The Terminator movie rights went up for auction today, and Sony Pictures and Lionsgate were bidding frantically back and fourth from 3:00pm to 8:00pm tonight. But as the dust cleared, neither movie studio came out the winner. Halcyon accepted a $29.5 million bid from a Santa Barbara-based hedge fund Pacificor, the debtholder which pushed the company into bankruptcy.Of course, this is subject to the approval by the bankruptcy court.

According to Finke’s source, “Sony and Lionsgate dropped out at just under $29.5 million when it became clear that Pacificor was willing to pay almost any amount of money for Terminator.” As part of the deal, Halcyon will keep the revenue streams from Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and Terminator Salvation, and will receive $5 million for every Terminator movie produced in the future.

What this all means for the future of the Terminator franchise is unclear.  The last Terminator film earned $372 million worldwide theatrically. And while Arnold might soon be available for big screen offers, I’m not sure they could afford him. I’m not a money guy, but it seems to me that the smartest thing they could do is make the fifth Termiantor film for about half the estimated budget of Salvation, aiming in the $100-$120 million range.

• Sony Submits Last Minute Bid for Terminator Franchise
• Halcyon Likes Lionsgate Bid For Terminator Franchise Rights
• James Cameron on Terminator Salvation, Sold Terminator Franchise Rights for $1?
• McG Still Wants to Make 5th and 6th Terminator Movies
• Halcyon Expects a Terminator Buyer By February 2010
• Joss Whedon Pens An Open Letter to the Terminator Owners

Tim Robbins (The Shawshank Redemption, Mystic River, The Player) has been cast in Martin Campbell’s big screen adaptation of the DC Comics superhero Green Lantern.

According to Heat Vision, Robbins will play Senator Hammond, a former astronaut and the disapproving father of the movie’s villain, Dr. Hector Hammond (played by Peter Sarsgaard). The doctor comes in contact with a meteor and becomes infused with psychic powers, genius level intellect, and telekinetic abilities. As far as I can tell, Robbins’ character was not featured in the comic series, and is a creation for the film adaptation (and from what I understand, nbot a large role in the movie). I’m sure one of our comic experts will weigh in. At very least, the character was not a sizable role in the mythology.

The rest of the announced cast thus far includes Ryan Reynolds as the title character, Green Lantern, and Blake Lively as his love interest, Carol Ferris. Green Lantern is set to begin shooting in New Orleans this March, with the film scheduled to hi theaters on June 17th 2011.

• Green Lantern Concept Art
• Cool Stuff: Fan Made Green Lantern Movie Poster
• Jackie Earle Haley Still Said to be a Contender for Green Lantern’s Sinestro
• Peter Sarsgaard May Fight Green Lantern
• Blake Lively Cast as Green Lantern’s Leading Lady
• A Green Light for Green Lantern

If you happen to use the bathroom while being stalked by a serial killer or a ghost/monster, watch out, because they’re right behind you. Last year we posted a video compilation showing the many moments from horror movies where the protagonist is trapped with bad cell phone reception. Today we’ve found another horror video compilation, this time focused on the dreaded and overused horror cliche - the mirror scare. Watch the four minute compilation, embedded after the jump.

via: Filmdrunk

• No Related Post

Francis Ford Coppola Winery is offering a 25% off coupon code for a couple of the Skywalker Ranch Wines: 2006 Merlot and 2006 Chardonay. The coupon Code is “THEFORCE” and is valid until February 15th 2010. For those unfamiliar with the origins of this wine, Viandante del Cielo is made by the winemaking team at Rubicon Estate for filmmaker and friend George Lucas from fruit (ie grapes) grown at Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch in Marin County. More information after the jump.

Inland from the northern Pacific coastline and nestled between a small range of hills lies Lucas Valley and the vineyards of Skywalker Ranch. It is an area renowned for having exceptionally long, cool growing conditions, which contribute to mature fruit, profuse aromas, and complex flavors - perfect conditions for this style of Chardonnay.

The Marin County AVA is very special, made up of only 86 acres of vineyards. It is bordered on three sides by the cold waters of the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay. In this colder climate, Pinot Noir makes up the bulk of the planting, so a Marin Merlot is a rare treat.

Skywalker Ranch is located on Lucas Valley Road in Marin County. According to wikipedia, the $100 million ranch contains “a barn with animals, vineyards, a garden with fruits and vegetables used in the on-site restaurant, an outdoor swimming pool and fitness center with racquetball courts, the man-made “Lake Ewok”, a hilltop observatory, a 300-seat theater called “The Stag” as well as multiple theater screening rooms, and parking that is mostly concealed underground to preserve the natural landscape. Skywalker Sound was moved onto the ranch in 1987, now occupying the Technical Building. The Main House has a company research library under a stained-glass dome. Skywalker Ranch has its own fire station, which is part of the Marin County Mutual Aid system, and is often called on to assist firefighters in nearby Marinwood.”

via: RebelScum

• Cool Stuff: Jamie Bolton’s Minimalistic Movie Posters
• VOTD: Star Wars Scrolling Text Invades Earth
• Cool Stuff: “It’s a Finger Trap” Star Wars Parody T-Shirt
• Avatar Tech May Finally Make Way for 3-D Star Wars, Says George Lucas
• Star Wars Burlesque
• Cool Stuff: Boba Fett with Han Solo in Carbonite Statue

We haven’t done much coverage on the film Passion Play, which stars Mickey Rourke and Megan Fox. The first big piece we ran on the film was prompted by Toby Kebbell dropping out and Bill Murray stepping into his role. Now we’ve got the first image from the movie, above, and a few quotes from Rourke about the production.

In true Rourke fashion, some of his comments are sure to piss a few people off. When an actor has worked with some of the people he has teamed with, saying that Megan Fox is “probably the best young actress I’ve ever worked with” is sure to get attention. Read on after the jump.

EW talked to the actor and ran the image you see above. Before I get to Rourke’s comments about Megan Fox, let’s cover what the film is about. We originally ran the following logline:

An angel under the thumb of a ruthless gangster is saved by a trumpet player down on his luck.

Fox is the angel, Rourke is the trumpet player and Murray is the gangster. I’m curious to what extent Fox’s character really is an angel. EW describes the film as being a “romance about a troubled trumpet player and a winged beauty who rescue each other from dire circumstances.” Rourke says, “she has wings, so she was sort of an oddity trapped in a carnival act. She’s been a prisoner her whole life, and she has no understanding of trust. She’s very vulnerable and delicate.”

The film is written and directed by Mitch Glazer, who wrote Scrooged and The Recruit. Rourke and Glazer went to high school together, and the director told Rourke about this story idea over a decade ago. So this one is a long time coming. Based on the description, I’m wildly curious to see the final product. EW says the film has just wrapped, so it’s possible we’ll see it this year if a buyer steps up.

So, about the more gossipy quotes from Rourke…basically he seems to dismiss the chops of Evan Rachel Wood and Marisa Tomei. I’m sure Darren Aronofsky would have something to say about the following quote. But maybe it’s just Rourke being Rourke. We love him because he’s nuts…right? As he says of his big comeback movie, “Well, The Wrestler was quite tough. There wasn’t much chemistry there. Uh, that’s a whole other conversation. With Megan and I, there’s a lot of chemistry and a lot of respect.”

• Bill Murray Replaces Toby Kebbell in Passion Play
• Walter Hill’s St. Vincent Moves Forward; Gong Li, Ray Winstone and Forest Whitaker Join Mickey Rourke
• New Images: Tony Stark, Whiplash and Black Widow in Iron Man 2
• An Official Image of Jonah Hex
• Michael Bay Promises Next Transformers Film Will Give Megan Fox a Good Role and Not Kill Her Off
• VOTD: The Wrestler [Grindhouse Version]

Last week some quotes came out of a Cop Out roundtable interview where Kevin Smith talked about the notion of accepting money donated from fans to finance his movie Red State. Smith said that he would match donations based on the plan that had been considered so far (a point I think a lot of people missed) to bulk up the financing.

I thought the idea was interesting, though possibly so difficult to pull together from a legal perspective that it could never really work. Astoundingly, a lot of the other reactions to this idea were vehemently negative. There was a range of angry response, much of which boiled down to “how dare he ask for money?” based on the idea that Smith would get paid to make the film and would own the final product.

Smith was understandably less than happy with the negative reaction and has addressed the idea and the response to it in a blog post.

The first point to take away here is that Kevin Smith did not propose this idea. He’s not begging; fans proposed and then endorsed the concept. (I arguably didn’t make that clear in my original post, which was a mistake.) One fan mentioned the idea of donations via Twitter, which led to many others offering to donate. At that point Smith said he’d look into it, and according to his post he has spent as much as ten thousand dollars having lawyers check into the legal issues that would ensue.

Here’s a segment of his blog response, which you should check out in its entirety:

This fan-financed-film (aka, “begging”) hasn’t happened yet, nor might it ever happen. While it all sounds perfectly Amish, it’s fraught with crazy pitfalls and tax problems that have required hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars in legal fees to investigate even the possibility of the fan-financed idea’s merit.

…If (and I mean IF with a huge fucking i & f) this fan-financed idea were to move forward? I’m not making a dime. If I were, as suggested, to turn to the fan-base to fund the movie, do you honestly think I’d even take a salary? I was just tickled and touched a bunch of people wanted to see it so badly, they were like “Here’s my twenty, if it’ll help.” All without having read a script.

…This isn’t about making money, you negative pricks: it’s about making movies. And what’s sickening about it? Motherfuckers screaming foul WRITE FOR MOVIE WEBSITES. You’d imagine they’d support the making of a movie.

Whew. Good thing we weren’t among the ones screaming foul.

I want to reiterate the point I tried to make the first time: this is a really intriguing idea, and if Smith and his lawyers could make it happen it could represent a small seismic shift in the way the business works. There’s no real reason it couldn’t work, besides the endless series of legal hurdles that get thrown in the path of any typical film getting made. Add a wildly unconventional financing package to the deal, and things could get really weird. But someone is likely to do this eventually, and Smith has a dream (that may be a pipe dream, but still) that this could be a sort of American Indie Movement v.3. That’s a thing I’d like to see come into being.

• Kevin Smith Considering Funding Red State Through Donations, Talks About Cop Out Marketing
• Kevin Smith Finds Funding For Red State? Will Wil Wheaton Hit Somebody?
• Kevin Smith Explains Why Studios Are Afraid of Red State
• The Weinstein Co Pass on Kevin Smith’s Red State
• Kevin Smith Answers Red State Questions
• Kevin Smith Finishes Red State Screenplay

Prefix has learned that the French band Phoenix is working on the score/soundtrack/sound design for Lost In Translation/Virgin Suicides director Sofia Coppola’s next film Somewhere. Thomas Mar, the frontman for the group had this to say about the project:

“It’s very minimal,” said Mars of the new work. “It’s almost like sound design. It wasn’t like writing songs, it was more about trying to make a sound that fits with a Ferrari and the city of Los Angeles’ theme. It was more of an engineer work than a composer.”

Coppola is known for her soundtracks, and it sounds like this one might be a little bit different - a little bit more minimalistic.

Somewhere tells the story of Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff), “a bad-boy A-List actor stumbling through a life of excess while living at Hollywood’s legendary Chateau Marmont Hotel.  His days are a haze of drinks, girls, fast cars and fawning fans.  Cocooned in this celebrity-induced artificial world, Johnny has lost all sense of his true self.  Until, that is, his 11-year-old daughter Cleo (Elle Fanning) unexpectedly shows up and unwittingly begins to anchor him.  Johnny’s fragile connection to real life slowly revives in her presence. So when the time comes fro Cleo to leave, his sense of loss is palpable, but the gift of hope she has also brought him leads to a beautiful, poetic denouement imbued with all of Coppola’s remarkable powers to conjure mood and atmosphere.”

via: FilmStage

• Focus Features Announces 2010 Release Dates
• Photos: Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere, Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg, and The American
• Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere Draws on Family History
• Benicio del Toro Joins Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere
• Chris Pontius Cast in Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere
• Stephen Dorff and Elle Fanning Cast in Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere

MTV has released a new redesigned logo, after a 30-year run with the classic iconic Frank Olinsky-designed logo we all grew up with. The redesign isn’t that much different, mostly a one color close-up. The big change is the exclusion of the “Music Television” tagline, which had run underneath the original. Of course, this is a long time coming. as MTV hasn’t been considered a music television network in years. And today most of the program is teen-focused reality shows.

According to the press release, the new logo “represents a new visually defined MTV, stimulating its past, present and future and embracing it’s diversity. Everything from Jersey Shore, to the VMAs to collaborations with the MoMA. The logo is part of MTV’s re-invention to connect with today’s millennial generation and bring them in as part of the channel.”

via: The Wrap

• No Related Post

Update: Cnet has issued the following retraction: “Netflix now claims that it incorrectly acknowledged 1080p streaming in the company’s 2010 development road map. A Netflix representative has clarified that the company plans to bring 5.1 surround and closed captioning to its streaming HD videos later this year, though 1080p Watch Instantly is not on the books for this year.” The original story follows:

Cnet has word that Netflix will be upgrading their very popular Instant Streaming service to 1080p with 5.1 surround sound audio, later this year. Netflix’s current capacity maxes out at 720p on an High Definition-compatible box (X Box 360, Playstation 3, and Roku). No release date has been announced, and it is unknown how much content will be available in 1080p, and if any extra bandwidth will be required on the users end. I’m sure they’ll make it work with the current limits of the average broadband user, probably with some noticeable compression.

• No Related Post

Universal Pictures has a couple more minor release date changes, including a new date for the Forgetting Sarah Marshall spin-off, Get Him to the Greek. The story, written and directed by Nicolas Stoller, follows a fresh-out-of-college record company intern named Aaron Greenberg (Jonah Hill) who is assigned by his angry record company boss Sergio (Sean “P-Diddy” Combs)to transport an out-of-control rock star named Aldous Snow (Russell Brand, reprising his role from Sarah Marshall) from London to a gig at Los Angeles’ famous Greek Theater. The film was scheduled to hit theaters on June 11th 2010, but will now be released nationwide on June 4th 2010.

The official plot synopsis:

Aaron Greenberg (Hill) gets things done. The ambitious 23-year-old has exaggerated his way into a dream job just in time for a career-making assignment. His mission: Fly to London and escort a rock god to L.A.’s Greek Theatre for the first-stop on a $100-million tour. His warning: Turn your back on him at your own peril. British rocker Aldous Snow (Brand) is both a brilliant musician and walking sex. Weary of yes men and piles of money, the former front man is searching for the meaning of life. But that doesn’t mean he can’t have a few orgies while he finds it. When he learns his true love is in California, Aldous makes it his quest to win her back…right before kick-starting his world domination.

via: Deadline

• Get Him to the Greek Set Footage
• Elisabeth Moss, Sean Combs and Rose Byrne Join Get Him to the Greek
• Page 2 for April 25th 2008
• Russell Brand Talks Sarah Marshall Spin-Off
• SXSW Movie Review: Forgetting Sarah Marshall
• Casting Notes: James Marsden Joins Russell Brand in I Hop; Naomi Watts Joins Daniel Craig in Dream House