The folks over at the MTV Movies Blog are rooting for Guillermo del Toro as director of the seventh and final Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. 

And it seems Del Toro would consider it, going by what he tells MTV: ‘I’m definitely interested now that the movies have grown darker. They have a contrast between the gloomy existence of the kid and the world he’s exposed to. They have evolved into a really nice universe. [...] I got [’Deathly Hallows’] for my daughter and she was like ‘When are you going to give it to me? I read it and I was very moved by the ending. It ends very much like a Dickens novel.’

Del Toro’s name has been mentioned in conjunction with the directors chair of a Harry Potter film time and time again - and his credentials have definitely risen with his visionary dark fantasy Pan’s Labyrinth. Fingers crossed?

Discuss Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on the X-Boards 

Posted in Harry Potter, Movies •

The Directors Guild of America (DGA) has announced its contenders for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures for 2007:

Paul Thomas Anderson - There Will Be Blood
Joel and Ethan Coen - No Country For Old Men
Tony Gilroy - Michael Clayton
Sean Penn - Into The Wild
Julian Schnabel - The Diving Bell And The Butterfly

Notable absentees include Joe Wright (Atonement), Tim Burton (Sweeney Todd), Ridley Scott (American Gangster), Jason Reitman (Juno) and Sidney Lumet (Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead). 

For the past couple of years the DGA nominations have been the clearest indicators as to which films would go on to make the Best Picture cut at the Oscars - since 2001 at least four of their five were also among the Academy’s nominees.

Discuss the DGA Awards on the X-Boards

Posted in Awards, Movies •

UPDATE JUST IN -

Jan. 8 (Bloomberg) — Viacom Inc.’s Paramount Pictures denied a newspaper report that the studio is poised to follow Time Warner Inc. in abandoning Toshiba Corp.’s HD DVD technology.  `Paramount’s current plan is to continue to support the HD DVD format,”  Brenda Ciccone, a spokeswoman for Paramount, said in an e-mail today.

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The revelation over the weekend that Warner Bros was jumping ship to Blu-ray was bad news for the HD DVD camp but now it looks like Paramount have dealt the final death blow to the floundering  next gen DVD format by abandoning it for its rival.

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Posted in Blu-ray & HD DVD, Movies, Sci-Tech & Video Games •

Just Jared has published the first on set images from Terry Gilliam’s new fantasy film The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.

Click here to see Heath Ledger as ‘Tony’.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is a fantastical morality tale, set in the present day.  It tells the story of Dr Parnassus and his extraordinary ‘Imaginarium’, a travelling show where members of the audience get an irresistible opportunity to choose between light and joy or darkness and gloom. Blessed with the extraordinary gift of guiding the imaginations of others, Dr Parnassus is cursed with a dark secret. Long ago he made a bet with the devil, Mr Nick (Tom Waits), in which he won immortality. Many centuries later, on meeting his one true love, Dr Parnassus made another deal with the devil, trading his immortality for youth, on condition that when his first-born reached its 16th birthday he or she would become the property of Mr Nick.

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Posted in Movies •

Rogue Pictures have announced that Doomsday,  the post-apocalyptic actioner from writer-director Neil Marshall (Dog Soldiers, The Descent) will be released in the US on March 14th.

The story is set in a futuristic Great Britain where a deadly plague, known as the Reaper Virus, has broken out, killing hundreds of thousands in its wake. In desperation, the British Government evacuates as many survivors as it can out of the infected area, and then builds a wall, preventing the remainder from escaping. Thirty years later, with the wall still up and the victims all but forgotten, the virus breaks out again. The Government decides to send a crack team of operatives, led by Major Eden Sinclair, into the hot zone to investigate the possibility of a cure.

The film stars Malcolm McDowell as Kane, a brilliant scientist leading an elite group of specialists led by Eden (Rhona Mitra) and monitored by Nelson (Bob Hoskins).

Discuss Doomsday on the X-Boards

Posted in Movies •

A studio source at IESB has told the site that Justice League,  the big screen outing for DC Comic’s superhero ensemble is in trouble.

‘Justice League is indeed in danger of not starting production on time and maybe even getting scrapped altogether’ writes the source. ‘The concerns are that the script is not ready to go in front of cameras, and also that the budget is getting a bit out of control‘.

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Posted in Batman, Movies •

Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura has told IESB that Transformers 2 is likely to begin production on this summer,  although due to the ongoing WGA industrial action the story is not yet in place -

‘We’re no where because of the strike,’ he explained. ‘We won’t know until we come back. We have a very fine outline and we know exactly where we want go with the movie but until this writers strike comes back, we’ll find out exactly where we are. Michael is completely on top of every detail. He’s designed a lot of great stuff already. He’s got a lot of great sequences imagined but you know, he needs some writers to work with before he’s ready to go, so I would say June 2nd is an unofficial start, it’s the target date we’d like to go for but, you know, we’ve got to get some writers to help us.’

Discuss Transformers 2 on the X-Boards

Posted in Movies, Transformers •

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles consulting producer James Middleton has told SCI FI Wire that the upcoming show will head in a different direction to the movie franchise.

‘The Sarah Connor Chronicles is really a new expression of the franchise, and it is a denouement, really, to Sarah Connor and that character that was introduced in the first two movies,’ Middleton explains.

What this means is that events of the TV series pick up directly from the end of Terminator 2: Judgment Day and spin off in their own direction,  ignoring the events of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.

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Posted in Television •

According to the Hollywood Reporter,  United Artists has optioned the film rights to the Australian children’s fantasy book series Ranger’s Apprentice, written by John Flanagan.

Paul Haggis (Casino Royale) is attached to both adapt and direct the first movie of the series, qlthough negotiations are currently on hold due to the writers’ strike.

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Posted in Movies •

Variety reports that efforts by industry insiders to salvage next Sunday’s Golden Globe Awards festivities have failed.

By Monday evening, the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn.’s 65th annual kudos had been downscaled from a gala dinner ceremony and live telecast to an hourlong news conference at the Beverly Hilton, to be covered live (taped delayed for the West Coast) by NBC News, with only journos in attendance — and most likely with WGA pickets outside.

The after-parties that traditionally make the Globes a fun night of event-hopping were also scrapped. NBC Universal-Focus, Warner Bros. and HBO cancelled their events, with Fox Searchlight and the Weinstein Co. expected to do likewise.

Discuss the Golden Globes on the X-Boards

Posted in Awards, Movies •