When McG started making Terminator Salvation , he went in wanting, first and foremost, to correct what he believed was the biggest shortcoming he showed in his work on the Charlie’s Angel films: this time, he would see a bare boob. So, the director told Terminator star Moon Bloodgood that rain makes things artistic, and got the actress to take her top off for a few seconds in one rain-drenched shot. The pathetically tame scene was ultimately cut to ensure a PG-13 rating, but of course it’s appearing on the DVD to boost sales to the desperately horny. And now it’s on internet:

Bet you didn’t know there’s a Shockwave game for Year One. That’s because Shockwave, well, kinda sucks. I can’t even get the game to play on my Mac; I tried Safari and Firefox, so if anyone would like to give it a whirl and report back let me know. So far all I know is that you try and herd ox without making them nervous and run away. Granted, Sony’s Year One is not exactly a property ripe for video game adaptation, and its target audience is much broader than movies whose studios put in a lot of effort at viral buzz, but if it’s that the case, why bother even making one at all? It’s shoddy and looks like the marketing department already knew Year One (which I liked, by the way) would already be poorly reviewed and have a weak box office showing despite the big names attached. On the other hand, The Dark Knight, which was also distributed by Sony, built up a ton of online buzz from its viral websites like WhySoSerious.com , Friends of Harvey Dent, and others with help from the marketing company 42 Entertainment. The Dark Knight would have been very successful even without these sites, which took a lot of effort and money to put together. Same with the campaign for Terminator Salvation and its Skynet Research site. It’s a no-brainer summer blockbuster, destined to rake in the bucks despite the many complaints from critics and fans. Filed under: Fandom , Distribution , Movie Marketing Continue reading Weekend WTF: Building Up Viral Movie Buzz Permalink | Email this | Comments

With Terminator Salvation getting dismal reviews and less-than-stellar box office, Sony Pictures has decided on the last-ditch effort of showing their entire Termi-hand, and they’ve released a new television spot that reveals the much talked about cameo by a young, digital Arnold Schwarzenegger head pasted on a bodybuilder Roland Kickinger’s frame. If you haven’t seen it yet, I think you’ll be pretty impressed by how surprisingly convincing it looks. All those years of copy-and-pasting bosses’ and teachers’ heads onto naked bodies has finally fulfilled itself in a meaningful way:

Oh, Terminator Salvation . It’s the sequel that tried, grabbing excellent names like Christian Bale, Helena Bonham Carter, and Anton Yelchin … but it had so much going against it. We had already learned, after Terminator 3 came out, that Terminators without James Cameron aren’t much fun at all. But now another sequel with another John Connor, all at the hands of the Charlie’s Angels helmer, and it just didn’t do very well at all — disappointing numbers and an ouch-worthy 34% fresh at Rottentomatoes . And what we all want to know is what does James Cameron think about what’s happened to his beloved franchise? Well, he’s not the sort of guy to be too catty, but what he said during a Q&A at the end of last month says it all. Cameron discusses how he wasn’t keen on returning to Terminator after Titanic , and how he suggested that Arnold Schwarzenegger get as much money as he could for his work in the third film. When Cameron told him just how much he should ask for, Arnie said: “Really?” And Cameron’s response was: “Sure, are you kidding? They’re not gonna make the movie without you. That’d be stupid!” (You can hear Cameron tell the story over at Movieline .) So, there you have it. Of course, it takes more than Arnie to make a good Terminator film, as we learned last time. And it certainly takes more than some mediocre-at-best CGI of the man to make for a good T800 this time. But hearing Cameron talk, I want to see the director finish Avatar and get back into the Cyberdyne spirit, like the anal-retentive parent who trashes their kid’s haphazard school project and redoes it into a masterpiece. Father knows best … Filed under: Sci-Fi & Fantasy , Fandom , Remakes and Sequels Permalink | Email this | Comments

Terminator Salvation has been in theaters for over a week now, and it seems to have already been largely forgotten. Remember how much we looked forward to seeing it? It was a little like those similarly heady days, way back in March, when we were eager to see Watchmen . Ah, we were all so young then. Despite the long summer days that have passed, I find myself still pondering Salvation . But I’m not thinking about the waste of a perfectly good Christian Bale , or continuing to boggle over the sadly inept action sequences. To be honest, I willed myself to forget most of it as soon as I was in the car. It seemed kinder to just let it go. No, what I can’t get over is how dead stupid SkyNet turned out to be. The evil, all-powerful threat to humanity that James Cameron introduced in 1984 turns out, in the fourth movie, to be a huge, incompetent boob who can be beaten with a tool belt and a lucky shot fired at a coolant line. Seriously? That’s your mechanized threat to all mankind? I can’t get over it. It was just so … silly. (Please note that spoilers follow. Serious spoilers. Like, not just descriptions of things that happen in the movie but spoilers . Thank you.) Back in 1970, there was a tidy little B-movie called Colossus: The Forbin Project . Based on a novel by D.F. Jones, the plot focused on a Cold War supercomputer, designed to control all of the U.S. and Allied nuclear weapons systems, which becomes sentient. Coincidentally, the Soviets have built a similar computer called Guardian — and when Colossus and Guardian become aware of each other, they decide to join forces and tell humanity to shove off. At the end of the film, Colossus announces that he/it is now ruler of the world. And there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. Filed under: Action , Sci-Fi & Fantasy , Fandom , Remakes and Sequels Continue reading ‘Terminator Salvation’ Afterthoughts: Boy, SkyNet Was Stupid Permalink | Email this | Comments

The weekend box office report. Email me for the Excel version. 1. Up - $68.2 million , because Pixar could animate a cockfight and it would still open huge. Especially in Latin America. 2. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian - $25.5 million , bringing its total gross to over $100 million and popularizing use of the saying, “It was no night at the museum!”, used to refer to nights that did not include exhibits spontaneously gaining consciousness. 3. Drag Me to Hell - Only $16.6 million . Where are all the teenagers taking dates to scary movies so that when the girl cowers in fear against the boy, he can give a sly grin and put his arm around her? Popular media led me to believe that happens constantly. 4. Terminator Salvation - $16.1 million –just enough to save humanity. We did it. 5. Star Trek - $12.8 million in gold-pressed latinum! Get it? Star Trek reference. The guy with the ears always talked about it. Weekend Box Office Results [Box Office Mojo]

I succumbed to the obvious sort-of-pun this week. I couldn’t help it. I’m sorry. $68.2 million for Up is pretty close to the highest opening weekend gross for any Pixar film in history — just about $2 million off the numbers for both Finding Nemo and The Incredibles . It beats last year’s Wall-E opening weekend by about $5 million, and since it’s probably a bit less challenging than that film, it may hold up a little bit better. $250 million probably isn’t out of reach, but we’ll see. The numbers for fan and critical favorite Drag Me to Hell — $16.6 million — will be a hot topic for discussion this week. It is not a particularly strong horror opening; this year, it finds a rough analogue in The Last House on the Left . The hope is that good reviews and word-of-mouth keep it afloat in the weeks to come, whereas most horror flicks open big and sink quickly. After opening second-banana to Night at a Museum last week, Terminator Salvation took the expected big hit its second weekend — 62%. It’s likely to top out around $130 million domestically which, I feel safe in saying, is below expectations. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian is running a little bit behind its predecessor, though the first film had the benefit of opening at Christmastime. And The Brothers Bloom quietly expanded onto 150 screens, winding up in 11th place with a decent per-screen average. Star Trek passed $200 million and now holds the #1 spot for the year. The full top 10 after the jump. Filed under: New Releases , Box Office Continue reading Weekend Box Office: ‘Up’ Rises Permalink | Email this | Comments

Hollywood: the only city in the world where having lunch at the right Italian cafe could net you millions of dollars. Two fledgling producers named Derek Anderson and Victor Kubicek parlayed a tip from a dining partner into a deal for the rights to the Terminator series, resulting in Terminator Salvation and a deal that entitles them to “rake in half of any profits that might come from box-office, DVD and television sales as well as all the proceeds from a new video game and other consumer products,” reports the Los Angeles Times . Dreams do come true — as long as you can talk somebody else into forking over millions of dollars to reward your moxie, good timing, and luck. It’s a fascinating story, and well worth reading for anyone interested in the business side of Hollywood — and for anyone who wonders, “What’s a producer?” In this case, newbie producers Anderson and Kubicek (who only had one credit prior to Salvation on a film that was never released) thought they had a deal in place for millions of dollars in financing from Dubai, and so made a $25 million offer on the rights to Terminator , which were available from independent producers Andrew Vajna and Mario Kassar . When the Dubai financing fell through, the duo got another “lucky break” in the form of a commitment from a Santa Barbara hedge fund. The producers then secured funding and distribution from Warner Bros. and Sony, decided on McG as director and Christian Bale as star, and the rest is history. The producing duo also controls sequel rights and reportedly have McG signed up for one sequel and Bale for two more. The Times also details various lawsuits that have followed in their wake, so it’s not all roses and champagne for Anderson and Kubicek. Still, nice work if you can get it. Filed under: Sci-Fi & Fantasy , Deals , Sony , Warner Brothers , Newsstand , Remakes and Sequels , Summer Movies Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Between barbecues and solemn remembrance on this four-day weekend, the following movies were most patronized: 1. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian - $70 million , showing a massive outpouring of support for this finale to the Indian in the Cupboard trilogy. 2. Terminator Salvation - $53.8 million . You’d think a powerful partnership with Pizza Hut would have been enough to push the film into first place. It worked so well for reading . 3. Star Trek - $29.4 million , bringing it well within reach of becoming the summer’s first $200 million blockbuster. Unless, as I’m predicting, The Soloist really picks up this week. 4. Angels & Demons - $27.7 million , dropping from first to fourth. What a slap in the Hanks. 5. Dance Flick - $13.1 million . There was a time when a horrible, Wayans Brothers-written comedy could have a summer opening at #2. How times have changed since Little Man . Weekend Box Office Results [Box Office Mojo]

Terminators were no match for Ben Stiller at the box office this weekend. Stiller’s Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian raked in $70 million in its opening weekend, besting the Christian Bale-fronted Terminator Salvation , according to Variety . The franchise reboot — which opened a day earlier than Museum — earned $53.8 million over the holiday weekend and an additional $13.4 million on its Thursday opening. Museum benefitted from … Read More > Other Links From TVGuide.com Star Trek Terminator Salvation Angels & Demons Night At The Museum: Battle Of The Smithsonian Dance Flick