The Mayans -- and Roland Emmerich -- always said 2012 was going to be a big year. So amid world-ending prophecies, why shouldn't Hollywood go out with a bang?
While summer 2011 has barely started, it's next summer that's already promising to be the most crowded moviegoers have seen in years. Nothing like waiting until the last-minute.
The latest addition to the 2012 summer slate is Dark Shadows, Tim Burton's remake of the 1960s gothic soap opera about vampires that will star Johnny Depp and Michelle Pfeiffer.
It joins a crazily crammed field that already includes Christopher Nolan's climatic Batman sequel, The Dark Knight Rises; Marvel's mega team-up The Avengers; the rebooted The Amazing Spider-Man with Andrew Garfield (The Social Network) replacing Tobey Maguire; Star Trek 2 (although we don't expect it to be actually named that); Men in Black III with Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones; Ridley Scott's long-awaited kind-of Alien prequel, Prometheus, with Charlize Theron and Michael Fassbender; the Matt Damon-free Bourne spinoff, The Bourne Legacy starring Jeremy Renner; the Total Recall remake with Colin Farrell; G.I. Joe 2; Sacha Baron Cohen's next comedy, The Dictator; Bryan Singer's spin on the Jack and the Beanstalk mythos, Jack the Giant Killer; the Tom Cruise musical Rock of Ages; and the Burton-produced Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, based on the best-selling literary mash-up.
Never mind a new Ice Age, another Madagascar and the latest from Pixar, entitled Brave.
The end of next year looks just as hectic. Late-2012 releases include Peter Jackson's The Hobbit; Man of Steel, the Zack Snyder-directed/Nolan-produced Superman reboot; the next James Bond starring Daniel Craig and directed by Oscar-winner Sam Mendes; the last Twilight sequel (a reason to rejoice if ever there was one), The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn -- Part 2; and Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, starring Daniel Day-Lewis (i.e.: the Lincoln film that doesn't have vampires in it).
Just don't tell the makers of Iron Man 3 about the apocalypse. Their movie's scheduled for May 2013.
NON-RESIDENT EVIL: Not so long ago, the Resident Evil franchise was wrapping itself in the Canadian flag with the news that Resident Evil: Afterlife 3D had eclipsed Porky's as the highest-grossing Canadian-produced film ever.
And now? Can you say "Sayonara?"
The fifth Resident Evil movie is apparently going to be at least partly shot in Japan, and is being spun -- by Tweeter Milla Jovovich among others -- as a cinematic mercy mission to the quake-ravaged nation.
Not to say some production might not end up in Toronto (where most of the series has been shot), and producer Don Carmody can't be accused of abandoning his home and native land completely (he just finished shooting a Silent Hill sequel in T.O.).
Unlike New Orleans post-Katrina, when Louisiana state government practically paid studios to shoot there (making their "saviours" more profiteers than anything else), the overvalued Japanese yen has been strangling the country's economy -- and arguably making shooting there not much of a bargain, even against a $1.04 Canadian dollar.
So OK, I guess we can cut "our" Canadian film franchise some slack for this "humanitarian mission." But bring the jobs back home soon.
While summer 2011 has barely started, it's next summer that's already promising to be the most crowded moviegoers have seen in years. Nothing like waiting until the last-minute.
The latest addition to the 2012 summer slate is Dark Shadows, Tim Burton's remake of the 1960s gothic soap opera about vampires that will star Johnny Depp and Michelle Pfeiffer.
It joins a crazily crammed field that already includes Christopher Nolan's climatic Batman sequel, The Dark Knight Rises; Marvel's mega team-up The Avengers; the rebooted The Amazing Spider-Man with Andrew Garfield (The Social Network) replacing Tobey Maguire; Star Trek 2 (although we don't expect it to be actually named that); Men in Black III with Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones; Ridley Scott's long-awaited kind-of Alien prequel, Prometheus, with Charlize Theron and Michael Fassbender; the Matt Damon-free Bourne spinoff, The Bourne Legacy starring Jeremy Renner; the Total Recall remake with Colin Farrell; G.I. Joe 2; Sacha Baron Cohen's next comedy, The Dictator; Bryan Singer's spin on the Jack and the Beanstalk mythos, Jack the Giant Killer; the Tom Cruise musical Rock of Ages; and the Burton-produced Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, based on the best-selling literary mash-up.
Never mind a new Ice Age, another Madagascar and the latest from Pixar, entitled Brave.
The end of next year looks just as hectic. Late-2012 releases include Peter Jackson's The Hobbit; Man of Steel, the Zack Snyder-directed/Nolan-produced Superman reboot; the next James Bond starring Daniel Craig and directed by Oscar-winner Sam Mendes; the last Twilight sequel (a reason to rejoice if ever there was one), The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn -- Part 2; and Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, starring Daniel Day-Lewis (i.e.: the Lincoln film that doesn't have vampires in it).
Just don't tell the makers of Iron Man 3 about the apocalypse. Their movie's scheduled for May 2013.
NON-RESIDENT EVIL: Not so long ago, the Resident Evil franchise was wrapping itself in the Canadian flag with the news that Resident Evil: Afterlife 3D had eclipsed Porky's as the highest-grossing Canadian-produced film ever.
And now? Can you say "Sayonara?"
The fifth Resident Evil movie is apparently going to be at least partly shot in Japan, and is being spun -- by Tweeter Milla Jovovich among others -- as a cinematic mercy mission to the quake-ravaged nation.
Not to say some production might not end up in Toronto (where most of the series has been shot), and producer Don Carmody can't be accused of abandoning his home and native land completely (he just finished shooting a Silent Hill sequel in T.O.).
Unlike New Orleans post-Katrina, when Louisiana state government practically paid studios to shoot there (making their "saviours" more profiteers than anything else), the overvalued Japanese yen has been strangling the country's economy -- and arguably making shooting there not much of a bargain, even against a $1.04 Canadian dollar.
So OK, I guess we can cut "our" Canadian film franchise some slack for this "humanitarian mission." But bring the jobs back home soon.