Kevin McKidd plays a god in "Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief." He almost played a monster in "Harry Potter."
While chatting with MTV News about "Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief," in which he plays Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea, McKidd revealed that he was recruited for a meaty, villainous role in the "Harry Potter" franchise. A scheduling conflict prevented him from coming aboard.
"I was asked to be in the last two 'Harry Potter' films and I couldn't do it because I was busy filming 'Grey's Anatomy,' " McKidd said. "There was this mean, alpha-male werewolf character, who's like the big villain in the final film." Read more...
As "Tron Legacy" director Joseph Kosinski plows forward with post-production work on his 3-D sequel to the 1982 sci-fi classic, he's also keeping his eye on bringing to the big screen a new version of another decades' old sci-fi touchstone: "Black Hole."
In an exclusive interview with MTV News, Kosinski gave us insight into the film's central concepts and revealed that Travis Beacham ("Clash of the Titans") will begin work on a script in early 2010. Read more...
Sometimes, the story's all in the headline. Do you need to know anything else about Robert Rodriguez's full-length expansion of the trailer embedded in 2007's "Grindhouse"?
Well, you already know that the cast includes one of the most wackily awesome ensemble casts in memory (Miss Jessica Alba, meet Miss Lindsay Lohan, Mr. Robert De Niro, Mr. Steven Seagal, Mr. Don Johnson and Mr. Danny Trejo). And an online script review revealed Alba would be playing at least one half of a set of twins. But when MTV News had a chance to chat with Alba to promote her upcoming rom-com "Valentine's Day," she made clear she'll in fact have two parts in "Machete."
"I play identical twins," she said. "One's bad and one's good." Read more...
Beware of spoilers big and small below!
The season six premiere of "Lost" gave us the show at its mind grape-exploding finest: alternately head-scratching, frustrating, tense, cool as heck, cheesy, scream-at-the-TV-cause-you-gotta-be-kidding-me crazytown. Quibble all you want with certain things — Jack pounding on dead Sayid's chest in that hoariest of TV doc clichés, Sawyer saying goodbye to a dying Juliet, like, six times — but those two hours delivered. When it comes to the elements of Island mystery, we got meaty clues about the Smoke Monster, the old school Others and the implications of the white flash-inducing nuclear explosion. Then there were moments of nail-biting thrills, from Kate's airport escape to Sayid's force-fed swim session.
All in all, I argue the "Lost" brain trust has set up what promises to be a killer season, full of conflict, mysteries answered and left unsolved, tight storytelling and a chance to commune with the characters we've come to love in two different realities wherein they're largely the same but the circumstances of their lives are vastly different.
Not everyone agrees with me, of course. Here's what our other "Lost" addicted staffers had to say about the premiere. Read more...
FROM MTV.COM: Lee Daniels' "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire" has already received a slew of awards love, from film festivals and the Golden Globes to the Screen Actors Guild and the Independent Spirits. Its string of praise stretches back over a year, to when the film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, winning both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award.
But none of that acclaim makes the morning of Oscar nominations any easier, as Daniels told MTV News just hours after the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences made its 2010 selections.
Continue reading Lee Daniels Calls 'Precious' Oscar Nominations 'Out-Of-Body Crazy'
FROM MTV.COM: In the hours since the early morning announcement of the 82nd Academy Award nominations, reactions from the Hollywood elite recognized by the Oscar gods have been rolling in.
Sandra Bullock, who nabbed a nod for her turn in "The Blind Side" (also a Best Picture selection), told The Hollywood Reporter, "I'd always assumed that the road to Oscar was planned. I thought people chose projects that were considered 'Oscar-worthy.' No one wanted to make this film. I didn't want to make this film for the better part of the year. Everyone is as blindsided — can I say that? — as I am."
Continue reading Sandra Bullock, Anna Kendrick, Others React To Oscar Nominations
FROM MTV.COM: "District 9" director Neill Blomkamp might want to call up "The Dark Knight" helmer Christopher Nolan and say, "Thanks, bro!" That's because Blomkamp's film might never have nabbed a 2010 Best Picture Oscar nomination had it not been for Nolan's best pic snub last year.
While "Dark Knight" was by far the highest-grossing film of 2008, it failed to garner a Best Picture nod, leading some to speculate that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voters were hopelessly out of touch with the tastes of the American public. Enough with the art-house flicks no one watches, some complained, it's time to honor the films we actually like. In other words, be more like the Golden Globes, which nominates 10 best picture films over two categories.
Continue reading 'District 9' Slips Into Expanded Oscar Best Picture Race
FROM MTV.COM: The Sundance Film Festival is all about reunions, as casts and crews who worked on films months or even years before meet up in the Rocky Mountains to promote their projects and hit some afterparties. Sunday night at the Eccles Theatre was the setting for one of the festival's more curious reunions, when the members of the pioneering all-teen-girl '70s rock band the Runaways walked the red carpet with the stars portraying them in a big screen biopic "The Runaways," which tells the story of the band's rise and fall.
So there was Runaways guitarist/solo star Joan Jett next to her onscreen counterpart, Kristen Stewart, and singer Cherie Currie walking alongside her young cinematic doppelganger, Dakota Fanning (both of whom star in the "Twilight" saga). Asked to give their reactions the first time they saw the teen actors in costume as the Runaways, Jett and Currie's eyes lit up.
Continue reading Original Runaways Talk About Seeing Kristen Stewart And Dakota Fanning Play Them
FROM MTV.COM: To hear Kristen Stewart talk about her role as an underage stripper in "Welcome to the Rileys" is to understand the way in which the character continues to live in the actress' mind and affect her emotionally. For all the attention she's garnered for the "Twilight" series, the 19-year-old actress maintains that her experience on "Rileys" stands out as both the most personal and most natural of her career.
"This ... was different from any movie that I've done," she told MTV News at the Sundance Film Festival. "How do you describe a feeling? I don't know. It just felt so completely right to be telling this story with [director Jake Scott] and [Melissa Leo] and Jim [Gandolfini], and that's different to any acting I've ever done."
Continue reading Kristen Stewart Compares 'Rileys' Role To 'Twilight'
Jesse Eisenberg has a long history of playing variations on real people. From "Roger Dodger" to "The Squid and the Whale" to "Adventureland," the actor has been a go-to for a long line of writer/directors who see in his curly-haired gawkiness and anxiety-ridden demeanor an apt surrogate for their younger selves.
Two 2010 films will have Eisenberg once again taking on approximations of real people, though the two new roles will offer new takes on that recurring career theme. In the Sundance flick "Holy Rollers," he plays a Hasidic youth pulled into a world of international ecstasy dealing, a story based on actual New Yorkers. Later in the year, he'll appear on screen as Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg in "The Social Network," which follows the creation and early years of the now ubiquitous site. Read more...
