Five friends go to a remote cabin in the woods. Bad things happen. If you think you know this story, think again. From fan favorites Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard comes ‘The Cabin in the Woods’, a mind blowing horror film that turns the genre inside out.

Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon first met when Goddard was hired as a writer on Whedon’s seminal television hit, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” A fruitful creative partnership – and a strong friendship – formed, and the two filmmakers have worked together consistently ever since. Along the way, ‘The Cabin in the Woods’ was born.

“Joss came up with the initial idea – we were looking for something to write together, and he had this concept kicking around in his head. And as soon as I heard the words ‘cabin movie,’ I said, ‘I’m in.” The two worked together to develop the idea, and wrote the script quickly while on hiatus from their various day jobs.

Once the script was completed, the film was greenlit by MGM Studios, thanks to the support of producer Mary Parent. But due to corporate changes, the studio was unable to continue with the film, making the way for Lionsgate to step in. “You always want your movie to find the right home,” says Whedon, “and there’s no question that Lionsgate is the right home for ‘Cabin’. So many of the films that inspired ‘Cabin’ were released by Lionsgate in the first place!”

Adds Goddard, “With some places, there’s a bit of a horror disconnect, but with Lionsgate I can say something in a meeting like, ‘I’m thinking it should be red, but not ‘The Descent’ red, more ‘High Tension’ red,” and they don’t look at me like I’m insane. It definitely feels like we’re speaking the same language. They’ve been wonderful.”

Goddard’s and Whedon’s goal was to cast the film with a mixture of established actors, new faces, and “Whedonverse” veterans, and that’s exactly what casting directors Amy Britt and Anya Colloff, who had worked on both “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” and “Angel,” set out to accomplish. But the casting process was not without its difficulties. “We ask a lot of our performers,” Goddard points out. “We ask them to vacillate between broad comedy and intense emotional drama. And often, it’s in the same scene – the same sentence, even. It’s very hard to find actors who can shift gears so quickly, the way we ask them to.”

From the beginning, Goddard had dreamed of casting Richard Jenkins in the role of control room boss Sitterson. After sending Jenkins the script on a Friday night, the phone rang on Monday morning with Jenkins’ enthusiastic commitment to the project.

“I just loved the twists. I loved the take on it. It’s fearless,” says the actor. “The control room is pretty mundane, you know. It’s like, just the guys in the office. And then you see what they’re working on and it’s bizarre. It’s just so great to throw those two worlds together.”

Jenkins’ acceptance quickly invigorated the rest of the casting process. Bradley Whitford committed soon after for the role of Hadley, which left Goddard marveling at their good fortune. “Both actors were our wildest dreams, and they were the first people in it,” he says.

Recalls Whitford, “I thought at first it was a sort of grade A, Defcon 5 horror movie. But the more I thought about it, there was something very funny and smart about it. It’s such a clever way to deal with this genre. You see with Hadley how the relentlessness of his job, and dealing with violence all the time, cuts him off from a real experience of it.”

Image Courtesy of  The Cabin in the Woods

The article Joss Whedon’s ‘Cabin’ Attracted Desired Charismatic Veterans appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

DreamWorks Animation SKG, has announced that Ryan Reynolds will lead an all-star cast including Paul Giamatti, Michael Pena,Luis Guzman, Bill Hader, Richard Jenkins, Ken Jeong, Michelle Rodriguez, Maya Rudolph, Ben Schwartz, Kurtwood Smith, Snoop Dogg and Samuel L. Jackson in the Company’s upcoming original film Turbo, which tells the story of an ordinary garden snail with dreams of racing greatness. Turbo is scheduled to come to the big screen on July 19, 2013.

“Ryan Reynolds’ infectious enthusiasm and humor will bring life to the lead role of Turbo and set the tone for this amazing roster of all-star voice talent,” said DreamWorks Animation Chief Creative Officer Bill Damaschke. “This high-octane journey will take audiences on the race of their lives and completely re-define the traditional notion of moving at a snail’s pace!”

David Soren (Merry Madagascar), a DreamWorks Animation veteran as a story artist, voice actor and director, is set to direct the film based on his own original concept. Soren is co-writing the script with Robert Siegel (The Wrestler) and Darren Lemke (Shrek Forever After). Lisa Stewart (Monsters vs. Aliens, Almost Famous) is producing with Susan Rogers serving as co-producer.

Turbo is a snail who dreams of being the greatest racer in the world, just like his hero, 5-time Indianapolis500 champ, Guy Gagne. His obsession with speed and all things fast has made him an oddity and outsider in the slow and cautious snail community, and a constant embarrassment to his careful older brother, Chet.

Turbo desperately wishes he could escape the slow-paced life he’s living. As luck would have it, he gets that chance one fateful day after a freak accident when he suddenly finds himself vested with the power of incredible speed. Turbo embarks on an extraordinary journey to achieve the impossible: racing against the best that IndyCar has to offer. Turbo is the ultimate underdog who achieves the impossible by refusing to let his limitations get in the way of his dreams.

The article DreamWorks Animation to Launch New Film ‘Turbo’ appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

The film adaptation of Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson’s second novel ‘The Rum Diary’ is set to premier in US cinemas on October 28. With Academy Award nominated screenwriter Bruce Robinson penning the script, the question is how the often wild and manic characters of the Thompson universe were translated onto the screen.

In the production notes, the team behind The Rum Diary explain their casting choices. “When I set to cast the role of Chenault, I was looking for someone with a lascivious edge,” says Robinson. Chenault is the fiance of Aaron Eckhart’s character Sanderson, a charming but unsavory businessman. “In the book Chenault is Yeamon’s girlfriend, but [...] the Yeamon character is gone [in the movie].

I made her Sanderson’s girlfriend to heighten the dramatic tension. You immediately get some heat and drama out of the fact that the girl is utterly unobtainable. The whole book is about the American dream, and Hunter’s obsession with lifting the lid on the dream. Chenault is attached to the man who is exploiting the dream. Kemp is crazy in love with her because she is as unobtainable as the dream.”

That unobtainable quality is what attracted Johnny Depp, who plays the journalist Paul Kemp to the role’s eventual taker, Amber Heard. “She was like this incredible 1950s movie star, but with a deep rooted poetry to her. There was a mystery there; you couldn’t quite understand what had gone on in her life, but it made you want to ask questions that you wouldn’t normally ask.”

The character of Moberg was interesting to cast. “In the book, he is described as being Swedish, but I decided to make him an American,” says Robinson. “Giovanni Ribisi is such a fine actor. On the set he looked like a derelict,” he laughs. “I think Giovanni brings comic relief to the driving force of the movie.”

Depp was adamant about Ribisi’s involvement from the outset. “We worked together on Public Enemies and I just thoroughly fell in love with him. I knew then that I wanted this guy on The Rum Diary somewhere. ‘I don’t care what he does, I just want him there. I want to work with him again.’ What a pleasure, what a gift. I salute the guy endlessly; he’s just wonderful.”

“As an actor, I really appreciated the details that Giovanni added to his character,” says Robinson admiringly. “He came up with something, which was a complete invention. It was absolutely ridiculous, but beautiful. He picked up an ashtray and emptied the entire thing into the shopping bag, which he always carries. It was just in case there are a few butts in there that may come in handy. It was a piece of pure on-the-spot comic invention.”

“Moberg is the crime and religious correspondent at the newspaper,” Ribisi says of his character. “I think he was really angry with capitalism in America, what they were doing. He started seeing the results of that on the Puerto Rican culture. Although he despises Lotterman [San Juan Star’s editor], he feels that being with the newspaper does give him a chance to have a voice as a journalist.”

“I think when Moberg first meets Kemp,” says Ribisi, “he thinks Kemp is someone he can possibly take advantage of. There is some degree of skepticism that Kemp is just another guy coming in. However, when he begins to talk about revolting and putting out the newspaper themselves, it electrifies Moberg. He starts to wake up, and become really passionate about it.  That was my own little arc that I was trying to add in.”

Moberg is responsible for encouraging the alcohol and drug abuse in his amigos, Kemp and Sala. “There was this new concept of altering your mind with certain substances. I think Moberg had been doing that for a long time,” says Ribisi. “He also scavenges filters from the rum distillery and produces the moonshine that they drink, which is about four hundred and seventy proof, if that’s possible!” he laughs.

For the role of San Juan Star editor Lotterman, Robinson chose character actor Richard Jenkins. “He played the role brilliantly,” says Robinson. “Lotterman is a hysterical old-style journo, who was probably a sub at The Baltimore Sun for 40 years. Now he is a seething nervous wreck, trying to run his own newspaper, and trying to hold it all together.

There’s a scene at the beginning of the movie, which I hope will be amusing, when Lotterman explains to Kemp that he is looking for some fresh blood to make the thing work, and he believes Kemp is the man that can do it. However, the whole place is awash with rum! It’s not by accident that it is called The Rum Diary. Everyone’s completely smashed all the way through the movie!” laughs Robinson.

Depp remembers the initial struggle to find the right actor to play Lotterman. “‘Who in the world can we get to play this part?’” he recalls saying. “We went through a few names here and there—‘Nah, nah, nah, they don’t seem right; he’s too pushy, he’s too this, he’s too that.’ And then bang, suddenly Richard Jenkins came to mind and we were like, ‘We’ll never get him.’ Boom, got him! We just offered him the part and got him! It was miraculous. He came in and kicked it straight in the ass.

He’s the most solid rock that everything revolves around. It’s because of him that everyone works in terms of character, how far you go and how far you don’t go, what you hold back and what you give out. It’s because of Richard Jenkins’s gravitas that a character like Giovanni Ribisi’s coming in there works.”

Image Courtesy of   http://www.facebook.com/RumDiaryMovie

The article The Rum Diary – Bringing Hunter S. Thompson’s Characters to Life appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

Fresh out of the Air Force and a stint as a copy boy at Time Magazine, future Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson moved down to San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1960, briefly worked at the soon-to-fold sporting magazine El Sportivo, and unsuccessfully pursued a job at The San Juan Star.

The people he met and the experiences he had in Puerto Rico inspired him to write ‘The Rum Diary’, which remained unpublished for decades. In the 1990s, Johnny Depp, Thompson’s close friend, accidentally discovered the manuscript for ‘The Rum Diary’ while visiting Thompson’s house in Woody Creek.

That same night they decided to publish the novel and adapt it into a film. Bruce Robinson, the director of ‘Withnail and I’, was brought out of retirement by Depp to write the script as well as direct the film. Their version of ‘The Rum Diary’ is both a labor of love and a clear-eyed tribute to Thompson.

“I felt Hunter with me throughout the shoot,” says Depp in the new movie’s production notes. “It was great to be close to him again, in that sense; it was great to have him around me. I knew what he would say in every circumstance. I just knew, because I knew him very well. If he’d seen the finished film, he’d be whooping.

He’d be making those Hunter noises that anyone close to Hunter knew. They meant, ‘Yes man, we’ve done it! Fantastic!’ He would have been celebrating. Ultimately, the film is a celebration of Hunter, his language and his discovery of his voice. He’d be super happy, I’m sure.”

Based on the early novel by Hunter S. Thompson, ‘The Rum Diary’ tells the increasingly unhinged story of itinerant journalist Paul Kemp, played by Johnny Depp. Tiring of the noise and madness of New York and the crushing conventions of late Eisenhower-era America, Kemp travels to the pristine island of Puerto Rico to write for a local newspaper, The San Juan Star, run by downtrodden editor Lotterman (Richard Jenkins).

Adopting the rum-soaked life of the island, Paul soon becomes obsessed with Chenault, played by an enchanting Amber Heard, the wildly attractive Connecticut-born fiancée of Sanderson (Aaron Eckhart). Sanderson, a businessman involved in shady property development deals, is one of a growing number of American entrepreneurs who are determined to convert Puerto Rico into a capitalist paradise in service of the wealthy.

When Kemp is recruited by Sanderson to write favorably about his latest unsavory scheme, the journalist is presented with a choice: to use his words for the corrupt businessmen’s financial benefit, or use them to take the bastards down. The Academy Award nominated writer and director Bruce Robinson directs from his screenplay based on the original novel by Thompson.

‘The Rum Diary’ represents the debut film of Infinitum Nihil, the production company headed by Johnny Depp and Christi Dembrowski, together with Academy Award Winner Graham King’s production company GK Films. The film is being produced by Johnny Depp, Christi Dembrowski, Anthony Rhulen, Robert Kravis, and Graham King.

Image Courtesy of   http://www.facebook.com/RumDiaryMovie

The article The Rum Diary: Hunter S Thompson’s Puerto Rican Paradise in Cinemas appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.