They’ve started filming Burke and Hare up in Edinburgh, Scotland. Directed by John Landis it stars Starring Pegg, Serkis, Isla Fisher, Jessica Hynes, Tom Wilkinson, Hugh Bonneville, Tim Curry and Sir Christopher Lee.
This is out first glimpse of what the characters look like.
The real-life Burke and Hare, who hailed from Ireland, were responsible for the deaths of at least 17 people from 1827 until 1828. After murdering their victims, the pair then went on to sell the bodies to Dr Robert Knox, who dissected them in his anatomy classes at Barclay’s anatomy school in Surgeon’s Square.
Looking good so far. Keep checking back as we may have some words from Mr Pegg before too long.
There is a great interview with Steven Spielberg over at the LA Times about his work on the Tintin adaption – The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn.
It stars stars Jamie Bell (Billy Elliot, King Kong) as Tintin, Andy Serkis (The Lord of the Rings, King Kong) as Captain Haddock, Daniel Craig (Casino Royale) as Red Rackham and Nick Frost and Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Paul) as the Thompson Twins. Peter Jackson is producing it with the animation done by Jackson’s Weta Workshop.
“It was based on my respect for the art of Hergé and wanting to get as close to that art as I could, Hergé wrote about fictional people in a real world, not in a fantasy universe,” Spielberg said. “It was the real universe he was working with, and he used National Geographic to research his adventure stories. It just seemed that live action would be too stylized for an audience to relate to. You’d have to have costumes that are a little outrageous when you see actors wearing them. The costumes seem to fit better when the medium chosen is a digital one.”
They are using the technology from James Cameron’s Avatar so it means that it should look spot on and Spielberg could also watch the action on the digital sets as the actors went through the motions.
“I just adored it,“ he says. “It made me more like a painter than ever before. I got a chance to do so many jobs that I don’t often do as a director. You get to paint with this device that puts you into a virtual world, and allows you to make your shots and block all the actors with a small hand-held device only three times as large as an Xbox game controller.”
“When Captain Haddock runs across the volume, the cameras capture all the information of his physical and emotional moves,” the director said. “So as Andy Serkis runs across the stage, there’s Captain Haddock on the monitor, in full anime, running along the streets of Belgium. Not only are the actors represented in real time, they enter into a three-dimensional world.”
Fingers crossed that they get it spot on as I have fond memories of reading the Tintin books when I was a kid. The film is due out in 2011.
The cast for John Landis’ new film, Burker and Hare, has gone huge. Joining Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis, as graverobbers William Burke and William Hare, are Isla Fisher (Confessions of a Shopaholic, Wedding Crashers), Jessica Hynes (Spaced, Shaun of the Dead), Tom Wilkinson (Batman Begins), Tim Curry (The Rocky Horror Picture Show, It, Legend), Ronnie Corbett (one of The Two Ronnies – British comedy legend), Reece Shearsmith (The League of Gentlemen, Psychoville, The Cottage), David Schofield, Allan Corduner, Bill Bailey (great stand up comedian), Hugh Bonneville, Michael Smiley and Sir Christopher Lee (star of so many films).
Landis describes the film as a “black romantic comedy” in spite of its story which is a comedic take on the true story of the 1828 Edinburgh body-snatchers Burke and Hare. These two Irish entrepreneurs discover that a dead body can fetch a hefty price when the demands of the leading medical professors Dr. Knox (Tom Wilkinson) and Dr. Monroe (Tim Curry) reach beyond that of the local supply.
With a cast like this it should be a great film. A great mix of horror and comedy icons. Shooting has already begun according to STYD.
– Sean Penn and Robert Pattinson are considering joining Water for Elephants at Fox 2000 reports Variety. Based on the best-selling historical novel by Sara Gruen, the story centers on a 90-year-old man (Pattinson) reminiscing about his life and is set during the Depression. At the time the man found work at a B-level circus taking care of the animals. He sees the brutality of circus life while falling for the wife of an abusive animal trainer (Penn). Reese Witherspoon is already attached to play the wife.
– Michael Winterbottom (“Nine Songs”) is next set to direct the $5 million indie Promised Land for Revolution Studios reports Variety. The story deals with the events that lead up to the 1948 partition of Palestine and the subsequent creation of the state of Israel. Jim Sturgess (“Across the Universe,” “21”) will star as a British officer hunting down the extremist Jewish factions.
– Neil Gaiman says the film adaptation of his The Graveyard Book is still on the cards. Speaking to The Los Angeles Times Gaiman said “It was all put together over at Miramax Films. The people there had a long, great relationship with Neil Jordan and it was all set up and ready to go, and then Miramax was more or less erased from existence. It became a filing cabinet in somebody’s desk, more or less… But it looks like almost all the pieces are on the table again. They have a studio, they have a distributor and they are putting stuff together and I’m not allowed to say anything else.”
– Martin Scorsese is in talks to direct a live-action adaptation of Brian Selznick’s children’s book The Invention of Hugo Cabret reports Variety. The 2008 novel centers on an orphaned boy who secretly lives in the walls of a busy Paris train station and looks after the clocks. He gets caught up in a mystery adventure when he attempts to repair a mechanical man.
– Isla Fisher (“Wedding Crashers,” “Confessions of a Shopaholic”) and Tom Wilkinson (“Michael Clayton,” “Duplicity”) have joined the horror comedy Burke and Hare says Heat Vision Blog.
The film is based on the true story a pair of the U.K.’s earliest serial killers, William Burke (Simon Pegg) and William Hare (Andy Serkis), gravediggers who lucratively sold the corpses of their victims to a medical college for dissection. Fisher will play Pegg’s girlfriend, an actress looking for a patron who might or might not be an accomplice to the murders. Wilkinson will play Dr. Robert Knox, an anatomy lecturer looking for fresh corpses. John Landis directs.
– John and Drew Dowdle (“Quarantine”) are set to direct an adaptation of Jack Kilborn’s gory novel Afraid reports Production Weekly. Larry Malkin and Chad Thumann will adapt the script about five government-sponsored lethal torturers wrongly sent on a mission to a small, sleepy Wisconsin town. The military sends in a bunch of Green Berets, Special Forces, SEALs and marines to take down this killing force. However it’s the townsfolk who band together to save their home that will make the critical difference.
A bit of a switcheroo in casting for the upcoming John Landis horror comedy Burke & Hare.
Simon Pegg has confirmed on his Twitter that outgoing “Doctor Who” star David Tennant has been replaced by BAFTA nominated Andy Serkis (Lord of the Rings, Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll).
Pegg and Tennant were set to play the titular characters in the story of 19th-century grave robbers who find a lucrative business providing dead bodies for an Edinburgh medical school.
There has been no official announcement or a reason for Tennant’s department, but it is probably due to problems with schedules. Tennant stars in the NBC pilot “Rex Is Not Your Lawyer” which was originally to premiere in the Fall but may be moved due to all the Leno / Conan shenanigans going on recently.
Regarding his BAFTA nomination for portraying Ian Dury in Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll 45-year-old Andy Serkis said in a statement that he was “just totally blown away!”
He said: “The whole experience of making this film with such amazingly talented, articulate, honest people has been a joy, and to get this nomination is not only a great thrill for all of us involved, but a fitting a tribute at a time that we mark the 10 year anniversary of the passing of the magnificent man himself, the unique Ian Dury.”
Do you think Serkis is a better choice than Tennant?
A biography of Ian Dury who was stricken with polio at a young age and defied expectations by becoming one of the founder of the punk-rock scene in Britain in the 1970s.
Starring Andy Serkis, Naomie Harris, Olivia Williams, Mackenzie Crook, Toby Jones, Noel Clarke and Ray Winstone.
Lots and lots of Hobbit goodness and it looks like Ron Perlman won’t be Hellboy anymore. BBC radio’s Simon Mayo had Guillermo del Toro on the show.
They were chatting about del Toro’s vampire novel The Strain, but they also discussed many of the films he’s working on. /Film picked up on this first.
The Hobbit – We know it is going to be split into two films and del Toro mentioned that they will be expanding on some of the things mentioned in passing.
There is a whole other chapter, so to speak, which is the comings and going of Gandalf which are dealt with, people that know the lore know that Gandalf was delayed with a crisis… with a character that is very shady called the Necromancer that proves to be Sauron.
He was then asked if Andy Serkis would be returning which led to some cool news.
Yes [and] Ian McKellen is back, [and] Hugo Weaving in the roles they originated in the trilogy.
That’s Gollum, Gandalf and Elrond. No news on who’ll be playing Bilbo. He also mentioned that they have got the basics down for Smaug but it will take a good few months before they get it finished. Will Perlman or Doug Jones have a role in the film?
Hellboy 3 – Ron Perlman has said he no longer wants to wear the prosthetics, so Guillermo “guesses” it will never happen. I hope this gets changed though as I would love to see another Hellboy film.
Frankenstein – Doug Jones (Silver Surfer, Abe Sapien) has been cast as the monster. Guillermo will be directing it and they are starting make-up tests very soon. I can’t wait to see what the Monster looks like.
The show is on BBC’s iPlayer for the next two days and the interview starts at the 1 hour 47 minute mark.
Back in January I posted part of an interview with Andy Serkis where he mentioned he would be playing punk legend Ian Dury in a biopic due to start filming this month.
Now the film has a title, Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, and will be directed by Mat Whitecross reports Variety.
It has also gained an excellent cast. Naomi Harris (“Pirates of the Caribbean”), Ray Winstone (“The Departed”), Olivia Williams (“The Sixth Sense”), Noel Clarke (TV’s “Doctor Who”), Toby Jones (“Infamous”), MacKenzie Crook (“Pirates of the Caribbean”) and Bill Milner (“Son of Rambow”) .
Arthur Darvill, James Jagger, Tom Hughes, Shakraj Soornack, Clifford Samuel and Joe Kennedy are also set to play Dury’s band members the Blockheads.
Paul Viragh penned the script, Damian Jones is producing and shooting kicks off May 3rd in London.
No word yet on whether Andy Serkis will be portraying Ian Dury through the wonders of motion capture 🙂
It’s going to be called The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn.
Jamie Bell (Billy Elliot, King Kong) will be playing Tintin after Thomas Sangster dropped out.
Daniel Craig will be playing the nefarious “Red Rackham”. Craig previously worked with producer and director of the first Tintin film Steven Spielberg on Munich.
The film will co-star Andy Serkis, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Gad Elmaleh, Toby Jones and Mackenzie Crook. All will be doing the motion capture dance.
Finally the script is being writtern by Edgar Wright (Spaced, Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz), Steven Moffat (Dr Who, Press Gang) and Joe Cornish (Adam & Joe).
Cinemablend have a great interview with Andy Serkis (LOTR, King Kong, The Cottage). He chats about his work on The Hobbit and Tintin. However, he then mentions a little bit about what he will be doing next.
“I’m actually doing a film in April about the life of Ian Dury, who’s a proto-punk rocker in the 1970s. He’s an amazing character, a real poet. He sort of came up out of the British pub rock scene. He sort of pre-empted the Sex Pistols and the whole punk movement. And he was a polio sufferer, so he basically didn’t have much use of his left leg or his left arm. The chance of being any kind of rock star is like zero [back then]. He was one of the first disabled punk rockers ever. I’m really looking forward to that.”
Interesting stuff and as you can see from the photos (the one of Dury is from Tom Sheehan’s gallery) the physical similarity is there.
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