Behold Aleksei Sytsevich– a.k.a. The Rhino.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 director Marc Webb tweeted this first image of Paul Giamatti as the thick-skinned villain, although it is obviously before the character is fitted with his ramming horn and armor that is surgically grafted to his radiation-enhanced body.
The massive walls seem simultaneously industrial and ancient. They have the scale of natural rock formations, but there is no such thing as straight lines like these in the wild.
From the creeping vines and empty corridors, the walls also seem to have been totally abandoned … except for a group of young boys who live in the grassy center of this intimidating structure.
As you can tell from the tiny figures in this first concept image from the upcoming film The Maze Runner, not all of the boys are eager to find out what lies beyond the barrier.
The year, make, and model were quite different but Rush filmmaker Ron Howard has felt the rumbling power of iconic cars when it comes to engines of cinema and symbolism. It was 40 years ago this summer that one of the ultimate automobile movies, American Graffiti, rumbled into box office history and steered Howard toward television and Happy Days.
Howard is a two-time Oscar-winning filmmaker and with Rush (featured in the first-look poster above with star Chris Hemsworth) and its fact-based tale of Formula One racing rivalry in 1976 he found himself feeling like he was covering some familiar road — but it wasn’t films about wheels on asphalt that hit close to home.
“People ask what has Rush been like and I say from a filmmaking standpoint it’s been kind of like a cross between Apollo 13 and Backdraft,” says Howard, who other films include The DaVinci Code, Splash and A Beautiful Mind. “In the case of Apollo 13, that’s for the complexity and the authenticity and the intent to capture an era and an endeavor that blends technology, action and danger.”
Image Credit: Walt Disney Co.
Will a western work? That’s the question with Disney’s The Lone Ranger, which arrives this summer as the most expensive cowboy film in history. The trio behind the film — producer Jerry Bruckheimer, director Gore Verbinski and star Johnny Depp — are accustomed to genre skepticism, they heard the chorus of doubters when they salvaged the swashbuckler genre from the briny depths with the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.
Jane Eyre (2006) star and Anna Karenina costar Ruth Wilson, who portrays Rebecca Reid in the film (as shown in the exclusive first-look poster above), says that Verbinski is a wild-card filmmaker up to the task of reviving a classic that seems dusty in all the wrong ways.
Image Credit: Matt Nettheim
Australia was founded as a repository for crooks and criminals — a wretched hive of scum and villainy, like the British Empire’s own Mos Eisley. Of course, that was a long time ago and the Australian national demeanor has since shifted from “kill or be killed” to “live and let live,” but David Michôd’s gritty 2010 drama Animal Kingdom chronicled some of the country’s more modern criminal descendents. In his upcoming sophomore effort, The Rover, the director takes things even further. READ FULL STORY »
After a year and a half, it’s probably time for your parents to meet your boyfriend. But for the Type A Grace Peeples (Kerry Washington), she’d rather delay it just a little longer. In Tyler Perry Presents Peeples (out May 10) Grace tells her boyfriend Wade (Craig Robinson) not to accompany her on her trip home to Sag Harbor for Moby Dick Day – a Peeples family tradition.
“Grace hasn’t told her family a lot about [Wade] at all,” Washington told EW. “She loves Wade very, very much and fears that he won’t accept them and they won’t accept him, and it makes her want to avoid the immersion. If she can just hold it off longer, maybe she’ll figure out how to do it perfectly. Or maybe Wade will suddenly become more successful.”
Wade decides to crash anyway.
Image Credit: Marvel
Even as Marvel Studios turns toward the stars with the Guardians of the Galaxy, the same is true in the pages (and pixels) of Marvel Comics. On Feb. 27, the inaugural issue of Guardians of the Galaxy, the ongoing comic book series, arrives at stores on the Marvel app to draft off the interest in the 2014 film that was announced last summer, just got a star, and represents the most unexpected Marvel adaptation since Lucasfilm’s Howard the Duck in 1986.
For the moviegoing public that recognizes Captain America and Thor but scratches its collective head when the Guardians are mentioned, the series is a entry point into the scruffy charms and deep-space heroics of the team members: Star-Lord, Gamora, Groot, Rocke, Bug, and Iron Man. Wait, Iron Man? Yes, Brian Michael Bendis and artist Steve McNiven (the tandem behind Avengers Assemble) are bringing Tony Stark into the fun, which raises some interesting possibilities for the film doesn’t it?
NEXT: Nova No. 1 cover
Image Credit: Frank Connor
The year of Benny Batch continues! DreamWorks announced today that principal photography has commenced on its heretofore untitled feature film about the creation of the controversial website WikiLeaks and its co-founder and international fugitive Julian Assange. Now titled The Fifth Estate, the film traces the meteoric rise of the site through the eyes of Assange colleague Daniel Domscheit-Berg. He’s played by Inglourious Basterds‘ Daniel Brühl, who’s pictured above with Benedict Cumberbatch as Assange in the first official image from the film. Bleached white hair is eerily becoming on Mr. Cumberbatch, is it not? READ FULL STORY »
Consider this … foreplay?
Lovelace, Amanda Seyfried’s drama about the dark life of a true-life 1970s-era pornstar, makes its debut a week from now at the Sundance Film Festival, and the producers have released this new image from the movie. Given its subject matter, if the film isn’t one of the most provocative of the festival, it’s doing something wrong.
Image Credit: John Jeffcoat
Lynn Shelton’s latest film has a touchy subject. Literally. The writer-director of Humpday and Your Sister’s Sister is re-teaming with Rosemarie DeWitt — who just scored a Spirit nom for Sister — on Touchy Feely, a drama about a massage therapist who develops an aversion to bodily contact. Shelton spoke exclusively with EW about the project, which she says goes into more dramatic territory that her previous projects. ”It doesn’t have this rollicky, bantering feel that my last couple films have had,” she says. “It definitely has laughs, but it really is a drama. It’s really about attempting to live in your own skin, both literally and metaphorically.” READ FULL STORY »
