Kenny and Spenny ask fans for show ideas
Outlandish frenemies Kenny Hotz and Spencer Rice are turning to their fans for ideas for the next season of Kenny vs. Spenny.
The TV duo is known for staging wild and gruelling competitions on their Showcase series like "who can stay tied to a goat the longest?" and "who can wear a dead octopus on their head the longest?"
Now they're inviting viewers to send new ideas to them online through the Showcase website.
Hotz and Rice say they will choose a winning submission and carry it out in an episode this season.
The competition runs now until Sept. 30 at showcase.ca.
The sixth season of Kenny vs. Spenny returns Nov. 15.
"Everyone hates Spenny as much as I do. Please help me give him a nervous breakdown," Hotz said today in a release.
"I trust viewers will submit competition ideas that are fair. Fans, my life and sanity are in your hands, treat them kindly," added Rice.
New rules for Fight Club
The 10th Anniversary of Fight Club is here and the Blu-ray will contain some nice extras.
A lonely, isolated thirty-something young professional in an unidentified, semi-stylized city, seeks an escape from his ordinary life with the help of a devious soap salesman. They find their release from the prison of reality through underground fight clubs, where men can be what the world denies them.
The disc contains the new featurettes A Hit in the Ear: Ren Klyce and the Sound Design of Fight Club, Flogging Fight Club and an Insomniac Mode. Returning features include, behind the scenes vignettes, an Edward Norton interview, four commentaries, deleted scenes, trailers (including the eight rules), TV spots, public service announcements, a music video, internet spots a promotional gallery and an art gallery.
The disc arrives on November 17th for $34.99.
Fox Re-Boots Marvel's Fantastic Four
Some have questioned whether Disney overpaid when it bought Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion. After all, its best known Marvel Comics superhero franchises are parked at other studios, and Universal's Islands of Adventure is as dominated by Marvel attractions as it is Dr. Seuss.
But one thing to remember about Marvel assets is, they don't seem to wear out. We're about to see the second example where successful Marvel movie franchises are going to be reinvented.
20th Century Fox is the latest studio to start the process of overhauling one of its big Marvel Entertainment franchises, “Fantastic Four,” which has already hatched two films. The studio has hired Akiva Goldsman to oversee the re-boot as producer.
New script will be written by Michael Green, the “Heroes” co-executive producer who co-wrote “Green Lantern,” the Martin Campbell-directed Warner Bros. film that will star Ryan Reynolds.
Fox would not comment on its plans, and neither would Columbia Pictures when BFD revealed a couple weeks its plan to potentially re-boot the studio's most valuable franchise, "Spider-Man."
With “Spider-Man 4” moving toward an early 2010 production start, the studio recently hired James Vanderbilt to write a fifth and sixth installment of the web-slinger franchise, with the understanding that one or both could give that franchise a makeover with a new director and cast (Daily Variety, Aug. 16, 2009). Whether director Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire return or not, Sony smartly has given itself the chance to shorten the gap between its superhero installments.
And with state-of-the-art visual effects on superhero franchises pushing these pictures toward the $250 million-$300 million range, reshuffling the creative cast gives the studio a chance to save money, since actors and directors usually have a pre-negotiated option or two before the studio is held over a barrell by talent and their reps.
Marvel Studios has eliminated that problem by making talent sign as many as nine options, which was the case with the supporting cast of "Iron Man 2."
The 2005 “Fantastic Four” and 2007 sequel “Rise of the Silver Surfer” were directed by Tim Story, and starred Ioan Gruffud, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans and Michael Chiklis. Since the deals are just getting made, it is unclear at present if any of them will return.
Though Marvel Entertainment owns and finances properties like “Iron Man” and “Thor,” Fox controls “Fantastic Four” in perpetuity—as long as it continues making the films. Fox has the same arrangement on Marvel Comics properties “X-Men,” “Daredevil,” and “Silver Surfer” --which, despite an appearance in the "Fantastic Four" sequel, is still a Fox priority for a solo film.
Marvel is a producer and financial participant through a licensing agreement signed before Marvel franchises had the drawing power they have now. In fact, the original deal was made back when Marvel was struggling to pull itself out of bankruptcy in 1997.
Fox has been extraordarily effective in mining its Marvel franchises. The studio made three “X-Men” films, and then a hit summer spinoff in “Wolverine.” Fox is working on a sequel to that film, and has scripts for “X-Men Origins: Magneto," and “X-Men Origins: First Class," the latter of which could bring original "X-Men" helmer Bryan Singer back to the fold. Potential spinoffs for the Gambit and Deadpool characters seen in "Wolverine" have also been discussed.
As producer, Goldsman is involved with several DC Comics transfers, including “Jonah Hex,” “The Losers” and “Teen Titans.” He was also producer on the Will Smith-Charlize Theron-superhero film “Hancock,” a film that has a sequel in development.
'Grand Theft Auto IV' journey will end with a bang
Rockstar Games' grand epic Grand Theft Auto IV writes its final chapter Oct. 29. And the action is as over-the-top as the title: The Ballad of Gay Tony.
Available via download exclusively for owners of the Xbox 360 version of the game ($20, and like all GTA titles, for mature audiences), this second and last add-on episode focuses on Luis Lopez, Dominican-born second-in-command to nightclub magnate Gay Tony. The drug-addled Tony, losing a grip on his empire, puts Luis in dangerous circumstances in an attempt to retain his power.
"Luis has to do some of these favors and see if he can get them out of debt," says Dan Houser, co-founder of Rockstar Games and lead writer of the episode. "The situation with Tony's drug problems gets worse and worse, and Tony gets more and more out of control."
The events happen at the same time as those in GTAIV, which has sold more than 14 million copies worldwide since its release in April 2008 (for Xbox and PS3). It focused on the "coming to America-type story" of former Eastern European soldier Niko Bellic in Liberty City.
The first downloadable episode, The Lost and the Damned, released in February, focused on Johnny Klebitz, a member of biker gang The Lost. It and Gay Tony remain Xbox 360 exclusives. Both also will be out Oct. 29 on a $40 GTA: Episodes From Liberty City disc that can be played without the original game.
"I know, as a consumer, I'm more comfortable buying songs, which are almost like playing a jukebox, than I am buying movies as purely digital items," Houser says. "We all feel that way, so we can surely get more people to experience it if we put it on a disc."
Packed with action set pieces à la films such as Mission: Impossible and Bad Boys, Gay Tony has Luis at one point parachuting from a helicopter onto a glass-windowed skyscraper. Inside he blasts his way to his prey a few floors below and shoots his target, who then topples out of the bullet-ridden window. Luis dives out after him, wearing a parachute that glides him to safety.
In another scene, Luis drops on to the top of a moving subway train from a bridge and unhooks one of the cars for a maniacal high-rolling collector of one-of-a-kind artifacts. A Skyhook chopper airlifts the freed subway car away.
A man of action, Luis is torn between friends and family and his quest for power and riches. But as he climbs higher in Liberty City's social circles, he discovers that the upper crust has some issues.
Gay Tony's cast of out-of-control characters allowed Houser and the game designers to get in touch with their inner Michael Bay. "We definitely wanted it to feel more like the way action films are when they get ridiculous," says Houser.
"Suddenly you're lifting up train cars with helicopters and it looks amazing and ridiculous, and after what you've gone through in the past, you're like, 'wow, this is a really good payoff for completing this journey.' "