We got the awesome new Super Bowl TV spot for G.I. Joe: Retaliation a few days early last week, and now we’ve got more brand new footage to tease you with, with a French trailer landing tonight, along with a new image from the film.

Jon M. Chu has helmed the project from a script by Zombieland’s Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, and we’ll be getting some familiar faces from the first film returning, as well as a host of new talent too.

Channing Tatum, Ray Park, and Lee Byung-hun reprise their roles from G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, and joining them will be Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Bruce Willis, Adrianne Palicki, Elodie Yung, Ray Stevenson, RZA, D.J. Cotrona, and Walton Goggins.

G.I. Joe: Retaliation will be released on 22nd June this year here in the UK, before setting sail across the Atlantic a week later to hit US theatres on June 29th. The first trailer we caught back in December made everything look pretty awesome, and the Super Bowl TV spot coupled with this new trailer has only furthered the excellent special effects we’ve seen, with a healthy dose of comedy.

With a few more months to go, you can whet your appetites now with some great new footage from the film, followed by a shot of Bruce Willis looking pretty bemused with Dwayne Johnson suitably living up to his character’s name, Roadblock. As usual, click to enlarge.

Source: Collider and ComingSoon.net.

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island hits UK cinemas today (our review of the movie is up here) and we got the chance to chat with Dwayne Johnson (aka The Rock) who stars in the sequel to to the 2008 movie, Journey to the Center of the Earth. This time, it’s Dwayne who takes over the lead role from Brenden Fraser for some pec-popping fun (see the trailer intro here to see what I’m on about!).

In our interview, we get to hear what attracted him to the movie, how often he works out and what it was like to work with legendary actor Michael Caine and relative newcomers, Josh Hutcherson and Vanessa Hudgens.

————————-

HeyUGuys: How would you describe Journey 2: The Mysterious Island?

Dwayne Johnson: Journey 2: The Mysterious Island is an epic 3D adventure. It’s fun, it’s visually stunning and it’s groundbreaking in many ways because of the 3D technology we used to make the movie. After James Cameron completed Avatar he adapted and improved the technology of the 3D cameras – and we are the first production to benefit from these advances in technology. We can take this new technology that’s never been seen before and apply it in an expansive way to our movie. Journey 2: The Mysterious Island was written, designed and created specifically for 3D, so it’s incredibly impressive.

How would you describe your character in the movie?

I play a guy called Hank in the movie. Hank is a hardworking, blue-collar guy. He is a man of integrity and a man of his word. He demonstrates great perseverance in the movie, but he also demonstrates a legendary move called the ‘pec pop of love’. He’s one hell of a guy.

What can you tell us about the story of Journey 2: The Mysterious Island?

The story follows a teenager called Sean Anderson and his stepfather, Hank. Sean and Hank embark on an incredible journey to a mysterious island written about by the famous author, Jules Verne. Along the way, there’s a helicopter crash, a run-in with a giant lizard and you get to see the amazing lost city of Atlantis, as well as Captain Nemo’s submarine, the Nautilus. Every attention is paid to detail and that can be seen with the stunning visuals. It’s been an amazing project to work on.

What attracted you to this project?

I was in the mood to make an epic 3D adventure because 3D is something I’d never done before. I’d spent nearly two years playing intense roles, so I wanted to make a big, fun movie. Journey 2: The Mysterious Island was the answer.

How much input did you have into the movie and your character?

I had a lot of input into the movie and the character, which is why I became a producer on the project. The singing in the movie and the ‘pec pop’ scenes were all my ideas.

How did you come up with the ideas?

The mysterious island in the movie is sinking, so there’s a lot of tension, but I started to think about how we could inject some fun into the storyline. How can we implement something that the audiences will enjoy? I was travelling on a plane with one of the producers and we were reading over the script when we discussed the 3D technology we were using in the movie. I wanted to do something fun with my body, so I said, “What if I did something where my chest is popping out in 3D to the audience?” The producer said to me, “Yes, that’s funny. That’s entertaining. We’ve never seen anything like that before, but what else can we do?” He was eating nuts at the time, which is why he then said, “I’ve got it. What if somebody throws berries at your chest and the berries then pop out into the audience?” I thought that was a great idea and then added, “What about if it is rapid fire into the audience?” It was brilliant. The studio loved it. The director loved it and it wound up being the highest testing scene in the movie.

How would you describe the comedy of the movie?

We thought it was incredibly important to take advantage of the wide audience that our movie was going to reach. When it comes to comedy, there’s something for everyone in Journey 2. There’s great comedy for younger children, great comedy for adults – and great comedy for everyone in between. Comedy is crucial in a movie like this because the tension is high and the humour helps to release that tension. For me, a lot of the comedy comes from my character’s verbal spars with Michael Cain’s character. In fact, one of the great joys of working on this movie was the back-and-forth sparring between Michael and me.

How much time was there for improvisation on set?

There was a lot of time for improvisation. However, the key with improvisation is to make sure you’re staying within the same space and spirit of the scene. I have worked with actors who tell me they are going to improvise during a scene, but they end up going miles away from the story. When that happens, you have to reel them back in – but that never happened with the cast of Journey 2: The Mysterious Island. When you’re working with people like Michael Caine and Luis Guzmán, you know that everybody is going to keep it on track.

How much of the comedy was written in the script and how much was added on set through improvisation?

There was a good amount of comedy in the script when I first read it, but the tone of the comedy was very different to what you see in the finished film. When I first read the script, my character in the movie was very different. At that time, he was a Brendan Fraser-esque character, but then the writers and the producers started to add layers that would fit more to my strengths. After that, we added a lot of the comedy, such as the ‘pec pop’ scene and the song I sing in the movie. The verbal jabbing was also added because we changed the relationship between my character and Michael Caine’s character. Now, Hank’s locker room humour collides with the dry, British, stinging humour from Michael Caine. I love British humour. It’s very witty, it’s very dry and it’s very funny. It works really well in our movie.

What was it like to work with Sir Michael Caine?

It was a complete honour to work with Michael Caine. What a great guy’s guy. I was really happy to meet him and I was even happier to discover that he is incredibly down to Earth. He’s the kind of guy you want to hang out with all the time. He tells great dirty jokes, but at the same time he’s a gentleman to everybody on set. He’s amazing.

What was it like to work with the younger actors in the cast?

Vanessa Hudgens and Josh Hutcherson are great young actors who really impressed me. Making movies is not easy. It’s a lot of fun, but it’s a lot of hard work and it’s tough to find that balance when you’re a teenager. It’s tough to stay smart and not get wrapped up in a lot of the nonsense found in Hollywood. It’s very easy to fall out of clubs and get swept away with being a celebrity, but not these two. They are both very smart and they both have wonderful, solid families. Both of them have really great mothers and if you have a great mother then you have a fantastic shot at being decent.

Click NEXT to read the second part of the interview.

The Super Bowl hits TVs this weekend and that means it’s time for all the studios to showcase their summer movies as it’s viewed by some ridiculous number of people! Many will tune in to watch the New York Giants vs. The New England Patriots while others will tune in simply to see new TV spots and trailers.

Many studios have been releasing TV spots early and this evening we get a new 30 second trailer for G.I. Joe Retaliation. The sequel to the 2009 movie stars Channing Tatum, Dwayne Johnson, Adrianne Palicki, Byung-hun Lee, Ray Park, Ray Stevenson, Walton Goggins, Bruce Willis, Jonathan Pryce and according to the trailer Jay-Z who gets quoted by The Rock as one of his tracks is played over it. Epic!

G.I. Joe 2: Retaliation is directed by Jon M Chu and will be with us 22nd June. Have a watch below:

Our thirst for family adventure movies is never quenched, and the promise of yet another involving a mystical, far-off land packed with interesting creatures promises big things. Carving a niche in such a market is Canadian filmmaker Brad Peyton, the debut director of Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore that got mixed reviews in 2010. Tasked with breathing life back into the Journey to the Center of the Earth franchise from 2008, and with the second film simply shortened to Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, Peyton’s shaky foray into family feature filmmaking has been redeemed.

In this adventure, a more mature Sean Anderson (Josh Hutcherson) is back on another quest to find yet another lost relative at the centre of the Earth, his grandfather (played by Michael Caine), after receiving a coded message from him. Reluctantly accepting help from his mum’s enthusiastic new partner, Hank Parsons (Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson), the pair decodes the message and finds the hidden location of a mystery island through the classics of Jules Verne, Jonathan Swift and Robert Louis Stevenson. But getting to the island will prove tricky and highly dangerous, and the pair enlists the help of pilot Gabato (Luis Guzmán) and his attractive and smart teenage daughter Kailani (Vanessa Hudgens) who get ‘sucked’ into the bizarre rescue.

As such ideas and mythical vistas have been seen and recreated before, Journey 2 is inevitably predictable in a respectful, copycat Jurassic Park/Avatar kind of way – even down to florescent forest toadstools from the latter. However, it bounds along on a flurry of enthusiastic energy and silly but amusing frolics and familiar squabbles between Hank and Anderson Sr, never taking itself too seriously. In turn, it provides ample family fun with good clean jokes that neither bore the adults or sore over the kids’ heads.

It also aims to spark literary inquisitiveness that will have the youngsters checking out all the old adventure classics that its own journey is based on, including the lost City of Atlantis. In addition, and as with any film in this genre, it is peppered with lessons to be learnt and appreciation for your elders – even if Caine as Anderson Sr. is as unreliable as they come, and looks like an aging rocker at the end. It also has its faults when dealing with scaling of its animals in this new world (big animals are small, and vice versa) – just check out Anderson Sr.’s fireflies illuminating his abode that remain normal size.

The casting of beefy Rock – still a man giant from Fast & Furious 5 last year – with a toned Hutcherson acting alongside Hudgens in the tiniest of shorts and vest top and with curls to die for is designed to titillate and provide the glamour among the forest undergrowth. If nothing else, this display of youthful virility will thrust Hutcherson into the hormonal and rather over-crowded teen spotlight currently occupied by the Twilight boys. Boy-next-door Hutcherson has an appealing integrity about him that carries through from the first film, even though he endearingly struggles with teenage angst and bad chat-up lines this time around. Still, he can handle bee flying – another unoriginal nod to another kids’ film classic, Honey, I Shrunk The Kids.

As for the 3D, it seems to have been deployed in this film merely to allow The Rock to do his party trick of firing virtual berries in our faces using pecks power alone – and it gets some giggles. Intimidating in size but as soft a playful puppy dog, the only really disconcerting feature of Johnson’s appearance is his oddly placed nipples that provided a fascinating, if horrifying distraction in the drearier moments. Still, the actor’s comic timing laced with sarcasm is in full supply in this, and he produces some comedy moments with Guzmán and Caine as the grown men try to overcome the obstacles standing in the way of making a quick escape. Apart from that, the 3D is just a nice, visually enhancing factor, but hardly earth-shatteringly important to the story context, so you decide whether you wish to spend the extra money when paying for a family cinema outing.

As foreseen as the ending is, it’s the journey taken that is key, in generating the laughs and the life lessons along the way. Journey 2 may not offer any exciting new premise to the genre and is not without its continuity errors, but its appealing cast has a great chemistry and an infectious team spirit that gives you a buzz and entertains you right until the corny and equally predictable finale.

***~~ (3/5)

Here’s what is most probably the final trailer for Dwayne Johnson’s new movie, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island. The trailer is introduced by Johnson and his co-star Josh Hutcherson who refuses to ‘pop his pecks’ like thje massive man sat next to him!

Michael Caine, Luis Guzma and Vanessa Hudgens complete the main cast of the movie which is set to hit our screens 3rd February. We’ll have a merchandise competetyion coming up shortly for the film so keep your eyes peeled.

Young Sean Anderson receives a coded distress signal from a mysterious island where no island should exist. It’s a place of strange life forms, mountains of gold, deadly volcanoes, and more than one astonishing secret.

Unable to stop him from going, Sean’s new stepfather, Hank, joins the quest. Together with a helicopter pilot and his beautiful, strong-willed daughter, they set out to find the island, rescue its lone inhabitant and escape before seismic shockwaves force the island under the sea and bury its treasures forever.

To celebrate the release of JOURNEY 2: THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND in cinemas February 3^rd, we are giving five lucky winners the chance to win an exciting JOURNEY 2: THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND goodie bag, including a t-shirt, hat and a ginormous growing toy lizard!  

In this follow-up to the 2008 worldwide hit “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” the new 3D family adventure “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” begins when young Sean Anderson (Josh Hutcherson, reprising his role from the first film) receives a coded distress signal from a mysterious island where no island should exist.  It’s a place of strange life forms, mountains of gold, deadly volcanoes, and more than one astonishing secret.  Unable to stop him from going, Sean’s new stepfather, Hank (Dwayne Johnson), joins the quest.  Together with a helicopter pilot (Luis Guzman) and his beautiful, strong-willed daughter (Vanessa Hudgens), they set out to find the island, rescue its lone inhabitant and escape before seismic shockwaves force the island under the sea and bury its treasures forever.

To be in with a chance of winning this prize, simply answer the question on the next page.

Eleven years ago, with the release of Richard Kelly’s seminal cult classic Donnie Darko, the thought that I might be one day vying to defend this once prolific director to a dismissive general public and disenfranchised fanbase would have been as counter-intuitive as thoughts come.

Following the theatrical release of Kelly’s freshman effort – which introduced the world to not only one, but two Gyllenhaals – it was widely accepted that the director could in fact do no wrong, and that a long and illustrious career lay ahead as he continued to baffle audiences with his trans-dimensional tales of suburban apocalypse.

Since then, however, everything has changed: a divisive director’s cut, and unofficial sequel and a two poorly received releases later, Kelly is no longer held in such high esteem. He has been derided, his storytelling abilities questioned and his imagination mocked. Nonetheless, with the benefit of hindsight, I cannot help but challenge this new opinion of Kelly as a self-indulgent and impenetrable pulp-existentialist.

Donnie Darko: The Director’s Cut

When Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko made its début back in 2001, the cinemagoing public was almost unanimous in its indifference. Well, it would have been if anyone had actually gone to see it. It wasn’t long, however, until overwhelming critical acclaim and persistent word of mouth spread and the film developed a dedicated cult following. With the film’s fans showing an insatiable thirst for more information, eager to make some sense of the film’s most enigmatic complexities, Kelly released a director’s cut in an attempt to maximise his audience’s enjoyment and understanding of the story.

For many, however, the release of the new cut of the movie had the opposite effect, with many viewer’s enjoyment of the film apparently mired by the new and extended scenes. In a somewhat predictable backlash on a film many hadn’t seen coming, stars were hastily deducted and Kelly’s abilities questioned due to a slightly altered pace and an additional 20 minutes of running time. As Kelly delved deeper into his film’s mythology and began to compromise the human element of his story in favour of a greater sense of narrative coherence, the director’s winning streak came to an almost immediate end, and he fell into an underserved disrepute that would haunt his next two features.

But Donnie Darko isn’t a lesser movie simply because Kelly has attempted to elaborate on his initial premise and endeavoured to find a clearer way of telling his story; if anything, it’s gained greater immersive value. The original film was ambitious enough, and while there might be those who miss the margin for interpretation provided by the missing pieces of the puzzle, they underestimate a version of the movie steeped in just as much ambiguity. It’s the same masterpiece, just with a different arrangement.

Southland Tales

The story of Southland Tales‘ troubled production is infamous: lambasted following its début at Cannes, Richard Kelly’s follow-up to cult favourite Donnie Darko re-entered post production for a much needed emergency overhaul – in which the director hacked furiously at a movie rejected by critics as calamitous, self-indulgent and unsalvageable. Even in its heavily edited form, released theatrically eighteen months later, Kelly’s film failed to redeem itself in the eyes of most.

Southland Tales is the sort of movie that features two cars having sex, an unlimited fuel source that can also get you high, and which casts Justin Timberlake only to have him lip-sinc to The Killers’ All These Things That I’ve Done. It is a film of criss-crossing narratives, conflicting genres and one which has an opinion on just about everything. A post-apocalyptic satire with a dream sequence musical interlude, Kelly has constructed a sprawling narrative which encompasses everything from reality television and celebrity culture to terrorism, cyber-censorship and surveillance. Not to mention the important topic of teen horniness.

But while it might flirt with pretension and occasionally border on the obtuse, Southland Tales is better for its eccentricities than it is worse off. Kelly has crafted an intricate and rewarding tale that – while initially confounding – has more and more to give with every viewing. Casting actors otherwise pigeonholed, Kelly has wrung interesting – if hardly naturalistic – performances from Dwayne Johnson and Sarah Michelle Gellar, while finding an unexpected emotional centre with an uncharacteristically toned-down and heartfelt double-performance from professional idiot Seann William Scott.

The Box

Kelly’s most recent offering is a comparably personal tale of familial and philosophical conflict. Starring James Marsden and Cameron Diaz as partial representations of his parents, the film asks what you might do if offered extraordinary riches at the expense of the life of a stranger. With the couple’s decision leading them to discover a society rife with conspiracy and their deal with the devil having unforeseen implications for their only child, the two actors wring almost unbearable tension out of a relatively simple concept.

While the hallmarks of a Kelly production are indeed present and accounted for – from the inexplicable water coffins to the mind-bendingly poignant final reveal – The Box makes a conscious attempt to dial down the crazy in order to appeal to a wider audience. Although decidedly more commercial than Donnie Darko and Southland Tales, however, this is no Hollywood sell-out, the film proving characteristically rife with intrigue and underscored by a welcome intelligence.

With one character’s face blown off and another’s toes missing, this is a movie that spends as much time outside the box as it does within. Packing zombies, aliens and a twist that isn’t so much unpredictable as hauntingly inevitable, Kelly has produced another winning blend of genres that successfully transcends its constituent influences to become more than the sum of its parts. When such parts include an ex X-Man and Cameron “The Holiday” Diaz, that’s all the more surprising.

All in all, then, Richard Kelly isn’t some one-hit-wonder turned laughing stock. To write his movies off simply because they fail to live up to the standards set by his original cut of Donnie Darko would be to do his subsequent works a great disservice. He is an auteur, a filmmaker unwilling to compromise his own vision, however impenetrable and non-commercial it may prove. A Richard Kelly film is one that straddles genres, as well as time and space; one which casts actors against type and juxtaposes music with striking visuals; a movie which strains under the very weight of its filmmaker’s limitless ambition, with a bullet in its eye and a paradox at its heart.

With only three such films to his name, I can only hope that there are many more to come. And so should you.

Vin Diesel has pretty much put rumours of a sixth and seventh Fast and the Furious film to rest this week by stepping out of the shadows to pretty much (two important words there) confirm them.

Speaking on the writing process of the much touted sixth film (a process that I’m sure is ably aided by a veritable surfeit of Hot Wheels miniatures and a lot of vroom vroom sound effects) he has stated:

With the success of this last one, and the inclusion of so many characters, and the broadening of scope, when we were sitting down to figure out what would fit into the real estate of number six, we didn’t have enough space. We have to pay off this story, we have to service all of these character relationships, and when we started mapping all that out it just went beyond 110 pages.

To this he added that the studio said “you can’t fit all that story in one damn movie!” which for my money is Universal braying for two films worth of box-office, what with their engine currently running on last year’s Fast Five dollars and all.

Director Justin Lin is confirmed for the sixth and everyone seems to be assuming that he and the cast will return for both new outings considering that most of them are pretty much box-office poison outside of the franchise (and by most of them I ironically mean the two leads stars Vin Diesel and Paul Walker). Even so that’s no bad thing because as long as you lobotomised yourself on the way in Fast Five was undoubtedly rollicking good fun.

It’s yet to be seen whether the two films will be stand-alone pieces or whether they will form one two-part contiguous story but either way I’m excited. Whilst they won’t be anything like The Hobbit or Harry Potter 7 they will definitely rival them as pieces of all out entertainment.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

On Saturday, we got our first sneak peek of the G.I. Joe: Retaliation trailer which is the sequel to the 2009 movie, G.I. Joe Rise of the Cobra and now the full trailer is here.

This time, veteran hard man Bruce Willis and not so veteran hard man, Dwayne Johnson show up to give the movie extra umph alongside Channing Tatum, Dwayne Johnson, Adrianne Palicki, Byung-hun Lee, Ray Park, Ray Stevenson and Walton Goggins. This one won’t be subtle…

 Synopsis: The G.I. Joe team faces off against Zartan, his accomplices, and the world leaders he has under his influence.

The movie is set for release on the 22nd of June and you can see all our coverage of the movie here.

Here’s the trailer,

Source: Machinima.com

Most weekends not too much happens when it comes to big movie news but someone didnt get the memo as this evening as well as this amazing new poster for The Dark Knight Rises, we have this first look footage of The Rock aka Dwayne Johnson and Bruce Willis from the sequel to the 2010 movie, G.I. Joe: Retaliation.

The footage comes from ET as is a preview to the trailer which is set to hit on Monday. The film also stars Channing Tatum, Adrianne Palicki, Byung-hun Lee, Ray Park, Ray Stevenson, Walton Goggins, and is directed by Jon M Chu. It’ll be with us 22nd June.

Source : Thanks for the heads up from BleedingCool

It seems like news about Michael Bay has been coming in fast and strong in the past few days. Earlier this week, we heard that Bay was reconsidering his position on declining to return to the Transformers franchise for a fourth film, with none other than Steven Spielberg fully backing his possible return.

Then yesterday, we got some great possible casting news in the form of Dwayne Johnson and Mark Wahlberg being eyed for Bay’s next and smaller-budgeted film, Pain and Gain.

Now comes the (in my eyes) fantastic news that Bay is in final talks to direct a fourth Transformers film for Paramount, via Vulture, and it sounds like the key is tied up in Pain and Gain.

Bay’s next film has been a passion project that he’s been developing since 2001, and he’d first been intending to direct it in between the second and third Transformers films. Since that didn’t happen, he’s now shifting from the $195m. budget of his last film, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, to a more moderate budget of $20m. for Pain and Gain, and it looks like Paramount are essentially going to greenlight and fund the smaller film for Bay if he’ll return to direct the fourth Transformers film for them.

As Spielberg recently commented, Bay really does seem to have a secret formula with his films, especially when you consider the ever-increasing box office performances of each of the successive Transformers films, and I’m already getting excited about seeing the robots return to the big screen under his direction.

The plan is to get Pain and Gain underway as early as the spring of next year, and whilst he’s shooting that, Bay will begin pre-production with art development and visual effects tests simultaneously, with an eye to start filming the fourth Transformers instalment by the winter of 2012.

Naturally plot details are being kept under wraps, but it sounds as though the next film is looking to hark back to some of the original characters and bring them to life on the big screen.

““Regular people might not care about bringing out a character like Sentinel Prime,” says one of our insiders, referring to the little-known character who played a major part in last summer’s Transformers: Dark of the Moon, “But believe me, fans of the series cared.””

No news yet on who’s going to be penning the script, but I’m hoping we’ll see the return of Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who co-wrote the first two films, alongside Ehren Kruger, who co-wrote the second film and took the third film on alone.

I thought Dark of the Moon was an absolutely brilliant film this year, with Bay really out-doing himself after what I think many fans thought was a bit of a drop-off in calibre in Revenge of the Fallen, so I’ve got high hopes for a fourth film, and every reason to expect Bay will fulfil every one of them.

One of the next big questions will of course be whether Shia LaBeouf, who had previously announced like Bay that he wouldn’t return for a fourth film, will reconsider his original position, and if not, then the studio will no doubt begin the search as soon as possible for who will fill his place in the lead.

It’s still early days yet, but it sounds like the deal is pretty close to closing for both Pain and Gain and the fourth Transformers film, and an official announcement is expected to come as early as next week. Keep your fingers crossed, because I think Bay has got two brilliant films coming for us in the next few years. More as we get it.

After reporting just yesterday that Michael Bay is reconsidering his position on not returning to direct a fourth Transformers film, we’ve now got some great casting news to bring you concerning the smaller film that he wants to do before potentially returning to the franchise he’s spent the past few years working on.

Variety are now reporting that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Mark Wahlberg, who’ve worked together previously on The Other Guys, are now being eyed for the two leading roles in Bay’s upcoming Pain And Gain, a dark comedy centred on two steroid-abusing bodybuilders.

“Based on a Miami New Times article from 1999, “Pain and Gain” will follow a pair of Florida bodybuilders who get caught up in an extortion ring and a kidnapping scheme that goes terribly wrong.”

The project is set up at Paramount and has been in the works since 2001, with Bay originally planning on making it in between the second and third Transformers films. He’ll be producing alongside Donald De Line, who’s worked with Wahlberg already on The Italian Job remake. The original script was written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, co-writers on this year’s Captain America: The First Avenger, who have compared its tone to the Coen brothers’ Fargo.

The talks for both Johnson and Wahlberg are very much still early, and it’s likely that Wahlberg’s busy schedule – he’s currently filming Broken City and has a slew of other movies lined up beyond that – will unfortunately keep him from joining Bay’s next project.

And whilst Johnson’s schedule is also busy at the moment, having gained some serious attention after starring in this year’s Fast Five, it’s thought that he’d have time to fit the project’s intended spring production next year into his schedule before returning for the sixth and seventh films in the The Fast and the Furious franchise, which are expected to be shot back-to-back next summer.

So though both Johnson and Wahlberg still have question marks over their heads for this project, it’s great to hear that the film is getting some traction having been in the pipelines for quite some time now. No official greenlight has been given to Pain and Gain yet, but with Bay at the helm and Johnson and Wahlberg being considered for the leads, I’m sure they’ll get the official go-ahead without much a problem, especially with the budget moderately forecast at $20m., which is a fraction of Dark of the Moon’s $195m. price tag.

Yahoo have released these four new posters for their movie, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island. What do you think? Let us know in the comments section below…. We like the fact that The Rock is jumping over an egg in this one and in the UK one it’s a rock!

Journey 2 – The Mysterious Island stars Dwayne Johnson, Michael Caine, Josh Hutcherson, Luis Guzman, Vanessa Hudgens and Kristen Davis​ and helmed by Brad Peyton.

In this follow-up to the 2008 worldwide hit “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” the new 3D family adventure “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” begins when young Sean Anderson (Josh Hutcherson, reprising his role from the first film) receives a coded distress signal from a mysterious island where no island should exist.  It’s a place of strange life forms, mountains of gold, deadly volcanoes, and more than one astonishing secret.

Unable to stop him from going, Sean’s new stepfather, Hank (Dwayne Johnson), joins the quest.  Together with a helicopter pilot (Luis Guzman) and his beautiful, strong-willed daughter (Vanessa Hudgens), they set out to find the island, rescue its lone inhabitant and escape before seismic shockwaves force the island under the sea and bury its treasures forever.

“Journey 2: The Mysterious Island,” is directed by Brad Peyton (“Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore”).  It also stars Michael Caine as Sean’s grandfather, Alexander Anderson, and Kristin Davis as Sean’s mom, Liz Anderson.

It’ll be with us February 10th 2012.

Earlier today I put up the first UK poster for Dwayne Johnson’s new movie, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island and didn’t actually bother to check if the trailer that we were sent was different to the US one that we placed last week. Turns out it is and gives us much more footage from the movie along with new storyline. I’ve embedded it below for your viewing pleasure. Alas there is no Dwayne Johnson moob dancing in this one! Good or bad thing? We’re not sure!

Journey 2 – The Mysterious Island stars Dwayne Johnson, Michael Caine, Josh Hutcherson, Luis Guzman, Vanessa Hudgens and Kristen Davis​ and helmed by Brad Peyton.

In this follow-up to the 2008 worldwide hit “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” the new 3D family adventure “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” begins when young Sean Anderson (Josh Hutcherson, reprising his role from the first film) receives a coded distress signal from a mysterious island where no island should exist.  It’s a place of strange life forms, mountains of gold, deadly volcanoes, and more than one astonishing secret.

Unable to stop him from going, Sean’s new stepfather, Hank (Dwayne Johnson), joins the quest.  Together with a helicopter pilot (Luis Guzman) and his beautiful, strong-willed daughter (Vanessa Hudgens), they set out to find the island, rescue its lone inhabitant and escape before seismic shockwaves force the island under the sea and bury its treasures forever.

“Journey 2: The Mysterious Island,” is directed by Brad Peyton (“Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore”).  It also stars Michael Caine as Sean’s grandfather, Alexander Anderson, and Kristin Davis as Sean’s mom, Liz Anderson.

It’ll be with us February 10th 2012.

This poster gives you tips on what to do if you discover a forgotten island, disturb some giant lizard eggs and need to get away fast! This is the first UK poster (could well be the first poster anywhere actually) for the sequel to Journey to the 2008 movie, Center of the Earth. This time we get the title Journey 2 – The Mysterious Island which sees Dwayne Johnson taking on the lead role accompanied by Michael Caine, Josh Hutcherson, Luis Guzman, Vanessa Hudgens and Kristen Davis​ and helmed by Brad Peyton. If you missed the first trailer, you can see it here.

In this follow-up to the 2008 worldwide hit “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” the new 3D family adventure “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” begins when young Sean Anderson (Josh Hutcherson, reprising his role from the first film) receives a coded distress signal from a mysterious island where no island should exist.  It’s a place of strange life forms, mountains of gold, deadly volcanoes, and more than one astonishing secret.

Unable to stop him from going, Sean’s new stepfather, Hank (Dwayne Johnson), joins the quest.  Together with a helicopter pilot (Luis Guzman) and his beautiful, strong-willed daughter (Vanessa Hudgens), they set out to find the island, rescue its lone inhabitant and escape before seismic shockwaves force the island under the sea and bury its treasures forever.

“Journey 2: The Mysterious Island,” is directed by Brad Peyton (“Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore”).  It also stars Michael Caine as Sean’s grandfather, Alexander Anderson, and Kristin Davis as Sean’s mom, Liz Anderson.

It’ll be with us February 10th 2012.

Click the poster to enlarge.

Here’s the first trailer for Dwayne Johnson’s new movie, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island which could also have the title Journey to the Centre of the Earth 2. This time, joining Johnson is Michael Caine, Josh Hutcherson, Luis Guzman, Vanessa Hudgens and Kristen Davis and it’ll be with us 10th February 2012 and is helmed by Brad Peyton.

This trailer is action packed, silly, funny and actually looks pretty good! Have to admit, I didn’t hugely enjoy the first Journey to the Centre of the Earth but I’m willing to give this one a go.

Have a watch of the trailer below and let us know what you think on Twitter or in the comments section.

Keep watching until the end to discover what the ‘peck pop of love’ is!

Vin Diesel has built up a substantial following through his Facebook – more than twenty seven million people and counting, you have to admit, is pretty immense.

He has a great track-record of sharing information with his loyal fans through his page, and the latest news he’s given us is absolutely fantastic, teasing the possibility that the sequel to this year’s explosive Fast Five will come in the form of not one but two more films in the franchise!

“Was just talking to my friend Paul… 10 years, a decade of heart put into this franchise. There is so much story… might not be able to be contained to one film.”

Fans of the films will of course recognise that Paul as Paul Walker, the second half of the series’ top two leading men, with each having starred in four of the five films to date (Walker led number two but wasn’t seen in Tokyo Drift, whilst Diesel skipped 2 Fast 2 Furious but had a cameo in the third).

Word now comes from Twitch, via Collider, that not only confirms that suggestion of there being at least two more films to come, but says that there are plans to shoot the two films back-to-back in Europe, with shooting expected to take place throughout 2012. And guess who’s just starting early talks to join the film.

None other than our own Jason Statham, the ridiculously brilliant star of films like Guy Ritchie’s Snatch, Crank, The Transporter, and most recently Killer Elite. Fast Five saw the cast of the franchise get an excellent addition in the form of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and expanding the cast by one more to include Statham in at least one of the next two movies would be an awesome move.

Fast Five was a transition film that began the process of moving the series from being cars-focused towards the heist genre, and Fast Six and Seven should be looking to cement that notion, being based in the latter. The transition in Fast Five was done both effortlessly and brilliantly, and I cannot wait to see what director Justin Lin, Diesel, Walker, and everyone else involved have in store for us.

Fast Six has a release date scheduled for 24th May, 2013, so we’ve still got just over a year and a half to wait to see what happens next, but if you happened to catch the mid-credits scene at the end of Fast Five, you’ll know that they’ve got a fantastic ace up their sleeve, and I am dying to find out how they’re going to bring back that familiar face from the past.

Fast Five was Justin Lin’s third film in the popular car driving/face hitting series and it turned out far better than anyone expected with Dwayne Johnson entering the series with the subtlety of a fifty foot fist to the face.

What Lin got right with this installment was to wrap a decent heist thriller around the trappings of a F’n'F film, not forgetting to add a smidge of family drama and the requestite semi-nakedness, some of which can be seen in the clip below.

It’s a lot of fun, looks great on Blu-ray and we have a brief chat with actress Elsa Pataky, who prior to this film was perhaps best known in the UK as Ilze in Bernard Rose’s Mr. Nice with Rhys Ifans.
Take it away Elsa,

Dwayne Johnson, a.k.a. The Rock, currently hard at work filming GI Joe 2: Retaliation, is now in talks to play the biblical role of Goliath in Scott Derrickson’s take on the tale of David and Goliath, entitled Goliath, TwitchFilm report.

The role of David, future King of Israel, has also been offered to Twilight-star Taylor Lautner, with Twilight producers Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey also on board for Goliath.

The bare bones of the story of David and Goliath are of course well known. Goliath is a giant in comparison to the regular-sized David, but nonetheless the latter defeats the giant with a slingshot between the eyes. It will be interesting to see the full plot synopsis when it emerges though, to see exactly what direction debut screenwriters Patrick McKay and John D. Payne decide to take with this project.

Johnson has been making a bigger and bigger name for himself recently, with a brilliant performance in Justin Lin’s Fast Five (a.k.a. Fast & Furious 5) this year, and he’s now filming the sequel to GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra, GI Joe 2: Retaliation. He’s also set to star in the Fast Five follow-up, which is definitely going to be one to look out for.

Lautner has of course also become a recognisable face in the past few years for his role as Jacob in the Twilight films, which has its final instalment commencing on 18^th November this year, before Part II next year. His next film, Abduction, has also been gaining some attention lately, due out at the end of the month, and you can see the recently released second trailer here, and an extended fight sequence for the film, which also stars Lily Collins, Jason Isaacs, and Sigourney Weaver, here.

Lautner’s offer is said to be still early days yet, and he’s not officially in talks for the role. But getting to star opposite Dwayne Johnson in what is sure to be a film on a pretty epic scale isn’t really something you should turn down, so I can see him taking the part as it’s on the table for him. Naturally, the film itself is still in early days as well, so no word yet on a release date, but the project sounds like it will be something to look forward to. In reality, I’d wager that Lautner couldn’t actually take Johnson down in a million years, but of course that’s the whole point of the casting.

To mark the release of Fast Five on DVD and Blu-ray 5th September, Universal Pictures (UK) have given us five copies of the movie to give away on Blu-ray Triple Play (contains the movie on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital Download). You can pre-order your copy here or scroll down to win the movie.

FIVE TIMES THE ACTION! FIVE TIMES THE FURY!

Vin Diesel, Paul Walker and Dwayne Johnson lead this all-star all-action movie with outrageous stunts, incredible cars and beautiful girls that pushes the limits into the red and beyond!

The legendary Dom Toretto (Diesel) partners with outlaw cop Brian O’Conner (Walker) on the opposite side of the law in exotic Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Hunted by the ruthless Agent Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and an army of corrupt cops working for a deadly drug kingpin, Toretto and O’Conner reunite the gang from previous Fast adventures to pull off one last job – an insane heist worth $100 million!

To be in with a chance of winning a copy of the movie on  Blu-ray Triple Play, simply answer the following question using the form below.

What is the name of Vin Diesel’s character in the Fast and Furious franchise?

COMPETITION NOW CLOSED

The small print:

• Open to UK residents only
• Only one entry per household will be counted
• The competition will close 12th September at 23.59 GMT
• The winner will be picked at random from entries received
• No cash alternative is available

The usual T&Cs can be found here. Good Luck!

Film © 2011 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved