Here’s a rather surreal shot for a Friday morning but it amused me greatly and had to go up! It’s not often you’ll see two of the greatest 80s action stars in bed next to one another but today is the day to make it happen as Arnold Schwarzenegger posted a picture on WhoSay.com of himself and Sylvester Stallone in adjacent hospital beds after they ‘bumped’ into one another while waiting to be seen for shoulder injuries.

Schwarzenegger posted this fab photo with the accompanying text:

After all the action, stunts & physical abuse shooting The Expendables 2 and The Last Stand, it was time for a little tune up on my shoulder. Look who was coincidentally waiting in line behind me for his shoulder surgery. Now we’re ready for another round of great times and action when we shoot The Tomb. #greattobeback

As Schwarzenegger mentioned in the text, we’ll see  the pair of them in The Expendables 2 which hits cinemas in August.

Love it! Don’t forget to add captions to the comments section below!

You know that meme about Chuck Norris? The ‘Chuck Norris facts’ meme I think they call it.

The one where there are a load of facts about Chuck Norris and people list them and laugh at them. The facts that make Chuck sound like some sort of malevolent God from the planet awesome. The facts that have been circulating the internet for so long and so loudly that even mentioning them is clichéd beyond credibility.

The ones that go like this:

• Chuck Norris’ tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried.
• Chuck Norris counted to infinity – twice.
• Chuck Norris does not hunt because the word hunting infers the probability of failure. Chuck Norris goes killing.
• Chuck Norris has already been to Mars; that’s why there are no signs of life there.
• Chuck Norris doesn’t have a chin behind his beard. Just another fist.

You know, those facts. The ones that you hate me for recounting. God I’m ashamed of myself…

Well Chuck isn’t just some karate kicking cliché or some occasional brainless sex object there to be ironically lauded to the detriment of everyone who chooses to do so 6 years on from the facts’ inception. He’s a serious man. And will be treated as such thank you very much.

Yep, Chuck has had enough of the vulgarity that surrounds him and has made a stand with his latest appearance in The Expendables 2. Whereas the film is being pitched (as was the first) as a no-holds barred, violent, sweary, adult smash-fest of silly proportions, Chuck Norris in an interview with Polish site Gazeta has claimed that one of his conditions for signing up to the project was that the film clean up its act and cut out the hardcore swearing that Norris doth abhor so much in order to get a PG-13 rating. You know, for the kids:

The ExpendablesPremiere.com transcription of the interview shows Norris’ message as being:

In Expendables 2, there was a lot of vulgar dialogue in the screenplay. Fot this reason, many young people wouldn’t be able to watch this. But I don’t play in movies like this. Due to that I said I won’t be a part of that if the hardcore language is not erased. Producers accepted my conditions and the movie will be classified in the category of PG-13.

Well this all sounds very silly doesn’t it. If The Expendables 2 really was going for a PG-13 rating in the US then surely the language isn’t the only thing that would have to be toned down. Also since Norris surely doesn’t have that much sway in the grand scheme of things his requests will surely amount to nothing.

Even so, as a man of apparently strong moral convictions and with an internet fame that has now surely surpassed his status as a cult film star maybe it’s time that he made a stand against the ravages of two-dimensional fame. Good for you Chuck, although next time maybe don’t make a stand by starring in a film that is fundamentally defined by its R rating. I mean without blood and some fruity language what’s left? The ground breakingly nuanced performances?

Source: /Film

Always more content when punching dreadlocked aliens, physical manifestations of the antichrist and pretty much everyone to death than when using ‘ideas’, ‘rhetoric’ and ‘any semblance of intelligence’ to get things done, it did indeed seem strange when Arnie was elected Governor of California in 2003. After slowly departing into his tenure in politics through a slew of tired and mechanically deficient star vehicles (ending with the competent tedium of Terminator 3) he disappeared from our screens almost completely. For eight years he subsisted upon minor roles, meagre cameos and his estimated $200 million fortune until his political career ended and his personal life collapsed amongst allegations of extra-marital affairs and children.

But today, no longer wanted by the government, Arnie looks once again to survive as soldier of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find him, maybe you can hire: Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Scott Waugh and Mike McCoy have evidently found him and given him a bunch of money so come April 1^st, 2012 filming will commence on Black Sunday (hitherto known as Black Sands), a project that on initial announcement had Schwarzenegger playing “a loner who wages war against a ruthless weapons manufacturer and his private army in the Southwest.” But just as I was about to fall asleep onto my keyboard as I typed out that description, Arnie (speaking to TheArnoldFans) has come out and declared a change to proceedings; “I’m a kind of angel. I cannot currently say more about this film.”

Well I’ll be damned, the film that started out as a generic actioner has about turned into the realms of the supernatural. It’s gone from something like Collateral Damage into a cross between Commando and Constantine. So that’s End of Days then.

Come to think of it maybe Arnie in a superficial bid to return as a relevant force could just mash up a load of his old greats with some hefty religious classics (not to say that Constantine isn’t a religious classic of course, it’s all subjective). Think Rambo and The Greatest Story Ever Told. Conan and the Ten Commandments. The Terminator of Nazareth.

But cut away the dollop of mystic fluff heaped on what sounds to be a creaky action thriller and it seems we’re back to the stereotypical Arnie of yore.

But after gliding through his movie career with nothing more than muscles, well chosen projects and a precision crafted cliché to which the likes of Steven Seagal and Jason Statham can only aspire that’s fine by me. He never laid claim to being the next De Niro that’s for sure. Although he’s probably going to end up playing out his senior years in a helluva more graceful fashion than old ‘comedy’ Bob whether he clumsily punches his way to retirement or not.

Ah, being a child in the nineties: GameBoys, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, early Pixar films, Batman: The Animated Series and Pokemon trading cards. But when it comes to Christmas films, one of my favorites as a youngster was Jingle All the Way, which was not only one of my first Christmas films at the cinema, but also my first Arnold Schwarzenegger film.

With this being a staple among the massive amount of films I watch for the holiday season each year (including The Muppets Christmas Carol, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Elf), I thought that it would be a great excuse to write about this childhood film of mine and seeing how it stands as a festive treat after all these years.

The film opens up with a tacky-looking children’s action show featuring Turbo Man saving the president’s family from his arch nemesis, Dementor. The camera zooms out to reveal that Jamie Langston (Jake Lloyd) is watching the popular television show based on the Turbo Man character. After the show reaches the end credits, his mum Liz (played by Rita Wilson) takes him to his karate lesson and tells him his Dad will make it.

We then cut to a Christmas party at a big mattress company and Howard Langston (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is selling mattresses into the night to his loyal customers and after being late to get to his son’s karate lesson with Officer Hummell giving him some road tests in a traffic jam, he tries to make it up to his son by promising to buy him the biggest selling toy: the new Turbo Man action figure.

With only one day left before Christmas day, Howard is determined to get the new toy, having to compete against mailman Myron (Sinbad), a band of thieving Santas led by James Belushi, avoiding Officer Hammell and eventually getting caught up in a ridiculous scenario with a parade.

For those who have not seen the film yet and read this article so far, this is indeed one of the silliest Christmas films that I have seen and that is what still makes this watchable to a certain degree.
Sinbad’s character is extremely fast-talking and crazy that reminded me of Donkey from the Shrek films, which did become quite annoying at times to watch. However, there would be times where his character would be funny and not because of his character or the dialogue, but the fact that he would be competing against a famous action star, who previously faced off against a Predator and the T-1000, in such crazy situations for an action figure.

The scene where Howard finds himself in a warehouse filled with crooked Santas is one of the true highlights of the film, as it quickly gets into a fight between Schwarzenegger and the gang of crooked Santas, especially since there are encounters of some small Santas and Elves and a giant, bulking Santa that is so strong that his punch sends one of the small Santas literally flying across the room in a high pitched screech. The fight is only more ridiculous when you see close-ups of Schwarzenegger’s wide-eyed comedic reactions.

There are so much crazy stuff happening in this film that it would take up quite a lot of space just to explain this film: there is the questionably creepy neighbor Ted, Myron actually using a bomb without knowing it that explodes in Officer Hummell’s face (and lives!), Schwarzenegger punching a reindeer in the face and later giving it some alcohol, every small person making high-pitched noises for comic effect and everyone falling over with cross eyes. But along with all this crazy stuff the script does try to tell a story with a message that makes it that much watchable and funny to see the silly wackiness happening.

With a cocktail of Schwarzenegger, the young brat that is Anakin Skywalker from The Phantom Menace and the most bizarre situations wrapped in a Christmas setting, Jingle All The Way is not the best film to watch during the holiday, but it is for sure one of the most fun to watch and if you have not seen it yet and found what you read interesting, you will be in for a treat! Oh, and “PUT THE COOKIE DOWN!!!”. Love the quote and just wanted to say it!

Eschewing the accepted convention of teasing a new trailer with the unveiling of a poster a few days beforehand The Expendables 2 is following its recent trailer with this new image of Stallone making his own inimitable impression on a nearby wall.

Those merry veterans of the movie web scene AICN were deigned hard enough to debut the poster and while it won’t win any design awards it’s a pretty fair indication of what to expect.

Sylvester Stallone leads a cast of Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Chuck Norris, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Liam Hemsworth, Jean Claude Van Damme, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger. So there’s something for everyone. As long as all anyone actually wants is a collection musclebound actors killing people.

Here’s the synopsis,

Things go boom.

Here is a fuller synopsis,

The Expendables are back and this time it’s personal… Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone), Lee Christmas (Lee Statham), Yin Yang (Jet Li), Gunnar Jensen (Dolph Lundgren),Toll Road (Randy Couture) and Hale Caesar (Terry Crews) — with newest members Billy the Kid (Liam Hemsworth) and Maggie (Yu Nan) aboard — are reunited when Mr. Church (Bruce Willis) enlists the Expendables to take on a seemingly simple job. The task looks like an easy paycheck for Barney and his band of old-school mercenaries. But when things go wrong and one of their own is viciously killed, the Expendables are compelled to seek revenge in hostile territory where the odds are stacked against them. Hell-bent on payback, the crew cuts a swath of destruction through opposing forces, wreaking havoc and shutting down an unexpected threat in the nick of time — six pounds of weapons-grade plutonium; enough to change the balance of power in the world. But that’s nothing compared to the justice they serve against the villainous adversary who savagely murdered their brother. That is done the Expendables way….

Poster time, click to make it big.

`While the world was waiting for a trailer for The Dark Knight Rises to appear the first trailer for Simon West’s The Expendables 2 is thrown into the ring.

Sylvester Stallone returns with a packed cast including Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Chuck Norris, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Liam Hemsworth, Jean Claude Van Damme, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Here’s the synopsis,

The Expendables are back and this time it’s personal… Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone), Lee Christmas (Lee Statham), Yin Yang (Jet Li), Gunnar Jensen (Dolph Lundgren),Toll Road (Randy Couture) and Hale Caesar (Terry Crews) — with newest members Billy the Kid (Liam Hemsworth) and Maggie (Yu Nan) aboard — are reunited when Mr. Church (Bruce Willis) enlists the Expendables to take on a seemingly simple job. The task looks like an easy paycheck for Barney and his band of old-school mercenaries. But when things go wrong and one of their own is viciously killed, the Expendables are compelled to seek revenge in hostile territory where the odds are stacked against them. Hell-bent on payback, the crew cuts a swath of destruction through opposing forces, wreaking havoc and shutting down an unexpected threat in the nick of time — six pounds of weapons-grade plutonium; enough to change the balance of power in the world. But that’s nothing compared to the justice they serve against the villainous adversary who savagely murdered their brother. That is done the Expendables way….

Here it is people! The one you’ve all been waiting for! it’s the first official poster for The Expendables 2 and it packs some serious punch! The movie appears to have the title EX2. I Don’t know yet if that is the official title for the movie but we’ll keep you posted. Joining Sylvester Stallone on the poster are: Jean-Claude Van Damme Chuck Norris, Dolph Lundgren. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jason Statham, Bruce Willis, and Terry Crews. Jet Li, Scott Adkins, Jet Li and Liam Hemsowrth also star in the movie but they didn’t make the cut on the poster!

The film should be with us August 2012.

Click he poster to enlarge.

Source: JoBlo

Cast your mind back to the late eighties/early nineties when Arnold Schwarzenegger was the biggest star on the planet. The Austrian-born bodybuilder-cum-toast of Tinseltown had an incredible run at the box office, and managed that rare feat of transcending his nationality (little explanation was ever attributed to his character’s thick Teutonic accents) and somehow became an all-American icon.

He established that mould for future contenders to the action throne, such as The Rock and Vin Diesel, and they even tried to emulate his career path by applying the same tactical steps in trying to reach out to an even wider fan base by appearing in family-friendly fare (and somehow making an even more ham-fisted attempt at it than Arnie himself).

Having stepped down from his seven year role of Governor of California at the beginning of this year (failing to adequately tackle the state’s disastrously escalating budget deficit) and after speculation in the blogosphere for months as to whether he would step back in front of the cameras (cameo roles notwithstanding) the recent announcement that he was returning to leading man status in border-set pseudo western The Last Stand was quickly followed by images taken from the film’s set. These cropped up last week, showing the Austrian Oak looking relaxed and in good shape for his 64 years.

The word ‘comeback’ inevitably gets bandied around in these instances, and it’s definitely a title which is applicable to Schwarzenegger (the recent revelations of his dalliances with the family’s housemaid didn’t help the actor’s already shaky PR record) but the truth of the matter is Schwarzenegger’s popularity was on the wane well before he took up office. In fact, his career began a downwards trajectory from as way back as 1993 when his attempts at subverting his image in the meta action-comedy The Last Action Hero floundered at the box office (having been stamped on and torn to shreds by those mighty CGI’d Spielberg dinosaurs) . With the exception of James Cameron’s True Lies the following year, Schwarzenegger attempts to capitalise on his earlier success were met, largely, with audience indifference.

The likes of Eraser and Collateral Damage tried (and failed) to emulate his persona from that more simplistic, black-and-white era of action heroics. Even those family-friendly films in which the audience had indulged the star at the height of his popularity were shunned (George Clooney routinely takes the blame for the woeful Batman and Robin, but Schwarzenegger as the one-dimensional, quip-horrific villain Mr Freeze, should be culpable for at least some of the failing of the film). Perhaps most apparent that he’d lost that minus touch at the box office came in the form of his return to his most famous and well-loved character with 2003’s Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machine. What must have looked like a no-brainer for the actor (and indeed the studio) was a tired and unadventurous rehash, failing to match anywhere near the hype and ultimate success of the previous film. Schwarzenegger’s price tag for reprising the role (a reported $29.25 million “pay or play” fee) also shined a spotlight on the increasingly bloated salaries of A-list actors, and whether they were fully justifiable in helping to guarantee strong box office returns.

This isn’t to say that opportunities to revisit former glories are completely out of reach for the star. The unexpected box office success of The Expendables, which has spawned a forthcoming sequel (featuring a sprightly 70-year-old Chuck Norris!) is somewhat of an indication that there’s a novelty in seeing these stars of yesteryear back in action. While genre peer Sylvester Stallone seems intent on recapturing his former box office glory days (seemingly at all costs), Schwarzenegger might benefit from taking the advice of another past master Clint Eastwood, whose ‘Dirty’ Harry Callahan once uttered the words, “a man’s got to know his limitations”. It’s a phrase which was probably far from Schwarzenegger’s mind when he initially set off on that Yellow Brick Road to Hollywoodland (and indeed the first half of his career wouldn’t have happened if he subscribed to that theory) but in recent months, where it’s pretty clear that star power is beginning to lose its lustre (and the increasingly youth-obsessed business he’s returning to), the actor will have to rely on the extreme goodwill of an audience if he intends to replicate the kind of success which is now two decades behind him.

Shedding that Hollywood hubris can sometimes yield positive and fruitful results for A-list megastars (just look at Tom Cruise’s blistering turn in Magnolia) and it’s perhaps no surprise that, although top-billed, his character in The Last Stand looks like he’s part of an ensemble (the cast list consists of such dependable characters actors as Forest Whitaker, Harry Dean Stanton and Luis Guzmán, alongside established comic relief sidekick, Johnny Knoxville). Admittedly, Schwarzenegger has never shown the chops Cruise has, but surrounding himself with better actors, can’t harm the chances of him bringing something of quality to the table (remember Stallone in Copland?)

Maybe this is the way forward for Schwarzenegger’s career. As he enters retirement age, he should perhaps leave the heavy-lifting (literally and figuratively) to his future co-stars and director. Unlike Stallone, who has had the opportunity to call on his two iconic roles from the past to see him through the tough times, past franchises fundamental to Schwarzenegger’s standing  (Conan and The Terminator) have already been plundered by the studio and been given unnecessary facelifts, with below-par results.

Whatever challenges lay ahead, for the moment, Schwarzenegger may indeed ‘be back’, but it could take more that a burst of ammunition and an archaic wisecrack in order for it to stay that way.

Now that he is done being all Governor-y, Arnie is getting back into the swing of making action films quite nicely. As we’ve posted recently, he has been on set with The Expendables 2 and is also already shooting The Last Stand, which is being directed by Jee-Woon Kim.

Now we have news that Arnie has lined up another action flick for once The Last Stand is finished. Working from a script by Skip Woods (who wrote the screenplay for the recently green-lit Die Hard 5), Scott Waugh and Mike McCoy will direct the Austrian Oak in Black Sands, a film being pitched as High Plains Drifter meets Man on Fire. Frankly, if the finished product can come even vaguely close to the quality of either of those films, I will be a happy man indeed. Arnie will play a loner (no doubt armed to the teeth and with some sort of Special Forces background) who takes on the private army of a weapons manufacturer in the South West of the USA.

Shooting isn’t due to commence until next April, before when Arnie will presumably wrap up The Last Stand and toy further with the oft-mooted Predator, True Lies &c. sequels. It is indeed heartening to see Arnie getting enthusiastically stuck into action thrillers again. I’d always found his dalliances with comedy and family-friendly fare altogether unsatisfying and it can only be hoped that he will keep blowing stuff up for as long as his body can handle the rigours.

Source: Deadline.

In case you haven’t already heard, the sequel to last year’s all-star action blockbuster, The Expendables, has been increasing its cast and signing everyone who’s anyone in the martial arts/butt-kicking scene.

Last week, we got a look at Sylvester Stallone, who won’t be directing this time around, hanging out with Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger on the set of The Expendables 2.

We’ve now got a picture, courtesy of Collider, that shows of a few more cast members, most notably giving us our first look at the one and only Mr. Chuck Norris – the ‘Mr.’ because the man could destroy with his eyes, so it’s a good idea to be polite. Norris is of course renowned for his general awesomeness, and though I confess that I’ve never actually seen him act – don’t hate me – I am naturally a fan of many of the Chuck Norris jokes you hear every now and then. A personal favourite, via TheChuckNorrisFacts, being:

“Chuck Norris does not hunt because the word hunting infers the probability of failure. Chuck Norris goes killing.”

The sequel will be directed by Simon West (Con Air, The General’s Daughter), and along with Stallone, Schwarzenegger, and Willis, we should get to see Jason Statham, Jet Li, Liam Hemsworth, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Randy Couture, Terry Crews, Dolph Lundgren, Scott Adkins, and possibly John Travolta and Donnie Yen, who remain rumours at the moment. Essentially, more names than you can reasonably fit into one sentence (but I did it anyway).

Principal photography is clearly underway for The Expendables 2, with a release date currently scheduled for 17th August next year, making it quite possibly/probably 2012’s biggest summer blockbuster in terms of cast recognition. Without further ado, here’s the new photo from the set, with Mr. Norris himself. As usual, click to enlarge.

Schwarzenegger’s appearance alongside Stallone and Willis in the first Expendables film was a glorified cameo and didn’t have nearly as much impact as they all seemed to think it did. Frankly, I felt robbed and it is therefore with some gratitude that I hear that there may be a bit more of him this time around.

Yes, it’s sequel time and along with the rest of the returning cast, we should get a whole host of other action stars as well. So far, we know to expect Randy Couture, Terry Crews, Dolph Lundgren, Jet Li, Jason Statham, Sly, Scott Adkins, Chuck Norris (who apparently can win Connect 4 in three moves), Jean Claude Van Damme, Bruce Willis and possibly The Rock, Vin Diesel, John Travolta and Nic Cage. Crikey.

Rumour-mongering aside, we know that Sly, Willis and Arnie are on set, because we have this lovely photo to prove it. So there.

Source: It’s from Arnie’s Twitter feed.

UPDATE: It seems the man can’t get enough of tweeting his movements, today he also found the time to tweet a pic of him ‘wrapping up a big day on The Last Stand with Zach Gilford and our great director, Jee-Woon Kim’.

]]> http://www.heyuguys.co.uk/2011/10/19/schwarzenegger-on-set-for-the-expendables-2/feed/ 0 http://www.heyuguys.co.uk/2011/10/18/johnny-knoxville-forest-whitaker-and-more-join-arnie%e2%80%99s-return-to-acting-in-last-stand/ http://www.heyuguys.co.uk/2011/10/18/johnny-knoxville-forest-whitaker-and-more-join-arnie%e2%80%99s-return-to-acting-in-last-stand/#comments Tue, 18 Oct 2011 17:00:52 +0000 Kenji Lloyd http://www.heyuguys.co.uk/?p=111872

There was naturally a lot of speculation circling Arnold Schwarzenegger leading up to when his term as Governor of California ended at the start of the year. His expected return to acting is now official, with production on Liongate’s Last Stand just begun.

The film will see him star opposite Jaimie Alexander (Thor) as the female lead, with a supporting cast the includes Peter Stormare (TV’s Prison Break), Rodrigo Santoro (Che: Parts 1 and 2), Eduardo Noriega (Vantage Point), and Zach Gilford (TV’s Friday Night Lights).

Variety are now reporting that the cast has been further bolstered by the awesome Oscar winner Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland), Johnny Knoxville (the one and only Jackass star), Luis Guzman (Yes Man), and the acting veteran Harry Dean Stanton (The Green Mile).

The film will see,

“Schwarzenegger playing the sheriff of a sleepy little town who runs up against an escaped drug cartel leader heading for the Mexican border.”

Last Stand is being helmed by South Korean director Kim Jee-Woon (The Good, The Bad, The Weird; I Saw The Devil), from an original script by newcomer Andrew Knauer, with rewrites done by Jeffrey Nachmanoff (The Day After Tomorrow) and most recently by George Nolfi (The Adjustment Bureau). Lorenzo di Bonaventura – what a name – will be producing, and his credits include all three Transformers films, Red, Salt, Shooter, and Constantine. Essentially, everyone involved knows what they’re doing.

A US release date is currently scheduled for 18th January, 2013, so we’ve got some time before we see Last Stand on the big screen, but it sounds like it could well be worth the wait. We shall see in a little over a year. Naturally, a lot of people will be interested to see what Arnie’s return to acting will be like.

According to Deadline, up-and-coming Australian actor Liam (brother of Thor’s Chris) Hemsworth is joining the starry cast of action dinosaurs in The Expendables 2.

Hemsworth will team up with the original’s director/star (Con Air’s Simon West is welding the megaphone this time around) Sylvester Stallone, alongside Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke, Terry Crews, Jet Li, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis and newcomers Chuck Norris and Jean-Claude Van Damme.

This piece of casting is certainly a shrewd move by the makers. Hemsworth is on the cusp of major stardom owing to one of the starring roles in the upcoming, hugely anticipated adaptation of the hit young-adult science fiction novel, The Hunger Games, which is due for release in the UK next March.

No word yet if his role in The Expendables sequel will be that of Stallone’s grandson, which the 21-year-old could feasibly play.

Here’s some rather welcome news at 23.40 on a Tuesday evening! While I’m sitting here waiting for the new Twilight trailer to drop, EW have just posted the news that Chuck Norris and Jean Claude van Damme have been confirmed for The Expendables 2 with Nicolas Cage on the wish-list. This news follows that of Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger are on board too.

In an interview with Sylvester Stallone who wrote, directed and starred in the original movie, he broke the news that Van Damme and Norris are confirmed and thinks that Cage will be appearing but it sounds like he wants to get a few more involved too including Michael Biehn and Michael Pare and maybe even John Travolta making it a nice Face Off reunion with Cage:

“We’ll have a big showdown between me and Van Damme, which has been anticipated for a long time, so it should be a good one”

“We’ve got Chuck Norris and I think Nic Cage. We’re trying to work out different scenarios. I like using people that had a moment and then maybe have fallen on some hard times and give them another shot. So we’re always looking for actors like Michael Biehn and Michael Pare. I like those kinds of guys. Someone did it for me and I like to see if I can do it for them. We also need some new blood in there, a Navy Seal-type, because with the Expendables none of them have 20-20 vision anymore. They need some help, man.”

I was desperate for Norris and Van Damme to appear to appear in the original 2009 movie but it looks like we had to wait a couple of years longer to see them. The addition of Cage could be cool and all I need to do now is work out how I can get on set! Now all we need is for Steven Seagal and Jackie Chan to sign on the dotted line and the line up is complete! Then again, we’ll need some more people for The Expendables 3 no doubt!

The movie is expected to be released August 2012 and shooting starts at the end of this month.

News continues to trickle in regarding the follow-up to the guilty pleasure (and frustrating waste of a golden opportunity) that was The Expendables. It looks as  though pretty much everyone who survived the first film is set to return, with a bit of added Chuck Norris and JCVD, if persistent internet rumours are to be believed.

Obviously Arnie and Bruce Willis cameoed in the first film, to mixed effect. This time around, director Simon West (ConAir, The General’s Daughter) looks set to give them a little more to do. Frankly, that must be a good move. Arnie hasn’t taken part in a decent action sequence in years and years, whereas Brucie has shown in more recent offerings like RED and Die Hard 4.0 that he still has fantastic action chops, so lobbing them all into some well-choreographed mayhem should be plenty of fun.

Filming is due to kick off in October 2011 for a summer 2012 release, so this should all start coming together pretty soon. Of course calling someone’s role “substantial” is very much eye of the beholder stuff, so we’ll have to wait and see whether we’re talking glorified cameos, or something a little more meaningful. I’d pay good money to see Willis, Arnie and Sly standing side by side, massive guns and rocket launchers in hand, levelling a city block, or an acre of Latin American jungle, but I’ll have to wait like the rest of you.

Source: Deadline.

It was rumoured for some time that Justin Lin’s next big screen project would be an attempt at getting the Terminator franchise back on track with a returning Arnold Schwarzenegger, however Indiewire’s The Playlist are exclusively reporting that Lin’s next project will be a sixth entry to the Fast and Furious series.

Lin met with both James Cameron and Schwarzenegger and he still appears to be the director of choice for the next terminator feature but given Schwarzenegger’s priorities resting firmly with his role in The Last Stand for some time which frees Lin up to return to the franchise that has made him such a sought after director.

Lin has reportedly also had conversations regarding directing a Highlander re-boot as well as Die Hard 5 but passed on both of those, with Lin hinting at lack of creative control being the main reason, although he will act as executive producer for Highlander. It’s great to see a director refusing to accept a job unless he’s allowed to make the film according to his vision.

Given the massive commercial success of Fast 5 as well as a warm critical response another instalment to the series was always going to happen, and it’s pleasing that Lin will be at the helm once again.

Without spoiling too much; the end of Fast 5 did hint strongly at a continuation of the series and it would appear that the film will focus more on the heist element rather than the street races that helped establish the franchise. Given the fact that Fast 5 is the strongest instalment this makes sense.

Regulars Vin Diesel and Paul Walker will return alongside Dwayne Johnson and the film has been pencilled in for a release date of 24^th May 2013 so there’s a bit of a wait.

As always we’ll bring you updates as and when they become available.

Casting rumours are beginning to circulate for the upcoming sequel to The Expendables, Sylvester Stallone’s surprise hit action movie from last year, and a couple of names (at least), are obvious choices to fans of 80’s tough-guy, martial artist cinema.

Members from the first film, Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis are being mentioned, alongside the kickboxing “Muscles from Brussels” Jean-Claude Van Damme and old-school favourite, Chuck Norris (now, shockingly, in his 71^st year on this planet!!!) He makes the rest of the crew look like a bunch of young, ineffectual punks by comparison.

John Travolta’s name has also cropped up, although he hardly possesses the hard-man credentials of many of these actors. Maybe he’ll perform a dance routine as a means of distracting the enemy while his macho peers do the dirty work.

All this is completely up in the air at the moment of course, but with the film stated for release next August (under the direction of Con Air’s Simon West), expect a locked-down cast list to appear pretty soon.

Via Collider.

Lionsgate have released this new UK red band trailer which is rather violent and definitely NSFW! It basically shows people getting killed in various nasty ways which is a small taster of what we can expect from the brand new version of Conan the Barbarian.

The movie is a reboot of the movie made famous by Arnold Schwarzenegger and based on the books by Robert E. Howard. It’s directed by Marcus Nispel and stars Jason Momoa as the lead character alongside Rachel Nichols, Ron Perlman , Rose McGowan, Stephen Lang, Jason Momoa and Saïd Taghmaoui.

Synopsis: A quest that begins as a personal vendetta for the fierce Cimmerian warrior soon turns into an epic battle against hulking rivals, horrific monsters, and impossible odds, as Conan realizes he is the only hope of saving the great nations of Hyboria from an encroaching reign of supernatural evil.

Conan the Barbarian is released in the UK August 24th.

While some fims are produced under a Promethian cover of secrecy others bask in the sunlight and are in plain sight of passing film fans. Toronto is currently home to the Len Wiseman remake of the 90s Paul Verhoeven’s adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s We Can Remember it for you Wholesale, renamed then and now Total Recall.

Colin Farrell leads Kate Beckinsale, Bryan Cranston and Ethan Hawke in this retelling, and it’s not clear how near or far this new film is sticking to either of its forebears but a few happy snappers have given us the chance to see what Wiseman’s world will look like.

First and foremost is the flying police car, looking a touch like the wall skimming Minority Report vehicles, which are all over the set along with the stormtrooper-esque policeman. As you would expect there’s a lot of greenery so the final shots will only have the minimum of what you see here.

So here you are, via AICN and a twitterer called Ian, some sci-fi imaginings in the style of Minority Report and Star Wars – very much looking forward to seeing how this one pans out.

Here are your pics,

Lionsgate have released another new poster for Conan the Barbarian 3D. The movie is a reboot of the movie made famous by Arnold Schwarzenegger and based on the books by Robert E. Howard. It’s directed by Marcus Nispel and stars Jason Momoa as the lead character alongside Rachel Nichols, Ron Perlman, Rose McGowan, Stephen Lang, Jason Momoa and Saïd Taghmaoui.

Synopsis: A quest that begins as a personal vendetta for the fierce Cimmerian warrior soon turns into an epic battle against hulking rivals, horrific monsters, and impossible odds, as Conan realizes he is the only hope of saving the great nations of Hyboria from an encroaching reign of supernatural evil.

Ignore the date on the poster as Conan the Barbarian is released in the UK August 24th. You can find out more on the UK Conan Facebook page.

This poster follows the brand new UK trailer which was released a few days ago.

Source: Fandango

Conan the Barbarian 3D