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Louis Leterrier To Direct Universal’s ‘G’

Krystal Clark — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 17:35:31 +0000

Have you been wondering what Louis Letterier is doing with his free time, since he’s not directing the sequel to Clash of the Titans? Don’t worry your pretty little heads, because he’s just landed a new gig according to THR. The director has been tapped to helm the sci-fi flick G for Universal Pictures.

No serious plot details for the film have been released but the studio described G as Taken mixed with The Day After Tomorrow. This makes us wonder if the premise will center on a hostage situation during a global meltdown? Many think the G in the title represents gravity, which means the plot might have something to do with it being altered. Could it deal with a hostage situation in mid-air? Just joking, we don’t know how far this will go.

Universal is currently looking for screenwriters to adapt the project, which is based on an original idea of Management 360’s Guymon Casady. Leterrier is currently working on the film Now You See Me, and once he’s done with filming the screenplay for G should be ready to go.

What do you think of Leterrier directing G? Are you interested in seeing the film?

Clash Of The Titans: Movie Review

Krystal Clark — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 02:00:13 +0000

Clash of the Titans will finally blast into theaters this weekend after a release date shuffle and a mundane 3D upgrade. The film is a remake of the 1981 Desmond Davis classic that hammers out all the stiff, campy elements we loved to make a gritty hard-hitting epic. The lead character doesn’t have any boyish charm or feathery hair, instead Sam Worthington takes over as Perseus the demigod son of Zeus, the only one who can stop Hades and his pet the Kraken from destroying mankind.

The Players:

Director: Louis Leterrier
Writers: Travis Beacham, Phil Hay, Matt Manfredi, Beverley Cross (1981 screenplay)
Cast: Sam Worthington, Ralph Fiennes, Liam Neeson, Gemma Arterton, Mads Mikkelsen, Alexa Davalos, Nicholas Hoult, Pete Postlethwaite, Polly Walker, Danny Huston
Music: Ramin Djawadi
Cinematographer: Peter Menzies Jr.

The Plot:

In Clash of the Titans, Sam Worthington plays the bastard son of Zeus who gets caught in a power struggle between the gods. Hades is the film’s villain, the vengeful god of the Underworld, and a brave Perseus volunteers to take him down when his family falls victim to his merciless hand. From that point on he makes it his life’s mission to keep him from gaining Zeus’s power and unleashing hell on earth.

The Good:

The Cast: There was an interesting mix of actors who all brought something special to their performances. With the exception of one (I’ll get to that below), everyone was entertaining and fun to watch. Even though Worthington, Fiennes, and Neeson were the selling points for the film, the supporting actors were just as enjoyable.
The Settings: There are a lot of special effects used in this movie, but the one thing Leterrier didn’t skimp on were the locations. The landscapes were all real, and you didn’t get that 300 feeling of everything being done in a studio. In the end, that authenticity accented the story and looked great on camera.
Costumes: The designers amped up the masculine factor with the soldiers costumes by making them look as strong as possible considering they were wearing skirts. After a while, you forget about their legs and you start concentrating on their fights. Yes, they do wear skirts, but skirts of armor.
The Action: The action sequences in the film are fun to watch. The last major fight (without spoiling anything) was the best out of the bunch. It features an old favorite from the original, which happens to be a winged horse.
Pegasus: Speaking of winged horses, Pegasus looks amazing here. There’s such a mystery surrounding him. He comes in and out throughout the movie, but he shows up when it counts. When he unites with Perseus it’s a beautiful sight to see.
Io: When it was first revealed that this character was created specifically for the remake it bothered me, but in the film you realize that she does serve a purpose. She’s not just there hanging out in the shadows looking pretty. She’s essentially a plot device to get Perseus from point A to point B.
The Kraken: The design for the killer beast was terrifying, which is great because that’s what the Kraken is supposed to be. When it’s finally unleashed at Zeus’ command all hell breaks loose (literally) and its introduction is priceless.

The Bad:

The Accents: A pet peeve of mine is whenever films are set in Greek or Roman times, the characters always have British accents and in the case of Clash of the Titans, we had Australian, British, American, and Danish. No one was on the same page. In Avatar and Terminator Salvation, it appeared that Worthington at least tried to cover his natural accent, but here he tossed it to the wind.
Alexa Davalos: I’ve seen Ms. Davalos appear in other projects and her acting was always up to par, but that isn’t the case here. She’s very stiff and comes across as doing an impression of someone from the Royal Shakespeare Company. Her regal English portrayal just doesn’t work.

Overall:

Despite a few character flaws, Clash of the Titans is an amazing movie. It’s pure popcorn entertainment and if you go into it with that type of mindset you won’t be disappointed.

Rating: 8.5/10

Clash of the Titans opens in theaters nationwide in 2D and 3D on April 2, 2010.

Photos:

Trailer:

Do you plan on seeing Clash of the Titans this weekend?

Interview: Louis Leterrier for Clash of The Titans

Krystal Clark — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 22:00:09 +0000

French director Louis Leterrier has become the go-to-guy for remakes and reboots of well known properties. His 2008 revamp The Incredible Hulk was a nice improvement from its 2003 predecessor and now he’s hoping to work that same magic on 1981′s Clash of the Titans. The original was directed by Desmond Davis and starred several veteran actors including Laurence Olivier. During that time, Davis’ version was revolutionary with its stop motion special effects and memorable characters including a mechanical owl and its feminine faced hero Perseus, played by Harry Hamlin.

Almost 30 years later, Leterrier traded in the pretty male protagonist for a realistic everyman with Australian actor Sam Worthington, and replaced the stop motion with top notch CGI. The director’s take on Clash of the Titans is grittier, dirtier, and a lot more action oriented than the original. But despite all the updates, we still get to see a group of men fight each other in dresses, so he didn’t really alter it that much.

Who would have the audacity to remake Clash of the Titans? That was the thought that ran through Leterrier’s mind when the film was pitched to him. He, like everyone else was skeptical about touching a movie that is so sacred to so many people.

It was actually Basil’s idea. Basil [Iwanyk, producer] is the one that came to me, I was like, “Really, are you insane?” Remaking this classic? I had lunch with Basil, he tells me about this movie. Obviously, I say, “No I don’t want to do it, it’s a classic. I just don’t want to do it.” But I go home and I watch it and then I’m like, “Ah man, I’m not going to be offered this thing again.” So I call Basil, I was like, “Okay, how can we make it different?” He said that there was this screenplay by Travis [Beachem] and I read it and it was so exciting. Travis was not available so Matt [Manfredi] and Phil [Hay] came on and we decided to — my issue with the original as much as I loved it, watching it again, was the starting point.

One of the main things that the director and the writers wanted to change from the original was the motivation of Perseus. He goes on this dangerous pursuit all in the name of love for a woman that he barely knows and it doesn’t seem believable. They wanted to change that and give him something tangible to hold on to throughout his journey.

It’s like the catalyst of the love story was not working for me and we decided together to make it more of a re-invent story. You watch Gladiator, you watch Brave Heart, these are not anti-heroes, but heroes that don’t know they are, and then the catalyst, the death of their families, death of their loved ones, sends them on the road to go on this impossible journey, suicide mission and along the way we decided to make it very human. We added more humans than in the original movie. More actors and more characters in our movie.

The reason Leterrier was able to get away with shifting the focus to the humans as opposed to the creatures is because of the positive reinforcement he got from many people involved with the original. He spoke to Ray Harryhausen, (a producer and visual effects creator on the 1981 film), who constantly emphasized the importance of the story when speaking to the director.

I actually called Ray Harryhausen twice and said what I was doing. I told him I was the guy. He didn’t talk about the creatures, I thought he would talk about the visual effects — don’t make it CG, it’s going to ruin everything — but he talked about the characters and the cast, and it was by getting the amazing cast that we have from all corners of the world that we made it. The Harryhausen world from the 60s to 80s is almost a blur. As much as I was a fan of the original, it was the old models, I was like great skeletons, fighting skeletons (laughs)? We loved Ray and he really helped me. He said, go my son, go!

With a film of this scope you could easily do everything inside a studio, on a soundstage, or in front of a green screen, but that’s not the route the director wanted to take. There was a lot of on location shooting that took place on Clash because Leterrier wasn’t trying to make another 300. He wanted his own version of this Greek epic that the studio and fans had trusted him to create.

It was important to give a scope and to actually set it in Europe — sort of like the backdrop of Greek mythology — and not to shoot it in Australia or New Zealand, we actually wanted to shoot it in Europe. So we went to this island called Tenerife which is part of the Canary islands. There are volcanoes that popped out of the ocean of the coast of Morocco (they are Spanish-owned islands, but they are on the coast of Morocco) so you get that real, beautiful, Moroccan light, but it’s not sand it’s volcanic rocks so you got amazing colors — the red, black green, clouds that come over, it’s fantastic. It was 7,000 feet up. People had difficulties breathing up there. Then England, we shot some stuff around London, and we went to Wales to fight that quarry. It’s hasn’t been overused by production.

Even though he found the shooting locations beautiful, overall they were a nightmare to film. The weather was unpredictable, which was sometimes hard for the actors to deal with.

We wanted locales that didn’t look like anything else. And it was the middle of July and it rained every day, and it was frigid and I was alright because I was wearing six coats, but poor Sam. Initially the rain was going up and when it’s going up it’s not good. They also went to Ethiopia to shoot some of the plates, because there is these volcanic sulfur lake and the colors are really beautiful and popping. All the tricks of the scorpions, you see there. We wanted to create a new world, something different than anything you’ve seen before. It’s not Lord of the Rings, It’s not Gladiator. It’s not that look.

Sam Worthington takes over the role of Perseus that was originally played by Harry Hamlin. The actor was coming off a string of blockbuster productions with both Avatar and Terminator Salvation before joining Clash so the guy Leterrier met over a year ago looked completely different from the man we see today. And we mean that in a good way!

Sam–it was a challenge to find the perfect Perseus, everybody has an idea in their heads — blonde kid, son of Zeus, buff, everything. I met a lot of actors and this kid from Australia is available after four years of shooting Avatar and Terminator, he was exhausted and he was coming to Los Angeles. I said, I’d love to meet him and see what he’s like, I was meeting everyone, I met like 60-70 [actors] and I sat down with him. Although he was not the Perseus I had in mind, he was perfect, he had everything. He loved the same movies I loved, the same stories I loved. He’s Perseus, he’s Jake Sully, he’s his character in Terminator [Marcus Wright], he’s all these guys, that’s Sam. We had to engineer our screenplay which was more Luke Skywalker to more like “I know who I am.” He’s in it.

Worthington became an overnight success when James Cameron chose him as the lead in his top secret 3D epic Avatar, then McG brought him on board to star as the next great machine in Terminator Salvation. Leterrier discussed the the balance of the actor’s work along with the pressure that comes with being the “next big thing.”

Sam has been humbled by success. At first he was like, will Avatar be good? James Cameron took 10 years making it, blue guys really? No one knew what it was going to be. Sam knew it and obviously James Cameron, but no one knew and it was funny, we did some reshoots after Avatar came out and he was relaxed. He knew that Avatar was right.

When it came to the rest of the cast, the director had big shoes to fill. We’re talking Laurence Olivier sized shoes, one of the greatest actors of all time who played the original Zeus, King of the gods. He managed to get veteran actors Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes to play brothers at war with each other and with the humans.

There’s three brothers, Poseidon, Hades, Zeus and all the other guys that you don’t see. As for Ralph,it was funny the meeting session, I was at the Four Seasons in New York, met him for breakfast and we started talking. He feels the physicality and once he gets the physicality, it’s not like talking to Ralph Fiennes. He was doing this, and doing this, and then I was talking to Hades and he was in character. Sometimes he’s in character. He’s in control.

Overall, with the cast, crew, and the story Leterrier was most impressed by his group of screenwriters. The creative vibe between then came across in the film. Everyone was a die hard fan of the original and they wanted to make this remake fun, entertaining and classic for a new generation.

That’s why these writers were the best ones for the job, they we’re real fans of the work and real fans of cinema so I was loving every page that was coming to me. They never took themselves seriously. There was never — this scene will revolutionize how an audience member will see God and men, it was always fun. We make it in a fun way.

Clash of the Titans debuts in theaters on Friday, April 2nd in both 2D and 3D.

Clash of the Titans Photos With Liam Neeson as Zeus

Krystal Clark — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 17:57:15 +0000

We just got a boat load of photos from next year’s Greek epic, Clash of the Titans. A few of them will be featured in the latest issue of Empire Magazine, and the upcoming issue of Entertainment Weekly. Out of this group, the most breathtaking image is of Liam Neeson as Zeus. We finally get to see what he looks like as king of the gods!

Take a look at Liam, Sam Worthington and more from Clash of the Titans…

To browse our gallery, select any photo and it will enlarge and then allow you to scroll through the photos…

Neeson doesn’t have the silver mane we’d expect from the thunder/lightening god, but he does have the stature to carry the role. The beard and the armor makes his Zeus appear a lot more warrior-like than Laurence Olivier‘s pampered eighties version. The landscape for this film is a lot more grittier and rugged than its predecessor. When looking at these photos the phrase “fire and brimstone” comes to mind.

Clash of the Titans is directed by Louis Leterrier and will hit theaters on March 26, 2010.

What do you think of the latest photos from Clash of the Titans?

Clash of the Titans Behind the Scenes Footage

Krystal Clark — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 01:50:34 +0000

Tonight on MTV, they’re airing a movie special entitled Behind the Screen that features some exclusive first looks at several upcoming releases. One of the films highlighted is Louis Leterrier‘s remake of the 1981 Greek epic Clash of the Titans, which stars Australian actor Sam Worthington. We’ve only seen promotional photos from the film, so this is our first exposure to any live action footage.

Over on MTV’s website they’ve posted two videos from their Clash of the Titans segment. One features B-roll footage of Worthington playing with fire and jumping from ledges, while the other video is a compilation of several interviews including a one on one with Worthington’s love interest, Gemma Arterton.

After watching the footage from their set visit, I’m not as skeptical as I was before about the direction of the film. I’m an avid fan of Greek mythology and I always get annoyed when various adaptations mix up the backgrounds of certain characters. From what Worthington describes in his interview, it looks as if they’re staying somewhat close to the source material.

Clash of the Titans hits theaters next year on March 26th.

What do you think of Louis Letterier’s take on the film?

Louis Leterrier Describes a Summer of Avengers!

Krystal Clark — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 16:40:51 +0000

The Incredible Hulk director Louis Leterrier has voiced an epic idea about how he thinks the Marvel Avengers movie can rule the summer. The director recently spoke to Hero Complex while on the set of his upcoming film Clash of the Titans and said, “”I would love to do the Avengers film. I’d love to work with Marvel again. I loved working with them.” His excitement doesn’t stop there. Leterrier has a pitch that could meld Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor together in more ways than one.

According to the director:

I’ll tell you my real dream: To work with Joe Johnston and ["Thor" director] Kenneth Branagh and Jon Favreau and make like a triptych. We do four movies. We release them one a month for the summer. Or even every two weeks or three weeks. And the whole summer would be Avengers summer. So we do it the way they make television shows. One story arc but told in installments by different directors. So all of the directors that touch part of the Avengers world would do a part; we could make the movies shorter, maybe less than an hour and a half, and we use the same sets and save Marvel money. I would love to sit around a table with all of them a kick around the story. That’s my dream.

God, that sounds awesome! Comic fans would be on Marvel overload by the summer’s end. This sounds like a recurring dream for a lot of people. The idea of putting all the films together, avoiding the year or so wait between them sounds great, but would be costly to the studio. The amount of promotion and production it would take to have several tent-pole films running simultaneously would be more than draining.

Also, movie goers might not like the idea of seeing “partial films” when entering the theater. It sounds similar to the set up of The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. I was happy that the sequels were only months a part, but the way Reloaded left the audience hanging was unbearable! Besides, at this point I believe each film is in a different stage of pre and post-production.

What do you think of Leterrier’s Avenger’s idea?

Sam Worthington as Perseus in Clash of the Titans

Krystal Clark — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:40:32 +0000

I seriously didn’t think that I would care for the remake of Clash of the Titans, but somehow this film has gotten under my skin. The original version from the early eighties is considered campy by today’s standards but at the time it was seen as quite epic. My biggest concern was seeing how director Louis Leterrier would once again elevate the film to it’s former glory over 25 years later. A recent scan from Empire magazine has popped up online, and it’s forcing me to reevaluate my stance on his vision.

Check out the full pic of Sam Worthington as Perseus after the jump.

Image courtesy of Rope of Silicon.

This photo, dare I say, gives me hope. It looks as if Leterrier is trying to do Gladiator with a dash of Braveheart. Is it just me or is there something menacing behind Worthington’s eyes that just scream, don’t f*ck with me? He wasn’t even that scary looking in Terminator Salvation! Clash of the Titans will be released in theaters on March 26, 2010. The film will be distributed by Warner Brothers, and co-stars Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, Danny Huston, Mads Mikkelsen,Gemma Arterton and Alexa Davalos.

What do you think of the first official photo for Clash of the Titans?

Danny Huston is Poseidon in Clash of the Titans

Krystal Clark — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 03:13:03 +0000

Why is Louis Letterier enticing me with his Clash of the Titans remake? When I first heard they were making the film I was completely against it. Then they went and cast Sam Worthington, Ralph Fiennes, and Liam Neeson. I love Liam Neeson! Now, I just read over on Joblo that another actor has joined the cast and it’s none other than William Stryker, Danny Huston. I feel like Michael Corleone in The Godfather: Part III. “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!“

Danny Huston is the son of John Huston, grandson of Walter Huston, and the half-brother of Anjelica Huston. Therefore, I’m not surprised that he would make an appearance in a film of such epic proportions. He will be starring as William Stryker in this Friday’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but will be appearing as a god in next year’s Clash of the Titans. Huston will portray Poseidon the god of the sea, opposite Neeson as Zeus, and Fiennes as Hades.

Even though the original film is viewed as campy by today’s standards Huston himself had some great things to say about Leterrier’s production. According to the actor the film is:

“More contemporary in its approach” with “sets and scope [that] are huge, outrageous, with moving practical sets and location photography.”

And the grip on me tightens. My expectations for this film were really low in the beginning, but now I’m starting to change my mind. I’m beginning to expect, dare I say a decent remake?

What do you think of Huston’s addition to the cast of Clash of the Titans? Will he make a good Poseidon?

ScreenCrave.com » louis leterrier

Louis Leterrier To Direct Universal’s ‘G’

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