Tag: Jurassic Park

Posted on in News, Television News

‘Jurassic Park’ & ‘The Thing’ Cinematographer Dean Cundey Worked On ‘The Book Of Boba Fett’

The last season of The Mandalorian ended with a huge tease for a Boba Fett series The Book of Boba Fett. We would later learn that it would begin airing on Disney+ sometime in December 2021 along with producers Robert Rodriguez, Dave Filoni, and Jon Favreau directing episodes. It would also star Temuera Morrison and Ming-Na Wen back in their respective Star Wars roles.

It’s now been revealed by American Cinematographer that legendary director of photography Dean Cundey has shot multiple episodes of The Book of Boba Fett. The outlet recently revealing that Season 3 of The Mandalorian has already started production.

He recently completed episodes of the Star Wars series The Book of Boba Fett.

Cundey’s fantastic run of credits includes Halloween, The Fog, Escape From New York, Big Trouble In Little China, Jurassic Park, Back To The Future Trilogy, Apollo 13, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Hook, Casper, The Flintstones, and Road House.

We can only hope that Robert Rodriguez has been able to convince Kurt Russell to take a role in the Star Wars show.

Temuera Morrison spoke with Rotten Tomatoes not too long ago and gave us some teases about the upcoming series along with confirm Rodriguez (Planet Terror, Desperado, Alita: Battle Angel) returned to direct episodes.

“Well, we can’t say too much, but we’re going to see his past and where he’s been since The Empire Strikes Back. Somebody pointed out he’s been kind of stuck in this one place, and now’s the time to actually go back in time and check out his journey and find out more about him. They brought Robert back in to direct a few more. There’s some wonderful directors involved,” Morrison said.

Lucasfilm still hasn’t announced a full cast for The Book of Boba Fett, but we should expect a teaser trailer before the end of the fall.

The button scene saw Fett and Fennec Shand essentially take over Jabba’s Palace and potentially hints at the series could be taking place more in the criminal underworld than previous Star Wars projects. I wouldn’t be terribly shocked if ends up playing to the gangster elements that the franchise has always tipped-toed around even with something like Solo: A Star Wars Story.

SOURCE: AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER

Posted on in Film News

Quentin Tarantino Reveals He Was Offered A Chance To Remake Sci-Fi Thriller ‘Westworld’ With A Script From ‘Overlord’s Billy Ray

Quentin Tarantino spoke to The Big Picture Podcast (via The Playlist) to promote his novelization of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. During that chat, the filmmaker revealing that around the time of his Grindhouse double-feature experiment (Death Proof and Planet Terror) flopped at the box office he was offered a couple of IP projects such as DC Comics film Sgt. Rock and Westworld remake that was being written by Billy Ray. The latter would have been Tarantino’s first entry into the sci-fi genre before attempting to get a Star Trek film together with the help of Mark L. Smith (The Revenant).

If you’re not familiar with Westworld, it was an original film that was released back in 1973 and was written/directed by author Michael Crichton, who is best known as the writer of Jurassic Park and The Lost World. It focuses on a futuristic theme park with realistic robots that exist to be killed and screwed by guests, that’s until the robots malfunction and start killing their human guests.

Westworld is a futuristic theme park where paying guests can pretend to be gunslingers in an artificial Wild West populated by androids. After paying a sizable entrance fee, Blane (James Brolin) and Martin (Richard Benjamin) are determined to unwind by hitting the saloons and shooting off their guns. But when the system goes haywire and Blane is killed in a duel with a robotic gunslinger (Yul Brynner), Martin’s escapist fantasy suddenly takes on a grim reality.

The project eventually was remade at HBO as a series from Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, it’s heading into it’s fourth season.

Billy Ray is certainly a competent screenwriter with credits such as The Comey Rule, Richard Jewell, Terminator: Dark Fate, Gemini Man, Captain Phillips, The Hunger Games, State of Play, and the Bad Robot WWII horror movie Overlord.

Quentin Tarantino plans on retiring from feature film directing after making his 10th movie, but has yet to announce that will be and has working on a Bounty Law mini-series that will likely be next for him.

SOURCE: THE BIG PICTURE PODCAST

Posted on in Film News

Netflix & Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Announce New Partnership To Develop Multiple New Films

Today, it was announced by streaming giant Netflix that they’ll be partnering with Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Partners to develop multiple new films per year for the streaming service, which includes banners such as Amblin Entertainment, Amblin Television, and DreamWorks Pictures.

This likely means that Amblin is going be increasing it’s output of feature films and that upcoming projects such as their vampire flick Last Voyage of The Demeter along with ones still in development stages, could end up being released by Netflix and likely won’t have as much trouble getting financing. On paper it like a win-win for both media companies.

Here’s is the official press release.

Amblin Partners, the global film and television studio led by Steven Spielberg, and Netflix have announced a partnership that will cover multiple new feature films per year.

“At Amblin, storytelling will forever be at the center of everything we do, and from the minute Ted and I started discussing a partnership, it was abundantly clear that we had an amazing opportunity to tell new stories together and reach audiences in new ways. This new avenue for our films, alongside the stories we continue to tell with our longtime family at Universal and our other partners, will be incredibly fulfilling for me personally since we get to embark on it together with Ted, and I can’t wait to get started with him, Scott, and the entire Netflix team,” said Amblin Partners Chairman Steven Spielberg.

Netflix’s Co-CEO Ted Sarandos said, “Steven is a creative visionary and leader and, like so many others around the world, my growing up was shaped by his memorable characters and stories that have been enduring, inspiring and awakening. We cannot wait to get to work with the Amblin team and we are honored and thrilled to be part of this chapter of Steven’s cinematic history.”

The two companies previously worked together on the Academy Award-nominated The Trial of the Chicago 7, and are currently collaborating on Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein film, Maestro, which is in pre-production.

It’ll be interesting to see what this means for Amblin’s participation with the theatrical experience and this is a sign they could end up walking away completely, outside of deals with Universal Pictures and Disney.

Amblin’s recent projects include the Paramount+ sci-fi action series Halo debuting in 2022, James Mangold’s Indiana Jones 5 at Disney, and Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World: Dominion at Universal Pictures.

SOURCE: NETFLIX

Posted on in Film News

‘Jurassic World: Dominion’ Has Wrapped Filming After More Than 18 Months

Today, director and co-writer Colin Trevorrow has announced via Twitter that they’ve finally wrapped filming on Jurassic World: Dominion. The film’s impressive cast includes Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Daniella Pineda, Justice Smith, DeWanda Wise, Mamoudou Athie, Dichen Lachman, Scott Haze, Isabella Sermon, Jake Johnson, Omar Sy, and Campbell Scott.

TREVORROW: “Wrap on Jurassic World Dominion. All my gratitude to our extraordinary crew and cast. We made a family.”

Production took place at Pinewood Studios UK, Vancouver, and Malta.

Deadline adding some significant information on the shoot’s COVID-19 protocols.

Jurassic World: Dominion began pre-production more than 18 months ago when the world was a very different place. The $165M Universal blockbuster wrapped this morning at the UK’s Pinewood Studios after an unprecedented shoot, which required 40,000 COVID tests, millions of dollars spent on protocols, and for cast and key crew to isolate in a bubble for months.

Universal commissioned a private medical facility called Your Doctor to manage the entire production’s medical requirements. Testing was the backbone of the safety measures. Deadline can reveal that more than 40,000 COVID-19 tests were conducted, with .25% returning positive. That’s around 100 positive results. Some of these were false positives and some were returned prior to employment at Pinewood.

Universal Pictures recently announced a new release date of June 10th, 2022 a day before filming had to be paused due to COVID-19.

SOURCE: COLIN TREVORROW & DEADLINE

Posted on in Film News

Universal Pushes ‘Jurassic World: Dominion’ Release Date To June 10th, 2022

Yet another Universal Pictures film has been given an release delay as Jurassic World: Dominion has been pushed from June 11th, 2021 to June 10th, 2022.

Director Colin Trevorrow said the following about the release being pushed an entire year.

TREVORROW: “For the past three months, I’ve worked with an extraordinary cast and crew on a film we can’t wait to share with the world. Even though we’ll have to wait a bit longer, it will all be worth it. Let’s stay healthy and take care of each other until then.”

The studio also released new teaser poster.

Filming had been taking place in Vancouver, London, and Malta.

SOURCE: UNIVERSAL

Posted on in Television News

Michael Crichton Sci-Fi Film ‘Sphere’ Getting A Series Reboot At HBO – ‘Westworld’s Denise Thé To Showrun

HBO has had some moderate success with its modern series adaptation of the Michael Crichton film Westworld as the series moves into the fourth season (expected to have six seasons). 

Variety has learned that HBO will develop a series based on Crichton’s novel Sphere with Westworld’s Denise Thé set to write, showrun, and produce the new sci-fi show. 

The novel was adapted into a feature film directed by Barry Levinson (Wag The Dog, Toys, Rain Man, Sleepers) film that was released in 1998 starring Dustin Hoffman, Samuel L. Jackson, Sharon Stone, Liev Schriber, Queen Latifah, and Peter Coyote. 

SPHERE – When psychologist Norman Goodman (Dustin Hoffman) wrote a report for the government on how to deal with extraterrestrial life forces, he didn’t expect his recommendations to be used. Now that a secret government agency is investigating what may be an alien spaceship that has been discovered partially buried on the floor of the Pacific Ocean, Norman finds that the plan he outlined is being put into effect and that the team he named in his report has been assembled.

I’ll be honest, it wasn’t the most impactful sci-fi film as movies like The Abyss and Event Horizon had previously tread similar ground. It was pretty much one of those films from the 1990s you would just forget was made. I revisited the film recently and the CGI effects didn’t age well, weren’t great for the era either.

Dustin Hoffman had led the studio’s box office hit Outbreak in 1995, which is likely behind the thinking of Warner Bros. to cast him as the film’s lead. A huge miscasting.

Sphere would end up becoming a big flop for Warner Bros. as it barely earned it’s budget back and wasn’t able to turn a profit. It doesn’t hurt that the twist and ending were more than just a little anticlimactic when it’s revealed the ship isn’t alien, but actually from the future and built by humans. 

Certainly, a property that could be improved upon with a new series exploration. 

SOURCE: VARIETY

Posted on in Film News

‘Amazing Spider-Man’ Actor Campbell Scott Joins ‘Jurassic World: Dominion’ – Recast As ‘Jurassic Park’s Dr. Lewis Dodgson

Collider reported this week that Jurassic World: Dominion will be bringing back another classic Jurassic Park character. They’ve revealed that veteran character actor Campbell Scott (House of Cards) has been recast in the role of Dr. Lewis Dodgson, who briefly appeared in the original Jurassic Park giving Dennis Nedry the embryo canister to steal dinosaur DNA samples.

Dr. Dodgson had a larger role in the Michael Crichten novels as the head of InGen’s competition BioSyn. He’s said to be the CEO of BioSyn Genetics in Dominion.

Scott might be best known to audiences as playing Peter Parker’s father Richard Park in the two Amazing Spider-Man films.

Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow returns with a cast that includes Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Daniella Pineda, Justice Smith, DeWanda Wise, Mamoudou Athie, Dichen Lachman, Scott Haze, Isabella Sermon, Jake Johnson, and Omar Sy. 

Recent reports revealed that Universal had planned on resuming production on Dominion next month at Pinewood Studios UK.

It was originally set for release on June 11th, 2021, but it expected to move to a later date.

SOURCE: COLLIDER

Posted on in Film News

‘Jurassic World: Dominion’ To Resume UK Filming Next Month According To Universal

Deadline has spoken with Universal Pictures about when Jurassic World: Dominion (working title Arcadia) could possibly resume filming. The studio is suggesting that by July 6th or mid-July they’ll having cameras rolling in London, England.

Universal’s Jurassic World: Domininion is set to be the first major studio movie to re-start filming proper in the UK, we can reveal. Cameras are due to roll the second week of July (July 6) at Pinewood Studios, Universal has confirmed.

“The plan is for us to be shooting early-mid July,” a senior Universal production executive confirmed.

The production presumably resuming at Pinewood Studios UK.

Universal also gave in-depth details to the outlet about the precautionary protocols they’re putting into place to adhere to government guidelines.

We’ll see if the studio actually sticks to this plan given that the United Kingdom is still in the middle of the Coronavirus pandemic with 41,600 deaths and counting. There very well could be a second production shutdown if there is an outbreak on set or if the government implements new stay-at-home orders leading to filming to be placed on hiatus.

Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow returns with a cast that includes Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Daniella Pineda, Justice Smith, DeWanda Wise, Mamoudou Athie, Dichen Lachman, Scott Haze, Isabella Sermon, Jake Johnson, and Omar Sy. 

Franchise producer Frank Marshall recently gave the impression that they’re hoping to continue beyond the new trilogy.

Universal had given the film a release date of June 11th, 2021 and that is more than likely going to change to a later date given how far they are behind on photography.

SOURCE: DEADLINE