by Shane “Doesn’t Lie To Kids” Hnetka
Warner Bros., which owns DC Comics, has moved their Batman versus Superman movie — first set for next summer — to May 6, 2016. It was originally part of a crowded 2015 blockbuster slate that included such likely box-office juggernauts as the Avengers sequel and a new Star Wars movie. The delay gives the studio an extra year, which one hopes will be spent developing a coherent plot and sewing some red shorts over the Man of Steel’s gross super-bulge. Marvel, meanwhile, has moved Ant-Man into the now-vacant July 17 spot.
Speaking of that, who ever would’ve thought there would be a big-budget Ant-Man movie starring Michael Douglas and Paul Rudd from director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead)? No one ever, that’s who. Weird.
DELUSIONS OF HOLLYWOOD
For a class project, a grade seven student named Spencer sent a letter to DC Comics. He asked several questions, including this troublemaker: “[How] does DC plan to compete against Marvel movies when Marvel seemingly dominates the live action superhero industry?”
A valid question, because it’s true — Marvel/Disney studios and Marvel’s characters at Sony and 20th Century Fox do dominate the box office.
DC’s reply to Spencer took some liberties with these facts. From their reply, which, naturally, is all over the Internet:
“How do we plan to compete you ask: well Marvel may have many movies that come out in one year, and the reason for that is they have many different distributors which makes it possible for them to do so. DC Comics only has one distributor who is Warner Bros., and well [sic] we don’t like to toot our own horn (well actually we do) our movies by far exceed all of Marvels [sic] in sales.”
Yup, a professional of some sort wrote that clunky, comma-deficient letter. Anyways, even if you just count the Marvel/Disney movies — leaving out Sony (Spider-Man) and Fox (X-Men, Fantastic Four) — Iron Man 3 made $409 million over Man of Steel’s $291 million, and that’s just the domestic gross. Worldwide, Iron Man 3 made $1.2 billion to Man of Steel’s $668 million.
I guess Warner Bros. and DC’s strategy in the competitive live-action superhero movie business is to lie to children. Good work.
QUENTIN TARANTINO AND THE HATEFUL EIGHT
Quentin Tarantino’s planned next project, a western called The Hateful Eight, has been shelved. What happened? Tarantino sent his first-draft script to six people — including actors Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern and Tim Roth. Supposedly either Madsen or Dern gave a copy of the script to their agent, who passed it around until it ended up on the Internet. Oops.
The breach of trust has apparently pissed off Tarantino more than the leak. So he’s taking his script and going home. He’s not going to make the film — at least for the time being.
What really sucks is it sounded like Tarantino was thinking about shooting the movie on gorgeous widescreen 70 mm stock — the classic format used in Lawrence Of Arabia, The Sound Of Music and 2001: A Space Odyssey. That would’ve been freaking awesome. Oh well.
I guess we’ll have to wait a while longer for his next movie — whatever it ends up being.
