News

Quentin Tarantino’s never been one to mince words or compromise on his vision, even if it meant shutting the door on a Hollywood A-lister. Back in 2007, the legendary filmmaker had his sights set on a wild $30M passion project. But when one Iron Man star’s agent started playing hardball, Tarantino wasn’t having it. The auteur famously walked away from casting them altogether.

Quentin Tarantino | Image by Gage Skidmore, licensed under Cc By-sa 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Despite Tarantino’s usual flair, the film didn’t quite dazzle at the box office. But his no-nonsense approach to casting proved one thing: he’d rather bomb on his terms than cater to Hollywood politics. Classic Tarantino energy.

When Mickey Rourke’s agent blew it: Quentin Tarantino’s no-nonsense call on Death Proof Mickey Rourke as Ivan Vanko in Iron Man 2 | Credits: Marvel Studios

Quentin Tarantino isn’t one to let agents play games,...

Quentin Tarantino just shook things up with a wild take on Yellowstone, suggesting where Taylor Sheridan missed the mark. And guess what? Even Joe Rogan’s hopping on this bandwagon. Tarantino, known for his gritty storytelling and sharp eye, sees Yellowstone not just as a western drama but a full-on soap opera — over-the-top twists, messy relationships, and plots that spiral faster than a cowboy chase scene.

Quentin Tarantino in From Dusk Till Dawn | Credits: Miramax

Whether you love Sheridan’s gritty vision or think it needs a serious revamp, Tarantino’s perspective brings a fresh, quirky lens to a show that’s become as complicated as a Texas ranch feud.

Quentin Tarantino Calls Out Yellowstone: Why Modern TV Fails to Leave a Lasting Impact Taylor Sheridan in Yellowstone as Travis | Credit Paramount Network

Quentin Tarantino weighed in on Yellowstone, pinpointing where Taylor Sheridan stumbled — and Joe Rogan chimed in too.

Not every actor is a Samuel L. Jackson, gladly signing an extensive superhero movie contract to play Nick Fury as many times as Marvel Studios wants him. Some are more like James Bond actor George Lazenby, securing an iconic part and then instantly worrying it'll cause typecasting. Meanwhile, some stars can't get along with the studio, while others, unfortunately, die before the role has run its course. No property or individual movie is immune to the possibility of recasting. It's just that some do it a lot better than others.

In the sci-fi realm, long-running franchises often pose unique casting challenges, but others are simply so difficult or so weird that they necessitated unexpected changes. The multiverse offers more recasting possibilities than most, as "Doctor Who" and its endless regenerations -- a sci-fi solution to a real-world problem -- regularly demonstrates. How the fans, the actors, and the studio react cannot always be predicted,...

Thirty years ago, the release of Pulp Fiction saw Quentin Tarantino reach the peak of his international celebrity. A look back at the Tarantinomania of 1994:

Joining Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino became one of a vanishingly small number of filmmakers who could be described as a household name in the early 1990s. Having broken through with the blackly comic and unabashedly violent Reservoir Dogs in 1992, his fame arguably reached its peak in 1994; to borrow a term from critic Joshua Mooney, it was a time of Tarantinomania.

That year saw the release of Pulp Fiction, which soon became more than merely a popular low-budget thriller: it was a pop cultural event, with its music, snappy dialogue and hip 50s styling appearing all over the place. But 1994 was also the year of Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers, and the US release of low-budget heist thriller Killing Zoe...

Stars: Juliet Mills, Richard Joseph Paul, Leon Russom, Walker Brandt, Tai Thai | Written by David Allen, Randall William Cook | Directed by David Allen

The Primevals was a film I thought I’d never get to see. Tracing its roots back to a short filmed in the 1960s, Raiders of the Stone Ring, and through the late 70s and early 80s it constantly seemed to be in some form of preproduction, either by the project’s driving force, stop-motion artist David Allen, or via one of producer Charles Band’s companies. It got frequent mentions in Famous Monsters of Filmland and even a cover story in Cinefantastique. But apart from some footage shot around 1978, nothing came of it until 1994 when the film’s live-action footage was shot in Band’s Romanian studios and the Dolomite Mountains in Italy.

Then, as he was working on the film’s extensive stop-motion effects, Allen died of cancer,...

Netflix has unveiled nine new movies and series from Poland including the directorial debut of High Water writer Kasper Bajon and a thriller from the team behind Forgotten Love.

As the streamer continues to unveil international originals by the bucket load, Project UFO leads the Poland slate, a mini-series helmed by Bajon that will transport fans of stories inspired by real events to the 1980s in order to investigate the alleged UFO landing in a remote countryside village.

Bajon wrote the popular High Water series, one of the biggest to come from Netflix Poland, about the 1997 Central European flood and how it was managed by the authorities of the Polish city of Wrocław.

Meanwhile, Michał Gazda (director) and Magdalena Szwedkowicz (producer), the team behind last year’s Netflix Poland movie Forgotten Love, are re-teaming on a movie following a retired policeman trying to bring to justice to those behind a ruthless bank robbery case,...

From The Video Archives Podcast, writer/director Roger Avary and writer/producer Gala Avary discuss a few of their favorite movies with Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Taxi Driver (1976)

Star Wars (1977)

Matinee (1993)

Dune (1984)

Terror On A Train a.k.a. Time Bomb (1953)

Licorice Pizza (2021)

Batman (1989)

Yentl (1983)

Nuts (1987)

Spaceballs (1987)

Die Hard (1988)

Top Gun (1986)

Cocksucker Blues (1972)

Mijn nachten met Susan, Olga, Albert, Julie, Piet & Sandra (1975)

Straw Dogs (1971)

The Godfather (1972)

A History Of Violence (2005)

Day Of The Dolphin (1973)

Babylon (2022)

Puss In Boots: The Last Wish (2022)

Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (2022)

Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

Rock ‘n’ Roll High School (1979)

Carrie (1976)

Indictment: The McMartin Trial (1995)

Blow Out (1981)

The Matrix (1999)

Pulp Fiction (1994)

Killing Zoe (1993)

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

The Tenant (1976)

Dr. Strangelove (1964)

Bugsy Malone (1976)

Phantom Of The Paradise (1974)

The Muppet Movie (1979)

The Rules Of Attraction (2002)

The Sound Of Music (1965)

Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory (1971)

Giant (1956)

The Andromeda Strain (1971)

Babe (1995)

Time Bandits...

As we now know, Quentin Tarantino's movies are all set in the same fantastical cinematic universe, offering a glimpse inside the director's head. Like in the real world, anybody can die at any time in various nasty ways, but at least in the Tarantino-verse your killer will probably be jiving to some obscure '70s pop tune or engaging you in a little banter about hamburgers before pulling the trigger. It's a rich, colorful, dangerous place, laden with pop culture references, and also has a second universe within a universe. As Tarantino explained (via Esquire):

"There's the realer than real universe, alright, and all the characters inhabit that one. But then there's this movie universe. And so 'From Dusk Till Dawn,' 'Kill Bill,' they all take place in this special movie universe. So basically when the characters of 'Reservoir Dogs' or 'Pulp Fiction,'...

From January 1989 until March 1996, Neil Gaiman's pivotal goth text "The Sandman" flooded the hearts of Doc Martens-wearing, clove cigarette-smoking, Fields of the Nephilim-listening teens the world over. The comic followed the downbeat, bitter adventures of Dream, a supernatural personification of human dreams, as he escaped a prolonged prison sentence in a fantasy kingdom, and set out traversing multiple dimensions to build up his power again. Dream frequently ran into other personified human concepts like Death, Destiny, Despair, and Delirium, and existed in a vast, complicated mythology world that your "Rocky Horror Picture Show"-attending buddies probably knew better than you. 

Because of its cult popularity, scuttlebutt about a "Sandman" feature film began to spread sometime in the mid-1990s. Recalling the time, the buzz seemingly became loudest following the release of Alex Proyas' ultra-Goth comic book adaptation "The Crow," a film that appeared to be visually and tonally in...

Click here to read the full article.

Cinematographer Tom Richmond, whose résumé included work on such films as Stand and Deliver, Killing Zoe, Little Odessa, Slums of Beverly Hills and Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, has died. He was 72.

Richmond died Friday in New York City, Anthony Jannelli, head of cinematography at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, told The Hollywood Reporter (Richmond also taught at NYU). The cause of death was not immediately available.

Richmond, who was the director of photography on nearly four dozen features, also shot Keenan Ivory Wayans’ I’m Gonna Git You Sucka (1988), Scott Silver’s Johns (1996), Rob Zombie’s House of 1,000 Corpses (2003) and Todd Solondz’s Palindromes (2004).

He won the best cinematography prize at Sundance in 2006 for his work on Right at Your Door, a drama about a terrorist attack involving chemical bombs.

He received Spirit Award nominations for Stand & Deliver...

The following interview with director of photography Tom Richmond appeared in Filmmaker‘s Winter, 1995 issue. Richmond died yesterday in New York at the age of 72, and this interview is now published online for the first time. — Editor “I want to be the Rod Serling of cinematography,” says Tom Richmond, whose distinctive and varied lensing has graced three recent films: the “Tex Avery meets Bonnie and Clyde” Love and a.45; the hyper-realist heist noir Killing Zoe; and Little Odessa, James Gray’s intimate epic about Brighton Beach’s Russian mafia. “The way Serling could get into you…”Richmond continues. “I want [my […]

The post “I Want to Be the Rod Serling of Cinematography”: An Interview with Little Odessa Dp Tom Richmond first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The following interview with director of photography Tom Richmond appeared in Filmmaker‘s Winter, 1995 issue. Richmond died yesterday in New York at the age of 72, and this interview is now published online for the first time. — Editor “I want to be the Rod Serling of cinematography,” says Tom Richmond, whose distinctive and varied lensing has graced three recent films: the “Tex Avery meets Bonnie and Clyde” Love and a.45; the hyper-realist heist noir Killing Zoe; and Little Odessa, James Gray’s intimate epic about Brighton Beach’s Russian mafia. “The way Serling could get into you…”Richmond continues. “I want [my […]

The post “I Want to Be the Rod Serling of Cinematography”: An Interview with Little Odessa Dp Tom Richmond first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Spoiler Alert: This article contains details of tonight’s Season 3 finale of FX’s Atlanta

“We wanted to end this season or end that episode with the feeling of some things have been addressed, but not necessarily solved,” says Zazie Beetz of tonight’s very Parisian finale of Atlanta’s penultimate season. “I think in Season 4, there’s a continuation of identity searching,” says the actress who plays Van of the Donald Glover, Brian Tyree Henry and Lakeith Stansfield co-starring FX series.

“That is a lifelong journey I think, and it takes on a bit of another context.”

A delicate weave of whispers of 1960’s Breathless, 1993’s Killing Zoe, 2016’s Raw and more than a dollop or two of 2001’s Amélie, literally and figuratively, the Glover helmed and Stefani Robinson penned “Tarrare” was a feast of a finale for the March 24 premiering third season. With a paid “piss kink,” cooked human hands,...

It’s been 17 long years since “Rules of Attraction” director Roger Avary has released a film, during which time he was involved in a deadly car crash, charged with gross vehicle manslaughter, saw a work furlough translated into actual prison time, and watched things go south with Video Archives amigo Quentin Tarantino over the “Pulp Fiction” credit fiasco. Those are setbacks that might break the spine of a lesser scribe, but in Avary’s case, it seems to have strengthened his resolve to write — although until now, virtually nothing has been produced to show for it. Not for lack of trying. Some people are good at directing movies, and others are good at getting movies to direct. Avary hustled a number of projects, and somehow, “Lucky Day” was the first to get made.

The movie marks a curious comeback, . Where Avary’s other films have innovated and unsettled, this one’s clever but safe,...

The latest clip from Lucky Day gives some insight into how awesomely over-the-top the movie is. We've all seen Crispin Glover blow up a cop car with a grenade launcher from the first trailer, so we know the movie is already a bit unhinged. Glover has had a pretty amazing career over the years from Back to the Future, all the way to Epic Movie, and he's showing no signs of slowing down or mellowing out. Lucky Day marks the first time the actor has been back on the big screen since 2010's Hot Tub Time Machine and he was missed.

Director Roger Avary, writer of Pulp Fiction and Killing Zoe, lends his high-energy, bone-crunching style to this crime saga starring Crispin Glover (American Gods), Nina Dobrev (Flatliners), and Luke Bracey (Point Break). Finally out of prison, Lucky Day finds safecracker Red (Bracey) rejoining his wife (Dobrev) and daughter and vows to go straight.

Is it 2019 or 1995?

That’s the question viewers may ask when watching Roger Avary’s total throwback of a gonzo action comedy, Lucky Day, which feels very much like a project the Pulp Fiction co-writer and Killing Zoe director dusted off the shelf a few decades too late.

Familiar for anyone who basked in the work of Avary and his former cohort, Quentin Tarantino, when they hit movie gold in the mid-'90s, this tale of an ex-con, his girlfriend, their adorable daughter and the nutso hit man trying to take them all out is eye-rollingly recognizable, from the retro rock '...

Is it 2019 or 1995?

That’s the question viewers may ask when watching Roger Avary’s total throwback of a gonzo action comedy, Lucky Day, which feels very much like a project the Pulp Fiction co-writer and Killing Zoe director dusted off the shelf a few decades too late.

Familiar for anyone who basked in the work of Avary and his former cohort, Quentin Tarantino, when they hit movie gold in the mid-'90s, this tale of an ex-con, his girlfriend, their adorable daughter and the nutso hit man trying to take them all out is eye-rollingly recognizable, from the retro rock '...

If you're the type of movie buff who thinks most, if not all films should include Crispin Glover blowing up a car with a grenade launcher, well A) Congrats on being a person of great taste, and B) We at Collider are happy to exclusively present the red band trailer for Lucky Day, the wild action-thriller from Oscar-winning writer/director Roger Avary. The film stars Luke Bracey (Hacksaw Ridge) as a safe-cracker named Red, fresh out of jail and looking for a fresh start with his wife, Chloe (Nina Dobrev), and daughter …...

If you're the type of movie buff who thinks most, if not all films should include Crispin Glover blowing up a car with a grenade launcher, well A) Congrats on being a person of great taste, and B) We at Collider are happy to exclusively present the red band trailer for Lucky Day, the wild action-thriller from Oscar-winning writer/director Roger Avary. The film stars Luke Bracey (Hacksaw Ridge) as a safe-cracker named Red, fresh out of jail and looking for a fresh start with his wife, Chloe (Nina Dobrev), and daughter …...

Friends recall fun-loving cinephile with big heart.

The international community paid tribute at a celebration of life on Thursday (28) to the late producer and independent film titan Sammy Hadida, who was remembered as a great friend, ferocious businessman, and karaoke-lover.

Hadida’s brother Victor summed up so much of the evening at Tiato in the Lionsgate complex in Santa Monica when he spoke of his deep bond and friendship with his brother, who died unexpectedly last November at the age of 64.

Etchie Stroh of Moonstone Entertainment emceed the emotional and often very funny celebration and set the tone when he...

Hotel Artemis is a stylish crime thriller with a grab bag of pulpy characters, cool quips, and teeth rattling action.

Whoa, after five years Jodie Foster comes out of her self-imposed acting semi-retirement to star in writer-director Drew Pearce’s debut passion project centring on a rogues’ gallery of wacky criminals hiding out in Hotel Artemis. It’s an old-school Hollywood boarding house, which doubles up as a members only and black market hospital. Foster brings her trademark steeliness underpinned by a haunting melancholy that has been her bread and butter since Taxi Driver (1976) to the almost nameless role of an agoraphobic nurse scraping by in the shadows of a riot-torn Los Angels in 2028. Yeah, it’s an interesting high-concept idea, but is it any good? Well, Pearce, who’s proven his action and cool quip mettle co-writing the Marmite of Marvel films Iron Man 3 (2013), delivers a stylish crime...

When news broke last week that A Wrinkle in Time director Ava DuVernay was going to direct The New Gods for Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment, it was revealed that the studio was searching for a screenwriter, and they have now found one. Writer Kario Salem has been tapped to write the script, working closely with Ava DuVernay to craft the narrative for this story, which will not be part of Warner Bros.' Dceu lineup. No production schedule or release date has been given at this time, although it seems likely that this will be Ava DuVernay's next film.

The New Gods was created in 1971 by Jack Kirby for DC, after the legendary writer and artist left Marvel following a dispute. The New Gods were part of a massive Fourth World saga that spanned a number of different comic book universes, although The New Gods were by far the most popular.

Simon Brew Sep 18, 2017

Pulp Fiction Oscar-winner and Killing Zoe director Roger Avary is returning to the movies.

Writer and director Roger Avary has, understandably, not been making many features of late. Back in 2009, the Oscar-winner - for co-writing Pulp Fiction (a gong he got for coming up with one of the film's stories) - was convicted of manslaughter, and eventually served eight months. He was released in 2010, and since then, has executive-produced the TV series Xiii. He's been away from features, though.

But that's changing.

His new film project, Lucky Day, is set to start filming in Toronto this week. It'll shoot through to early November. He's written the screenplay for the movie and will direct as well. It tells the story of a safe cracker who is just released from prison, and trying to go straight. That is until a contract killer with an eye for revenge catches up with him.

Exclusive: The year was 1994 and the Croisette was Roger Avary’s oyster. Not only did he have Pulp Fiction at the festival, the film he co-wrote with Quentin Tarantino which would go on to win the Palme d’Or, but he also made his feature directorial debut out of competition with the psychedelic heist pic Killing Zoe, which would take home a Critic’s Prize. Avary returns to Cannes this year, but in a slightly different capacity, that of pitchman in the market. He stands in…...

"Rules of Attraction" and "Killing Zoe" director Roger Avary is set to helm "Unwind" for Voltage Pictures and Constantin Film.

Based on Neal Shusterman's award-winning novel, the story imagines a cruel dystopian world in which those over eighteen years of age, either function as a cog in the machine of a brainwashed society, or get 'unwound' - your body is taken apart, piece by piece, and given to those the government determines to be more suitable.

Connor (Ian Nelson), Risa (Kiernan Shipka), and Lev (Percy Hynes White) are three young people raging against the machine. Their desire for freedom and self-determination is greater than their fear of unwinding.

Bill Paxton and Jay Baruchel also star in the film while Avery and his daughter Gala Avary wrote the screenplay. Don Carmody, Robert Kulzer, Roger Avary, Julian Stone and Marc Benardout will produce.

Source: Deadline...

Failure is the name of the game here. This is an in-depth look at some of the most common reasons that heists in films go wrong.

Heists in films rarely go right. In fact, the heist gone bad is a plot device that has been used over and over for decades. It adds drama. It adds tension. It adds excitement as the crooks run from the law. Often times, that’s what makes a heist movie so fun to watch, seeing how the characters get themselves out of a tight situation. A perfect heist can be interesting to watch, but doesn’t really enhance or create much conflict between characters by itself. That’s why heists gone wrong are much more frequent in film than heists which go off without a flaw.

There are many ways a heist can go wrong. This is an overview of some of the most common reasons,...

It's always a bummer when a technical glitch happens. This week, we lost an entire question and answer to some sort of strange microphone flutter. Someone wrote in to ask about the year 1994, asking if there were films that were overshadowed by "Pulp Fiction" that year that deserved some praise, and I took the opportunity to sing the praises of Roger Avary's "Killing Zoe" for a bit. I love that movie, and I think it's got a great dark evil energy about it. The work by Eric Stoltz and Julie Delpy is outstanding, and Jean-Hugues Anglade is like some mad hallucination in it. Anyway, we had to lose the whole thing, so it's a quicker-than-normal episode of "Ask Drew!" this week. We had a longer-than-expected hiatus between episodes, and we'll be turning that around and getting back on the every-other-week schedule now. It was my schedule that complicated everything.

Twenty years ago today, Quentin Tarantino and Harvey Weinstein unveiled the filmmaker’s sophomore movie — an ambitious anthology of crime stories, all interconnected and metatextualized — at a late Saturday night screening at the Cannes Film Festival. A little over three hours later, as the crowd staggered out of the Palais des Festivals, they knew they had an audience favorite on their hands. Soon, they would be able to add Palme d’Or winner, Best Picture Oscar nominee, the first indie film to break the $100 million mark, a gamechanger and a modern classic to the list.

Odd List Ryan Lambie Simon Brew 17 Oct 2013 - 06:29

Here are 25 more great, unsung films - this time, from the year 1994...

Yes, 1994. The year cinemas were dominated by such whimsical wonders as The Lion King, Forrest Gump, The Mask and, erm, True Lies. It was also the year Gump dominated the Academy Awards, and Four Weddings And A Funeral loomed large at the Baftas.

As ever, there was so much more to the year's cinematic landscape than Tom Hanks' park bench ramblings or Hugh Grant mithering from beneath his gorgously crafted hair. To prove it, here's a list of 25 films that, in our estimation, are among its most underappreciated. There's much horror, drama, tears and laughter, plus a couple of classic documentaries, too.

25. Phantasm III: Lord Of The Dead

The Phantasm series was quite unusual, in that writer and director Don Coscarelli made all four of them. This means that,...

There's been a Martin Luther King biopic set up at DreamWorks for awhile, and it looks like it's actually gaining some traction and moving forward. According to The Wrap, Jamie Foxx is in talks to star in the film with Oliver Stone planning to direct. If this team up happens it will be the first time the two have worked together since 1999's Any Given Sunday. 

Steven Spielberg is producing the movie, and it features a screenplay written by Kario Salem (The Score, Killing Zoe). The story will follow the life of King and this film will be the first to be authorized by King's estate. The producers even have the right to utilize King's intellectual property, including his famous "I Have a Dream" speech delivered during the 1963 March on Washington, to create a definitive portrait of his life.

This is some big, solid talent, and if the team up...

In development from DreamWorks for some time , a proposed biopic of Martin Luther King, Jr. appears to be gaining some serious traction today as TheWrap reports that Jamie Foxx is in talks to headline with Oliver Stone tentatively planning to direct. Fox and Stone previously teamed for Any Given Sunday in 1999. The film, which features a screenplay by Kario Salem ( The Score , Killing Zoe ), will follow the life of King and will mark the first film to be authorized by King's estate, giving the producers the right to utilize King's intellectual property -- including his famous "I Have a Dream" speech delivered during the 1963 March on Washington -- to create a definitive portrait of his life. Foxx and Stone are no stranger to biopics. The former won an Academy...

In the movie industry, most scripts bought and developed never get made, that’s just a depressing side of the business. There are endless great scripts, ideas and concepts that just never get made for so many reasons, the most common of which is money. Development hell isn’t just something that affects little known writers and directors, some of the most renowned names in the history of film have seen their projects defeated by the studios and sent to development hell for eternity, the most famous of which would be Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon.

Even things such as Justice League, Jurassic Park and Superman – three materials that would be guaranteed commercial successes – can’t get made. Despite the committed fanbases, studios keep pushing them to one side. Jurassic Park 4 in particular was a strange one as the previous three Jurassic Park movie made a ton of money for everyone involved,...

Bret Easton Ellis created a monster in American Psycho's homicidal yuppie Patrick Bateman. Now he turns his eye on a bohemian college, where Bateman's younger brother finances his alcohol-fuelled haze by dealing cocaine. Director Roger Avary (Killing Zoe) frames the film around a series of parties, charting the cynical romances of bisexual Paul (Ian Somerhalder) and all-American blonde Lara (Jessica Biel).

It's been a few years since we've heard from writer/director Roger Avary, who was serving out a sentence for vehicular manslaughter between 2009 and 2010, but now he seems to be focused on getting his career back on track. One of the last major projects he was involved with before his legal problems started was the first Silent Hill movie. With the sequel bombing in theatres just last weekend, you might think he would take that as a sign that he should stay away from more video game adaptations. On the contrary, he has decided to resume another project based on a video game that he had been working on a few years ago. Here's what Avary had to say about writing and directing a Castle Wolfenstein movie: "I've been playing the Wolfenstein games since I was a kid, and feel that their outlandish sensibility has deeply influenced my own writing and directing throughout my career.

Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds brought audiences a unique alternate universe vision of what World War II could have been. That film, of course, was one of Tarantino’s most celebrated and earned actor Christoph Waltz an Academy Award.

Now, Roger Avary – Tarantino’s co-writer on Pulp Fiction – is set to bring his own version of WWII to life with his latest project. However, unlike Basterds, Avary’s project is actually an adaptation of the video game, Castle of Wolfenstein.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Avary is set to both write and direct a film version of Castle Wolfenstein, the video game series that launched in 1981. Avary’s previous directorial efforts include The Rules of Attraction and Killing Zoe, and he is credited with scriptwork on numerous films, including Silent Hill and Beowulf.

Castle Wolfenstein ...

Click to continue reading ‘Castle Wolfenstein’ Movie to be Directed by ‘Pulp Fiction’ Co-Writer Roger Avary...

It’s a busy week for John Cusack. Yesterday we reported that the actor was now attached to the long-in-development Stephen King adaptation Cell. Today comes new information that he’s negotiating to appear in another project. The latest film courting Cusack is the “aerial action thriller” Airspace. Variety says the film is being described as “Duel in the sky” and finds Cusack playing a charter pilot who’s attacked by an MiG fighter after he discovers a mysterious briefcase aboard his own plane. As fans of Spielberg’s Duel, we’re intrigued by this pitch. Should Cusack accept the part, he’ll most likely be working with Killing Zoe director Roger Avary on the film. Avary has reportedly already started polishing the...

Read More...

Academy Award winner Roger Avary (Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, True Romance) is set to write and direct the upcoming feature film adaptation of the video game Castle Wolfenstein. Avary has been attached to the project for a few years already, but it looks like Panorama Media and Samuel Hadida are ready to move forward with production.

The movie will be an action adventure film that's been compared to Captain America: The First Avenger and Inglourious Basterds. "The story follows a young Us Army Captain and a British Special Agent on a top secret mission to Castle Wolfenstein, where Hitler will be for the unveiling of a new secret weapon. After reaching the Castle, our heroes are confronted with Himmler's SS Paranormal Division and must fight, not only for their survival, but for a mission that could alter the course of the War."

Hadida explained in the press release:

With Roger at the helm,...

Panorama Media and Samuel Hadida announced today the production of Castle Wolfenstein. The action-adventure film, inspired by the iconic game franchise, is written and will be directed by Academy Award winner Roger Avary. Hadida will produce through his Davis Films Productions, and global sales will be handled by Panorama's Marc Butan and Kimberly Fox. Talks with U.S. distributors are underway.

Castle Wolfenstein is an action adventure film in the vein of Captain America and Inglourious Basterds. The story follows a young Us Army Captain and a British Special Agent on a top secret mission to Castle Wolfenstein, where Hitler will be for the unveiling of a new secret weapon. After reaching the Castle, our heroes are confronted with Himmler's SS Paranormal Division and must fight, not only for their survival, but for a mission that could alter the course of the War. Here's what producer Samuel Hadida had to say about the project.

News out of Afm reveals that Roger Avary will direct a film adaptation of Castle Wolfenstein. The original video game was released in 1981 and spawned a number of sequels, including popular shooters from id Software. Roger Avary is probably best known for his story work on Pulp Fiction and writing the screenplay for Silent Hill. This will be the first project he’s directed since 2004.

Although this is currently using the title Castle Wolfenstein, we would be very surprised if this didn’t take more of the horror/sci-fi elements from the sequels. Here is the official press release:

Santa Monica, CA, November 1, 2012 – Panorama Media and Samuel Hadida announced today the production of Castle Wolfenstein. The action-adventure film, inspired by the iconic game franchise, is written and will be directed by Academy Award® winner Roger Avary. Hadida will produce through his Davis Films Productions, and global sales will be handled...

John Cusack is in negotiations to star in the aerial action-thriller "Airspace" which Roger Avary ("Killing Zoe," "Rules of Attraction") is in talks to direct for Scooty Woop Entertainment and Arclight Films.

Cusack would play a work-absorbed charter pilot flying home to his family who must escape a sudden attack by a heavily armed MiG fighter jet after finding a mysterious briefcase in his plane.

Briana Hartman ("Brother's Keeper") wrote the screenplay based on a story by Michael B. Chait. Avary has already begun work on a polish.

Source: Variety...

Directed by: Todd Lincoln

Written by: Todd Lincoln

Cast: Ashley Greene, Sebastian Stan, Tom Felton

Young tech geek Ben (Sebastian Stan) and his girlfriend Kelly (Ashley Greene) are taking a big step by moving in together; what Kelly doesn't know is that Ben has a bit of ghostly baggage that he's bringing along with him.

Ben managed to attract unwanted attention after being involved with a successful seance that managed to make contact with something from 'the other side'. Kelly doesn't know anything at all about this, which makes things awkward when they move in together and spooky things start to happen around the house.

It starts small, as such things are wont to do. A desk slides out of place. A picture falls from its frame. Little bumps in the night and other small annoyances. This rapidly escalates, however, until the two young people realize they are under a full paranormal assault.

Roger Avary is an Oscar-winning screenwriter, but these days he has trouble gathering his thoughts. "How do I put this?" Avary said on the the terrace outside his hotel in Locarno, Switzerland, where he's currently serving on the international competition jury at the city's film festival. "I haven't talked about this to anyone other than family and close friends, so I want to measure my words very carefully." He stared at the ground and took a breath. "Incarceration didn't change me," he said after a long pause. "In many ways, incarceration galvanized me. The totality of the experience helped me." While Avary looked relaxed in a salmon-colored shirt and neatly tousled hair, sunglasses hid the emotion on his face. Read more of Iw's extensive Locarno coverage Four years ago, the co-writer of "Pulp Fiction" and "True Romance" -- as well as the director of "Killing Zoe" and...

Biblical movies are all the rage in Hollywood right now, with Darren Aronofsky currently casting his "Noah" for a summer shoot, Ridley Scott looking to tackle Moses for Fox while Steven Spielberg also has a Moses movie brewing for Warner Bros. Meanwhile, "Robocop" and "Showgirls" director Paul Verhoeven wants in on the Biblical epic movement too, specifically with the controversial take on Jesus Christ that he's been trying to get off the ground since last year. And Verhoeven has taken a couple significant steps forward with his Jesus movie with Muse Productions’ Chris Hanley stepping up to finance the project and screenwriter Roger Avary ("Beowulf," "Killing Zoe") hired to write the screenplay.

Verhoeven's interest in Jesus didn't occur overnight. Besides being a member of the the Jesus Seminar, the Dutch director published a book he co-wrote last year titled "Jesus of Nazareth." Not surprisingly, that's the book that Avary will...

A violent crime thriller with a bad-ass attitude and a killer twist, this is an ultra-stylish cinematic love letter to the 90s-era wave of breakout indie movies that gave us “Reservoir Dogs”, “Killing Zoe”, “Pulp Fiction” and “The Usual Suspects”.

Stars Bruce Willis (Cop Out; Die Hard 4.0; Grindhouse), Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker (Criminal Minds; The Shield; The Last King Of Scotland), Malin Akerman (Wanderlust; Watchmen), Nikki Reed (The Twilight Saga), Deborah Ann Woll (True Blood; Mother’s Day) and Academy Award nominee Brad Dourif (Bad Lieutenant; One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest).

Catch .44 (Anchor Bay) is available to download and own on DVD and Blu-Ray now.

We have two copies of the Blu-ray to give away to our readers.

For your chance to win, first like us on Facebook… Already a fan? You can skip this part.

And then email contest@whatculture.com with your name, address,...

Open Road Films has acquired the distribution rights to the Michael J. Bassett (Solomon Kane) directed follow-up to the 2006 big-screen adaptation of Silent Hill, starring Sean Bean, Radha Mitchell, Deborah Kara Unger, Adelaide Clemens, Carrie-Anne Moss, Malcolm McDowell and Kit Harington.

Official Press Release:

Open Road Films Acquires Psychological Horror Film Silent Hill: Revelation 3D With Plans For Halloween 2012 Release Based On Iconic Video Game Franchise, Sequel To 2006′S Hit Film Silenthill Stars Adelaide Clemens, Kit Harington, Sean Bean, Carrie-anne Moss And Malcolm McDowell

Los Angeles, CA, April 18, 2012 – Open Road Films has acquired all U.S. distribution rights to Silent Hill: Revelation 3D, the highly anticipated sequel to 2006′s film Silent Hill, released by TriStar Pictures. Silent Hill: Revelation 3D will be released wide October 26, 2012 in time for Halloween. The announcement was made today by Tom Ortenberg, CEO of Open Road Films and producers Samuel Hadida and Don Carmody.

Based...

Samuel Hadida.S Davis Films Acquires Feature Film Rights To

House Of Night Vampire-based Book Series

Major Film Franchise Potential for Young Adult International Bestselling Books

Samuel Hadida announced today that his company, Davis Films, has acquired film rights from authors P.C. and Kristin Cast to their phenomenally successful House of Night young adult fiction book series.

The ninth book in the series, Destined, was just published on October 25. The series, from the mother-daughter writing team, has sold over 12 million copies in the United States, keeping it on The New York Times bestseller list for a record 140 weeks. The books have consistently debuted at #1 in the United States, Canada, UK, and Australia, and have been published in 39 countries around the globe.

The books chronicle the coming of age of 16-year-old Zoey Redbird, who learns she is genetically marked to either become a .vampyre. in adolescence, or be killed in the process.

A new 3D terror tale is headed our way, and we have your official first word and look at what manner of abominations will be clawing their way off the screen!

From the Press Release

Dead Of Nowhere is a story about a man who finds himself trapped in a strange lawless town where he must fight various "abominations" in order to escape and save his wife.

Director Chris Young elaborates on the genesis of this project:

"I grew up on 70's and 80's late night cable movies and have always wanted to create my own odd universe with larger-than-life characters in the drive-in cinema style of filmmaking. I've been intrigued how digital cinema technology has made the stereoscopic 3D experience pixel perfect, and so I spent several months exploring a low-budget, high quality, guerilla-style way of filming that would allow me to shoot 30 set-ups a day, on location in the Mojave Desert.

I totally forgot that I had set up this poll before I went on vacation, but I figured some people might be interested in the results even though they are a couple of weeks late. In honour of Ben Affleck's The Town, we took a look at some of the best heist movies -- specifically, bank heist flicks. The winner was somewhat predictable, although I didn't think it would win by such a large margin. With 44% of the votes, Michael Mann's Heat had a pretty clean away with this particular poll. Meanwhile Dog Day Afternoon and Inside Man battled it out for the #2 spot, followed by Point Break and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The rest of the entries were pretty much ignored, especially Roger Avary's Killing Zoe. Do you agree with these results? Would the inclusion of The Town have forced you to rethink your choices?...

I’m flip-flopping between opinions on The Town because many reviews I’ve read call its direction ‘fresh’ and its writing ‘snappy’ or ‘sparkling’, and I’m in danger of being coerced by the critics* into believing that I enjoyed this bank heist thriller more than I actually did. That’s not to say that, on reflection, it doesn’t garner more praise than your average Hollywood A-List vehicle, but it’s just that immediately after watching it I felt like I’d been anticipating a new Heat and instead got Killing Zoe. As Mandela says, “Retrospection is a bitch, y’all.” Directed by and starring distractingly bum-chinned stubble spokesperson Ben Affleck, the movie follows his professional criminal Doug MacRay and Jem (Jeremy Renner) as they rob Boston banks with a couple of Charlestown buddies in a manner that is more violent, methodical and intelligent than their peers. The opening...

The Resident Evil: Afterlife soundtrack. Here you go film fans, another leery and desperately inept action horror shoot-em-up cry-from-boredom dear-good-who-is-financing-these-things type effort based on a computer game, that looks like a computer game, and is less scary than the computer game it’s based on. A film which manages to make the end of the world as dull as an episode of Joey. Thank you very much Paul W.S. Anderson. I bet no-one thought Event Horizon was destined to become anyone’s unrivalled crowning achievement back in 1997, but there it is, sitting on his CV between Mortal Kombat (thank you once again, Paul, for your contribution to the popular arts) and Soldier (which even Kurt Russell doesn’t remember). This is one more artistic triumph that we can thank the utterly pointless technological “revolution” that is 3D for. The sales potential of a three dimensional scantily clad Milla Jovovich seems...