Film ON AIR

These shots were taken at the set of Johnny Depp’s new film ‘Public Enemies.’ The $80 million movie is shooting in Chicago with Michael Mann, also creator of ‘Miami Vice,’ ‘Collateral’ and ‘Ali,’ directing.

The crime drama is set during The Great Depression and revolves around FBI agent Melvin Purvis in his attempt to stop criminal John Dillinger. The story is based on the book by Bryan Burrough, with Johnny Depp playing John Dillinger. He is co-starring with Christian Bale as Melvin Purvis. Shooting will take place until the end of June and ‘Public Enemies’ will hit theaters after one year of post-production.

Also notice how the bakery is actually a book store. Don’t let the cinema fool you!

Chris Wedge, the creator of ‘Ice Age,’ is getting ready to take on the children’s book ‘The Invention of Hugo Cabret.’ The live-action film will be written by John Logan, responsible for ‘The Aviator,’ ‘The Last Samurai’ and ‘Sweeney Todd.’ The last one might have made the connection between him and producer Infinitum Nihil, Johnny Depp’s company.

‘The Invention of Hugo Cabret’ is a fairly new book, first released in January 2007. It centers around an orphaned boy that secretly lives between the walls of a train station in Paris. The bestseller was praised by its original combination of text and pictures. With about 300 illustrations it depends equally on words as it does on pictures.

Infinitum Nihil is targeting the Fall to start production.

Not only is a big part of the upcoming ‘Iron Man’ dialog and script improvised, Robert Downey Jr. was also not considered suitable for such an expensive movie. In an in depth interview with SSH!, director Jon Favreau touched upon the making of the new Marvel project. And how the independent aspect of the movie helped him to take the movie above average.

“Well, these movies don’t really have scripts which are locked in a traditional sense. [...] Sometimes Robert and I would scribble it down on a piece of poster board between takes if we had a different idea. Sometimes we would just give it three takes for him to try different things, or we’d have two cameras and him and Gwyneth then would improvise different versions of the scenes.“

While a representative had to sign off on big changes, the lack of a big studio breathing down Favreau’s neck got him a lot of “latitude and leeway.”

Initially however, Robert Downey Jr. wasn’t approved for the big budget movie. “[...] they didn’t like the idea of Robert–they were scared of him, they told me ‘no, I couldn’t hire him’ and it felt like too big of a risk,” Favreau said. But he pushed trough and when everybody saw the screen test Downey Jr. did, they stopped asking questions. “They wanted me to go with somebody younger and somebody with less of a reputation, and I was like this could be like casting Johnny Depp in ‘Pirates.’ This could define the movie and bring it out of obscurity and out of this sort of ’second-rate Spider-Man’ status that it’s in.“

The missing studio aspect of this movie is interesting. Del Toro recently said making a studio movie was like “having five hands holding your hand while you’re drawing a comic book.” And it looks like there was only one hand holding Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr. down while making this movie.

Before Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Harrison Ford will make some money on the new ‘Indiana Jones,’ the studio has to cover its $400 million in expenses the LA Times says. In recent years, more and more bigwigs have opted for a percentage of the earnings, instead of taking an upfront fee.

Paramount Pictures will have to make $400 million to cover its production and distribution fees. After that Spielberg, Lucas and Harrison will start making 87.5% of every dollar made, while Paramount will get 12.5%. Similar deals were made with Jerry Bruckheimer, Johnny Depp and Nicolas Cage on ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ and ‘National Treasure.’

Of course, we fully expect the new ‘Indiana Jones’ to make more than $400 million. These guys aren’t stupid. They will make 87.5% after that, $1 million per every $1.15 million. One of the main reasons they can do this is because Lucas owns the rights to these properties, while other movies like ‘Spider-man’ are fully owned by the studios.