“LOST” starlet Evangeline Lilly is going full-elf in Peter Jackson’s adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. The 31-year-old stunner recently spoke to SFX about playing Tauriel, a woodland elf not originally found in Tolkien’s novel.
She says:
With every film, you have to educate yourself on the material and it’s often things you don’t know a lot about. Right now I’m studying Elvish and having conversations with people about learning how to be an archer, a swordsperson and how to fight like an elf instead of a gritty convict [laughs].
The Hobbit will be split into two movies: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (release date: Dec. 14, 2012) and The Hobbit: There and Back Again (release date: Dec. 13, 2013). Production is currently underway in New Zealand.
Lilly, best known for playing fugitive Kate Austin on ABC’s “LOST,” will soon be seen in DreamWorks upcoming Hugh Jackman vehicle Real Steel, opening Oct. 7.
Stephen Moyer (“True Blood”) is no stranger to supernatural creatures, but his latest project will have him facing off against one of folklore’s most feared cryptids: The Jersey Devil. Directed by Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw 2), The Barrens finds Moyer playing a family man who takes his wife and kids camping in the New Jersey Pine Barrens where the Jersey Devil is believed to live.
Bousman tells Variety:
I don’t want to turn it into a cheesy creature feature. It’s about the characters for me, and having watched Stephen for years on ‘True Blood,’ I have no doubt he’s the right leading man.
Bousman, who wrote the script (said to be in the vein of The Shinning), will produce The Barrens with The Genre Company and some other rich guy named John Eckert. Anchor Bay Entertainment will release the film next fall.
Moyer is, of course, best known for his portrayal of vampire Bill Compton on the Showtime series “True Blood.” The 41-year-old British actor has also starred in the apocalyptic actioner Priest, the supernatural thriller The Caller, the Al Pacino serial killer drama 88 Minutes, the home invasion frighteners Restraint (with a nude Teresa Palmer), and Open House (with wife and “True Blood” costar Anna Paquin).
The starlets pictured above are Marcia Do Vales, Victoria Broom, Natalia Celino and Tabitha Quitman. They are the protagonists in director Neil Jones’ (The Reverend) upcoming frightener Deranged. I have not seen any of their previous work, but they appear to possess some natural talent … or maybe it’s enhanced talent.
The film’s synopsis reads:
Four girls go on a bachelorette party weekend to a country house, in rural Spain. Little did they know what someone had planned for them. The real party begins when the host is mysteriously attacked and one by one, the guests find themselves in mortal danger. The race is on to uncover the killer’s identity and they must fight back or be brutally murdered.
Deranged costars Craig Fairbrass (White Noise 2: The Light) and is produced by EnMar Productions. The film wrapped production earlier this month in Madrid, Spain.
Nude photos of Scarlett Johansson were leaked online yesterday. I did not post about it because I was certain the rapture was about to occur. As it turns out, the shots aren’t a gift from baby Jesus, but the noble work of a now wanted hacker who infiltrated Johansson’s cell phone.
Johansson has hired a team of lawyers and Seal Team 6 to take down the perp and anyone who posts the pics on their site. I value my life and assets (Foreman Grill, PS3, and a couch) too much to put the images up on this site, but you can peep them by visiting these brave degenerates.
Johansson is currently at work on geek-mesiah Joss Whedon’s The Avengers. The 26-year-old stunner is also set to play a horny alien in director Jonathan Glazer’s adaptation of author Michel Faber’s novel Under the Skin.
StudioCanal has released a trailer for director Nick Murphy’s feature film debut The Awakening. Set in 1920’s England, the film stars Rebecca Hall (The Town) as a paranormal party pooper out to prove that the apparition at a boy’s school is nothing more than the creation of mass hysteria.
While this movie looks like the type of paranormal thriller you’d take mom to see, I gotta say I was pretty amused when the boy ghost goes all Porky’s on Hall during a shower scene (1:58 mark). Consider me sold (I’m calling mom right now).
Pop quiz, ladies: What was the most romantic movie of the ’90s? Was it Ghost? Pretty Woman? Legends of the Fall? Titanic? I don’t think so. Anyone who has ever experienced the joy of true love and the anguish of possibly losing that love knows that Frankenhooker was—and, arguably, still is—the greatest love story ever told.
Frankenhooker is the heart-wrenching tale of Jeffrey Franken, a med-school dropout who loses his fiance to a tragic lawn mower accident. Left with only her amputated head, he sets out to murder and dismember New York prostitutes with the intent of building her a new body. After putting her together, he successfully brings her back to life … as a sleazy and twitchy streetwalker.
If that isn’t an ode to true love, I don’t know what is. That’s why I’m thrilled to learn that Synapse Films is releasing remastered, uncut version of Frankenhooker on Blu-ray disc, complete with audio commentary from director Frank Henenlotter and featurettes with Jennifer Delora and Frankenhooker herself Patty Mullen—aka Penthouse Pet of the Year 1987.
Frankenhooker can be picked up on Blu-ray on Nov. 8.
Carla Gugino, the sexy star of Zac Snyder’s Sucker Punch and Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City, is the latest Hollywood babe to make Esquire’s “Women We Love” feature. The 40-year-old stunner even goes nude for photographer Kayt Jones.
This being Esquire, however, the shots are pretty tasteful … so you may want to keep things classy by using a Burberry fringed cashmere muffler while “enjoying” the pictures.
Gugino will soon be seen in TNT’s small-screen adaptation of author Lisa Gardner’s bestselling crime-thriller Hide. She plays protagonist D.D. Warren, a detective investigating the mummified remains of six missing women found inside a buried chamber at an abandoned mental hospital.
Newly launched production house Gaumont International Television is cooking up an hour-long crime drama set around the early days of Hannibal Lecter, the notorious cannibal/serial killer first introduced in the Thomas Harris novels “Red Dragon” and “Silence of the Lambs.”
Bryan Fuller, creator of ABC’s Emmy-winning series “Pushing Daisies” and—one of my personal favorites—Showtime’s “Dead Like Me,” is penning the “Hannibal” series, which will reportedly focus on the cat-and-mouse relationship between Lecter and FBI agent Will Graham.
Fuller has also written for “Star Trek: Voyager,” “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,” and NBC’s “Heroes.” He also adapted Stephen King’s Carrie for the small screen in 2002.
A trailer for Blair Witch Project director Eduardo Sanchez’s new supernatural mind-fuck Lovely Molly has hit the net. The film stars newcomer Gretchen Lodge (pictured) as Molly Reynolds, a recovering junkie with a 10-year-old boy’s haircut who is tormented by a malicious presence while living in the house of her deceased father.
While Sanchez appears to have abandoned his Blair Witch shaky-cam ways with Lovely Molly, there is a curious moment in the trailer where Molly is facing (and humping???) a wall that kind of reminds me of BW’s end. All-in-all, it the new flick looks pretty creepy and cool.
If you enjoy the Science Channel’s “Mantracker” show, but feel it’s lacking in rape and torture, then chances are you’ll wanna see writer/director Scott Walker’s feature film debut Frozen Ground, the true tale of Robert Hansen, an Anchorage-based serial killer who murdered 24 women over a 12 year span by hunting them down like game in the Alaskan wilderness.
Deadline reports that John Cusack will play the notorious murderer while Nicolas Cage will take on the role of Detective Glenn Flothe, the Alaskan State Trooper who brought Hansen to justice. Vanessa Hudgens is also on board as Cindy Paulson, the teen prostitute who managed to escape from Hansen after being abducted, raped, and sexually assaulted with a hammer.
Hansen, an accomplished game hunter, respected family man, and small town baker, preyed on prostitutes and topless dancers, luring them to him with the promise of easy money in exchange for pictures. He would then rape and violate them at gun point before flying them out to the wilderness—to be stripped and hunted—in his single engine Piper Super Cub plane.
You can read more about Hansen in the true-crime book “Butcher, Baker.” Or, if you’ve lost your library card, you can go here.
Frozen Ground is set to start shooting on Oct. 17 in Anchorage, Alaska.
