Universal Maps Out The Ultimate Monster Mash!

In modern Hollywood, the franchise is everything. If there’s a successful model everyone wants to copy, it’s the tiered platform approach of Marvel Studios. Since Iron Man debuted in 2008, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (owned by Disney) has reaped insane billions of dollars. Buoyed by the impending arrival of a whole new crop of Star Wars films, Disney-driven franchises will be dominating the box office for years to come.

Understandably, other studios are trying to copy that model, with Warner Brothers intent on major franchise-building with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, the massive gamble they hope will lead to positioning a subsequent Justice League movie as their own Avengers.

Which brings us to Universal, whose only comic superhero property is Marvel’s Namor: the Sub-Mariner, which they still have the rights for. What’s a studio to do? Seeing a connection between heroes and monsters, Universal is embracing the horror of its roots in a major way, positioning a three-part scare strategy in an effort to carve out their unique share of the future box office landscape. Looking back to the days of Carl Laemmle and the “Universal Monsters,” the studio will reinvent their classic monsters as action movie franchises, giving Dracula, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, Frankenstein and The Creature From The Black Lagoon, a new lease on life in a series of interconnected  monster-centric action movies, in a bid to create a new cinematic universe. Universal has tapped Transformers and Fast & Furious screenwriters Alex Kurtzman and Chris Morgan to develop a world of intertwined classic monster storylines. The first of these will be The Mummy in June 2016, with Kurtzman directing. Universal has tried reimaging these properties before, with Stephen Sommers’ The Mummy with Brendan Fraser, Van Helsing with Hugh Jackman and The Wolfman with Benicio Del Toro. What Universal is attempting now is a much deeper, more long-term strategy. The wrinkle is that many of these monster properties like Dracula and Frankenstein are in the public domain, so there will be plenty of competition from films like this October’s Dracula Untold (yes, released by Universal) and Victor Frankenstein (Fox)to potentially steal some of the initiative’s thunder and dilute their brands. They’ve also announced Skull Island for 2016, with Legendary Pictures, featuring the return of King Kong. Universal will distribute, through their first-look deal with Legendary, which also includes As Above, So Below, Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak and Warcraft.

So that’s part one – part two saw Universal acquire the rights to Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles for Brian Grazer and Imagine Entertainment, with Kurtzman and Roberto Orci producing. The deal includes Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, The Tale of the Body Thief and Prince Lestat, being published later this year. Interview has been shot previously at Warner’s with Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, as was their Queen of the Damned misfire. With the Rice properties, the studio envisions a chance to fill the Twilight void and capture female audiences looking for more tortured, romantic vampire stories. It’s not clear if an outright remake of Interview is part of this strategy.

For part three, Universal signed a decade-long first-look deal with low budget horror producer Jason Blum, responsible for some very profitable horror franchises, including Paranormal Activity, Sinister, Insidious and The Purge.  Blum has done a great job at capturing the young male box office, though the franchises have been uneven performers. He’s also developing a remake of The Sentinel.

Whew! That’s enough horror and beastliness to raise the spirit of Forrest J. Ackerman! Beyond a doubt this is exciting stuff to contemplate. As someone who always loved monsters as a boy and who loves them even more as an adult, because they represent the different – the misunderstood – I’m thrilled to imagine these classic forces of the subconscious getting a new chance to run and play. Of the three strategies outlined above, it’s the first one I’m most excited by – and the one that may be the hardest to pull off. Can brutes and monstrosities resonate with audiences the way Captain America can? Is there vision enough behind these reimaginings to prevent the next I, Frankenstein? Can Universal successfully cross-pollinate this disparate of an array of mythologies and not end up with an inadvertent sequel to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? I like to think that they can. But finding success in a plan this daring will take more than strategy and release dates – it will take vision. Universal needs to find filmmakers for whom these iconic monsters actually mean something. They would do well to pay attention to what Disney’s doing with Star Wars right now – hiring directors like Rian Johnson, Gareth Edwards and Josh Trank. Younger filmmakers representing fresh perspectives who’ve had to put creativity ahead of budget – though those days are gone now, fellas! It’s a little bizarre to see some of these world builders staking a claim on release dates as far out as 2020, but this is where we’re heading. It’s fun to think of new generations discovering the classic monsters of old – but I can’t help but wonder how much they’ll be changed, in the mad dash to keep up with Iron Man and the Jedi Knights. Here’s hoping they don’t lose the spark of what made them monsters in the first place.

The Bloody Business of Soderbergh's The Knick

The dog days of August are seeing some interesting new shows test the waters, none of which are likely to be more fascinating than The Knick, from producer Steven Soderbergh, who directs the excellent pilot episode. The Knick is shorthand for 1900 New York's Knickerbocker Hospital, where surgeons such as Clive Owen's Dr. John Thackery are trying to make advances in medicine, despite their reliance on the primitive tools of the era. "More has been learned about the treatment of the human body in the last five years than in the last five hundred."

Obsessed with saving lives, Thackery is also struggling against The Knick's wealthy benefactors who administer the hospital and his own addiction to cocaine, as well as the inexorable grasp of the grim reaper. Like a bloodied Sherlock Holmes, Thackery promises to be a fascinating, flawed character.

The sense of time and place evoking turn of the century New York is outstanding. In a city swelling with immigrants and corruption, the dawn of a new age is upon them, but the prejudices and limitations of the past loom just as large. Performing a Cesarean section is a procedure as daunting as landing on the moon. The surgeries depicted in The Knick are shockingly immediate and out-gruesome The Strain in terms of showing the pliability of human tissue. Soderbergh shoots these without music in near silence, save for a faint background drip, drip, drip echoing in the operating theater.

The cast of largely unknown actors adds to the realism and Soderbergh's use of an initially anachronistic electronic score works surprisingly well at capturing Thackery's outlier perspective.

If you don't have Cinemax, the pilot is available on Comcast in a free "Premiere Preview" section. The Knick has already been renewed for a second season, which bodes well for keeping us awake during surgery. Definitely check it out.

FINALLY! Original cut of Star Wars coming to blu-ray!

Why is this a big deal? Well, let me refresh your memory:

A long time ago, somewhere in Skywalker Ranch, George Lucas started effing with the O.T. In this kinder, gentler, less badass alternaverse, Han didn't shoot first and our beloved Star Wars was beset by all manner of ridiculous revisionist history editing.

Now finally, Disney has plans to release the original cut of Star Wars on blu-ray. 

There have been some challenges, evidently due to damage incurred by the original negative. But Disney's goal is to release the original versions of Star Wars, Empire and Jedi without any of those good intentions George whitewashed into the "special editions." From a purely film preservationist perspective, this is a godsend. I have to hope we're talking really original, with no "Episode IV" inserted into the opening crawl. All the original special effects would be presented with no digital tweaks or enhancements.

There's bound to be a lot more news on this front in the coming months, but Disney makes it clear they expect to have this project completed before Episode VII  hits theaters next year. Definitely cause for celebration - so grab a stormtrooper helmet and start drumming.

HBO's Westworld Saddles-Up Their Bad Guy

HBO's Westworld series is heating up. The J.J. Abrams re-imagining has had several casting announcements lately, none more notable than this one - Ed Harris will be portraying an ultimate villain called The Man in Black (paging Stephen King...), referred to by the producers as "the distillation of pure villainy into one man." Harris joins Evan Rachel Wood, Anthony Hopkins, Jeffrey Wright and James Marsden for producers Jerry Weintraub, Bryan Burk and Jonathan Nolan (Person of Interest) who is also writing and directing.

While this sounds a bit more like The Stand or Lost than Yul Brynner's infamous Gunslinger, we have to presume Harris plays some incarnation of a similar killing machine. Michael Chrichton's Westworld is an underrated gem, without which there never would have been a Terminator or a Jurrassic Park. While story elements are bound to differ, given that it's called Westworld, we have to figure there'll still be a Gunslinger, and there was no black hat more unstoppable than Brynner's incessant automaton - so let's assume this Man in Black is a cold-blooded cousin. 

I'm pretty sick of "re-imaginings" in general, but this casting has me excited. Harris is always fantastic, and brings a formidable blue steel glare that takes on all comers.

Release Dates: A Blink Is Not A Flinch

It should come as no surprise, but tongues were wagging throughout the fan community yesterday with the announcement that after a lengthy stare-down over a shared May 2016 opening date, Warner Brothers blinked, leaving May for rival Marvel Studios' Captain America 3 (“The Torch of Freedom,” or whatever they end up calling it), moving their Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice up two months to the earlier frame of March 2016.

 

Now I know that a lot of folks are gunning for this picture to fail. They hate the idea of Ben Affleck, there are too many characters, Jesse Eisenberg, etc. - plus, it's a tall order for Warners to try and replicate the insane success of Marvel Studios - to make The Justice League their Avengers - but you have to admire their chutzpah for taking a shot. It's a gamble, but then so is everything.

This is actually a pretty savvy move on the part of Warner Brothers. Summer weekends can get awfully crowded - and remember, Captain America: The Winter Soldier opened in early April, which paid off huge - so Warner's is emulating Marvel yet again. More and more, studios are seeing that moving outside of the conventional summer or holiday release schedule can reap big rewards. Just look at Gravity and The Lego Movie. By getting the two-month jump on Marvel, Dawn of Justice gets a taste of Easter and spring break, which made great openings for Alice in Wonderland and The Hunger Games. 

All this dancing for a 2016 release sounds crazy, I admit. But this is the landscape we're heading into. With both Marvel and Warners planning multiple tiered "Phase 2 and 3" strategies, each composed of four or five movies, claiming your campsite well in advance is going to be nothing short of box office Darwinism - and would you rather go camping over the Fourth of July, or maybe sneak outdoors a little earlier, and enjoy that many more marshmallows apart from the crowd?

Misfits of Science: Guardians of the Galaxy!

If Hollywood has any doubts about audiences hungering for something fresh, let's hope they pay attention to the opening box office for Marvel Studios' most far flung success yet - the star-crossed scalawags of Guardians of the Galaxy, easily the most crowd-pleasing space saga we've been served in a long, long time.

Marvel took plenty of chances here, and they've paid off enormously. Handing this square peg behemoth to director James Gunn (Slither, Super) was a risky choice, given his minimal experience on a canvas this size - but the choice is a terrific one. Then casting Chris Pratt as ne'er-do-well Peter Quill? The Marvel secret sauce may be as simple as hiring people who just passionately love the material, because does that ever show here - Guardians fires on all cylinders and takes off like a like a house on fire. It could easily have been another John Carter, but instead it's the exact opposite - a lush, eye-popping space opera origin story of five rogue lowlifes that juggles plenty of hysterics as well as heart.

In venerable Tesseract fashion, there's a mystical object that everyone wants. But in Guardians, those doing the wanting are degenerate mercenaries. Guardians opens unexpectedly, with a flashback scene on young Peter Quill - and it's an unexpected heart-breaker. Before long though, we've crammed all the main characters into a deep space gulag where things get interesting pretty fast. Among the Guardians, there are no weak links - Zoe Saldana (Avatar, Star Trek) adds another sci-fi franchise to her impressive quiver, Dave Bautista is spectacular - and hilarious - as muscle-bound Drax the Destroyer - but then you just have to get out of the way, because Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper) and Groot (Vin Diesel) dominate this picture like no tomorrow, creating classic sci-fi characters that kids and adults alike will be aping for years. Rocket is awesome incarnate - he may be my favorite movie character of the year.

If Guardians has any weakness, it's the fairly generic villain, Ronan (Lee Pace, Elf King Thranduil of The Hobbit movies). Pace does a good enough job, but the character's a bit of a yawn. Held up next to the charisma of Bautista and Pratt, he barely registers. Briefly-glimpsed Thanos is clearly the more interesting Big Bad, but they're saving him for future installments further down the road. Marvel also needs to strive to develop 3rd act showdowns that go beyond protracted dogfights and giant crashing vehicles (see also Star Trek Into Darkness). But this is a minor carp, as if ever a movie had the super power to make you gleefully shrug "Just go with it!" it's Guardians. The charisma of Pratt, Saldana, Rocket, Groot and Drax can't be argued with. Pratt's prized possession is his aging Walkman, the source of a miasma of seventies hits that help give Guardians its off-kilter slap-happy energy.

The end credits promise that The Guardians of the Galaxy will return, which is great new for audiences everywhere.  James Gunn has assembled a fantastic bunch of characters we can't wait to see more of. In the meantime, I suspect crowds will be lining up for Guardians again and again - it's the biggest helping of pure fun being served anywhere.