Thompson On Hollywood

Sequels: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Indy 4, Dark Knight

Here's a new photo from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, due in theaters November 21.

Here's more on the final two Harry Potter movie installments and Hollywood's love affair with the sequel from CBS News:

John Hurt gives some scoop on Indiana Jones and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

At ShoWest, Christian Bale talks about The Dark Knight and Heath Ledger:

And the NYP looks into George Lucas's move into TV with Star Wars and Clone Wars, which is also going to be an animated movie.

ShoWest: Summer Preview

Every year ShoWest screens an honor reel of movies that grossed over $100-million the year before. Which of the 2008 ShoWest promo pics will be on next year's reel?

Based on what I saw and reactions gleaned, here's my best guess:

Movie that could pass $300 million: the sequel The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, which will likely improve on its predecessor with more action and more mature protagonists.

Movies that could go well past $200 million: sequels The Dark Knight, starring Christian Bale and Heath Ledger, Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, starring Harrison Ford and Shia LeBeouf, Rob Cohen's China-shot Mummy 3: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, starring Brendan Fraser, Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh, and Guillermo del Toro's epic-scale actioner Hellboy II: The Golden Army; plus non-sequels Wanted, starring Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman as assassins training rookie James McAvoy, the invulnerable Will Smith as a homeless hero in Hancock, Judd Apatow's dumb male comedy Step Brothers, starring Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, Marvel's Iron Man, which boasts femme appeal via Robert Downey Jr. and co-star Gwenyth Paltrow, and animated family originals Kung Fu Panda (DreamWorks Animation) and Wall-E (Disney/Pixar).

Movies that could break $100 million: a remake of Marvel's The Incredible Hulk, starring Edward Norton as a thinking man's Bruce Banner; for the femme audience, a remake of the HBO classic Sex and the City, a remake of the boomer TV show Get Smart, starring Steve Carell and Ann Hathaway, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler's surrogate nightmare comedy Baby Mama, and a movie version of the Broadway musical Mamma Mia (also for musical fans); Judd Apatow factory comedies Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Pineapple Express; Ben Stiller's starry R-rated action comedy Tropic Thunder, starring Stiller, Downey, Jack Black and Steve Coogan; the frere Wachowski's adaptation of the anime classic Speed Racer, starring Emile Hirsch and Christina Ricci; and George Lucas's animated sequel Star Wars: The Clone Wars. (Am I the only one who feels a shock that the film is going out through Warners? Even though Lucasfilm controls and markets the movies and collects the lions' share of the take, I feel like all Star Wars movies are supposed to have the Fox fanfare in front of them.)

ShoWest: Stiller and Downey Star in Tropic Thunder

Actor-director-writer-producer Ben Stiller and star Robert Downey, Jr. hit the Vegas strip's Planet Hollywood to promote their new summer comedy Tropic Thunder. Downey is about to enjoy the summer of his life, with two films book-ending the summer, Iron Man, his first major starring role in a summer action hero tentpole, and Tropic Thunder, in which he plays an actor who ingests some chemicals to help him become a black man.

In Tropic Thunder, a group of actors, under the direction of wild and crazy Steve Coogan, is in the jungle shooting a war movie when they are attacked, for real. The footage from the R-rated comedy was profane and hilarious. Jack Black plays a star who is coming down from heroin and asks to be tied to a tree as he withdraws. Black also could have enjoyed a good ShoWest, having voiced the title role in Kung Fu Panda, if he had showed up, pointed out Stiller and Downey during some affectionate competitive banter. "Fuck him."

Word is the DreamWorks movie, which looks expensive with its mega-watt cast, action mayhem and jungle locations, may have cost over $100 million. (Paramount claims far less.) It opens August 15. The first trailer will be out next week, Paramount said.

ShoWest Honors Hunt, Schamus, Lee, Mamet

Tuesday, Universal co-chairmen David Linde and Marc Shmuger piled a bunch of folks into the corporate jet and flew them to Vegas for lunch. Hamlet 2 star Steve Coogan came along with long-time collaborators Focus Features prexy James Schamus and Lust, Caution director Ang Lee, who were given the first-ever ShoWest Freedom of Expression award. (Basically, the National Association of Theater Owners wants to encourage the studios to make NC-17-rated movies and the theaters to show them.)

Lee explained before the lunch that Tang Wei is the only Lust, Caution star who is Chinese; Tony Leung is from Hong Kong, and Taiwanese Lee lives in New York. That's why the government targeted her, banning her from media coverage. "The others don't matter," Lee said. "It's political. It will subside." Here's his interview on Access Hollywood, which covers Lee's relationship with Brokeback Mountain star Heath Ledger.

Coogan introduced the indie lunch host, Landmark Theaters' Ted Mundorff, saying, "I've been a huge admirer of Ted's ever since I googled him last night." Coogan said that being at the Las Vegas Paris Hotel "really is like being in France. In my hotel last night I was eating a cheeseburger and saying, 'c'est magnifique!"

After a series of clips for such upcoming indie pics as The Duchess (Keira Knightley is coaxed out of her corset) and the geriatric singers doc Young@Heart, which played well at ShoWest on indie night and should do some biz, ThinkFilm's Mark Urman presented actress/director Helen Hunt with the Breakthrough Director of the Year Award for Then She Found Me. While Hunt played down her looks in the pic, which she adapted herself from the novel, she looked stunning onstage in a form-fitting gold dress and teetering heels. "I'm the daughter of a director, and an actress who served at the feet of directors my whole life," said Hunt, who wants to fight for "movies where people talk to each other and feel things sharply and fiercely." Here's the Access Hollywood interview with Hunt.

Also in Vegas was playwright/filmmaker (and poker player) David Mamet, writer-director of SPC's jujitsu pic Redbelt (which has a terrific trailer). Mamet accepted the ShoWest filmmaking award, saying, "We're fortunate that our forefathers insisted on a country where it's nobody's business who expresses what. We don't have censorship or an intellectual elite. What we have is a marketplace of ideas."

I also took pics of Hunt and fellow award recipients Robert Redford and Alan Ball (Towelhead), but the photos sucked; a couple more of my ShoWest atmosphere snaps are on the jump:

ShoWest: MPAA Popularizing DVD Sniffing Dogs Lucky and Flo

With 90% of all pirated DVDs originating from in-theater Camcorders, says the MPAA, the org is happy to reward its patrons for fighting piracy. Its Camcorder Reward Program will give consumers who inform on camcorder pirates in their theaters a cash prize of $500. "We're getting more sophisticated at intercepting and arresting more people," said MPAA chairman Dan Glickman, who described syndicates of professionals centered largely in 40 states--the ones that have passed anti-piracy laws. The MPAA is also working on getting more anti-piracy legislation passed in Mexico and many other countries. One way the MPAA is trying to teach kids at an early age that film piracy is wrong is by popularizing DVD-sniffing Labradors Lucky and Flo in the pages of the Weekly Reader.

ShoWest: The $100 Million-Plus Honor Reel

ShoWest started off Tuesday with the annual Honor Reel of films that made over $100 million, 28 last year, starring Peter Parker, Harry Potter and Jack Sparrow, among others, with two from the Judd Apatow comedy factory, several big FX and comics flicks, musicals (Enchanted, Hairspray, and Alvin and the Chipmunks), and big animation titles like Ratatouille (which stuck out amid all the other stuff as a Quality Film) and The Simpsons. (Every one of the $100-million-plus club had some digital playdates as well.) There were seven $200-million-plus pics, and four that grossed over $300 million.

While these films may have grossed a lot, they didn't all return pots of money, because some, like Evan Almighty and Blades of Glory, were very expensive. Rush Hour 3 ended up making up for its lackluster b.o. on DVD. I was also struck by how many movies appealed to adults as well as kids. (One Sony exec explained that the current Vantage Point did as well as it did by playing to the boomer crowd.)

And there are a few stars left in the Hollywood firmament, it seems: Depp, Cage (with two biggies), Willis and Smith among them, and in the comedy world, Carrell and Sandler.

300 reminded me that we should expect a rash of imitators to turn up soon.

Trailer Watch: The Grand

I got a kick out of screenwriter Zak Penn's last mock doc, The Incident at Loch Ness, which pretended to be a doc about a loony filmmaker (played by real-life doc-director Werner Herzog) chasing the Loch Ness monster.

This time, Penn set his sights on Las Vegas, and threw a group of actors with characters to play-- among them Herzog, Woody Harrelson, Ray Romano, David Cross, Ray Liotta, and Shannon Elizabeth-- into an actual Vegas poker tournament. The movie opens March 21.

Here's the trailer:

I played seven card stud at The Grand in 2002, when I was doing jury duty with AICN's Harry Knowles and critic Emanuel Levy at Cinevegas. I was the only woman at the table all night (except for one dealer), and I promised myself I would not lose more than $100. But after I was way up and I knew my luck had changed (as it did every time someone moved at the table, whether it was a dealer or a new player), I kept playing until I lost my 100 bucks. It was great fun. Most of the tables are Texas Hold 'Em now, which I can play, but it's not my game. It's hard to find a stud table anymore. On this ShoWest trip, I doubt I'll have time to play poker. We'll see.

ShoWest, Young Man

I'm off to the annual exhibitor's convention in Las Vegas, ShoWest, to explore the latest in digital projection and 3D and sour candy and summer trailers and much, much more. Will Indy 4 or the Wachowskis' Speedracer (see trailer below) save the summer? Will report back.

UPDATE: The Reeler is reporting that WB's Speedracer may close Tribeca on May 6, right before its May 9 opening.

Here's Variety's ShoWest coverage. Michael Speier covers how four studios' trailers played at Monday's International Day.