All Screen articles in 9 March 2007 – Page 2
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News
Blockbuster season: The Franchise Four
Summer 2007 has a dream line-up of franchise properties, with an average per-film domestic gross across the four biggest series of almost $350m.Director Sam Raimi and stars Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst are back for Sony's Spider-Man 3. The film's May 4 domestic opening marks a return to the early ...
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Blockbuster season: the original spin-offs
Two of this summer season's tentpoles are not sequels but based on successful pre-existing properties.Paramount's Transformers is a live-action film from director Michael Bay, based on the robot action toys first introduced in the 1980s but relaunched several times since and brought to both the small screen and big screen ...
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Blockbuster season: the next tier of sequels
Three franchises whose previous installments each enjoyed $200m-$500m global box-office are also pitching into the sequel-heavy summer.Warner's Ocean's Thirteen will be the first entry in its crime-caper series to open in the summer (Ocean's Eleven and Ocean's Twelve, both pre-Christmas domestic releases, grossed $450.7m and $362.7m worldwide respectively) and Warner ...
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Blockbuster season: the long-delayed sequels
Three sequels are attempting to re-ignite audience enthusiasm this summer after long lay-offs or major cast changes.Universal's comedy Evan Almighty arrives in the US on June 22 with Tom Shadyac back as director but Steve Carell starring in place of Bruce Almighty lead Jim Carrey.Carell had a hit in summer ...
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News
Blockbuster season: comedy contenders
Raunchy or physical comedies often produce good summer results and this year's crop is a healthy one. Judd Apatow, writer-director of summer 2005 hit The 40-Year-Old Virgin, is behind the camera again for Universal's Knocked Up (June 1), about a man who finds out he has impregnated his one-night stand.Apatow, ...
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News
Blockbuster season: counter culture
The counter-programming success of last year's The Devil Wears Prada - which opened on the same weekend as Superman Returns and went on to gross $122m domestically - will not be easy to replicate.Several distributors, though, will try their hands with female-oriented offerings that might find a niche between the ...
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News
Blockbuster season: dark horses
Every summer schedule has a few unknown quantities and among this year's is a handful of films that look intriguing on paper and may perform in the marketplace.Dark horses with mainstream label studio distribution include Disturbia, which Paramount/DreamWorks will open in the US on April 13 but which Paramount Pictures ...
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News
Blockbuster season: Showest
The largest assembly of international exhibitors and distributors in the world, ShoWest (March 12-15) remains an informative and entertaining stopping-off point on the industry calendar. Yet as next week's 33rd incarnation approaches, there is a growing realisation that the Las Vegas shindig is of more use to some than others.While ...
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News
Blockbuster season: animated animals
After last year's glut, there are only two non-sequel animated films this summer.Sony's Surf's Up comes from Toy Story 2 co-director Ash Brannon and Tarzan director Chris Buck, with voices by Shia LaBeouf, Zooey Deschanel and others.Like Warner's Happy Feet, Surf's Up (opening June 8 in the US and aiming ...
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News
Blockbuster season: scary alternatives
Recent summers have produced a handful of lower budget horror and sci-fi hits and this year there are a number of potentially scary movies, several of them from international directors.The Screen Gems label of horror expert Sony opens Vacancy, with Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale as a couple staying at ...
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Features
Marketing - Poster technology - Sheets ahead
The poster is one of the oldest advertising media, and in an age of targeted internet campaigns and interactive pop-ups it would be understandable if film distributors had started to lose interest in paper and ink.But this is not happening. Not only does the film poster remain an important release ...
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News
Norbit looks big for PPI in 15 territory launches
Sony Pictures Releasing International (SPRI) will be looking to dominate the overseas arena with Ghost Rider for the fourth consecutive weekend.However with no new releases planned for major territories and a concerted push for the Eddie Murphy comedy Norbit through Paramount/PPI, Ghost Rider will struggle to hold on to its ...
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News
New York publicity co Falco Ink promotes three account executives
Falco Ink partners Janice Roland and Shannon Treusch have promoted three account executives at the US publicity firm.Steve Beeman becomes senior vice president, Erin Bruce is named vice president, and Betsy Rudnick becomes senior account executive.'It's rare to find a team that has worked together as long as ours has ...
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News
THINKFilm acquires Guttentag and Sturman's Nanking doc
THINKFilm has acquired North American rights to Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman's documentary Nanking, which premiered at Sundance in January.The distributor plans a late 2007 release on the account of the bloody Japanese invasion of Nanking, China, in the early stages of the second world war. AOL vice chairman Ted ...
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News
Spanish short Oscar nominee sets feature debut Flash
Spain's recently Oscar-nominated short film director Borja Cobeaga will shoot his first feature for producers Telespan 2000 and Estudios Picasso in October.The film, titled Flash, El Amigo De Las Chicas (literally, Flash, Friend Of The Girls), is based on the novel Flash by Massimo Bruni.The boy-meets-girl comedy is set against ...
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Huayi Brothers to co-produce Relativity's King Of Kung-fu
Beijing-based Huayi Brothers has boarded the $70m action drama, previously known as the untitled J&J Project due to the dual casting of Jackie Chan and Jet Li, as local investor and co-producer. Huayi Brothers has sent the project, under the tentative title King Of Kung-fu, to the Film Bureau of ...
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News
Swedish partners launch fund for five low-budget features per year
In collaboration with Swedish public broadcaster SVT, Swedish regional film centres Film i Vast and Filmpool Nord, the Swedish Film Institute has launched the Rookie film fund, which will finance five low-budget, (primarily) first features annually. Nordisk Film will handle both domestic release and international sales of the titles. Headquartered ...
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News
Curtis Brown Agency starts below-the-line division
The Curtis Brown Agency has launched a department to handle below-the-line film and TV artists and technicians. Agent Natasha Blake is heading the division. She previously worked with below-the-line talent at The Skouras Agency in Santa Monica and at PFD in London. London-based Curtis Brown is now representing clients including ...
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Rotten Tomatoes expands with UK website
Rotten Tomatoes, the website that aggregates film reviews, is launching in the UK today at http://uk.rottentomatoes.com. The site draws on reviews from a variety of sources worldwide. Joe Utichi will serve as editor of Rotten Tomatoes UK. Senh Duong launched Rotten Tomatoes launched it US site in 1998. The company ...
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Reviews
Becoming Jane
Dir: Julian Jarrold. UK-US. 2007. 120mins Fact proves just as charming as fiction in Becoming Jane, a beautifully crafted biography of Jane Austen that will hold an irresistible appeal to global audiences who swooned over big screen adaptations of Pride & Prejudice (2005) and Sense & Sensibility (1995). Charting the ...