More than thirteen years, Bill Pullman gave a goose-bump-inducing Fourth of July speech about freedom, willpower and how a few ugly aliens needed a good beatdown – and honestly I'm still pumped up.
On the strength of that patriotic presidential speech alone, "Independence Day" deserves a sequel, and talk about one has cropped up here and there since the film's blockbuster release in '96. Could it actually happen? And what would it look like all these years later? Director Roland Emmerich gave MTV News a couple clues. Read more...
"Independence Day." Classic blockbuster. It wasn't "2012" director Roland Emmerich's big screen debut, but it's an epic-scale disaster flick that pulled no punches when it came to trashing the planet Earth. Nothing was safe when those aliens descended in their gigantic, city-spanning UFOs. Who can forget the iconic scene of the White House being blown to smithereens?
Released on July 3, 1996 and starring Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum and Bill Pullman, it's a bit of a surprise that the popular sci-fi flick has never seen a sequel. According to Emmerich, it's not for lack of desire. To hear him tell it, in an interview with Latino Review, there's a "very really good great story, a very cool one." Read more...
I've got a hypothetical, one of those "tree falling in the woods"-type scenarios, to run by you. Can there really be a "Bad Boys 3" if Jerry Bruckheimer, Michael Bay, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence aren't involved? I say no.
That might just be a possibility however, as Peter Craig is busy putting together a script for Columbia Pictures while the franchise's key players wait to see the results, according to The Hollywood Reporter. This isn't unusual of course, though newer series' get around this problem by locking the most important names into contracts spanning multiple movies. "Bad Boys," which first snapped to action back in 1995, was conceived before it became common practice in Hollywood to write out franchise plans before the first movie hits theaters. Read more...
The script for Disney’s adaptation of the classic Jules Verne character Captain Nemo is getting a revision, as Randall Wallace (“Braveheart”) steps in to rework the script previously penned by Bill Marsilii ("Deja Vu") and Justin Marks ("Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li"). As MTV recently learned, the film’s origin story focus will remain and producers have been traveling the globe to scout possible shoot locations.
“We’re just back from Australia on Friday,” producer Sean Bailey told MTV News. “We were looking around Australia and New Zealand. It’ll be a big, big globe-trotting movie. We feel like if you’re going to go 20,000 leagues under the sea, [the audience] needs to feel like you’ve done it with [Nemo].” Read more...
There's no adventure too big or too small for Will Smith to tackle, no journey too epic for him to take onscreen. The moment a film with a title like "The City That Sailed" is announced, you probably think "Oh yeah, that'll probably star Will Smith. He could sail an entire city." And you would be right! According to The Hollywood Reporter, Smith is attached to star in the fantastical drama, and the film may reunite him with director Francis Lawrence ("I Am Legend").
Written by Andrew Niccol ("Lord of War"), the story focuses on a New York street magician and his young daughter. The two are separated thanks to unhappy family circumstances, and the daughter moves to England. One day while exploring a lighthouse she discovers a room filled with magic candles on which she wishes, birthday party-style, to be reunited with her father. The bond between them is so strong that her wish causes the entire island of Manhattan to break away, and float to England. The magical candles probably have something to do with it too. Read more...
We keep hearing sudden bursts of news about Will Smith’s remake of “The Karate Kid,” then the project seems to quiet down for awhile. Now, a new actor has signed on to star alongside Smith’s son and she’s a red-hot Oscar nominee coming off “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”
“I’m off to Beijing [soon] to work on a film,” actress Taraji P. Henson revealed to us Sunday afternoon on the red carpet of the MTV Movie Awards. “They’re remaking ‘The Karate Kid.’” Read more...
Will Smith is no stranger to playing heroes. With the exception of "Ali" however, they've all been fictional do-gooders who save the world from CGI hordes. Well Smith is heading back into the real world with his latest project, as Variety reports that Smith is set to tell the story of a Hurricane Katrina hero.
Sony, with Smith's Overbrook Entertainment, have obtained the rights to the life story of John Keller, an ex-Marine who was nicknamed "The Can Man" by New Orleans press. Keller resided in the American Can Company apartments; when the hurricane hit and flooded the building beneath 11 feet of water, he stood guard against looters and troublemakers. Keller also hot-wired cars and boats in order to get to the grocery store so he could provide neighbors with food. Read more...
FROM SPLASH PAGE: Though his name is out of the running for Marvel’s “Thor” adaptation, Channing Tatum wouldn’t mind taking a shot at becoming Steve Rogers -- provided Will Smith doesn’t want the role.
After last year’s “Stop Loss”, three of Tatum’s next major roles feature him in various iterations of the US Military, including “Dear John”, “G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra” and “Pinkville”. Could Tatum’s public perception as the homegrown American soldier extend to the Marvel Universe in Joe Johnston’s “The First Avenger: Captain America”?
“I would love to talk about it,” Tatum told MTV News, admitting that a few people have told him to go after the role, though nothing solid has happened on that front.
For more of Channing Tatum's thoughts on "The First Avenger: Captain America" casting, head over to SplashPage.MTV.com.
Recently at Sundance, we bumped into Eighties icon Ralph Macchio and brought you his first thoughts on Will Smith's upcoming “Karate Kid” remake. But while we played in the snow with the original Daniel-san, we were also eager to get his thoughts on the recent news that Mr. Miyagi is going to be played by…Jackie Chan?
“I don’t know,” sighed the now 47-year-old star, in town to promote his Slamdance flick “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead." “I think Jackie Chan, we all assumed that’s where they were going to go - unless they were thinking of just casting an unknown.” Read more...
FROM SPLASH PAGE: It's been several months since we last heard about Steven Spielberg's plans to adapt the popular manga "Oldboy" into a live-action film starring Will Smith, but fans of both the manga and the original live-action adaptation released in 2003 have been buzzing about whether the edgy story will be softened for American audiences.
With the film and the original manga well-known for their disturbing themes -- a crucial plot point involves incest -- and graphic violence, is the typically family-friendly Spielberg up to the task of staying true to the dark, violent nature of the story?
"It's the thing that Steven was attracted to," Smith told MTV News. "We're working from the comic and we haven't done anything other than talk about it. So we'll see what happens, but he's not going to do anything that would be less than stunning."
For more on Steven Spielberg's "Oldboy" adaptation starring Will Smith, head over to SplashPage.MTV.com.
