Movies
WETA Action From the Set of ‘Rampage’
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is flexing his muscles on the set of New Line Cinema’s Rampage, which is now filming in Atlanta, for an April 20, 2018, release.
Based on the popular Midway video game, Johnson plays Davis Okoye, a primatologist who shares an unshakable bond with George, the extraordinarily intelligent, silverback gorilla who has been in his care since birth. But a rogue genetic experiment gone awry transforms this gentle ape into a raging monster.
“ In this scene, our Oscar-winning Weta Digital is using their groundbreaking ‘performance capture’ to bring ‘George’ the Silverback to life,” says Johnson of the first photo, pictured above. “It uses over 30 special cameras to ‘see’ the performance of my co-actor [Jason Liles], allowing the digital artists to make the most realistic and badass animations possible. He’s wearing a ‘facial capture helmet’ and we can record every muscle movement and expression and emotion of George as goes on a rampage. Jason studied gorillas for months preparing for this performance capture role – facial expressions, sounds, habits, and emotions. Spectacular performance. What a learning curve for me and such a pleasure to help produce these amazing artists who come to set daily to be game changers.”
The second photo displays Johnson with two of his costars.
“Rampaging nights with my partners in crime, Naomie Harris and Jeffery Dean Morgan,” he explained of his costars. “The animal-loving anti-poacher Ranger from Rwanda, the groundbreaking geneticist from CRISPR and the cowboy himself from the OGA – the ‘other’ government agency.”
Described as “Ted meets ET,” David Mikalson’s raunchy comedy Goblin is being brought to life over at A24, and Will Forte (“The Four Seasons”) is now in talks to star.
Deadline first reported the news this afternoon.
Kenneth Branagh has been cast to voice the titular Goblin in the upcoming A24 movie, with the character said to be “green-colored” as well as “anatomically correct.”
Skyler Gisondo (Superman) is reportedly playing the Goblin’s human best friend.
The mysterious project sounds a bit like films including A Gnome Named Gnorm and more recently, Frankie Freako, though it’s important to note that it’s not billed as a horror movie.
Deadline details, “After [Mikalson] hatched the idea to make an outrageous buddy comedy about a goblin, using a practical puppet and operating outside the Hollywood system, his script quickly got him a rep team. While others might have eyed the raunchy comedy as a writing sample or planned to wait to see the micro-budget version Mikalson has been directing in Kentucky, A24 jumped all over it. The hot indie essentially has agreed to finance a full feature.”
“There was a lot of interest, but A24 came with what Mikalson really wanted, after spending all his money crafting the puppet title character: they acquired the movie and agreed to let him make it with a significantly increased budget than what he had left after creating the anatomically correct title character,” Deadline’s report goes on to explain.
What does the titular Goblin actually look like? Well, a cake that Mikalson had whipped up for his reps might give us our first look at what to expect. Deadline explains the photo you’ll see down below, “Take a look at the cake he commissioned with Marc Gravelle at Cake Art in West Hollywood, to present to his reps as thanks for making his dream come true.”
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