MY MOVIE WEEK with Mike Shaw

It’s all black and white for Emma

A couple of weeks ago I talked about Disney trying to woo Emma Watson to play Cinderella in its live action remake from director Kenneth Branagh.

However, it now sounds like the young star has turned down the opportunity, with Saoirse Ronan the new favourite name. Another role Watson will not be playing is the female lead in the 50 Shades of Grey movie adaptation.

She has been connected to the role since the film first started being talked about seriously, and while most of that was probably just wishful-thinking, the idea got a boost last week when hacker collective Anonymous broke into the database of German movie studio Constantin and claimed to have found files confirming her involvement.

Now, however, Watson has set things straight. Taking to Twitter, she wrote: “Who here actually thinks I would do 50 Shades Of Grey as a movie? Like really. For real. In real life.” And then quickly followed it with: “Good. Well that’s that sorted then.” Which makes sense, given Watson is already preposterously rich and an established star with absolutely no reason to take her clothes off on-screen in a film adaptation of a book with worse writing than Twilight and a more moronic fanbase than The Only Way is Essex.

Jurassic Park 4 has taken another step towards reality with the appointment of Colin Trevorrow as director. The director of time-travel-based comedy Safety Not Guaranteed had previously been floated as an outside bet for Star Wars: Episode VII before JJ Abrams was named, but it looks like he’ll be in charge of another mega-franchise instead.

Producer Frank Marshall said: “Thrilled to have director on JP4, Colin Trevorrow, an exciting young filmmaker who understands and respects the world that is Jurassic Park.”

It’s a huge job for Trevorrow, who will be working on a script written by Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes pair, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver. After the awful mess of Jurassic Park 3, a young, new director with fresh ideas is exactly what’s needed. Planned release date is June 13, 2014.

Books have been funded via Kickstarter, as have albums, documentaries, video games and even gaming consoles. It was only a matter of time before a big-name movie went down the crowdfunding route. And it’s fitting the title to do it is cult favourite Veronica Mars – a cancelled TV show fans have been hoping would be turned into a movie for years. Series creator Rob Thomas and star Kristen Bell put a plea for funding on Kickstarter last week, and within 10 hours fans had met the $2 million target.

Warner Bros is the rights-holding studio on the TV series, which follows its titular heroine as she attempts to solve the murder of her best friend and while Warner has decided to give the project the green light, the film’s production budget will come entirely from the money it has raised itself. No additional funding will arrive from the studio. Of course, this has led to a flurry of speculation about other TV shows fans feel should be resurrected, with the most chatter being about Joss Whedon’s long-dead sci-fi show, Firefly. However, the Avengers director says using Kickstarter to fund a movie continuation of the series is unlikely.

He said: “I realised [a Firefly film project would be the] only thing on everybody’s mind right now. I’ve said I would love to make another movie with these guys, and that remains the case. It also remains the case that I’m booked up by Marvel for the next three years. So I don’t even entertain the notion of entertaining the notion of doing this, and won’t.

“A couple years from now, when Nathan [Fillion]’s no longer [on ABC’s crime drama] Castle and I’m no longer the Tom Hagen of the Marvel Universe and making a giant movie, we might look and see where the market is then. But right now, it’s a complete non-Kickstarter for me.”

So, that’s that then.

The other thing to remember is Whedon and Firefly have already had one crack at the movie world, with the excellent but financially-unsuccessful, Serenity. Even if enough money could be raised, there’s no guarantee anyone will watch it.

While fans are ecstatic, this is new ground for a major studio like Warner, so I’m interested to see how the Veronica Mars movie pans out. Could crowdfunding be a serious way to get movies made, or is this just a one-off?

Don't go all Tolkien-y, Peter!

It didn’t get a whole lot of love when it was released, but that didn’t stop Tintin from being one of Steven Spielberg’s better films in recent years. So, I’m pleased to hear that things are progressing on the sequel. Spielberg said: “Peter Jackson is directing the next one, I’m producing. We have a script and we’re going to start performance capture probably at the end of this year. Don’t hold me to it, but we’re hoping the film will come out around Christmas-time in 2015. We know which books we’re making, we can’t share that now but we’re combining two books which were always intended to be combined by Hergé.” It’s good to know that it hasn’t been forgotten about. Tintin proved that an animated film can do action and drama just as well as anything else. I only hope that Peter Jackson doesn’t get all Tolkien-y about things and make the sequel a long, rambling, boring slog. With songs.