News

Simon Brew Sep 15, 2017

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller are rewriting the script for The Lego Movie 2, as production begins...

With their work on the Star Wars: Han Solo movie cut short, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller have returned to one of their biggest hits, with the sequel to The Lego Movie.

The pair - who were always involved with the feature - are back on screenplay duties for the movie, that’s this time being directed by Mike Mitchell. The news was confirmed by producer Dan Lin, who’s currently on the promotional trail for the upcoming The Lego Ninjago Movie.

Talking to Collider, he said that “the team is all back together, so it’s Lord and Miller, myself and Chris McKay [McKay most recently directed The Lego Batman Movie]”.

“Mike Mitchell is the new voice who’s coming in to direct the movie. Chris and Phil are rewriting the script right now, but we’re in production.

The Lego Movie was one that shouldn't have really worked, but wound up being a very big deal. It may have taken a few years, but Lego Movie 2 is finally getting underway. Original directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller aren't returning to helm the movie, but they are now back on board to rewrite the script after being let go from the untitled Han Solo movie recently. Plus, we have some of the first story details for the highly-anticipated sequel.

Collider caught up with producers Dan Lin and Chris McKay during a press day for the upcoming spin-off The Lego Ninjago Movie. During the conversation, Lin made the reveal that Phil Lord and Chris Miller are currently rewriting the script for The Lego Movie Sequel, which is slated for release on February 8, 2019. Here's what he had to say about it.

"We are going to The Lego Movie 2. The team is all back together,...

Big breaking news this morning. Disney and Lucasfilm have confirmed that J.J. Abrams, the true driving force behind launching the new Star Wars trilogy with 2015's The Force Awakens, will return to direct Star Wars 9. No story details have been released at this time. StarWars.com sent out the official Press Release. They offer this statement.

"J.J. Abrams to Write and Direct Star Wars: Episode IX. J.J. Abrams, who launched a new era of Star Wars with The Force Awakens in 2015, is returning to complete the sequel trilogy as writer and director of Star Wars: Episode IX. Abrams will co-write the film with Chris Terrio. Star Wars: Episode IX will be produced by Kathleen Kennedy, Michelle Rejoin, Abrams, Bad Robot, and Lucasfilm."

Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy was on hand to deliver the news. She didn't say much about the actual film itself or the firing of Colin Trevorrow. She did...

David Crow Aug 25, 2017

Jordan Vogt-Roberts reveals what advice Phil Lord and Chris Miller had for Kong: Skull Island, and how they took that into Han Solo.

The community of directors and filmmakers jumping into the realm of mega-budgeted blockbusters is only growing. Still, it remains a pretty small and elite company, especially if they all relatively recently came up together from the world of independent moviemaking. That appears to be the case for Jordan Vogt-Roberts, director of Kong: Skull Island, and his relationship with filmmakers like Phil Lord and Chris Miller.

Prior to Kong, Vogt-Roberts had been primarily known for the playful and eccentric The Kings Of Summer. But when Den Of Geek Us sat down last month to chat with him, he was faintly wistful about saying goodbye to his first blockbuster. He describes the experience of making it - from pre-production all the way to the media tour...

Han Solo director Ron Howard revealed in an interview last week that he's very careful not to include even, "a sliver of a spoiler" in any of the photos he's sent out from the set, after taking over the production in late June. Still, that hasn't stopped fans from trying to find out more details, especially with the new photo he sent out today, where the director is seen, "checking out a camera move" on the set. The director is seen watching a monitor, and while we can see that one unspecified female character in a backless dress has her back to the camera, there is not much more we can glean from this image, unfortunately.

The photo from Ron Howard's Twitter features this mystery woman facing numerous other characters, although we can't make out any distinguishing details about the woman or the other characters gathered around her. It's...

Shifting directors mid-production is tricky, especially with reshoots, and having a cast used to working with one director only having to switch to another. Things get scary. A lot of news has recently been going crazy with the fact that Ron Howard has now taken over for Phil Lord and Chris Miller as director of Lucasfilm's Han Solo movie. While of course, the studio will say everything is fine, it's much more interesting to see what the actors have to say, and... Woody Harrelson says everything's fine!

What did you expect. Of course, actors aren't going to diss the project, unless they never want to work again. But it is rather impressive the amount of faith Harrelson has in director Ron Howard. They have previously worked together in the film Edtv. In a recent interview, while promoting War for the Planet of the Apes, Harrelson was asked about the director...

Woody Harrelson is out and about promoting War for the Planet of the Apes, but he set aside some time to talk about the upcoming untitled Han Solo movie, noting that new director Ron Howard is "awesome" and that the project is in "very capable hands." The Han Solo movie seems to finally be on the rebound after the shocking news that directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller had been fired from the project due to the ol' creative differences excuse, which may for once actually be true. Ron Howard has stepped up to finish what Miller and Lord have started and Woody Harrelson, who portrays Becket in the spin-off couldn't be happier about the situation.

Uproxx recently sat down with Woody Harrelson to talk about War for the Planet of the Apes and the subject inevitably switched gears to talk about the Han Solo movie and the controversy surrounding the project.

Even after the recent production woes and subsequent firing of Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the Force is still strong in Lucasfilm’s Han Solo anthology film.

At least, that’s according to Woody Harrelson, who spoke with Uproxx in anticipation of War For the Planet of the Apes. Similar to how his Apes director Matt Reeves has been soliciting nine kinds of questions regarding The Batman, Harrelson has been hounded about his involvement in Star Wars and, more recently, how Lord and Miller’s departure has affected those on the ground level.

Given how quickly Disney drafted in a replacement – two days elapsed between the firing of Lord and Miller and subsequent appointment of the Oscar-winning Ron Howard – it’s no surprise to learn that filming has already resumed on the Han Solo set, with leaked pictures revealing Alden Ehrenreich decked out in costume as the young nerf-herder standing alongside everyone’s favorite Wookiee,...

First it was Star Wars: The Force Awakens that had some trouble as it being pushed back from the franchise's usual May release to December, and then came the extensive reshoots for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Both the films turned out fine and were massive successes for Disney, each pulling in over $1 billion. Recently, the next stand-alone Disney chose to produce, the still yet unofficially titled Han Solo film went through some of the worst kind of trouble a film can go through, having a directorial change after almost four months of shooting.

This shook Star Wars fans to the core, what exactly was the problem? After all the juicy details came out about the who, what, when, where and why, (which you can read about here) the film was still left without a director for a short time. Disney and Lucasfilm quickly fixed the issue and...

Hey there, it’s time for a brand new episode of The Flickcast. We’re excited too! On this week’s episode Chris and Joe discuss a bunch of stuff including American Gods, the Han Solo solo movie and the new Twin Peaks series. Plus, the usual even more. No beer selections again this week (But if you do drink, […]...

A few weeks ago, it was revealed that Lucasfilm had fired Han Solo directors Phil Lord and Chris Millers from the project, and in their place, they put in veteran helmer Ron Howard. In recent years, the replacing of directors is something that’s been revealed to happen on fairly regular basis. Hell, just a couple months back, Joss Whedon replaced Zack Snyder as director of the Justice League for the reshoots (albeit under completely different circumstances). However, with Lucasfilm, it’s become something of a pattern.

Josh Trank was fired from the Boba Fett movie for his behavior on Fantastic Four, Gareth Edwards was basically a puppet during the reshoots of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story as Tony Gilroy took the helm, and now this. It seems to portray a disturbing trend, and while Lucasfilm is still currently two-for-two in strong films since they resuscitated the Star Wars franchise,...

The first promise directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller made when they were hired to make the long-rumored Han Solo standalone “Star Wars” film was to take risks. They may have risked too much.

Two years after first coming on board the film, the pair have unexpectedly departed the project, leaving the fate of the still-filming feature up in the air, even as Lucasfilm vows to charge forward with a new director in order to meet a planned 2018 release date. But the film that Lord and Miller were in the midst of making is now, at least in part, long gone.

With weeks left on the original shoot and an already-scheduled series of reshoots planned for later this summer, whichever director steps in will be able to lens plenty in his or her own vision (or, perhaps more appropriately, in Lucasfilm’s vision), to say nothing of the possibility that still more material will be shot and an editing process that could drastically change whatever it is that Lord and Miller were planning. Now there’s an entire “Star Wars” film we’ll never get to see.

Read More : Han Solo Cast Photo: Alden Ehrenreich, Donald Glover and More Appear in First Image from Standalone ‘Star Wars’ Story

When Lord and Miller were first announced for the project in July of 2015 (shared first, as these things so often are, on the official Star Wars website), the statement pointed directly to “their unique creative chemistry.” But their exclusive association with comedies went unacknowledged; their previous efforts were referenced by the studio as “critically acclaimed” films. Perhaps the disconnect started there, with Lucasfilm leaning more on accolades than style when showing off its new directors.

To be fair, while Lord and Miller traffic firmly in comedies, from “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” to “21 Jump Street,” their films are well-liked by both audiences and critics. That’s not often the case with broad comedies and says a lot about their unique appeal. Lord and Miller don’t have indie roots the way some filmmakers do, but they maintain an aura of independence associated with the quality of their work. Each of their four directorial outings are “Certified Fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes, with high enough critical ratings to put them in the top tier of released films. They’ve made money, too, over $700 million, and each of those four features opened in the top spot on their designated weekend.

When they started working on the Han Solo film, Lord and Miller struck a tone consistent with expectations from these distinctive storytellers. “We promise to take risks, to give the audience a fresh experience, and we pledge ourselves to be faithful stewards of these characters who mean so much to us,” they said in a statement at the time. “This is a dream come true for us. And not the kind of dream where you’re late for work and all your clothes are made of pudding, but the kind of dream where you get to make a film with some of the greatest characters ever, in a film franchise you’ve loved since before you can remember having dreams at all.”

Back then, both Lucasfilm head and producer Kathleen Kennedy and producer and screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan — who would later reportedly “clash” with the filmmakers, until they were fired — seemed to embrace that. In his own statement, Kasdan called the duo “two of the smartest, funniest and most original filmmakers around, and the ideal choice to tell the story of Han Solo, one of the coolest characters in the galaxy.”

Kennedy played up their wit. “It’s not just any filmmaker who can tell the story of such a beloved icon like Han Solo, and I’m excited to say we’ve found the perfect team to handle the task,” she said. “Larry and Jon [Kasdan, co-screenwriter] know all there is to know about the character, and Chris and Phil will bring their wit, style, energy and heart to tell Han’s story.”

If you want sharply-crafted humor in your film, you hire Lord and Miller. That’s what they will give you. Their sweet spot is blending the silly with the smart, and going for low-hanging fruit with gusto and style (their already-iconic “Channing Tatum takes way too many drugs” scene in “21 Jump Street” is hilarious and weird and fun, easy material elevated by their intelligence). They delight in twisting genres into new shapes, taking something that sounds tired (like a “Jump Street” movie revival or an adult-leaning adaptation of a classic kids book) and making something original and fun out of it.

In retrospect, those attributes were never going to fly in the “Star Wars” environment, one beholden to fitting even so-called standalone stories into a larger framework.

Related storiesRon Howard's 'Star Wars': We Debate the New Choice For the Lucasfilms' Han Solo Movie'Star Wars': Ron Howard Set to Take Over as Director of Embattled Han Solo SpinoffHan Solo Upheaval: Here's Everything You Need to Know About Phil Lord and Chris Miller's 'Star Wars' Exit...

Rob Leane Simon Brew Jul 14, 2017

The next Doctor Who will be revealed on Sunday, the BBC confirms...

A big update here, as the BBC has revealed that we'll know who's replacing Peter Capaldi in the Tardis by the other side of the weekend. The announcement as to who the next Doctor is will be made on BBC One following the Wimbledon Men's Singles final. Best guess is somewhere around 6.30pm at the moment. Let's hope it doesn't rain.

See related Doctor Who, and the casting of Jodie Whittaker Doctor Who stars react to Jodie Whittaker casting Star Wars: Rey, & her absence from Force Awakens merchandise

Here's the BBC announcement that it's making an announcement...

Exclusive News: It%u2019s Almost Time. #DoctorWho pic.twitter.com/rB4t1RH8Dx

— Doctor Who Official (@bbcdoctorwho) July 14, 2017

From Wednesday

Peter Capaldi is leaving Doctor Who at the end of the year,...

Sam Neill, Sue Milliken, Anthony Buckley (Photo credit: Peter Jackson).

The 71st Australian International Movie Convention wrapped last week, with a delegation of just over 1,000 converging on the Gold Coast for the five-night-four-day convention.

Seven features screened at Aimc, including three Australian films: Don.t Tell — attended by cast members Jack Thompson Am, Rachel Griffiths, Sara West, Gyton Grantley, Martin Sacks and Robert Coleby; Jasper Jones — introduced by director Rachel Perkins; and Transmission's Oscar contender Lion — attended by mother and son Sue and Saroo Brierley, on whose story the film is based.

Sam Neill followed in the footsteps of Jack Thompson, winning the Aimc Lifetime Achievement award, and used the occassion to read out amusing testimonials from the likes of Bryan Brown, Rob Sitch and John Cleese congratulating him on his award..

Neill.s Hunt for the Wilderpeople director Taika Waititi watched on, fresh from the set of Thor: Ragnarok,...

Sam Neill, Sue Milliken, Anthony Buckley (Photo credit: Peter Jackson).

The 71st Australian International Movie Convention wrapped last week, with a delegation of just over 1,000 converging on the Gold Coast for the five-night-four-day convention.

Seven features screened at Aimc, including three Australian films: Don.t Tell — attended by cast members Jack Thompson Am, Rachel Griffiths, Sara West, Gyton Grantley, Martin Sacks and Robert Coleby; Jasper Jones — introduced by director Rachel Perkins; and Transmission's Oscar contender Lion — attended by mother and son Sue and Saroo Brierley, on whose story the film is based.

Sam Neill followed in the footsteps of Jack Thompson, winning the Aimc Lifetime Achievement award, and used the occassion to read out amusing testimonials from the likes of Bryan Brown, Rob Sitch and John Cleese congratulating him on his award..

Neill.s Hunt for the Wilderpeople director Taika Waititi watched on, fresh from the set of Thor: Ragnarok,...

For the second consecutive year, Warner Bros. Pictures International has exceeded the coveted $3 billion mark at the international box office. This benchmark comes on the heels of the release of The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies, a production of New Line Cinema and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, which surpassed $400 million at the international box office this weekend and is still going strong.

Nine Warner Bros. Pictures films have exceeded $100 million internationally, topped by Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (with Paramount Pictures), which has taken in an astounding $467 million outside of the U.S. to date, and Godzilla (with Legendary Pictures), which has earned $327 million overseas.

Four titles – Doug Liman’s Edge Of Tomorrow (with Village Roadshow Pictures), Phil Lord & Christopher Miller’s The Lego Movie (also with Village Roadshow Pictures), and Noam Murro and Zack Snyder’s 300: Rise Of An Empire (with Legendary), along with the 2014 spillover grosses from The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug...

Producer David Hannay will be remembered as one of the pioneers of the modern Australian film industry, a passionate cinephile, mentor and loyal friend.

The Nz-born filmmaker whose career spanned seven decades died on Monday, aged 74, after a long battle with cancer.

He entered the film industry at Artransa Park Studios in 1958 as an extras casting assistant on Ray Lawler's Summer of the Seventeenth Doll.

As a producer and executive producer he was involved in more than 50 film and television productions. His feature film credits include Stone, The Man From Hong Kong, Solo, Death of a Soldier, Emma.s War, Mapantsula, Shotgun Wedding, Gross Misconduct, Dead Funny, Savage Play, Love in Ambush and the feature documentary Stone Forever.

He was Head of Production for Gemini Productions (which merged with the Grundy Organisation in 1977) from 1970 to 1973 and again from 1975 to 1976, and general manager of the Greater Union production subsidiary The...

Keanu Reeves is making his way back onto the big screen on friday starring in the new film Generation Um… a tale of three friends who form an intimate bond as their deepest secrets from their past are revealed after partying in New York City the night before. Friendships are tested and compromises are made as these three friends are preparing to do it all again tonight. Recently, I got the chance to sit down with both Keanu Reeves and director Mark Mann in a roundtable discussion about the film. Check it out below.

Keanu, your character is kind of a kleptomaniac in the film.

Keanu Reeves: Yes. I steal a camera and some chocolate. (laughs)

When you’re reading it and playing it, what did that bring to the character?

Keanu Reeves: Stealing the camera for John was the only thing he could do in order to have that camera.

Clemenger Bbdo Melbourne was named agency of the year at the Melbourne Advertising & Design Club Awards tonight.

The agency won top honours for the second year running. However, rival Gpy&R Melbourne – which won more lions at Cannes this year than any Australian agency – did not enter for the second consecutive year. Last year, Patts Ecd Ben Coulson cited cost reasons for not supporting the event, which is Melbourne’s top awards show.

The awards list in full:

The Adstream Award for Agency of the Year

Winner

Clemenger Bbdo Melbourne

The Madc Award for Best in Show

Winner

Guilt Trips V/Line Agency McCann

The Madc Award for Lifetime Achievement

Winner

Scott Whybin, Whybin Tbwa

The Blackley Award for Creative Leader of the Year

Winner

Jason Williams, Leo Burnett

The Madc Award for Client of the Year

Winner

Carlton United Brewers

The Exit Films Award for Best Junior

Winners

Jono...

Screen Australia has given the green light to "Drift", the 70's-set Sam Worthington-led surfing drama to be shot in Worthington's hometown of Perth reports The ABC.

The story follows the Fisher brothers who "escape their brutal past to start a new life in a remote Australian coastal town". The pair soon battle "suspicious locals, killer waves and ruthless bikers as they struggle to kick-start a business from their greatest passion - surfing,"

Actor turned filmmaker Morgan O'Neill ("The Factory," "Solo") directs the $11 million project while Ben Nott ("Tomorrow When the War Began," "Daybreakers") will serve as the director of photography. Tim Duffy and Myles Pollard will produce

Screen's acting CEO Fiona Cameron calls it "the first character-driven action movie set in the surfing world since Kathryn Bigelow's Point Break."

Also today Screen greenlit Catriona McKenzie's indigenous coming-of-age story "Satellite Boy" which is set in the Kimberley region.

Screen Australia has just announced production investment in two feature films - a surfing drama and an Indigenous coming-of-age tale - both hailing from Western Australia. "These feature projects represent distinctive Australian storytelling in all its diversity of genre and style," Screen Australia's Acting Chief Executive, Fiona Cameron, said of the announcement.   The first of these is Morgan O'Neill and Benn Nott's surfing action drama, Drift, which stars Australian actor and Avatar star Sam Worthington. For O'Neill - who also penned the script - Drift marks his third directorial feature with the actor-turned-director (who won the inaugural Australian Project Greenlight and went on to make Solo starring Bojana Novakovic and Colin Friels) having recently completed the crime thriller, The Factory, which stars John Cusack.

John Cusack has signed on to star in The Factory, a psychological thriller for Dark Castle to be distributed by Warner Bros.

Morgan O'Neill, a winner of the Australian Project Greenlight, co-wrote the script and is directing the feature, which is being produced by Dark Castle's Joel Silver, Susan Downey and David Gambino.

Cusack will play an obsessed cop who, with his partner, is on the trail of a serial killer prowling the streets of Buffalo, N.Y. When his teenage daughter disappears, the cop drops any professional restraint and goes all out to get the killer.

O'Neill wrote Factory with Paul Leyden, an Australian actor who starred in As the World Turns and LAX. Dark Castle picked up the script preemptively a year ago.

The movie is slated to go before cameras in January.

Steve Richards and Don Carmody are exec producing. Leyden is co-producing.

O'Neill, who also helmed the thriller Solo, set in the Sydney underworld, is repped by Paradigm and Luber Roklin Entertainment. Leyden is repped by Paradigm and APA.

SYDNEY -- The winner of the inaugural Australian Project Greenlight scriptwriting contest has watched one too many Las Vegas-set crime thrillers. Or maybe not enough good ones. Morgan O'Neill, a 32-year-old TV actor making his writing and directing debut with Solo, might have transplanted the fear and loathing to the streets of inner-city Sydney, but the gambling dens, flophouses and neon-lit strip joints, the smoky jazz soundtrack and the cast of shady players are all too familiar.

This somewhat contrived retread, about the efforts of a jaded hitman to extract himself from the Sydney underworld, should arouse some local curiosity (it opens July 6 in Australian theaters) but regular moviegoers will feel as if they have seen it all before.

Lending some authority to the production is Colin Friels (Malcolm, A Good Man in Africa), a veteran actor who has grown into his good looks, much like an antipodean Dennis Quaid.

He plays silver-haired Jack Barrett, an old-school enforcer who works for a group of sketchy operators called the Gentlemen. We meet him up to his elbows in blood, clutching a chainsaw and retching as he dumps body parts over the side of a boat. Rough day at the office, he explains afterward in the first of several wry one-liners.

At 53, Barrett has developed a conscience, possibly after discovering that he orphaned two children with his most recent job, and the work is literally making him sick. He wants out. Naturally, it's not that easy.

As Barrett works to disentangle himself from his life of crime, the plot snarls up with the number of low-lifes lining up to off him, from a coke-snorting cop (Vince Colosimo) to his latest victim's Vietnamese associate (Anh Do) to the Gentlemen themselves.

This is where the plot takes a sharp turn into implausibility.

A young university student named Billie (promising newcomer Bojana Novakovic) is researching a thesis on organized crime and it seems she is getting a little too close for the comfort of the Gentlemen who, despite presumably having faced down their share of drug-dealers, contract killers and cops, are made to quiver in their boots by this twentysomething's questioning.

They agree to cut Barrett Loose provided he does one last job -- bump off Billie. O'Neill, who shot his film in 21 days, sets up an effectively off-key dynamic between Barrett and Billie, but clearly manipulative plot twists dilute the power of the "surprise" ending.

Australian pay TV channel the Movie Network -- which funded the local offshoot of the Project Greenlight competition created in the U.S. by Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and American Pie producer Chris Moore -- gave O'Neill AUS$1 million ($763,000) and he has turned out a polished production on that modest budget, bringing on board Academy Award nominee Marcus D'Arcy (Babe) as editor and Ben Osmo (Rabbit-Proof Fence, Strictly Ballroom) to do sound.

The visual styling of production designer Murray Picknett, a two-time AFI Award winner, creates an undertow of menace that accompanies Barrett as he moves within yet apart from a world of seedy stereotypes.

SOLO

Dendy Films pressents a Movie Network Channels/Screentime production

Credits:

Screenwriter-director: Morgan O'Neill

Producer: Sue Seeary

Executive producers: Sue Milliken, Bob Campbell, Chris Berry, Tony Forrest

Director of photography: Hugh Miller

Production designer: Murray Picknett

Music: Martyn Love, Damian Deboos-Smith

Costume designer: Paula Ryan

Editor: Marcus D'Arcy

Cast:

Jack Barrett: Colin Friels

Billie: Bojana Novakovic

Reno: Linal Haft

Kate: Angie Milliken

Keeling: Vince Colosimo

Kennedy: Bruce Spence

Arkan: Chris Haywood

Louis: Tony Barry

No MPAA rating

Running time -- 98 minutes...