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The story of Elden Ring is frequently credited to two individuals: George R.R. Martin, author of A Song of Ice and Fire, and Hidetaka Miyazaki, president and creative director of FromSoftware. So, what exactly did Martin do with Elden Ring?

George R.R. Martine played a pivotal role in making Elden Ring. | Credit: FromSoftware.

The Game of Thrones famed writer actually helped Miyazaki in contributing worldbuilding for the popular game. Now, you might wonder why the award-winning TV series author suddenly shifted his focus towards video games. Actually, Grrm’s profound love for video games takes us back to the 80s.

George R. R. Martin would have written “a novel or two” if it wasn’t for the video games Railroad Tycoon was George R.R. Martin’s one of the favorite games. | Credit: PopTop Software.

Grrm isn’t just a legendary writer; he is an avid gamer as well,...

Brian Cox has given a frank response to one of his iconic stage roles going to Anthony Hopkins onscreen. Cox is an award-winning performer on both stage and screen. Since his career began in the 1960s, he has been nominated for two British Theatre Association Drama Awards, five Emmy Awards, four Golden Globes, and seven BAFTA Awards.

Cox is best known in the modern age as one of the leads of the Succession cast, having played patriarch Logan Roy across all four seasons of the popular HBO drama. However, he has held a variety of onscreen roles in iconic properties over the years, including playing Samara's father in The Ring, William Stryker in X2: X-Men United, CIA Deputy Director Ward Abbott in The Bourne Identity and its sequel The Bourne Supremacy, Captain O'Hagan in the Super Troopers movies, and more.

Brian Cox Shares His Thoughts On Not Being Cast...

Veteran actor Brian Cox slams the Oscars while recalling the time he played Winston Churchill around the same time Gary Oldman won Best Actor for it. With a career spanning decades, Cox has earned widespread acclaim for his commanding roles in works such as the TV series Succession, the 2008 drama thriller The Escapist, and the 2000 Canadian-American series Nuremburg. Despite winning a Golden Globe for his portrayal of the global media titan Logan Roy in HBO’s Succession, the Scottish actor has yet to receive recognition from the Academy Awards.

Cox’s career is a testament to his versatility and talent, with roles that have consistently showcased his knack for embodying complex, larger-than-life characters on stage and the big screen. However, the actor has recently spoken out about his frustrations with the Oscars, criticizing the politics and timing behind the journey towards recognition. Cox argued that the Academy disproportionately focuses on high-profile,...

Exclusive: Lionsgate is in negotiations with Rupert Wyatt to direct the Black List screenplay Boxman from screenwriter Adam Yorke.

The thriller takes place after a botched bank heist leaves 19 people locked inside a state-of-the-art vault, and the FBI recruits the world’s foremost box man from federal prison so he can break them out before they suffocate inside.

Boxman will be produced by 42’s Ben Pugh & Josh Varney and Range Media Partners’ Brian Kavanaugh-Jones and Fred Berger. Casey Durant and Aj Bourscheid will executive produce for Range.

Meredith Wieck and Jon Humphrey are overseeing for Lionsgate. Lionsgate’s Bonnie Stylides is negotiating the deal.

Wyatt’s film credits include The Escapist and Rise of the Planet of the Apes. He most recently served as executive producer of the Apple TV+ series Mosquito Coast. He is represented by UTA and 42.

Yorke is represented by The Characters Talent Agency, Heroes and Villains Entertainment,...

In the last couple decades, it's been as safe to assume that big-budget blockbusters arrive almost every week as it is to assume that many of the people directing those films aren't very big names. The days of directors like Steven Spielberg or Tony Scott or Michael Bay regularly directing blockbusters have mostly gone by the wayside. More often than not, studios have passed their big-deal intellectual property titles to filmmakers who aren't household names, perhaps hoping that they'll hew to the company line instead of injecting their own personal flair into the proceedings. 

This week marks the arrival of one such film, the Universal Pictures/Warner Bros. Pictures film "Twisters," which serves as a long-awaited sequel (kind of) to the 1996 blockbuster "Twister." It also serves as the first film for director Lee Isaac Chung since his Oscar-winning 2020 indie family drama "Minari." Chung's past feature work doesn't suggest he'd...

Exclusive: Cillian Murphy, fresh off of the massive global success of Oppenheimer — and as he gets ready to debut Small Things Like These (in which he stars and he produced) as the opening-night gala of the Berlin Film Festival next week — has set his next starring and producing gig with Steve.

This adaptation of Max Porter’s novel Shy also officially launches Murphy’s production company, Big Things Films, with longtime collaborator Alan Moloney. (See below for our discussion with the duo.)

Netflix has greenlighted Steve in collaboration with Big Things and will distribute globally. Production begins in the spring.

Steve is a reimagining of Porter’s Shy and traces a pivotal 24 hours in the life of its eponymous character, a headteacher (Murphy) of a last-chance reform school who struggles to keep his students in line, while also grappling with his spiraling mental health.

Moloney and Murphy are producers. Small Things Like These...

Exclusive: LA and London-based management and production company 42 has signed British writer, director and producer Rupert Wyatt for management.

Wyatt is best known for directing 20th Century Fox’s critical and commercial hit Rise of the Planet of the Apes, starring Andy Serkis. He will continue to be represented by UTA.

Wyatt made his directorial debut in 2008 with crime-thriller The Escapist, starring Brian Cox, Damian Lewis, Dominic Cooper and Joseph Fiennes. The Sundance premiere achieved multiple BIFA nominations. He also helmed Paramount Pictures’ The Gambler, starring Mark Wahlberg, Brie Larson, John Goodman, and Jessica Lange; and Captive State for Focus Features, with John Goodman and Vera Farmiga.

Most recently, he co-wrote and directed historical drama Desert Warrior, Mbc Studios’ largest ever feature film, which stars Anthony Mackie, Aiysha Hart, and Sir Ben Kingsley. The movie is due to launch next year.

In TV, Wyatt was pilot director and executive producer...

Ahead of Red Barrels dropping a new Early Access update for The Outlast Trials (and on the heels of a tie-in comic book series), we’ve gotten a making-of documentary, courtesy of Red Barrels and The Escapist. Available to watch now, “Outlast: The Challenges of Trials” aims to give an insight to the studio’s first experience in creating a multiplayer horror game.

The half-hour documentary features members of the Red Barrels team from their studio in Montreal, giving fans a peek into the developer’s world of creativity, challenges, and triumphs when it came to creating The Outlast Trials. “After Outlast 2, we seriously considered making something completely different,” says Red Barrels co-founder Phillipe Morin, who admits that the team were “fed up” after the game’s release. “We took some time off, and eventually, the challenge to make something multiplayer while still making an Outlast game felt like a...

This post contains spoilers for Netflix's "Fubar."

"Fubar" features the coolest 65-year-old CIA operative, Luke Brunner, who busts Russian mobsters and takes down baddies in style. Played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, who couldn't be more perfect for the role, Luke had an eventful run as a CIA agent over the years and is finally ready to retire and spend more time with his family. However, his plans are thwarted when he is pulled into one last mission in Guyana, where he must extract another agent codenamed Panda while stopping an illegal arms dealer from putting a nuke suitcase up for auction. While such a mission would generally be a cakewalk for someone like Brunner, things get complicated when he discovers that his daughter Emma (Monica Barbaro) is the agent he is meant to extract.

Owing to the nature of his job, Luke was never been able to be around his family much,...

It's easy for Liam Neeson's post-"Taken" movies to start blurring together if you're not paying close attention. Are we talking about the film where he plays a vengeful snowplow driver or the one where he plays a heroic ice road trucker? Does he play a hitman dealing with dementia or a potential terrorist with amnesia? Is he fighting bad guys on a plane or on a train? Has a member of his family been kidnapped or has he himself been kidnapped (or both)? Is he playing a Jesuit priest who has renounced his religion after trying to spread Catholic Christianity across Edo-era Japan, no longer willing to allow others to suffer so that he might cling to his personal faith? 

Okay, you probably won't mix that one up with any other Neeson movies, but the point still stands.

In all seriousness, it's hard to fault Neeson too much...

Neil Jordan will next be directing Liam Neeson in The Riker’s Ghost, a unique prison break thriller.

Deadline details this afternoon, “Liam Neeson will play a convict set for release who is forced to break a terrorist out of prison.”

“This is a unique take on the prison escape,” said Neil Jordan. “A bare knuckle ride from incarceration to freedom, by someone who just wants to finish his term. The reluctant escapee will be played by Liam Neeson, and I can’t wait to explore this character with him.”

“I am thrilled to be joining forces again with Neil and Liam,” added producer Alan Moloney. “We have put together an elite team to support Neil’s scripted and directorial vision. This one will have you on the edge of your seat.”

Sean O’Keefe (Spenser Confidential) and Brian Rudnick (Dungeons & Dragons) wrote the script. Parallel Film’s Alan Moloney (Albert...

While covering TIFF this year, I was invited to do something rare in this era of Covid-19 – an in-person interview. Even more exciting was the fact that the interview would be with Brian Cox and Kate Beckinsale. How is that for a dynamic duo? They were in town promoting Prisoner’s Daughter, a small-scale drama directed by Catherine Hardwicke that I was a big fan of. While I did extensive interviews with them and Hardwicke, which I’ll be running shortly, one thing I thought was interesting was their reaction when I brought up several of their more obscure films.

Beckinsale noted that it’s often the smaller, lesser-seen stuff that winds up being special to an actor, with her noting Rod Lurie’s Nothing But the Truth as a particular favorite. As it happens, one of my favorites of hers is a movie she did with David Gordon Green and...

You may have heard that Warner Bros has, the company says, cancelled forever the release of Batgirl, starring Leslie Grace of In the Heights in the title role.

Darren Mooney at The Escapist has the best rundown I’ve come across yet of what happened, the conflicting explanations, and the likely fallout:

The film was reportedly so near completion that it had been shown to test audiences — even if the accounts of how those test audiences reacted vary dramatically depending on who is framing the story. Warner Bros. had already invested between 70M and 90M in the film that had been intended to stream on HBO Max. If anybody needed more proof that the streaming revolution promised by the pandemic was a failure, this would seem to be it.

Competing justifications for the cancellation have been offered, with commenters inevitably seizing on whichever argument validates the opinion they already hold.

When Star Citizen was publicly revealed via Kickstarter in 2012, it felt like a dream come true for many gamers. Led by Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts, Star Citizen’s record-breaking crowdfunding campaign seemingly left it in an ideal position to fulfill some ambitious promises by becoming not just the ultimate sci-fi gaming experience but a title funded and developed outside what was seen as the traditional studio systems.

Years later, though, Star Citizen‘s journey has practically become defined by its controversies. As the debate rages on regarding nearly every aspect of this title, it becomes increasingly clear that the quality of Star Citizen as a video game has almost taken a backseat to the discussion about the title’s history, funding, where its development stands, and what the final chapter on Star Citizen will say.

While it’s nearly impossible to summarize every complaint, concern, and fear raised about this game thus far,...

Exclusive: Netflix has preemptively acquired a new feature thriller pitch from screenwriter Sean O’Keefe to be produced by Matt Reeves’ 6th & Idaho. The project is billed as being in the spirit of Ron Howard’s 1996 action kidnap thriller hit Ransom but with a female bent.

The new project reps a reteaming of Netflix and O’Keefe who co-penned the Mark Wahlberg action-comedy Spenser Confidential, which is the third most-watched movie on the streamer with 85 million households after Sam Hargrave’s Extraction at 99 million and Susanne Bier’s Bird Box starring Sandra Bullock which drew 89 million. Directed by Peter Berg, Spenser Confidential stars Mark Wahlberg as Boston ex-cop, Spenser, who teams up with his no-nonsense roommate, Hawk (Winston Duke), after two Boston police officers are murdered. O’Keefe co-wrote with Brian Helgeland based on the 2013 novel Robert B. Parker’s Wonderland by author Ace Atkins.

Adam Kassan and Rafi Crohn of...

Here’s the latest episode of the 365Flicks podcast, part of our growing podcast roster here on Nerdly. If you haven’t heard the show yet, you can check out previous episodes on Libsyn, whilst we’ll be featuring each and every new episode as it premieres.

365Flicks Podcast: Episode 152 – Director Philip Barantini

Kev sits down to chat with actor turned director Philip Barantini. After seeing his debut feature Villain starring the awesome Craig Fairbrass, Kev just had to get the director on to talk. Before we get there though we find out that Barantini has had a varied career in acting. Starting at a young age on Brit show Dream Team as young Billy O’Neil before moving onto Band of Brothers working for Spielberg and Hanks.

Movies wise Philip broke into flicks like Ned Kelly, The Escapist and recently Nightshooters. All of this before turning to Directing with Short...

Wes Anderson’s beloved 2014 Oscar winner “The Grand Budapest Hotel” arrived on The Criterion Collection this week with 25 minutes of animated storyboards narrated by the filmmaker himself. Polygon exclusively debuted the first of six animated storyboard sequences: “Introduction,” “Washer Woman,” “Killing of Kovacs,” “Prison Escape,” “Gabelmeister’s Peak,” and “Hotel Show-Down.” The clip below brings the beginning of “The Grand Budapest Hotel” to life through Anderson’s hand-drawn graphics and provides an early look at how the filmmaker envisioned the various shots and camera movements that would kick off his period comedy-drama. The result is a barebones, black-and-white animated version of a Wes Anderson movie.

“The Grand Budapest Hotel” was released in March 2014 by Searchlight Pictures and became his highest grossing movie worldwide with $172.9 million. The movie went on to earn nine Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director. “Grand Budapest” won the Oscars for Best Original Score,...

This article contains major The Invisible Man spoilers.

The Invisible Man is an excellent horror film packed with shocks and scares and with a fun ending which contains several twists. But it’s possible director Leigh Whannell might have intended to pull the rug out from under the viewer one last time, offering the opportunity for a very different alternative reading of what actually happens to Cecilia.

In the ending we see onscreen, Cecilia (Elisabeth Moss) escapes the institution she’s locked in, is cleared of killing her sister and is able to exact a fitting revenge on her abusive husband Adrian (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) with the help of her friend James (Aldis Hodge) who finally believes she was being tortured by her invisible ex. It’s a triumphant ending for Cecilia that’s pure wish fulfillment.

But sometimes when something feels too good to be true that’s because it is.

Andy Serkis is in talks to play Alfred Pennyworth in Matt Reeves’ “The Batman,” an individual with knowledge of the project exclusively told TheWrap.

Robert Pattinson is set to star as the Dark Knight. Reeves took over the directing gig after Ben Affleck stepped away from the role. Affleck was also expected to play Batman again but then said he would be hanging up the cape for good. Reeves has since described the film as a “defining” and “very personal” story about the Dark Knight, rather than an origin story in the vein of Frank Miller’s beloved “Year One” series.

Serkis would join the cast which includes Zoe Kravitz who has been cast as Selina Kyle, a.k.a. Catwoman and Paul Dano who has been cast as Edward Nashton, also known as the Riddler. In recent adaptations, actors like William Austin, Michael Gough, Michael Caine and Jeremy Irons...

A few years ago, Hans Zimmer wrote Ben Wallfisch a fan letter. Zimmer had just seen “The Escapist,” a film he didn’t like but whose music he admired. He never received a reply.

A few months later Zimmer was in London meeting a mutual friend, fellow composer Richard Harvey, and Wallfisch’s name came up. Later, when Harvey later told him Zimmer had written but not heard back, Wallfisch was mortified.

As both Zimmer and Wallfisch tell it, that very day Zimmer received an email from another Benjamin Wallfisch, a Texas lawyer, who wrote to say, “I think you meant to write the composer Ben Wallfisch.”

Zimmer, one of Hollywood’s most in-demand composers, had been impressed. “I looked at a video on YouTube, a piece that he had written for an orchestra in Holland,” the composer recalls. “I thought it was astonishing. Brilliant writing, and quite witty. And it had 254 views.

Exclusive: Damian Lewis has launched his own production company, Rookery Productions, and plans to develop and direct projects across feature film, television and theater.

This comes after the Billions and Homeland star signed up to A+E Networks’ factual series Spy Wars, which he will co-produce, marking his nascent indie’s first project.

In an interview with Deadline, Lewis said that he wants to produce and direct across genres and has already lined up to develop a feature film, another television series and a play.

“It’s an opportunity for me to create some exciting drama and comedy,” he said. “It gives me an opportunity to be creating things from inception.”

He admitted that it was early days and these projects needed time to “percolate”. But he added, “It’s a way to work independently with other producers, authors and talent to make compelling and provocative content.”

Lewis is finishing up...

If a story has a moral that says, basically, “stories like this one are not as important or good as other kinds of stories, which are more special,” is that enough to make you throw it across the room in disgust?

In this case, it didn’t…mostly because it was a library book, and I don’t want to damage someone else’s things. But Michael Chabon’s The Escapists has a severe case of wanting to eat its cake and have it too, even though The Escapist is a pretty unappetizing cake to hang onto.

Perhaps I should explain.

Michael Chabon wrote a novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, almost twenty years ago, a fictionalized version of the Simon/Kirby team. In that novel, the main characters created a Golden Age superhero called The Escapist.

For some reason, The Escapist turned into a real comic book,...

Exclusive: Mary Shelley and Albert Nobbs producer Parallel Films has picked up rights to spy thriller spec You Are Leaving The American Sector by Jared Cowie, whose 2014 Blacklist script Bismarck is set up at Universal with Temple Hill producing.

The spec centers on a young CIA officer stationed in West Berlin in the early 1980s who uncovers a classified military operation that threatens to tip the world into a nuclear war. The idea is based on the controversial 1983 Nato military exercise codenamed Able Archer ’83 which saw Western powers simulate a period of conflict escalation. It has been described by some historians as among the closest times the world has come to nuclear conflict since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Parallel chief Alan Moloney will produce. Jon Kanak, who manages Cowie, will serve as executive producer. Parallel’s development slate includes Marlowe by William Monaghan and The Escapist by Sean O’Keefe.

After years of languishing under Defy Media’s ownership, The Escapist video-game website is under new management.

Defy sold the property, founded in 2005, to Toronto-based Enthusiast Gaming, which operates a network of websites devoted to video gaming and Canada’s largest video-gaming expo. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

With the deal, Enthusiast Gaming is bringing back The Escapist’s former editor-in-chief, Russ Pitts, who had departed in September 2011. In acquiring The Escapist, Enthusiast cited its YouTube channel, which has 1.1 million subscribers. Its YouTube shows include popular game-review series “Zero Punctuation” hosted by Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw, who has a social media following of nearly 2 million users.

For Defy Media, it’s another move to pare back its business to focus on core brands, led by Smosh and Clevver. This month, Fandom announced a deal with Defy Media to acquire Screen Junkies, the entertainment news and parody property. Earlier in the year,...

Hulu has confirmed that several of its original series will be debuting new episodes on the streaming service in July, including the first season of the highly anticipated Stephen King thriller “Castle Rock” as well as season 2 of the costume drama “Harlots” and season 4 of the comedy “Casual.”

And there will also be new to Hulu seasons of some of your favorites from other networks, including season 2 of “The Strain,” season 4 of “The Vikings” and season 8 of “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” Likewise, there will be plenty of movies making their first Hulu appearances including the first five films in the “Star Trek” franchise and the Oscar-winning “Rosemary’s Baby.”

See Netflix schedule: Here’s what is coming and leaving in July

Available July 1: TV

Alaska: The Last Frontier: Complete Season 4 (Discovery)

Deadliest Catch: Complete Season 11 (Discovery)

Deadly Women: Complete Season 6 (ID)

Dual Survival: Complete Season 5 (Discovery)

Elementary: Complete Season...

Showtime has given a 10-episode series order to Halo (working title), an hourlong live-action scripted drama based on the award-winning Xbox video game franchise, from Awake creator Kyle Killen, Rise of the Planet of the Apes helmer Rupert Wyatt and Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television.

Killen serves as writer, executive producer and showrunner of the series. Wyatt will direct multiple episodes and also executive produce. Halo (wt) is produced by Showtime in association with Microsoft/343 Industries and Amblin TV. Production is slated to begin in early 2019.

The Amblin TV project was originally announced in 2013 as one of the big series to launch XBox’s original content effort. It moved to Showtime shortly after XBox Entertainment Studios was shut down in 2014 and has been in discussions at the premium cable network for almost four years, with various creative auspices in talks for it over the years.

Halo has grown into a global entertainment phenomenon,...

Thus far in his career, Rupert Wyatt has made a firm decision not to repeat himself. From his prison pic “The Escapist,” he leaped to the blockbuster “Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes,” which launched a new franchise. From there he pivoted to the drama “The Gambler,” and now he’s going sci-fi with “Captive State.”

Read More: Take The Cap Off On The First Poster For The Safdies’ ‘Good Time’ Starring Robert Pattinson

Starring John Goodman, Ashton Sanders, Jonathan Majors, and Vera Farmiga, the film is set in a Chicago neighborhood nearly a decade after an occupation by an extra-terrestrial force, and explores the lives on both sides of the conflict – the collaborators and dissidents.

Continue reading Eerie First Look At Rupert Wyatt’s ‘Captive State’ at The Playlist.

Last year, I reported on a planned relaunch of Alien Nation. The topical sci-fi flick from the 80s gave way to a TV show, and it's premise continues to be as timely today as it was then. When I reported on it back in March of 2015, I shared with you the idea that Fox wanted to reboot the film and expand the story into a Planet Of The Apes style franchise. Back then, it was Art Marcum and Matt Holloway who had been hired to bring this vision to life. Now it looks like Fox has made a creative shakeup, and it's a very intriguing one.

Deadline is reporting that Jeff Nichols has been tapped to write and direct Alien Nation. What makes that so intriguing? The fact that Nichols is a fairly serious filmmaker, and his films- up to this point- have been smaller, more thoughtful affairs. That's not...

After directing a reboot (Rise of the Planet of the Apes), a remake (The Gambler), and the pilot for another remake (The Exoricist), director Rupert Wyatt is now developing an original project. After The Gambler, Wyatt wanted to start directing his own material again, as he did with his feature debut, The Escapist (co-written by Daniel Hardy). The filmmaker is sticking […]

The post Rupert Wyatt Will Direct Original Sci-Fi Project ‘Captive State’ appeared first on /Film.

Director Rupert Wyatt seems to be decidedly picky in terms of projects. After directing “The Escapist,” 20th Century Fox gave him the keys to “Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes,” which he helmed to major, franchise starting success. He could have directed the sequel “Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes,” but he turned down […]

The post ‘Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes’ Director Rupert Wyatt Gets Into A ‘Captive State’ appeared first on The Playlist.

Ryan Lambie Aug 25, 2016

Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes director Rupert Wyatt is tackling an original sci-fi movie next, called Captive State...

There are a couple of exciting, original sci-fi movies on the horizon, with Denis Villeneuve's Arrival (based on the Ted Chiang short story Story Of Your Life) and Passengers (from Headhunters director Morten Tyldum) currently top of our must-watch list. Now, Rupert Wyatt - director of Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes and Mark Wahlberg drama The Gambler - has added another one: something called Captive State.

Precious little is known about the project other than that intriguing title, but Variety reports that Wyatt co-wrote the screenplay with his wife, Erica Beeney, and that studios are currently bidding to get their hands on it.

Wyatt's track record suggests that Captive State's well worth our attention; his debut, 2008's The Escapist, was a tense and economical...

Wes Anderson’s underrated 2004 film “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” follows Steve Zissou (Bill Murray), an eccentric oceanographer, and his large crew on a revenge mission to kill a rare “jaguar shark” that murdered his partner. In the film, Brazilian singer Seu Jorge plays Pelé dos Santos, a member of Zissou’s crew, who memorably sings Portuguese acoustic covers of David Bowie songs. Jorge later released a collection of these covers on an album entitled “The Life Aquatic Studio Sessions Featuring Seu Jorge.” Bowie himself remarked about Jorge’s covers, “Had Seu Jorge not recorded my songs in Portuguese I would never have heard this new level of beauty which he has imbued them with.”

Read More: The 8 Essential Movie Performances Of David Bowie

Now, Jorge has announced a tour where he will play these Bowie covers live. According to Pitchfork, images from “The Life Aquatic” will play on screens shaped like boat sails.

The Gambit movie just can’t catch a break, and even when there’s some good news, it seems that it falls apart, or at least threatens to. Getting Channing Tatum to star was something that split fans, because some said he just doesn’t seem like he’s a great choice (me among them), but then we had to go through the fear that he might be lost.

Now, shortly after signing director Rupert Wyatt, the production schedule changed, and he’s out. Apparently, the shooting start has been pushed back a couple of months, and Wyatt isn’t available to commit to the timeframe.

Of course, who knows how things will work out at this point, and how quickly the film can get someone else on board, but it could end up being a blessing in disguise. That is, unless the movie, already plagued with various problems getting...

According to EW, 20th Century Fox has hired Rupert Wyatt (The Gambler, Rise of the Planet of The Apes, The Escapist) to helm their solo Gambit movie, which will star Channing Tatum as Cajun mutant, Remy LeBeau. This won't be the character's first live-action incarnation of course, as he was played by Taylor Kitsch in X-Men Origins: Wolverine - but fans were left underwhelmed by both the movie and that interpretation of Gambit, and have been looking forward to seeing some justice done. Aside from the star (and now the director) we don't know a whole lot about this, but Tatum has told us to expect a different take on the typical origin story, and that the plot will play around with the usual tropes associated with superhero movies. Tatum is also producing the film along with Reid Carolin, Lauren Schuler Donner, and Simon Kinberg. Gambit is set for release on Oct.

Copyright Desert Dancer Productions Ltd 2014

Relativity Studios has released a new, behind-the-scenes featurette for their upcoming film Desert Dancer. The movie stars Freida Pinto, Reece Ritchie, Tom Cullen, Nazanin Boniadi and Makram J. Khoury.

Check out the featurette now for an inside look at the cast’s dance rehearsals with acclaimed choreographer Akram Khan.

The video features Benjamin Wallfisch’s original score throughout.

Set in Iran, this powerful and unbelievable true story follows the brave ambition of Afshin Ghaffarian. During the volatile climate of the 2009 presidential election, where many cultural freedoms were threatened, Afshin and some friends (including Elaheh played by Freida Pinto) risk their lives and form an underground dance company.

Through banned online videos, they learn from timeless legends who cross all cultural divides, such as Michael Jackson, Gene Kelly and Rudolf Nureyev. Afshin and Elaheh also learn much from each other, most importantly how to embrace their...

Cinematographer Greig Fraser talks to us about his work on The Gambler, from lenses to shooting in Los Angeles...

In Foxcatcher, there’s a captivating scene where Steve Carell’s character, millionaire John du Pont, ushers a stable of horses out into a grey, autumnal morning. It’s a moment given a luminous, magical quality by cinematographer Greig Fraser, whose other recent film credits include Let Me In and Zero Dark Thirty.

The Gambler, the new drama written by William Monahan (The Departed, Kingdom Of Heaven) and directed by Rupert Wyatt (The Escapist, Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes) represented its own set of unique challenges. One of them was to bring tension and visual excitement to a story that frequently sees its wayward protagonist Jim (Mark Wahlberg) frittering his money away at a blackjack table or lecturing a theatre full of distracted college students.

It’s testament to...

British director Rupert Wyatt talks to us about his new film The Gambler, and what he's up to next...

Having made his debut feature with the acclaimed 2008 thriller The Escapist, British filmmaker Rupert Wyatt directed the hugely successful Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes in 2011. Reviving a franchise that had long since slipped into the doldrums, it was hailed as a summer film with an all-too-rare streak of intelligence.

Wyatt's latest film is a very different proposition: a remake of the 1974 film starring James Caan, The Gambler is a slickly-written drama about a college professor (an against-the-grain Mark Wahlberg) in hock to some very dangerous people. With his debts mounting, Wahlberg's gambler resorts to a series of schemes to try to pay his way out of trouble, only for his self-destructive nature to send him sinking further into the mire.

As The Gambler's UK release approaches, we catch...

• Reese Witherspoon will star opposite Matt Damon in Downsizing. Alexander Payne will direct from a script he wrote alongside Jim Taylor. Set in the near future, the film follows a man who realizes he'd be better of if he shrunk himself. Payne, Taylor, and Witherspoon all previously worked on Election. [Variety] • The Fault in Our Stars’ Ansel Elgort is joining Chloë Grace Moretz and Catherine Keener in November Criminals. Sacha Gervasi is directing. Steven Knight adapted Sam Munson’s teen-thriller novel for the screen. The story tracks two teenagers in Washington D.C. who investigate a friend’s murder, and fall in love in the process.

The most recent film from director Rupert Wyatt was a remake of The Gambler, and now his own first feature is getting the remake treatment. The Escapist is Wyatt’s UK debut, in which Brian Cox played a prison inmate who assembles a group of fellow inmates in order to stage an ambitious break from the […]

The post Liam Neeson Attached to ‘The Escapist’ Remake appeared first on /Film.

Liam Neeson will star in the Hollywood remake of The Escapist.

The actor will lead the cast of the Legendary Pictures project, which has yet to secure a director.

2008's The Escapist was directed by Rupert Wyatt, and starred Brian Cox, Damian Lewis and Joseph Fiennes. Wyatt will serve as a producer on the remake.

The film follows a convict serving a life sentence, who plots a prison break when he learns that his daughter is terminally ill.

Neeson can next be seen in Taken 3, which he has previously suggested will be the final instalment of the series.

Taken 3 is released in the UK tomorrow (January 8) and in the Us on Friday (January 9). Watch a trailer below:...

With it being Neeson Season and all, I guess it's only appropriate a new project is in the works starring the actor. It's being reported that Liam Neeson will star in Legendary Pictures' remake of the 2008 prisoner thriller The Escapist. The original U.K. film was Rupert Wyatt's (Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, The Gambler) directorial debut, and it starred Brian Cox, Joseph Fiennes and Dominic Cooper. No director has been announced, but Wyatt is attached to...

Legendary Pictures announced a deal for impressive Cold in July director Jim Mickle to be at the helm of a new project called Esperanza, based on the book of the same name by John N. Maclean. And in that news, they also revealed another developing project elsewhere. First of all, Sean O'Keefe, a writer who has had several scripts picked up but not produced into feature films yet, will be scripting Esperanza, the story of a Spartan culture of firefighters battling the ‘perfect storm’ of wildfires. Sounds like 300 meets Planes: Fire & Rescue to me. And it's O'Keefe who is also behind that aforementioned project we learned was in the works. In the same press release, it's mentioned that O'Keefe is working on a remake of The Escapist. The original UK thriller was directed by Rupert Wyatt (Rise of the Planet of the Apes, The Gambler), who will produce the remake now.

Liam Neeson’s shift from solid drama actor to all-out action badass came rather late in his acting career. As this Friday sees the release of trilogy-closer, Taken 3, does this mean he might be heading for new waters? By the looks of his next project, the answer to that question is a resounding no. Just because Bryan Mills is retiring (we’ll see) doesn’t mean that Neeson has to relinquish his ass-kicking credentials, as he’ll be carrying on his action-packed antics in The Escapist.

A remake of Rupert Wyatt’s British thriller, Studio Canal are taking the reins on this Americanized take on The Escapist. It’s assumed that Neeson will tackle the role Brian Cox commandeered in the first movie, and it’ll be a change to see him dishing out orders while his lackeys do the heavy lifting.

In the 2009 original, Cox starred as a...

The director of Cold In July and We Are What We Are has graduated to the studio world and will helm Legendary’s wildfire action film.

Esperanza is based on Sean O’Keefe’s screenplay adapted from the novel by John N Maclean about a perfect storm of wildfires. Legendary’s Alex Hedlund will oversee the project.

Mickle’s (pictured) Cold In July premiered at Sundance 2014 and played in Cannes, while We Are What We Are screened in 2013 in Sundance and Cannes.

O’Keefe is currently writing the remake of The Escapist for Studio Canal with Rupert Wyatt producing and Liam Neeson attached to star.

He has Riders On The Storm at Fox with Davis Entertainment, while Joe Roth and Mir Bahmanyar are producing his 2012 Black List Project The Paper Man.

Legendary’s Michael Mann cyber thriller Blackhat starring Chris Hemsworth opens through Universal on January 16.

Chicago – One could say that “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” director Rupert Wyatt has been pretty lucky. But even he’ll tell you that with his followup feature, “The Gambler,” he could be back to zero.

After making the critically-renowned prison film “The Escapist,” he was scooped up to reboot the “Planet of the Apes” franchise, and did so with the praised “Rise of the Planet of the Apes.” The English director has now released his third feature, “The Gambler,” starring Mark Wahlberg. A remake of the same-titled 1974 film starring James Caan and even the inspiring Dostoyevsky novel, this project features Wahlberg as college professor in grave existential crisis. Carelessly putting himself in dangerous amounts of debt to moneylenders played by John Goodman and Michael K. Williams, “The Gambler” is the story of a man who may not survive to restart. In a year of films about Americans working hard for their success,...

One could say that “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” director Rupert Wyatt has been pretty lucky. But even he’ll tell you that with his followup feature, “The Gambler,” he could be back to zero.

After making the critically-renowned prison film “The Escapist,” he was scooped up to reboot the “Planet of the Apes” franchise, and did so with the praised “Rise of the Planet of the Apes.” The English director has now released his third feature, “The Gambler,” starring Mark Wahlberg. A remake of the same-titled 1974 film starring James Caan and even the inspiring Dostoyevsky novel, this project features Wahlberg as college professor in grave existential crisis. Carelessly putting himself in dangerous amounts of debt to moneylenders played by John Goodman and Michael K. Williams, “The Gambler” is the story of a man who may not survive to restart. In a year of films about Americans working hard for their success,...

A mission matched to Mark Wahlberg’s on-screen roles means an intense optimism, an earnest resolve that one can easily visualize. Eyes wide, nostrils flared, an incredulous stutter – his face is a perfect slate on which to register stakes as they build. “The Gambler” sets that slate to zero and stages a man who knows the stakes and doesn’t care: $125,000 owed, seven days to pay, and Jim Bennett (Wahlberg), a college literature professor, liable to repeat the situation even if he clears his name. The film in which this premise unfolds intrigues by its director, or more specifically its director’s decision to tackle it: Rupert Wyatt (“The Escapist”), who previously handed 20th Century Fox a new franchise with “Rise of the Planet of the Apes.” Instead of turning to another big-budget tentpole, he’s used his studio clout on this, a remake of the 1974 New York-set drama starring...

Mark Wahlberg plays the hand he’s had dealt in The Gambler, out in theatres today.

Wahlberg stars as Jim Bennett, a college literature professor by day, a high-stakes player in the world of underground gambling by night who has reached the end of his game. Balancing a heavy debt he owes to a loan shark, Jim is struggling to make it out alive aided by one of his students, Amy (Brie Larson), with whom he’s developed a relationship with.

With a great supporting cast that includes Jessica Lange as Jim’s estranged mother and John Goodman as a loan shark, The Gambler is directed by Rupert Wyatt (Rise of the Planet of the Apes, The Escapist). Shot on location in Los Angeles, The Gambler is a throw-back to 1970’s era genre films, and while not a remake of the 1974 movie of the same title starring James Caan, that...

A surprise choice to direct “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” back in 2010, Rupert Wyatt forged a revival in quality for the franchise, leaving sequel duties to Matt Reeves on ‘Dawn’ while eyeing smaller, more intimate projects. He settled on “The Gambler,” a Mark Wahlberg-led remake of a 1974 film about a college professor moonlighting as a reckless gambler facing a host of loan sharks and gangsters, including John Goodman and Michael K. Williams in this version. Tense, offbeat and with a dark streak of humor, the film falls more in line with Wyatt’s 2008 calling card “The Escapist” and features an interesting turn from Wahlberg in the lead role. Our review noted Wahlberg’s performance while also calling the film “a well-shot throwback." I sat down with Wyatt the day after the film’s AFI Fest premiere, and found an amiable director willing to discuss the problems of “The Gambler” alongside its strengths,...

A mission matched to Mark Wahlberg’s on-screen roles means an intense optimism, an earnest resolve that one can easily visualize. Eyes wide, nostrils flared, an incredulous stutter – his face is a perfect slate on which to register stakes as they build. “The Gambler” sets that slate to zero and stages a man who knows the stakes and doesn’t care: $125,000 owed, seven days to pay, and Jim Bennett (Wahlberg), a college literature professor, liable to repeat the situation even if he clears his name. The film in which this premise unfolds intrigues by its director, or more specifically its director’s decision to tackle it: Rupert Wyatt (“The Escapist”), who previously handed 20th Century Fox a new franchise with “Rise of the Planet of the Apes.” Instead of turning to another big-budget tentpole, he’s used his studio clout on this, a remake of the 1974 New York-set drama starring...