As far as we know, a second 300 movie is currently being worked on by Frank Miller, the creator and artist of the original 300 graphic novel. After the amazing success of the rated-R film back in 2007, it’s no wonder they want to pump out another one. Miller is interested, producer Marc Canton is interested and most importantly, Director Zack Snyder is interested… But only if Miller makes a graphic novel for it first.

The major question surrounding the project however, is when it would take place and who would it be about. Well, Gerard Butler is certainly interested in returning if it happens…

Just over a year ago at a Warner Brothers presentation for Watchmen, Zack Snyder revealed that the next movie would take place “between the Battle of Thermopylae and the Battle of Plataea,” the latter of which is where the first film ended off with Dilios, the one-eyed narrator (David Wenham), leading the Greeks into battle.

The obvious assumption is that it would take place where the first film left off with Dilios or someone else narrating about battles that took place before the events of 300.

I don’t know about you but when I first started seeing the promo material for 300, it was marketed as a visually epic action film with insane fight sequences. That’s what I wanted to see, that’s what I did see, that’s what I loved about it and I didn’t have to look deep into it for other reasons.

So on that note, when we hear news updates on a second 300 film, I personally get excited while some think the first should act as a standalone.

MTV spoke with Gerard Butler, whose new movie Law Abiding Citizen debuts October 16th, and they touched on the prospect of King Leonidas returning.

“I had an incredible time doing the first one, and I think that if the first one was a stand-alone, as a one-off, there’s no bad thing in that… But, you know, let’s see what it might bring forward with a second one.”

He also clarified by saying that he doesn’t know how “real” the project is at the moment but if it all comes to fruition, we’ll likely get the chance to see our favorite Herculean warriors on screen again to tear it up, Spartan style. Gerard Butler, David Wehnham, Vincent Regan, Michael Fassbender, Lena Headey – bring them all back!

We can also expect to see the same aesthetic of the first movie which Snyder said he will preserve, but the second project will definitely be much larger in scale, with more epic landscapes of Greece, including Athens and the Aegean. The same green screen tech and methodology will be employed for the next movie to keep that same look and to keep costs low.

Are you excited to see more intense Spartan action in a sequel/prequel to 300?

Source: MTV

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Marc Canton, the producer of 300, had a conversation with MTV Splash Page’s Larry Carroll recently, where he confirmed speculation that a sequel to 300 is gaining momentum. Reiterating comments previously made by 300 director Zack Snyder, Canton confirmed that Frank Miller, the author behind the graphic novel upon which the movie was based, is currently working on a sequel graphic novel that will later be transposed into a screenplay.

Commenting on what must surely be a complicated process (bringing to fruition a film that has few remaining leading characters), Canton says that Snyder and Miller have already agreed upon the story’s setting. However, in previous public statements, Snyder has said that he will have no hand in the creation of the new story in novel form; that will be left entirely up to Miller.

One would think the situation is pretty straightforward: if most or all of the original leading characters from 300 were killed off, the likelihood of a sequel seems slim. Apparently no one gave Canton that memo. Carroll asked how the minds behind the masterpiece plan on overcoming this rather large roadblock to the sequel. Here what Canton had to say:

Things are always looking good with ‘300,’ it’s a blessing and a gift…There’s a new Blu-Ray coming out all over again shortly, so that’s great. It’s like the gift that never stops giving.

Canton seems to see the pragmatic side of the argument: the potential for a 300 sequel to be another financial wellspring like the original.  But what of the character shortage that seems to be standing between the film in theory and the film in reality?  Carroll revealed to Splash Page that Gerard Butler’s character, King Leonidas, COULD be brought back from the dead, even though the first film ends with the recounting of his death by David Wenham’s Dilios. Said Canton: “Never assume anything; never assume anything…”

Producer Marc Canton

A text book answer from the Hollywood Producer School of Vagueness. What is it we are NOT to assume, exactly? That dead characters are going to stay dead? Because that would be presumptuous…

Let’s hope that Canton’s “gift that never stops giving” can deliver a second time.  Thankfully, with minds behind the project like Snyder and Miller, focused more on the creative aspect, the film has the potential to repeat the success of the original and continue to give Canton what he really want$.

How do you think they should approach the 300 sequel? Should they try an bring back King Leonidas?

Source: MTV Splash Page

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The perfect sequel contains new and old tricks that blend to make a new movie with characters and stories that genuinely deserved closure or extension. Zack Snyer, the man with the vision behind Watchmen and 300 understands this, and has the foresight to see when a sequel could strike gold, or when it will just strike bottom.

At a screening prior to the release of Watchmen: The Director’s Cut Blu-ray, Coming Soon reports, Snyder knew of no plans to make a sequel to Watchmen, and if a sequel were to manifest, he would not be a part of it.  However, in regards to whether his previous film, 300, would be given a second installment, Snyder had good news to share with fans.

When released in 2007, 300 was the third biggest opening for an R-rated film ever.  In the hopes of reproducing that success, Snyder is currently in talks with 300 creator Frank Miller about stepping up to the plate to take another swing for the fences in what’s going to be not quite a sequel, and not quite a prequel.

Few details are available this early in the process, but what is known is that the new movie would take place in the year between the epic death of Leonidas and leading up to Dilios’ (David Wenham) dramatic speech to the troops  at the end of 300:

“And so my king died, and my brothers died, barely a year ago. Long I pondered my king’s cryptic talk of victory. Time has proven him wise, for from free Greek to free Greek, the word was spread that bold Leonidas and his three hundred, so far from home, laid down their lives. Not just for Sparta, but for all Greece and the promise this country holds. Now, here on this ragged patch of earth called Plataea, Xerxes’s hordes face obliteration!”

Snyder hopes to preserve the aesthetic of the first movie, but says that the second will be bigger, with more epic landscapes of Greece, including Athens and the Aegean. Commenting on the technology used in the production of 300, Snyder said “The tech we used…was not a revolution. It’s basically what the weatherman has.” This same technology, he added, will once again be used during the making of the new installment, and that little will change when it comes to effects.

The 300 ‘follow-up’ is currently untitled, probably due to the fact that Miller is still penning the next installment of the graphic novel.  Snyder has said that he will have no hand in the new graphic novel, that it will be solely a creation of Miller’s, and only when it is complete will a script be derived from it.

As for casting, Wenham’s one-eyed Dilios deserves a larger part in the second go-round, though there is no mention of the role on his IMDB page (though it is on Snyder’s).  Additionally, I wouldn’t mind seeing more of Lena Heady’s character, Queen Gorgo, but those are just the musings of the horny adolescent within.  With all the slow-motion shots in that movie, it’s a shame we didn’t get more of her walking through the pillared halls of Sparta.

The risk in sequels is teetering on that fine line between producing and reproducing.  A successful sequel takes all the old ingredients that made the first installment great and adds new additions that can hold the-incredible-shrinking-attention-span of modern audiences. Too much of the old runs the risk of over-doing it and poorly reproducing the precursor using the same old tricks (any of The Matrix follow-ups); or under doing it, and all you’ve got is a new movie with old characters – a potentially poor fit.  So, to Hollywood: please, unless a sequel is justified by an unfinished story, or a surviving villain, get out while you’re on top.

Only time will tell for certain whether we see another 300.  But if we do, Snyder assures us, “It’s going to be the same way, but on crazier steroids.”

Source: Coming Soon via Ain’t It Cool News

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Well the totals are in, and Watchmen is nowhere near to being the box office smash many of us expected it to be.

After a solid $55 million opening weekend, Watchmen suffered a 67% second week drop-off, earning just $18 million for a total two-week domestic gross of $86 million (approx $112 million worldwide). Those earnings are far short of Watchmen’s reported $120 million budget, not to mention the astronomical cost of a marketing campaign so intense it seemed like Rorschach was making a run for The White House.

Now that Watchmen is in real danger of being a box office flop, it’s time to ask the hard question: has Watchmen’s underperformance killed “comic book movies?”

DEFINING THE ‘COMIC BOOK MOVIE’

There have always been two distinct approaches to comic book films. There are films like Watchmen, The Spirit, 300 and Sin City – films which adhere too closely to their comic book sources, trying to recreate those comics (sometimes panel for panel) in cinematic form. For films like Sin City and 300, this imitative style proved $uccessful; for The Spirit, not so successful. In the case of Watchmen, the verdict is still being debated, and will likely continue to be debated for years to come.

Opposite these “comic book movies” are films like The Dark Knight, Iron Man or Spider-Man, which are inspired by comic books but don’t try to BE comic books, instead opting to present the often-fantastic world of comic book superheroes in a more “realistic” cinematic fashion.

Having defined both approaches to comic book films, I ask again: has Watchmen killed the “comic book movie?” i.e., those films which try to be “living comic books,” championing style over substance; slavish fidelity to the source material over the hope of mass appeal?

STUDIO BACKLASH

Zack Snyder has said in many interviews that getting Warner Bros. to make a Watchmen film that closely adhered to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ original text (the alternate 1985 universe, the adult nature of the story, a certain climax involving a giant squid) was an uphill battle. The studio (like so many other studios that had previously passed on Watchmen) wisely felt that the denseness and oddity of the comic would limit the mass appeal of the film, which, even in the pre-production stages, was already being tagged with a huge budget.

Snyder argued that to do Watchmen “right,” the source material needed to be slavishly followed–that there was no better way to tell the story other than how Moore and Gibbons had already told it. The result is a Watchmen movie which is both liberated and limited: Liberated in the sense of what big-budget films are allowed to be (wonderfully stylized, full of psychopath heroes and dangling blue junk); Limited in the sense that Snyder’s take on Watchmen never succeeds in breaking free of its comic book boundaries, in order to live and breathe as its own unique piece of art. (BTW, that’s not an opinion: that’s the split down the middle you’ve been seeing amongst critics and audiences. Those who dig the comic book for all its dense, heady weirdness tend to love the film; those that don’t, don’t. And that divided opinion is surely taking its toll at the box office.)

So the question is: Going forward, how many box office millions are studios going to be willing to risk, just to pay homage to the fanboy nation? Watchmen screenwriter David Hayter recently asked moviegoers to see the film a second time, in order to send the message to Hollywood that there is a market for “complex” comic book films. By now, however, he may be preaching to an empty choir.

DO FANBOYS RUN THE SHOW?

One thing that was very unique about the whole Watchmen experience was the level of consideration the filmmakers gave to the fanboy nation. In every interview or panel he was on, Zack Snyder went to great lengths to stress that he too was a Watchmen fanboy, and that he would not let the fanboy nation down by mucking with source material.

Now Snyder could’ve been totally B.S.’ing us all, but I don’t believe that. I believe that as far as filmmakers go, Zack Snyder really is a fanboy who was genuinely making this film for fanboys first, mass audiences second. Time will ultimately reveal the wisdom (or lack thereof) of that approach, but as of right now, it’s surely questionable.

Screen Rant’s own Rob Keyes recently wrote an article on the upcoming X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie, where he posed the question of just how much (or not) the filmmakers behind Wolverine are listening to fanboy opinions about how characters like Deadpool or Gambit get translated to the big screen. In that same vein, I find myself wondering: when it comes to comic book films, who really runs the show? Did fanboys really have that much influence before Watchmen? And now that Watchmen is coming up short, how much influence will fanboys not have going forward? Is a core fan base of comic book geeks really worth catering a big-budget film to? Or is mass appeal the bottom line every comic book filmmaker should be going for?

THE RISK OF MAKING A ‘COMIC BOOK MOVIE’

The simple truth is, some people are really into comic books while others can’t stand them. And we all know the reasons why the haters hate: The characters are too fantastic, the stories are too outlandish, the dialogue is too cheesy, etc., etc.

In order to make comic book films appeal to an audience beyond the comic store, filmmakers have to separate their adaptations from the “trappings” of their comic book sources, mining the raw essence of what made a superhero interesting or appealing in the first place, and then build a film on that foundation. People need never to have read a Batman comic to be intrigued by Bruce Wayne’s dark societal view, or a single issue of Spider-Man to relate to Peter Parker’s teenage angst. Of course, some would say that character recognition has everything to do with a comic book film’s chances at mass appeal (wide character recognition = wide film appeal). I would remind those people of the cases of Batman & Robin and V For Vendetta. Sometimes widely known doesn’t mean mass appeal, and vice versa.

Click to continue reading “Has Watchmen Killed ‘Comic Book Movies?’”

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Hmm… a prequel or a sequel to 300… how about BOTH!

After the huge success of 300, there was much talk of a potential prequel or sequel to the hit phenomenon. Well, it turns out there will be another 300 film and it will be a bit of both.

After the Warner Brothers’ Watchmen presentation on Wednesday, Robert Sanchez from IESB had a chance to throw a few questions at Zack Snyder during the cocktail reception. Simply asked when the second 300 film would be based, Snyder responded saying it would take place

“between the Battle of Thermopylae and the Battle of Plataea”

the latter of which is where the first film ended off with Dilios, the one-eyed narrator (played by my favorite, David Wenham), leading the Greeks into battle.

Frank Miller, creator of the original 300 graphic novel, will be working on the follow-up graphic novel, which will then be adapted for the second film. Snyder made sure to point out that this second piece of work will be entirely Frank Miller’s creation and that he is not involved in any way with the writing of the story.

It’s a relief to hear that the sequel/prequel will be an original comic turned into a movie rather than a movie turned into a comic. It’s also a relief to hear that Snyder will again helm the film.

What do you think? Should there be another 300 film? If Wenham is back, if Snyder is directing, and if they can bring back Gerard Butler as Leonidas, then I’m in for sure!

source: IESB

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By Vic Holtreman

Short version: Pretty close to being the ultimate “guy movie.”

I’ve waited a long time to see 300, the movie inspired by Frank Miller’s graphic novel about the Spartans. If nothing else, based on the trailers I was expecting a movie that at least visually, would blow me away. My only concern going in was that I had heard that there were WAY too many slow-motion scenes… in fact that every single battle sequence was in slow-mo. On the plus side, if ever there seemed to be a film that would connect directly into the testosterone center of the male brain this looked like it was going to be it.

For the most part, it delivers big time.

300 tells the (no doubt highly romanticized) story of the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C., where King Leonidas of Sparta made a stand against the self-proclaimed god-king of Persia and his massive army. Leonidas had 300 Spartan warriors and a few hundred other Greek conscripts as back up to go up against an army purported to be one million men strong.

Via narration the film opens with a short history lesson about Sparta and it’s people, and you immediately get a sense of who they are. There are no wimps or physically inferior people in this civilization… only the strong are allowed to live. Both the men and women are forceful, proud people, with some male children destined to become ultimate warriors who begin training as soon as they can walk.

We see Leonidas (played with great gusto by Gerard Butler) as a seven year old in combat training where his instructor pulls no punches, and then at about 10 or 12 years old where he undergoes the rite of passage in the wild. He will either return as a man or he will not return at all. Cut to him at 40 and as king, where he and his beautiful wife Queen Gorgo (played by Lena Headey) obviously rule together. A messenger from the king of Persia comes to tell Leonidas he must kneel before King Xerxes (played by the insanely tall Rodrigo Santoro) and submit to Persian rule. Leonidas gives a typical Spartan response when he refuses… with feeling.

Sure, there is some political maneuvering going on as part of the story back in Sparta, where the Queen tries to convince the council to send the rest of the Spartan army to reinforce the 300, and there are a couple of erotic nude scenes to keep the male audience happy (that Oracle… woah). And the reason for the politics is that King Leonidas went against the wishes of the council and the creepy, lecherous and leperous high priests in deciding to attack the Persian army. He takes 300 men to face King Xerxes at Thermopylae, where a narrow canyon will allow him to hold off the hordes of invaders with relatively few men. And this, my friends is why you go see this movie.

But the BATTLE is what 300 is all about.

The fight scenes in this movie are incredible… the word “glorious” comes to mind. Yes, there is a lot of slow motion but it serves to accentuate the battle. It’s mesmerizing to watch this small band of men go against everything Xerxes throws at them. No matter what, they don’t back down. They take on regular foot soldiers, archers, creepy “immortals” who are Xerxes elite fighting force, a wierd giant mutant guy who apparently doesn’t understand that getting stabbed hurts and is supposed to stop you, and on up from there. These men led by King Leonidas are the very definition of “Never Say Die.”

The only thing that kept this movie from getting a NC-17 rating for violence is the fact that it’s shot in sepia tones and the blood that appears onscreen look black (as it did in Lord of the Rings). And there is a LOT of blood.

Now I’m not a big critic of the MPAA, but there are some things they decide that are just plain silly as far as I’m concerned. You can have gore galore in a movie, but as long as the blood isn’t red they’ll cut it some slack. Wierd, but I digress.

Aside from the amazing battles, I enjoyed the performances of the leads. Butler was intense and feral when required, yet still had a quiet side as Leonidas. David Wenham (who played Faramir in Lord of the Rings) does a somber job as Leonidas friend and the narrator, and Lena Headey as Leonidas’ queen was both beautiful and strong onscreen, plus with an outfit or two that rivals the famous Princess Leia metal “slave bikini.”

I’ve also never seen such a huge collection of six-pack abs outside of a bodybuilder competition. I imagine that Gold’s Gym and 24 Hour Fitness are going to see spikes in new membership numbers for the next couple of weeks as this movie makes millions of coach potato men feel physically insignificant as they stuff popcorn in their faces.

On the negative side, I thought the film went on a bit too long and started to run out of steam towards the end. The political aspect of the film that takes place back in Sparta was not compelling when compared to what was going on at the battlefield. Much like watching an American Idol performance where a big finish can make you forget the mediocre beginning and middle, I had to remember how great the first 80% of 300 was and not judge it only on how it felt towards the end.

Overall, a great ride that will get you fired up if you’re a guy, and although it’s very bloody I suppose there is lots of eye candy for the ladies.

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