Great Looking 2 Minute Sneak Peek At ‘Predator’ Reboot

Wow. Who would have expected a reboot of ‘Predator’ to look this damn good? Apparently, it does. And here is Robert Rodriguez (the producer) with a sneak peek and some of the goodness.

A bold new chapter in the Predator universe, “Predators” was shot on location under Rodriguez’s creative auspices at the filmmaker’s Austin-based Troublemaker Studios, and is directed by Nimród Antal. The film stars Adrien Brody as Royce, a mercenary who reluctantly leads a group of elite warriors who come to realize they’ve been brought together on an alien planet… as prey. With the exception of a disgraced physician, they are all cold-blooded killers – mercenaries, Yakuza, convicts, death squad members – human “predators” that are now being systemically hunted and eliminated by a new breed of alien Predators.

How bad-ass does that look? And I completely agree with Rodriguez. Instead of going the ‘action hero fighting predators’ route (that can’t be topped more than Schwarzenegger did in the original), he opted for an ‘anti-action hero fighting predators’ which seems to be working much better thanks to Adrien Brody. The look is slick and so are the locales. This just climbed up the radar for the most anticipated films of the year.

Watch the sneak peek below.

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John Cho Says ‘A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas’ Could Shoot This Summer

Don’t you guys love the ‘Harold and Kumar’ movies? They got a great cast and hilarious situations everytime. One of the stars, John Cho, says that the next film in the series could very well shoot this June.

Speaking to Collider while promoting the (great) show ‘FlashForward’, he says that the next film titled ‘A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas’ could be shooting this June while the show will be on a hiatus. As surprising and bizarre as it may sound, Kal Penn who plays Kumar currently works with Obama in the White House Administration. Not sure how they will get around that but I’m sure they’ll find a way.

The film was set to be released on November 5, 2010 and it will be interesting to see how they can handle a holiday theme with the characters that are so anti-holiday. Do we have another ‘Bad Santa’ on our hands?

Disney Shutting Down Robert Zemekis’ ImageMovers Digital Next Year

Big news today and not a great one. Robert Zemekis’ ImageMovers Digital, the motion capture studio that brought you ‘The Polar Express’, ‘Beowulf’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’ is now closing its doors very soon.

LA Times reports that after post-production on its latest ‘Mars Needs Moms’ is finished, up to 450 employees will be let go as operations will wind down. The reason? Walt Disney Studios president Alan Bergman sums it up here:

“Bob and the entire IMD team successfully built a state of the art studio and produced an amazing film, A Christmas Carol, at a time when the dynamics of the industry are rapidly changing. But, given today’s economic realities, we need to find alternative ways to bring creative content to audiences and IMD no longer fits into our business model.”

In other words, their last two films had disappointing returns. Beowulf flopped domestically (although it was a great film) while ‘A Christmas Carol’ hardly broke even. You don’t get more chances in Hollywood. It’s too bad for motion capture though – it was a big studio and produced tentpoles every year.

Full press release below.

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Steven Speilberg Launching A Robocalypse?

‘Matt Helm’ and ‘Harvey’ are two projects that were linked as director Steven Spielberg’s upcoming directorial projects but never proceeded. Now, it looks like Speilberg might be headed to blockbuster territory of robotic proportions.

Deadline reports that his next project might be ‘Robocalypse’ and screenwriter Drew Goddard (Cloverfield) has been tapped to adapt the novel by Daniel H Wilson about the human race’s struggle to survive against a massive robot urprising. My guess is this has the highest chance to be actually made thanks to the epic scale and the director’s mastery with it. DreamWorks optioned the unfinished novel which is getting serious buzz.

Personally, a proper movie about a robot uprising could be massive in scale and should be amazing considering Speilberg is involved. Just don’t let Michael Bay come near 100 feet of the project. Please.