• Titles and Release Dates Announced for Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit

    // Gradly // 3D, blog, Featured, LOTR, Movies, News No Responses

    New Line Cinema, Warner Bros. Pictures and MGM have announced the titles and release dates for Peter Jackson‘s upcoming two-film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien‘s masterpiece “The Hobbit.” The first movie, titled The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, arriving in theaters on December 14th, 2012. The second movie, titled The Hobbit: There and Back Again, arriving in theaters on December 13th, 2013.

    Both movies are set in Middle-earth 60 years before J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. The adventure of “The Hobbit” follows the journey of Bilbo Baggins into an epic quest to reclaim the lost Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor from the fearsome dragon Smaug.

    Ian McKellen returns as Gandalf the Grey, the character he played in “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, and Martin Freeman, who just won a BAFTA TV Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the BBC series “Sherlock,” takes on the central role of Bilbo Baggins. Also reprising their roles from “The Lord of the Rings” movies are: Cate Blanchett as Galadriel; Orlando Bloom as Legolas; Ian Holm as the elder Bilbo; Christopher Lee as Saruman; Hugo Weaving as Elrond; Elijah Wood as Frodo; and Andy Serkis as Gollum. The ensemble cast also includes (in alphabetical order) Richard Armitage, Jed Brophy, Adam Brown, John Callen, Stephen Fry, Ryan Gage, Mark Hadlow, Peter Hambleton, Stephen Hunter, William Kircher, Sylvester McCoy, Bret McKenzie, Graham McTavish, Mike Mizrahi, James Nesbitt, Dean O’Gorman, Lee Pace, Mikael Persbrandt, Conan Stevens, Ken Stott, Jeffrey Thomas and Aidan Turner.

    The screenplays for “The Hobbit” films are by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Guillermo del Toro and Peter Jackson. both movies shot consecutively in digital 3D using the latest camera and stereo technology.

  • Fox is Marketing ‘X-Men: First Class’ By Giant Smokey X’s in the Sky

    // Gradly // blog, Humor, Movies, Superheroes, Trailer 2 Responses

    20th Century Fox, in a genius marketing move, has hired planes to fly around and make giant smokey X-Men X’s in the sky promoting X-Men: First Class, they know they can get comic geeks excited all around by doing so. And it has worked. There’s even a YouTube video if you want to watch it and a huge gallery on facebook. Watch the trailer here.

    Official Synopsis:

    X-MEN FIRST CLASS charts the epic beginning of the X-Men saga, and reveals a secret history of famous global events. Before mutants had revealed themselves to the world, and before Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr took the names Professor X and Magneto, they were two young men discovering their powers for the first time. Not archenemies, they were instead at first the closest of friends, working together with other Mutants (some familiar, some new), to prevent nuclear Armageddon. In the process, a grave rift between them opened, which began the eternal war between Magneto’s Brotherhood and Professor X’s X-Men.

    X-Men: First Class stars Michael Fassbender, Kevin Bacon, Jennifer Lawrence, January Jones, Rose Byrne, Nicholas Hoult, Jason Flemyng, Zoë Kravitz, Lucas Till, Oliver Platt, Ray Wise, Edi Gathegi, Caleb Landry Jones and Álex González.

    The movie opens in theaters on June 3rd.

  • Michael Bay and James Cameron Discussing 3D in Transformers 3

    // Gradly // 3D, blog, Featured, Movies, Rants & Raves, Tech. No Responses

    James Cameron and Michael Bay talking about the future of 3D technology. Both directors sat down for the first time to have an extended public conversation about the technology and its use in the new movie industry. Here is the full 15-minute version of that video courtesy of THR.  check out the video below:

    Here is a snippet from the video above of Bay talking about the cost of 3D:

    The bottom line is, if you want to do good 3D, it’s very expensive. The camera equipment is expensive because it comes with a lot of techs, the labor. When you’re doing special effects, you have digital artists, but they have to do about a third more work when they have to match two eyes. So depending how many shots you have, that incrementally increases. And there’s a lot of tech fixes — it’s not easy shooting 3D. It’s never technically perfect, like where you shoot film and you get it back from a lab and it’s like, “Oh, that’s great.” It doesn’t come out like that with 3D….Bottom line in terms of financial impact, it’s about $30 million to the budget.

    For the full transcript of the event click here.

  • Transformers: Dark of the Moon 2 New TV Spots

    // Gradly // 3D, blog, Movies, Superheroes, Trailer No Responses

    Michael Bay has released following two TV spots for their upcoming, Transformers: Dark of the Moon. There are a couple of bits of new footage in them, check them out below and tell us what you think:

    The movie directed by Michael Bay and starring Shia LaBeouf, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, John Malkovich, Patrick Dempsey, John Turturro and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. The voice cast includes Leonard Nimoy and Hugo Weaving.

    Official Synopsis:

    The Autobots, led by Optimus Prime, are back in action, taking on the evil Decepticons, who are determined to avenge their defeat in 2009’s Transformers Revenge of the Fallen. In this new movie, the Autobots and Decepticons become involved in a perilous space race between the U.S. and Russia, and once again human Sam Witwicky has to come to the aid of his robot friends. There’s new characters too, including a new villain in the form of Shockwave, a longtime “Transformers” character who rules Cybertron while the Autobots and Decepticons battle it out on Earth.

    Dark of the Moon is set to be released in 3D, 2D and IMAX theaters on June 29. Check out all of our Transformers coverage HERE.