Paramount Pictures shuffled around 2 of their biggest
upcoming movies and at the same time finally confirmed the return of The
Teenage, Mutant, Ninja Turtles to the big screen. Jonathan Liebesman (Wrath of
The Titans, Battle L.A) is directing the $100m film, the first live action
Turtles movie since 1993, and the first since 2007’s Computer animated TMNT.
This film will mix the live action with CGI (probably mo-capped) Turtles. Expect skateboards and empty Pizza boxes on
Christmas Day 2013 (in North America). Of course you do have to question of
releasing a film that will surely be going after family / teen audiences, less than
2 weeks after the conclusion to The Hobbit. There’s probably room for both, but
you have to feel that if either film will take a hit, it will be the little
green guys, not the little people with hairy feet.
In a move that, on the face of it at least, makes a fair bit
more sense, Brad Pitt’s Zombie film, World War Z, has been moved away from the
Christmas season to June 2013. In its place will be the Tom Cruise starring One
Shot. World War Z is an adaptation of the novel by Max Brooks ‘World War Z: An
Oral History of the Zombie War’. It is directed by Marc Forster (Quantum of
Solace, Machine Gun Preacher, Finding Neverland) and to be honest feels much
more suited to summer (or any other time of the year really) than the Christmas
season.
The reason for moving WWZ is so that One Shot can be brought
forward from mid February 2013, to WWZ’s original release date of the 21st
of December 2013. The logic behind that is to match up with the very successful
release date of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. That film has proved to
be a massive success ($688m and not quite done); so you can see why the change
has been made. Cruise has remained a big draw in the international market, but
of late his films were not massive hits in North America, so anything that may
help maintain the M:I4 momentum is welcome. ‘One Shot’ is adapted from the
novel by Lee Child (Much to the chagrin of many a fan, as Cruise isn’t exactly
a close match for the character of Jack Reacher, who is over 6 feet tall) by
Christopher McQuarie. McQuarie’s only other directorial effort was ‘Way of The
Gun’ back in 2000, but he is a well respected screenwriter, responsible for ‘The
Usual Suspects’, ‘Valkyrie’ and next year’s ‘The Wolverine’ & ‘Jack The
Giant Killer’.
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