theron, “Kubo” was always going to be a tough sell.

    Even though reviewers and audiences loved the movie (it scored 96 percent at Rotten Tomatoes and a solid A at CinemaScore), it couldn’t get much of a crowd into the theaters to appreciate the film. It might have done better at another time of year, as “Coraline” did in February and “Boxtrolls” in September; instead, it opened while family films “Pete’s Dragon” and “The Secret Life of Pets” were still in the top 10. As a result, “Kubo” suffered the lowest opening of any wide-release Laika movie yet.

    4. Why Another ‘Ben-Hur’?
    The 1959 version is one of the most beloved movies of all time and the biggest Oscar-grabber in Academy history (it won a record 11 trophies, a number that’s never been beaten.) Charlton Heston and Stephen Boyd‘s chariot race is one of the most exciting action sequences ever filmed. It is a problematic movie to adapt from its very old source material. Audiences old enough to remember the ’59 version are either too old to care about seeing a new version or just don’t bother to go to the movies at all. And young audiences have no desire for swords-and-sandals anything, starring an actor from “Boardwalk Empire,” an HBO show their dads stopped watching after Season 2

    Director Timur Bekmambetov (“Wanted,” “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter“) is certainly a whiz with action sequences. Still, the movie seemed doomed to suffer in comparison with the 1959 epic. Stars Jack Huston and Toby Kebbell are not as charismatic as Heston and Boyd. Reviewers are divided on whether the new chariot race is any good, much less on whether its in the same league as the old one. As with “War Dogs,” it was a given that critics were going to be harsh on “Ben-Hur,” giving it just a 29 percent fresh score at Rotten Tomatoes. Audiences were more appreciative, giving it an A- at CinemaScore, but the negative reviews may have scared away much of the older crowd (those old enough to have fond nostalgia for the Heston version) from even seeing the new “Ben-Hur.”

    5. Misplaced Optimism
    Usually, studios low-ball their predictions so that everyone can be pleasantly surprised when the movie’s opening exceeds them, or at least not be disappointed when it doesn’t. “Ben-Hur,” however, marks the first time in recent memory that a studio was much more optimistic than industry analysts, with Paramount predicting a $20 million debut and outside pundits expecting a premiere more in the $10 to $13 million range.

    Why was Paramount’s guess so high? Maybe the studio expected its marketing efforts to Christian audiences would pay off bigger. (Jesus is just a supporting character in “Ben-Hur,” but he has a more prominent role in Bekmambetov’s film than in all previous versions.) Or maybe because “Ben-Hur” cost $100 million to make; any prediction lower than $20 million would be an admission that the studio expected the film to flop, and no studio wants to admit that.

    Again, the movie might have done better with another release date, instead of one that had “Ben-Hur” competing for action fans against the still-strong “Jason Bourne,” “Star Trek Beyond,” and the dreaded “Suicide Squad.”

    Or maybe, at this late summer date, viewers simply have action blockbuster fatigue. September, and its promise of grown-up dramas, can’t come soon enough.
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  • Bradley Cooper, Todd Phillips Making ISIS Miniseries for HBO

    BRITAIN-ENTERTAINMENT-CINEMA-BURNTBradley Cooper and Todd Phillips first teamed up as actor and director in “The Hangover” series. They joined forces as producers for “War Dogs,” and now they are teaming up again to make an HBO miniseries about ISIS, according to Deadline.

    Cooper got the project going after reading the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “Black Flags” by Joby Warrick. The book tracks the rise of ISIS, from its roots in a remote Jordanian prison to its current status as a feared terrorist organization. Cooper reached out to the author, envisioning a limited series, and set it up at HBO. Author Gregg Hurwitz (“Wolverine”) will write the adaptation, and Tim Van Patten (“Boardwalk Empire,” “Game of Thrones”) will direct.

    This is the second political project for Cooper and Phillips’ Joint Effort production company. The first, “War Dogs,” is about two arms dealers trying to score a government contract in Afghanistan, and opens August 19.

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