sam raimi

‘Spider-Man 4′ Exclusive Accidentally Outs Closet Fangirl Nikki Finke

8:45AM Seth | While regular Nikki Finke readers know she don’t do geek, you’d be forgiven for assuming from today’s column that she occasionally dabbles in dweeb: Watch as she churns a Spidey Wiki’s worth of Peter Parker biographical material cross-referenced with the latest villain indexes into the mother of all Spider-Man 4 exclusives, its vital insider information fed to her in the basement of a Century City parking structure by an anonymous figure known only as Deep Flack. The basics: Spider-Man 4, based on a screenplay by Zodiac writer Jamie Vanderbilt, is a go, with Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire on board. Kirsten Dunst’s character is in the script, but hasn’t yet signed on. The “black costume” won’t return. They may shoot 4 and 5 back-to-back. As for villains, well, we’ll leave you now to Finke’s capable deductive services: More »

The Death of ‘Austin Powers’ (And Six More Hobbled Franchises Worth Putting Down)

3:00AM STV | After the unfortunate reception for The Love Guru, it’s just too easy to write off New Line’s prospective Austin Powers revival (which Mike Myers is reportedly working on for New Line with former series collaborator Mike McCullers) as yet another ill-advised folly belching the black smoke of Myers’s career. In fact, taken as merely a part of the larger phenomenon we at Defamer like to call The End of Ideas, the Powers franchise is but a speck of the shit on Hollywood’s collective bathroom wall — a tableau diligently studied today by the haz-mat crew at Entertainment Weekly.

Jilted Spider-Man Getting Over It as Raimi Picks up Spy Franchise

9:10AM Defamer Hollywood | Your Dad will likely be thrilled to hear this morning that Paramount plans a Jack Ryan revival starting in 2010, while the rest of us are intrigued to see Sam Raimi recruited as the studio’s go-to helmer for the reborn franchise. A glorified genre director if ever there was one, Raimi’s stewardship of Sony’s $US2.5 billion Spider-Man empire reportedly impressed the ‘Mount enough to lock him in for the fifth installment of the spy series for a 2010 release. More »

Spider-Friends Remember Sony’s Amy Pascal On Her Big Day

7:00AM Defamer Hollywood | The weekly edition of Variety officially awards its Showmen of the Year honour, the most coveted recognition in all of showbiz trade journalism (and yes, that includes Var’s Billion Dollar Director Day celebration), to Sony’s Michael Lynton and Amy Pascal, an occasion necessitating the purchase of full-page tribute ads by any talent, producers, or agency ever hoping to get a movie made at their red-hot studio. While none of the ads make direct mention of Pascal’s ceremonial bepenising by the publication, this minimalist, phoned-in-by-someone’s-unimaginative-assistant offering by Spider-Man’s trio of Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, and Sam Raimi (really, couldn’t someone have thrown some spider-related clip art on there?) nods to the co-president’s honourary gender reassignment, a little in-joke that only those who’ve generated billions in box office grosses can get away without fear of career reprisals. [Ad via Digital Variety] Previously: They Aren’t Kidding When They Say Amy Pascal Can Run A Studio Like A Man [Defamer] More »