Deadline Hollywood report that Warner Bros. Pictures have pushed the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince back to July 17, 2009, which is eight months after the original release date of November 21, 2008.
Studio head Alan Horn said “repercussions of the writers’ strike, which impacted the readiness of scripts for other films — changing the competitive landscape for 2009 and offering new windows of opportunity that we wanted to take advantage of. We agreed the best strategy was to move Half-Blood Prince to July, where it perfectly fills the gap for a major tent pole release for mid-summer.”
On a (as bright as can be) bright note for Harry Potter fans, this will not change the production schedule for the two part Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc Chief Executive Jeffrey Katzenberg has revealed that the studio are in talks to make a sequel for Kung Fu Panda.
Katzenberg said, “we’ve started conversations about it, and I think in the next 30 or 60 days, we’ll be able to talk completely about that.”
The movie which features the voices of Jack Black and Angelina Jolie has already made $560 million worldwide on ticket sales alone.
Speaking of DreamWorks, the next big movie for the studio is another animated sequel, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa is set for release on November 7.
Tom Cruise has gotten even more bad news in terms of his career, only a couple days after been replaced by Angelina Jolie in the a spy thriller movie which was originally called Edwin A. Salt but will now need to be renamed.
Now the Top Gun actor was told he is too old to star in another Mission Impossible movie, according to Page Six Cruise was in a meeting with Paramount “begging for MI4″.
But they told him that they are looking for a younger, cheaper actor to play the role. Upon hearing this Cruise “had a tantrum and ran out of the meeting.”
Billy Bob Thornton has been announced to play Freddy Krueger in a new Nightmare On Elm Street movie.
The Bad Santa actor will play the role that was originally played by Robert Englund in the original eight movies.
Englund said that Thornton is an “excellent choice“, he also said “a big budget should mean the film will look a lot better than some of the old movies.”
Thoughts?
Angelina Jolie is set to take on action movie “Edwin A. Salt” which was originally set for Tom Cruise. It has been said that the script will be re drafted for a woman to play the role. The movie will also get a new title
The movie is about a CIA officer who is accused by a defector of being a Russian sleeper spy and must elude capture long enough to establish their innocence.
Jolie’s last movie action movie ”Wanted” has grossed over 250 million worldwide.
James Franco has revealed that he wears a prosthetic penis in this upcoming movie Milk, in which he and Sean Penn play a gay couple.
The Spiderman actor said that during filming of a scene in which he jumps in a pool naked, Sean Penn thought the penis was real.
He said, ”This scene went on for a long time, like half the day, and it’s getting old… and I go over to Sean and I guess he didn’t know that I was wearing a prosthetic. I go, `Sean, you’re such a great actor but you wouldn’t do a scene like this if they asked you; you wouldn’t dive into a pool naked.’ And he said… `Well James, if I was built like you, I would.’ A couple of weeks later we did this scene, where we’re both dancing and we’re naked, and we both have prosthetic penises. He finally put it together that I’m wearing, like, the Boogie Nights prosthetic.”
Milk tells the story of California’s first openly gay elected official, Harvey Milk, a San Francisco supervisor who was assassinated along with Mayor George Moscone by San Francisco Supervisor Dan White (Josh Brolin).
High School Musical star Lucas Grabeel and Emile Hirsch also star in the movie which is released on December 5
Remember it was reported Brad Pitt was set to sign on to star in the new World War II Quentin Tarantino movie, Inglorious Bastards?
It is now confirmed that the new father will indeed star in the movie, Pitt will play Lt. Aldo Raine, a Southern rebel who leads a band of eight Jewish American soldiers as they exact vengeance on Nazis in German-occupied France.
A producer of the move told Variety that Pitt and Tarantino are “going to push each other and really help make something special.”
The movie will begin shooting on October 13 in Germany and they are hoping it goes fast enough so it can debut at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival in May 09.
British actor Simon Pegg, David Krumholtz, Nastassja Kinski, B.J. Novak and Hostel creator Eli Roth are also in talks about the movie, there is no word on if Leonardo DiCaprio has signed on or not.
If you are an actor in Germany, they are casting for a German actor to play the role of Hans Landa, the Nazi leader targeted by the resistance.
