Stephen Lang joins Avatar 2, new Cap America 2 poster, trailer and stills and Peter Jackson talks post-Hobbit plans

Avatar was the sci-fi hit of 2009, and is the highest grossing film of all time at $2.782 billion. Director James Cameron’s (Aliens, Titanic, The Terminator) greenlighted sequels (Avatar 2, 3 and 4) will begin in 2016 and will recur annually. Colonel Miles Quaritch was the real villain of Avatar and he, and his portrayer, Men Who Stare at Goats’ Stephen Lang, will return for Avatar 2. Those who haven’t seen Avatar and have plans to watch it without knowing major plot details may want to skip over the next paragraph.

If you remember, at the end of the film’s epic final battle, Quaritch is killed by Na’vi princess Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) when the colonel tries to kill her human boyfriend Jake Sully (Sam Worthington). “Stephen was so memorable in the first film, we’re privileged to have him back,” Cameron said. “I’m not going to say exactly how we’re bringing him back, but it’s a science fiction story, after all. His character will evolve into really unexpected places across the arc of our new three-film saga. I really look forward to working with such a gifted actor, who’s also become a good friend.” Worthington, Saldana and Sigourney Weaver are still only rumoured to star, odd to cast in the villain before the hero.

We move onto Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Marvel’s expected sequel to the 2011 box office success of The First Avenger is fast approaching but it’s been weeks since we got a proper bit of news about it. Today, director Joe and Anthony Russo have brought us up to speed with a few new stills (click next to cycle through) and an awesome poster (on which note the multiple SHIELD helicarriers and the Washington Monument backdrop). Then came this!

There’s only about 10 seconds worth of footage within that clip, featuring Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson) and The Winter Soldier/Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) joining Captain America/Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), but the full trailer, which will likely be about 2 to 2 and half minutes long, premiers tomorrow on I-Tunes. Expect full coverage from us, Tuorhoth Movies. Captain America: The Winter Soldier also stars Robert Redford, Frank Grillo, Emily Van Camp, Anthony Mackie, Cobie Smulders, Dominic Cooper, Hayley Attwell, Toby Jones and Jenny Agutter.

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones was a great financial (taking just $75 million off a $60 million budget – it didn’t loose money but, to be called a success, a film has to gross double it’s budget so that investors get more profit than they put into the film) and critical (see our verdict in August’s review here) disappointment. The immanent plans for a sequel were postponed but a recent report suggests that Lily Collins, Robert Sheehan, Jamie Campbell Bower, Lena Headey, Jared Harris, Aidan Turner and Jonathan Rhys Meyers  will return for the sequel with new addition Sigourney weaver, The Mortal Instruments: City of Ashes.

“The fan response, from the blogosphere and the thousands of mails we have received, has encouraged us to keep going.” Constantin Film’s Martin Moszkowicz tells The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s been overwhelmingly positive, in contrast to some other titles. We are analysing what we did wrong with the first film, particularly with the positioning and marketing, and what changes we have to make. We are working with a great group of people to reposition the franchise.”

I think by positioning and marketing Moszkowicz is referring to the fact that in this year City of Bones was going against three other teen fantasy book adaptations (flops like The Host and Beautiful Creatures, the more grown up How I Live Now and the already successful The Hunger Games, with it’s sequel Catching Fire). Filming is once again likely to start next year with a 2015 release date. By then, everyone’s realised that Twilight and The Hunger Games had a magic formula for young adult films (2014 only has The Maze Runner and Divergent – both of which are way too similar to The Hunger Games) and that attempting these kind of films are bad idea without a experienced team. I don’t think that City of Bones’ director Harald Zwart is likely to return for Ashes as he’s the man who brought you The Karate Kid remake which featured no Karate and the Agent Cody Banks films.

Peter Jackson is easily the greatest director of New Zealand, and perhaps the greatest in the fantasy genre as a whole. He brought us the immortally classic The Lord of the Rings trilogy and the underrated prequel The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey plus The Lovely Bones, Heavenly Creatures and King Kong. His 2013 and 2014 productions are continuing his Middle-Earth saga with The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (Dec 13th 2013) and the ultimate There and Back Again (Dec 19th 2014). But this is about Jackson’s future, post Hobbit.

“We have got a few bits and pieces that we are working on, Fran (Walsh) and I.” Jackson tells us. “The things that we are most excited about are some New Zealand stories. We just want to step off the Hollywood blockbuster thing for a while and we’ve had a few New Zealand stories in line for a while that we think would make great films. The Heavenly Creatures mode really. But one thing has led to another and we have never had time. We’ve made a conscious decision that in the limited years we have left to make movies to tell some New Zealand stories.”

The earliest we could see any of these stories are in 2016 as 2015 is already scheduled for another sequel, The Adventures of Tintin: Prisoners of the Sun). He and Steven Spielberg are signed on to bring us the return to Herge’s mo-cap world of adventure. Whatever this New Zealand project is, it’s likely to star Jackson regular Andy Serkis.

Avatar 2 – Christmas 2016

Captain America: The Winter Soldier – May 2nd 2014

The Adventures of Tintin: Prisoners of the Sun – late 2015

Untitled Peter Jackson/Fran Walsh New Zealand project – 2016?

Untitled Tintin sequel – 2017/18?

Jurassic World announced and Mortal Instruments 2 and Pirates 5 delayed

You can see our review of the average teen fantasy The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones here! The frostily received film only grossed $65 million off an $60 million budget meaning next year’s sequel, City of Ashes, may no longer be on the cards.

We may be overreacting but the negative response has prompted a rethink and, ultimately, a big delay. A statement claimed that the studios needed to “analyse the results to date and reposition the franchise in order to maximize the results for future instalments.” returning director Harold Zwart is hopeful that he’ll shoot the film before the end of this year but should any more problems occur the film may miss it’s 2014 slot; meaning it could either suffer terribly in 2015 (due to Bond 24, Hunger Games 3, Jurassic Park 4, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Batman vs. Superman and a minor space opera project called Star Wars: Episode VII) or schedule for 2016 (which is already stocking up with James Cameron’s Avatar 2, Rupert Wyatt’s Star Trek 3, The Amazing Spiderman 3 and Angry Birds) which could result in a loss of interest or a big fan base (indeed Twilight and The Hungers did/are planning to release films one year after another.

Their plans for a sequel (with Lily Collins, Jamie Campbell Bowyer and a new villain in the form of Alien and Avatar’s Sigourney Weaver), and a prequel series The Infernal Devices, may be delayed for quite a bit if studios don’t give City of Bones a fresh think.

Another delayed project is Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. The fifth instalment in the Johnny Depp epic fantasy series will be directed by Norwegian duo Espen Sandberg and Joachim Ronning. Disney have been juggling the release dates of their 2015 projects. Pirates was running against the legendary studios’ sci-fi reboot Star Wars: Episode VII, Pixar animations Inside Out and Finding Dory and Marvel’s The Avengers: Age of Ultron and Ant-Man. After Ant-Man was switched from November to July and Star Wars from Summer to Christmas, Dead Men won’t be telling any tales until 2016 at least.

Finally we’ve got some pretty big news from Universal and Amblin studios. Colin Trevorrow’s directing follow-up to Safety Not Guaranteed is the fourth instalment in the Jurassic Park franchise and, today, we got a release date and a title. Jurassic World will come out July 12th 2013.

What’s your first impression of Jurassic World? Is the incredibly cheesy title putting you off? Please tell us in the comments!

The Mortal Instruments: City of Ashes could be out 2014

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales is out Summer 2016

Jurassic World is out July 12th 2015

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones review

Director: Harold Zwart

Starring: Lily Collins, Jamie Campbell Bowyer, Robert Sheehan, Lena Headey, Aidan Turner, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Jared Harris, Kevin Zegers, Jemima West, CCH Pounder, Kevin Durand

In the era of young-adult mass success such Twilight and The Hunger Games, another potential franchise has appeared. But The Mortal Instruments is unlikely to become a beloved series that’ll enchant audiences to watch it time after time like the former two examples. A lot of Cassandra Clare’s book hasn’t translated well from page to screen. There’s charm to it but it’s still flawed.

Clary Fray (Lily Collins) is living a normal life in New York with her English artist mother Jocelyn (Lena Headey) with regular visits from her mother’s friend Luke (Aidan Turner) and poetry readings with her friend Simon (Robert Sheehan). One night at a club, she meets the mysterious and leather donning Jace Wayland (Jamie Campbell Bowyer) while nobody else at the club can see him. When she returns home, her mother has been kidnapped and it’s revealed that Clary and her mother, like Jace, are Shadow Hunters, half-angel half-human beings who must destroy the evil demons of the world. With Jace’s small team of Shadow Hunter, Alec (Kevin Zegers), Isabelle (Jemima West) and Hodge (Jared Harris). They set out to rescue Jocelyn and retrieve The Mortal Cup, a long lost artefact that could bring power to the now dying race of Shadow Hunters, by going to the City of Bones to unlock Clary’s suppressed memories.

There are a huge amount of flaws that can’t be overlooked in the City of Bones. First of all, it’s a complete regurgitation of other successful franchises. The hoards of creatures (in this case vampires) crawling out of a whole in the ceiling heading in different directions about 10 storeys above the adventuring group heroes’ heads has they don’t notice is practically the same shot as the one in the Moria sequence from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. The fiery demons brought to mind only this year’s Doctor Who villains from Journey to the Centre of the T.A.R.D.I.S and Wrath of the Titans’ Kronos. The Shadow Hunter’s home, The Institute, is a complete rip-off of Harry Potter’s Hogwarts. The plot twists at the end are the same one as in Star Wars, although this is a fault of the book. Has Cassandra Clare never seen Star Wars?

However, there is some charm in the lead performances. Jamie Campbell Bowyer is a little dull as the plot explainer in the first half but he comes into his own in the second act as a dark and brutal man. Lily Collins in great and charismatic and I wish there were a few more scenes where she could actually act instead of running around to poorly constructed action sequences. Robert Sheehan gives an excellently heartfelt performances as Simon in his unrequited crush on Clary.

Some of the supporting roles aren’t up to scratch though. Aidan Turner (The Hobbit’s Kili, Being Human) and Lena Headey (Game of Thrones, Dredd, 300) are some of the upcoming stars of the moment but in this they’re shrunk into small roles that don’t match their star prowess. Jared Harris gives a interestingly creepy performance but, like Turner and Headey, he’s barely in it and barely any of his backstory is explained. We’re told that he can’t leave The Institute because he was cursed by a Clave without actually telling us how, why or what a Clave is. We’re also supposed to believe that Kevin Zegers’ Alec and Jemima West’s Isabelle Lightwood are a brother/sister duo even though they don’t speak to eachother throughout the entire of the film. I don’t think they actually look at eachother while their both conscious. Nor do Jace and Alec but we’re told that they’re best friends. Kevin Durand is just playing a generic supporting Kevin Durand character. CCH Pounder’s Dorothea the Witch could be a more intriguing character where she not just a plot device. Jonathan Rhys Meyers is a decent bad guy in the form of Valentine Morgenstern but, these days, it’s not good enough to only introduce the bad guy and the last minute.

Valentine’s plan makes absolutely no sense. None of it requires a huge stream of energy streaming from the top of a tall New York building and into the sky, another rip-off of an existing franchise (this time last year’s Avengers Assemble). And a certain characters hiding place makes absolutely no sense to the plot.

The film is often afraid to bump off major characters and struggles to get across key aspects of the plot. They never tell us by the end of the film if certain characters survived, an it’s not as if there’s a cliffhanger ending. A lot of the film is disappointing. The great big large scale shots just look a bit cheap and small. Just as we think we’re in for a dark and intense battle sequence, heavy pop music kicks in and just ruins what could be a great scene. City of Bones is a disappointment. There’s certainly some good attention to detail at points in the film but it struggles to ever have a defining moment.

Hodge tells us that all of the mythological stories are true and yet the plot chooses to only use some of the most generic and most-used monsters in fiction: vampires, werewolves, warlocks and witches. Although a sequel (City of Ashes) is already confirmed, this film is likely to join the pile of this year’s book to film potential adaptations that have flopped (critically and commercially) despite well known source material and a promising young star at the centre alongside Beautiful Creatures (Jeremy Irons) and The Host (Saoirse Ronan).

It’s unlikely to ever become as beloved by any audience as Twilight was and The Hunger Games is. The three central actors (Collins, Campbell Bowyer and Sheehan) are impressive and do bring charm to an otherwise dull and humourless (although it does, on occasion feebly attempt) re hash of other fantasy’s. It has a unimaginative and ludicrous plot with the same ending as Star Wars. If it does have a future, I don’t think it’ll be a particularly successful one. I do hope that the next young adult adventures, Ender’s Game, The Maze Runner’s, Divergent e.g, are a significant improvement on this disappointment.

3/10

“Welcome to the City of Bones.”

Disney begin Artemis Fowl and casting news for Samantha Barks and Sigourney Weaver

Since 2011, we’ve been wandering what the next Harry Potter would be. But instead of that we’ve got the next Twilight The Hunger Games and next year the next Hunger Games Divergent. The teen/young-adult market has now fled the bookshelves and into the box-office which means the 10-year-old-appropriate fantasy market is losing out the the superheroes of Marvel and the forced pre-historic adventures of Ice Age. Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice failed to leap above average but there’s plenty of material (see Skullduggery Pleasant) that’ll refresh the young fantasy market. Next up to save the genre could be Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl.

Harvey Weinstein (producer of Pulp Fiction, The Lord of the Rings)  managed to get the rights to the books in 2001, when the first in the series was published, for Miramax. Back then he was still a part of Disney which he left from in 2005 and Artemis Fowl will mark his return to the company. The plot sees the teenage, Irish, genius, criminal title character discover a world of fairies, elves, centaurs and other assorted fantasy creatures but not in the way you’d expect. Harry Potter and the Order Phoenix (and less impressively Green Lantern) writer Michael Goldenberg has been hired to make a script based on the first two books: Artemis Fowl and Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident.

Some quick casting news for Sigourney Weaver. The Avatar and Aliens star is now in talks for a role in the film version of The Mortal Instruments series. Cassandra Clare’s books have been hugely successful and the first film in the series, City of Bones, will be released this August. Jamie Campbell Bower, Lily Collins, Lena Headey, Aidan Turner, Jared Harris, Kevin Durand and Robert Sheehan star in the new dark fantasy that’ll receive a sequel next year called City of Ashes. The book’s continue with City of Glass, City of Fallen Angels, City of Lost Souls and City of Heavenly Fire and spawned the well received prequel series. It’s title is The Infernal Devices and contains the books Clockwork Angel, Clockwork Prince and Clockwork Princess. Another series set in the same universe called The Dark Artifices begins in 2015 with Lady Midnight that’ll be followed by Prince of Shadows and The Queen of Air and Darkness.

It’s highly unlikely that all of these novels will get the big-screen treatment but City of Ashes certainly will and it’s that film that’ll introduce Weaver’s character who’ll most likely serve as the antagonist of the piece.

Finally, Samantha Barks has joined the cast of Dracula. It’s a new horror that’ll combine the Bram Stoker mythology with the true legends of Prince Vladimir, a war master who was famed for drinking his victim’s blood. Barks won plenty of awards for her first film Tom Hooper’s Les Miserables where she took her role of Eponine off the stage and on to the screen. Rumours state that she may play folkloric witch Baby Yaga. Gary Shore will direct Dracula with a cast that features Barks, The Hobbit’s Luke Evans (Dracula), Captain America’s Dominic Cooper, Stardust’s Charlie Cox, Game of Thrones’ Art Parkinson (Count Dracula’s son) and Thor Kristjansson as Ottoman assassin Bright Eyes.

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones is out August 21st

The Mortal Instruments: City of Ashes is out Summer 2014

Artemis Fowl could be out around 2016

Dracula is out August 8th 2014