blogging – Page 2 – Hunter Goddard

Is online pitching the future of the film industry?

1323305_img_1545_837358_crop — BFI Doc Society fund executive Lisa Marie Russo says it is key for both the producer and director to join the video pitch to cover all facets of the project. (Image Courtesy: Screen Daily).

With most of the world on lockdown due to coronavirus, filmmakers are finding themselves forced to pitch electronically for industry events such as Visions du Reel, Frontieres, as well as Sheffield Doc/Fest, which have all moved online, according to Screen Daily. United Kingdom-based script consultant and screenwriter David Pope says the COVID-19 pandemic will be an opportunity for more industry insiders to connect internationally. However, Annick Mahnert, the newly appointed market director at the Montreal-based genre forum Frontieres, says in-face meetings will still be crucial to collaboration, but online pitches will allow professionals to forge new relationships and discuss new content.

Darren Aronofsky’s “Batman” movie canceled because he wanted to cast Joaquin Phoenix

darrenaronofsky-joaquinphoenix-696x442 — The outbreak of COVID-19 has halted production for Matt Reeves’s *The Batman*. (Image Courtesy: *New Music Express*).

In an interview with Empire, Darren Aronofsky said Warner Bros. dismissed him from directing a Batman film in the early 2000s because he would have cast Joaquin Phoenix as Bruce Wayne whereas the studio wanted Freddie Prinze, Junior, according to New Music Express. Christopher Nolan ended up being hired to reboot the DC Comics franchise, while Phoenix would later go on to play the Caped Crusader’s archnemesis in Todd Phillips’s Joker (2019). Meanwhile, Matt Reeves’s The Batman (2021), starring Robert Pattinson, is currently in the works, with a release date scheduled for next summer (unless impacted by the coronavirus pandemic).

TCM Classic Film Festival will broadcast a “Special Home Edition” on Turner Classic Movies

ca-times.brightspotcdn — Clips of interviews between TCM on-air host Ben Mankiewicz, the late Robert Osborne, and Eva Marie Saint, Tony Curtis, Debbie Reynolds, as well as the cast and director of John Boorman’s *Deliverance* (1972), will play during the festival. (Image Courtesy: The *Los Angeles Times*).

The eleventh annual TCM Classic Film Festival, a multi-venue Hollywood fan event, has been canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic, but Turner Classic Movies will broadcast a “Special Home Edition” of the festival from Thursday to Sunday, according to the Los Angeles Times. Lead programmer Charlie Tabesh says it would not have been possible to exhibit all the titles they had planned for the live festival over the same four days the festival was originally scheduled, so the “Special Home Edition,” with its highlight reels, will be a unique experience. Fans can win swag through Twitter giveaways under the hashtag #TCMFF.

Quentin Tarantino’s five best (and five worst) films, according to IMDb

Because Quentin Tarantino only has ten directorial credits to his name, ranking his films per their user ratings on IMDb divides the five “best” from the five “worst,” according to Screen Rant. Indeed, Dan Peeke writes that Tarantino fans tend to love his whole filmography, and the filmmaker has yet to release one “bad” movie. From lowest to highest, the IMDb scores for Tarantino’s pictures are as follows: Death Proof (2007), at seven-point-five out of ten; Jackie Brown (1997), at seven-point-five; Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), at seven-point-seven; The Hateful Eight (2015), at seven-point-eight; Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004), at eight-point-zero; Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003), at eight-point-one; Reservoir Dogs (1992), at eight-point-three; Inglourious Basterds (2009), at eight-point-three; Django Unchained (2012), at eight-point-four; and Pulp Fiction (1994), at eight-point-nine.

Andy Muschietti’s “The Flash” (2022) may be canceled

shutterstock_754537342 — The project was first announced in 2014 with a then release date for 2018 – team changes have repeatedly pushed it back. (Image Courtesy: *Out*).

Video footage surfaced earlier this week of actor Ezra Miller, star of Andy Muschietti’s ill-fated The Flash (2022), allegedly choking a woman in Iceland, according to Out. During a live stream, Lords of the Long Box reported Mikey Sutton, who is known among superhero movie aficionados as a reliable source of leaked information, posted that Warner Bros. may cancel the film as well as reboot the entire DCEU pending an investigation into the clip. After appearing in David Yates’s Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018), Miller confirmed they will be involved in a third installment of the series.

Library of Congress streaming preserved films online for free

Even though the Library of Congress is temporarily closed to the public, they are streaming more than seven thousand videos online for free, according to The New York Times. The largest library in the world was created in 1800 by the same act of Congress that moved the federal government to Washington, D.C., with President John Adams approving a five thousand-dollar budget for books. The library also invites the public to nominate titles for the National Film Registry, which adds “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” texts annually with the help of the advisory body that is the National Film Preservation Board.

James Gandolfini wanted “The Sopranos” to be a movie before passing away in 2013

Vincent Pastore, who played Salvatore Bonpensiero on HBO’s The Sopranos (1999-2007), told The Sunday Times series star James Gandolfini wanted to adapt the show to film before he died of a heart attack at fifty-one years old on vacation in Italy, according to Metro. Pastore says showrunner David Chase ended the series ambiguously on purpose so as to open The Sopranos up for a movie. Chase describes the “genius” actor as one of the greatest of all time, Gandolfini having won three Primetime Emmy Awards as well as a Golden Globe for his performance as conflicted mob boss Tony Soprano.

“Tiger King” director on the future of the Netflix documentary series

Last year, UCP signed Kate McKinnon to star in and executive produce a limited series called Joe Exotic, a scripted adaptation of a Wondery podcast, according to Page Six. However, Eric Goode, who codirected Netflix’s Tiger King (2020), says he feels like dramatization would not do the story justice, though he would cast McKinnon (or Kathy Bates) as animal rights activist Carole Baskin, and Edward Norton or Sam Rockwell as Joe Exotic. While Dax Shepard, Jared Leto, and Norton himself have been playfully lobbying for the role on social media, Goode says he has enough footage for a second season.

Film at Lincoln Center magazine to go on hiatus

filmcommentlogo2016_875c-fbcard. — Film at Lincoln Center’s Rendez-Vous with French Cinema and Mapping Bacurau events have been cut short, and its New Directors/New Films series with the Museum of Modern Art was postponed; the center’s annual Chaplin Awards Gala fundraiser has also been postponed until this fall. (Image Courtesy: *Variety*).

On Friday, Film at Lincoln Center executive director Lesli Klainberg released a memo announcing the organization would be furloughing or laying off half of its fifty-person full-time staff and all of its part-time employees, according to Variety. While continuing to provide health insurance for the furloughed full-timers, the company (which has published Film Comment since 1962) will release the May/June issue of the cinema and arts magazine digitally, after which time it will be placed on an indefinite hiatus. As per recommendations from the Department of Health and Centers for Disease Control, the center already suspended its theater operations March 12.

Michael Biehn cast in the second season of Disney+’s “The Mandalorian” (2019-)

Mandalorian-Season-2-Cast-700x321 — Filming for the second season of Disney+’s *The Mandalorian* (2019-) has recently wrapped production. (Image Courtesy: /Film).

Michael Biehn has been cast in the second season of Disney+’s The Mandalorian (2019-) as a bounty hunter from the titular Din Djarin’s (Pedro Pascal) past, according to /Film. A James Camron alumnus, Biehn has starred in The Terminator (1984), Aliens (1986), as well as The Abyss (1989), in addition to action movie classics such as George P. Cosmatos’s Tombstone (1993). Giancarlo Esposito is expected to reprise his role, Rosario Dawson will play fan-favorite Ahsoka Tano, and Bill Burr, Carl Weathers, and Gina Carano are all set to return; Baby Yoda (officially called “The Child”) is back also.