Avatar 3 doesn’t premiere in theaters until the end of 2025, but Zoe Saldana just provided an update on the fourth movie in the popular franchise.
10.05.2024 - 21:13 / variety.com
Zack Sharf Digital News Director Moviegoers flocking to see “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” in theaters might leave with the same question: What does the cast exactly look like? In the tradition of James Cameron’s “Avatar” franchise and the last “Planet of the Apes” trilogy, “Kingdom” director Wes Ball utilized groundbreaking motion capture technology to make sure every ape character in his movie was played by a real human being. Leading star Owen Teague told Variety that he attended six weeks of “ape school” in order to help his transformation into a primate be as believable as possible. He and the rest of the film’s cast worked with a movement teacher to get in touch with their simian sides.
They were also outfitted with extensions made from sawed-off crutches in order to help them move like apes. The ensemble had to learn how to run on them, using their arms to propel their bodies forward. “They’re very economical,” Teague said about nailing the posture of a primate.
“You don’t see them sit down and then shift around to get comfy. They plant themselves in the exact right place and stay there. They’re so physically present.
Avatar 3 doesn’t premiere in theaters until the end of 2025, but Zoe Saldana just provided an update on the fourth movie in the popular franchise.
Jack Dunn As part of Variety‘s Global Conversations Summit at the Cannes 2024 Film Festival, Variety executive editor Tatiana Siegel sat down with New Zealand Film Commission CEO Annie Murray and Philippa Mossman, head of International Screen Attraction at New Zealand Film Commission, to talk about the country’s thriving film industry. Murray’s most recent project with the New Zealand Film Commission is a pop-up intensive film school by writer and director Jane Campion. Campion has hand-picked a class of ten filmmakers from 300 applicants and is taking them through a two-year program where they will develop and shoot original short films.
Tatiana Siegel Zoe Saldaña says the future of female representation in the film industry is dependent on women continuing to shatter the glass ceiling. And those who do cannot get complacent. “We need more female CEOs.
Ed Harris (Appaloosa, Pollock) will direct his own adaptation of Kim Zupan’s 2014 novel The Ploughmen with Owen Teague, Nick Nolte, and Bill Murray signed on to star.
Alex Ritman Ed Harris — recently seen starring alongside Kristen Stewart in “Love Lies Bleeding” — is getting back behind the camera to direct his own adaptation of Kim Zupan’s acclaimed novel “The Ploughmen.” Owen Teague, currently playing the lead in “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” Nick Nolte and Bill Murray have come on board to star in the neo-noir crime thriller, which will go into production in Montana this Fall. Amy Madigan and Lily Harris are also set for the film. “The Ploughmen” will mark Harris’ third feature as director after his Western “Appaloosa” and multi-Oscar nominated “Pollock.” Described being in the vein of “Hell or High Water” and “Wind River,” the film is set in the wilderness of Montana, where a strange friendship develops between a haunted young deputy sheriff and a notorious old murderer.
It’s been happening for so long now, it’s almost boring, but we still get filmmakers who bash superhero films for being some sort of cancer on the industry. Like them or not, it feels as if superhero films aren’t just some fad, but they’re going to be around for years to come.
Variety yesterday that he passed away on Thursday (May 9) at his home in Santa Monica, California, surrounded by family members.Corman was seen as a trailblazer in the world of independent film, producing and directing hundreds of low-budget movies and giving an early platform to leading figures in the industry, including Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, James Cameron, Jack Nicholson and Robert De Niro.“His films were revolutionary and iconoclastic, and captured the spirit of an age. When asked how he would like to be remembered, he said, ‘I was a filmmaker, just that,’” the family said in a statement.Known variously as ‘The Pope of Pop Cinema’ and ‘The Spiritual Godfather of the New Hollywood’, he made his name in the 1960s, creating his own studios New World Pictures and New Concorde, and was awarded an Honorary Academy Award in 2009 for his “rich engendering of films and filmmakers”.His own films were often made quickly with low budgets and specialised in genres such as horror, science fiction and action.Several major names received early credits in Corman’s work, including Nicholson in The Little Shop of Horrors (1960), Scorsese with Boxcar Bertha (1972), Cameron with Battle Beyond the Stars (1980) and Ron Howard with Grand Theft Auto (1977).Howard himself joked that Corman told him during the tumultuous making of his first film Eat My Dust that “if you do a good job on this film, you won’t ever have to work for me again!”Tributes have come in for Corman, with director John Carpenter writing on X: “Roger Corman, one of the most influential movie directors in my life, has passed away.
Roger Corman, the Oscar-winning “King of the Bs” who helped turn out such low-budget classics as “Little Shop of Horrors” and “Attack of the Crab Monsters” and gave many of Hollywood’s most famous actors and directors early breaks, has died. He was 98.Corman died Thursday at his home in Santa Monica, California, his daughter Catherine Corman said Saturday in a statement.“He was generous, open-hearted and kind to all those who knew him,” the statement said.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” isn’t monkeying around. The latest “Apes” entry from 20th Century Studios earned $22.2 million from 4,075 theaters on its opening day, a figure that includes $6.6 million in previews. “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” is estimated to make between $52 million and $56 million in its debut, which about the same as the last three installments.
Jordan Moreau SPOILER WARNING: This story contains spoilers for the ending of “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” now playing in theaters. A new decade means a new “Planet of the Apes” trilogy. The “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” ending teases much more story to come, and director Wes Ball has already confirmed there are plans for two more sequels. At that rate, the reboot series, comprised of two trilogies, will surpass the five-movie original series, which ran from 1968 to 1973.
Todd Gilchrist editor After 10 installments and 56 years, “Planet of the Apes” is one of the longest-running science-fiction series in film history. Even Pierre Boulle, who wrote the novel upon which the 1968 film was based, never imagined a future this long, complicated, or full of talking simians.
Jordan Moreau It’s all monkey business at the box office. “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” the latest film in 20th Century Studios’ primate franchise, will rule over the box office this weekend.
Owen Teague stars in the new movie Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, but you never actually see him in the film.
It has been 56 years since “Planet of the Apes,” arguably one of the greatest science fiction films of all time. To see the franchise display such promising growth and evolution almost six decades later is phenomenal and deeply heartening.
Todd Gilchrist editorFor a writer, signing on to “Planet of the Apes” is less an assignment than a calling. After all, it’s the longest-running science-fiction series in film history.
The Chromatica Ball special is coming, after all!
After 2017’s masterful War of the Planet of the Apes, which completed the trilogy that started with 2011’s Rise and 2014’s Dawn and told the epic story of wise leader Caesar and the apes who created this whole new world, I really thought there was nowhere else to go with this franchise that had itself started so brilliantly in 1968 with the original starring Charlton Heston as an astronaut who lands in this futuristic world dominated by intelligent apes. Many other iterations would come, even a side foray by Tim Burton, but it was that most recent trilogy (the first directed by Rupert Wyatt, the final two by Matt Reeves) that really popped. But being box office successes, 20th Century’s new owner Disney knew there was more to be mined, and they were right.
Brent Lang Executive Editor Steven Quale, best known for his work on “Into the Storm” and “Final Destination 5,” has been tapped to direct Capstone Studios and Hammerstone Studios’ “Black Box (Flight 298).” The upcoming supernatural thrilleris based on an original screenplay from Stephen Susco, a horror writer whose many genre credits include “The Grudge,” “The Grudge 2,” “Texas Chainsaw 3D” and “Hell Fest.” According to the logline, the film follows the supernatural events surrounding Vero Airlines Flight 298 from New Orleans to Seattle. Hammerstone Studios’ Alex Lebovici (“Barbarian”) and Jon Oakes (“The Guilty”) will produce alongside Capstone’s Christian Mercuri and David Haring (“Bill & Ted Face the Music”), Warren Zide (“The Final Destination” and Susco.
Zack Sharf Digital News Director James Gunn’s first official look at David Corenswet in 2025’s “Superman” brings a new version of the Man of Steel and his iconic costume to the big screen. Hollywood has been depicting Superman in the live-action format for 76 years and counting, as the first actor to assume the superhero role onscreen was Kirk Alyn in the 1948 serial movie “Superman.” Since then, a handful of actors have brought Superman to life at the movies and on television screens over the decades.
Titanic is one of the biggest triumphs of the film industry.