StevenSpielberg

Open Casting Call for Jackman's Son in 'Real Steel'

Feb 8th 2010 9:54AM By: Jennifer A. Brown

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Young acting hopefuls have a shot at acting opposite Hugh Jackman in the upcoming boxing robot drama Real Steel.

DreamWorks Studios is actively looking for a fresh new face for the upcoming sports sci-fi drama. Jackman stars as a former boxer with one last title shot in a robot boxing championship. He teams up with his long lost son Max, a part currently uncast. Max is described as a charming street-smart, tough, who's complicated and resourceful.

Last week Dreamworks announced they were looking for a young male actor, age 10-14 years old, and have open casting calls set for Chicago on February 14th, and New York on February 20th. Those interested in auditioning can submit a video audition online at realsteelcasting.com, which also has information on the two open calls.

Reel Steel was written by John Gatins (Coach Carter, Hardball), and is set to be directed by Night at the Museum's Shawn Levy.

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'Real Steel' Set in Stone

Nov 24th 2009 10:25AM By: Jacob Hall

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Several weeks ago, the news broke that Richard Matheson's story story Real Steel was getting the blockbuster treatment courtesy of producer Steven Spielberg and director Shawn Levy, with Hugh Jackman the front-runner for the lead role. Today, Variety is reporting that the project has been greenlit by Dreamworks with an $80 million price tag and a June 2010 start date.

The story follows a former boxer living in a futuristic world where massive robots duke it out in the ring instead of human beings. Naturally, he comes across an underdog robot who he can train to be the best and finds out about the 11-year-old son he never knew he had. Various forms of bonding ensue. The story was previously a mediocre Twilight Zone episode starring Lee Marvin. The robots looked like walking wax figures there, so I expect we'll be getting a Transformers-esque update in that department.

This is Dreamworks' first film since securing new financing and I can see why they picked it. People like Rocky and people like Transformers and people like Hugh Jackman, and Shawn Levy tends to make movies that make a tidy profit.

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Steven Meet Stephen: Spielberg and King together for 'Dome'?

Nov 20th 2009 10:02AM By: Zachary Herrmann

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Stephen King's latest novel, Under The Dome, has only been on shelves for 10 days, but DreamWorks TV has already optioned the the book and is looking to adapt it for a possible cable mini-series. That's right -- Spielberg and King are are back in mutual business.

It's not the first time the two have come together for a potential project. Spielberg has been trying to bring King's 1984 novel (with Peter Straub), The Talisman, to either the big or small screen for roughly 20 years. TNT came close to putting together a six-hour mini-series in 2007, but the TV event (as I believe they call these things) was shut down due to budgetary reasons. Imdb.com currently has a listing for a 2010 version of The Talisman series, but there doesn't seem to be news of such an endeavor anywhere else.

As for Under The Dome -- a quick visit over to the book's Wikipedia page reveals a wealth of positive reviews, including the likes of the Associated Press, The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. Consensus seems to be that this is one of King's best in quite some time.

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Will Hugh Jackman Rock 'Em and Sock 'Em in 'Real Steel' ?

Nov 12th 2009 2:02PM By: John Gholson

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Hammacher Schlemmer's RC boxing robot toysSwitching gears from his middle-of-the-road comedies, director Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum, Cheaper By the Dozen) is taking on a sci-fi sports drama based on a short story by Richard Matheson. The film, Real Steel, takes place in a future world where human boxers have been replaced by realistic androids who are able to dish out more viscerally satisfying carnage on each other than humans can.

Hugh Jackman is the frontrunner for the lead role, and Levy shared a little about his character's place in the script, "It's faithful to the story in that that story was very much about a down-on-his-luck, slightly desperate journeyman who works in this robot boxing sport and who is desperately needing redemption and one last shot. The movie is more Rocky than Transformers." Levy wants to focus on the father/son relationship at the heart of the story over explosive CGI-driven robot battles.

It's that approach that caused producer Steven Spielberg to hand the project over to Levy, a director whose body of work doesn't even hint at being able to do dramatic science-fiction. Production on Real Steel should ramp up in 2010 with an eye toward a 2011 release date.

(via SciFi Wire)

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Clint Eastwood Goes Supernatural with 'Hereafter'

Sep 18th 2009 12:45PM By: Sci-Fi Squad Staff

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By: Elisabeth Rappe - originally posted on Cinematical

Once Clint Eastwood casts you in a movie, you're his friend for life and you'll probably enjoy a steady supply of work until the terrible day he decides to retire. (If I was a young actor at Warner Bros, I would just happen to walk by his office with bagels and coffee, just in case he was hungry and casting.) Thus, it's almost no surprise that Eastwood's next film will share the same leading man as his last. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Matt Damon, soon to be seen in Eastwood's Invictus, will take the lead in Hereafter.

The plot of Hereafter is being kept under tight, tight wraps. All anyone knows about it is that it boasts a script by Peter Morgan and is "a supernatural thriller in the vein of The Sixth Sense." (Movieline, though, snagged a copy of the script and offered up some more details, including the following: "After two tense set pieces that leave its main characters changed forever, the film becomes a quiet drama about three people trying to figure out what, if anything, exists after death." Oh, and Matt Damon sees dead people.)

It's also being executive produced by DreamWorks and Steven Spielberg. They were the original owners of Morgan's spec script, but happily handed it to over to Eastwood and Warner Bros, with Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy staying on as executive producers. It'll be the fourth film Spielberg and Eastwood shared producing credits on. (The others are The Bridges of Madison County, Flags of Our Fathers, and Letters from Iwo Jima. You might need that for a trivia contest someday.)

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Should Spielberg, Lucas and Ford Be Allowed to Make 'Indiana Jones 5'?

Sep 17th 2009 3:32PM By: Jason Hughes

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Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal SkullsApparently the boys are hammering out the details for a fifth installment of the Indiana Jones franchise. Harrison Ford says that if the script is good he'll come back. But does that mean anything? He put on the fedora for Indiana Jones and the Space Invaders and that took the franchise in a direction it didn't need to go.

What's next? Indiana Jones and the Flying Saucer of Anal Probing? Indy and Mutt are abducted by aliens and brought on board their spaceship filled with ... snakes! The Jones boys must escape the clutches of the aliens by swinging from Indy's whip into an escape pod and make their way back to Earth with the alien's plans for planetary destruction so they can give them to Randy Quaid, who'll fly his plane right into the aliens' ship and blow 'em all up while Will Smith sheds a tear.

Damn, and I thought they couldn't top the fourth one. If Indiana Jones is going to come back, he needs to return to his mystical roots and leave the aliens for someone else to play with. ET II: Extra-Terrestrial Boogaloo maybe. What would you do in the new movie?

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Steven Spielberg Producing 'Halo' Movie?

Aug 10th 2009 10:33AM By: Erik Davis

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Remember back when Peter Jackson and Neill Blomkamp (the team behind this week's much buzzed-about District 9) were going to make a Halo movie? Unfortunately, studios got cold feet -- and didn't want to risk such a high budget on an unknown filmmaker -- which eventually led to Blomkamp being given the reigns on something a lot smaller ($30 million) and a lot like the short film that got him noticed in the first place. Should District 9 turn into a summer sleeper hit (and it should), look for Blomkamp to be the next go-to guy for smart science fiction.

In the meantime, though, IESB claims via their secret inside sources that Steven Spielberg may be looking to pick up where Jackson left off and produce a big-budgeted Halo movie. This is all due to screenwriter Stuart Beattie's (G.I. Joe) pitch-heard-around-the-web some months back, when the writer actively pursued the non-existent Halo gig by coming up with his own concept art alongside a story that he feels could be "this generation's Star Wars," according to an interview with Sci Fi Wire from back in January.

IESB claims Spielberg is in active discussions to produce a Halo movie based on Beattie's script, titled Halo: The Fall of Reach. We're not sure why Spielberg -- who's working with Jackson now on their joint Tintin adaptation -- would want the project after Jackson quit it, but perhaps he sees the potential of the next great sci-fi franchise. Either that, or another failed video game adaptation.

What do you think of Spielberg possibly getting behind a Halo adaptation?

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Captain's Log: 'Iron Man 2', 'Transformers', Ricky Gervais, 'Virtuality', Stan Lee

Jun 29th 2009 9:04AM By: Mike Moody

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Welcome to Captain's Log -- your (semi) daily round-up of sci-fi randomness from around the web. Here's what's happening today:

- Here's more evidence of Robert Downey Jr's awesomess: The dude reportedly saved an extra from rampaging robots on the set of Iron Man 2 over the weekend.

- Michael Bay' second Transformers movie made $201.2 million, the second-largest amount over a five-day period after The Dark Knight. Also, it's awfulness made me sterile.

- A sci-fi-tinged comedy with Tina Fey, Jonah Hill, Louis C.K., Jennifer Garner and starring/written/co-directed by Ricky Gervais? You must watch the trailer for The Invention of Lying and read more after the jump:

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Michael Bay's Next Film Could Be ...

Jun 26th 2009 3:56PM By: Erik Davis

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With Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen absolutely demolishing the box office this week (it took in another $28 million on Thursday), Variety reports that DreamWorks is looking to pick up the film rights to the first book in an as-yet-unpublished six-book series for Michael Bay to produce and potentially direct. The book, titled I Am Number Four, tells of a group of earthbound alien teens who escaped their planet just as another hostile species was destroying it. Now, as they attempt to settle in and build new lives for themselves on earth, the main character discovers that he is being hunted by the same enemy that blew up his home planet.

The most surprising aspect of this whole thing is that while the book was being shopped around under a pseudonym, sources are saying that James Frey (the controversial author behind A Million Little Pieces) is one of the writers. (Hey, at least this time they're coming right out and saying it's a work of fiction.) Like Transformers, this deal puts Michael Bay back in business with Steven Spielberg, and the latter will most likely operate as an executive producer (or take on a "godfather role", as Variety calls it). I'd be curious to learn more about the series, as well as whether Bay directing could delay (or even squash) a potential third Transformers movie.

Discuss: Is it just me, or does the whole teenage aliens on earth in high school feel a little too Twilight-ish for the hardcore genre fan?

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Will Noah Wyle Board Spielberg's Alien Invasion TV Pilot?

Jun 22nd 2009 11:06AM By: Mike Moody

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steven spielberg noah wyle tnt alien invasion pilotSteven Spielberg, the man behind sci-fi movie classics like E.T and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, is producing an alien-invasion drama pilot for TNT. The unnamed series would potentially take place on Earth six months after evil aliens wipe out most of humanity.

We still don't know if Spielberg will direct the pilot, but the award-winning filmmaker reportedly wants to cast Noah Wyle to play the potential series' lead. The former ER star would play the leader of a group of human rebels trying to bring down the big bad aliens. Read more at TV Squad.

Bonus: Check out the trailer for the new Spielberg-produced HBO miniseries The Pacific, which tells the story of three marines during America's battle with the Japanese in the Pacific ocean during World War II, after the jump.

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