2011
06.23

Shall We Play a Game? Who’s Up for a ‘WarGames’ Reboot

wargames-poster

MGM announced today that it is remaking its Oscar nominated—and just plain awesome—1983 thriller WarGames. According to Deadline, the studio has put the property in director Seth Gordon’s (Horrible Bosses) hands and is giving him a “wide berth” to update the story to better fit our hacker happy times.

Gordon tells Collider:

I love the original. I’m a bit of a hacker fanatic, and know a fair bit about that industry and cyber crime and cyber warfare. I have a real point-of-view on the material and how things have changed. And also, I think the politics of the world have changed in really fascinating ways since 1983.

There’s no longer a monolithic evil empire somewhere, spreading a different philosophy of life. That doesn’t exist. It’s a much more complicated, nuanced, political world we’re in, and I think that actually makes for a more interesting plot to tell. Frankly, cyber attack is a lot more real.

WarGames was originally directed by John Badham and starred Matthew Broderick as David Lightman, a computer hacker who unwittingly gets World War III underway when he hacks into a military super computer and engages it in a game of—say it with me—Global Thermonuclear War.

The film was a box office success and went on to earn Academy Award nominations for Best Screenplay, Best Sound, and Best Cinematography. It also launched the careers of Broderick and costar Ally Sheedy (Short Circuit).

It’s too early to know who will star in the WarGames reboot, but here’s hoping Broderick and Dabney Coleman (Cloak & Dagger), who played NORAD engineer Dr. John McKittrick, get a cameo. Coleman’s still alive, right? Or is he dead like Sheedy?

2011
06.23

martin-freeman-the-hobbit

Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings) is currently in New Zealand filming the eagerly anticipated big screen adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. The film, which will be released in two parts, has a shooting schedule of 254 days.

Entertainment Weekly managed to score the first three images from the film’s set. The photos showcase actors Martin Freeman as hobbit Bilbo Baggins and Ian McKellen as Gandalf the wizard.