Hollywood, CA–At a press conference today outside his estate in Beverly Hills, acclaimed director Peter Jackson announced his plans to make a 72-film adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion. “It was the next logical step after doing Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit,” Jackson said. “In Lord of the Rings, we took over a thousand pages of novel and adapted it to the big screen in three extremely long films. Then in The Hobbit, we took a children’s book a fraction the length of Lord of the Rings, and also made it into three extremely long films.”

Jackson then unfolded his plan for…

TJ and Fizz discuss what’s good and bad about ‘The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1’. As ever, they don’t always see eye to eye, but that will give you, dear listeners, some fun things to chew on. They also discuss the redesign of the MovieByte website, Disney’s live action ‘Cinderella’ trailer (no, really, it’s a thing), the Russos possibly directing ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ parts one and two as opposed to Joss Whedon — which leads to a lot of discussion — and of course what theaters will have the ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ trailer.

James Gunn took to Facebook recently. He did not have kind words for the direction many studios have been headed with their universes. But I didn’t feel that he was overly crtical. And I share his conerns. This is a really short read and worth your time.

CARTS BEFORE HORSES & HOLLYWOOD’S NEW LOVE OF SHARED UNIVERSES

Listen, I love big ass shared universes in movies, as well as huge franchises. But I’m a little worried about the numerous shared universes being planned by the studios, without having a strong base film to grow from - or in some cases, NO base film to grow from. Star Wars had…

UPDATE: More theater chains other than Regal have announced plans to screen the trailer this weekend, though have not specified which theaters. Check below for a list of chains, including AMC Theatres, that have announced their involvement in the theater roll out.

Yes! My theater in Franklin, TN is on this list (the Carmike, Thoroughbred 20)! I’m excited. Guess I’ll be making the drive into Franklin for my film this weekend though I haven’t been driving that far lately. Here’s the list:

Phoenix, Arizona–Harkins, Tempe Marketplace
Los Angeles, California–AMC, Century City
Los Angeles,…

We take a look at the impressively large-scale sci-fi adventure of Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar. While well-documented as Nolan’s “most ambitious” project to date, it does remind us a lot of things he has done before. Interstellar, although technically brilliant, didn’t blow us away from a storytelling point of view, but it does force us to wrestle with questions about human potential, limitations, society, anti-intellectualism, “our place in the sky”, and “our place in the dirt.” Due to the incredible scope of the film, we increased the scope of the panel– so we are flush with…

Read The Rest

The first trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens will be debuting in a small number of theaters across the US on Friday. Regal Cinemas announced that the trailer will play before all movies showing at nine of its locations starting this Friday and continuing through the weekend:

CA Irvine — Edwards Irvine Spectrum 22 & IMAX

CA San Diego — Edwards Mira Mesa Stadium 18 IMAX & RPX

GA Atlanta — Regal Atlantic Station Stadium 18 IMAX & RPX

IL Chicago — Regal City North Stadium 14 IMAX & RPX

NY New York — Regal Union Square Stadium 14

PA Warrington — Regal Warrington Crossing Stadium 22 &…

This is the point at which I realize I never got around to writing my written review of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and realize that I have not seen it recently enough to do so. That’s sort of frustrating. Make no mistake, it is always my intention to write a review of every film I see. I am not always able to get around to doing it.

Luckily, I did write a review of the first Hunger Games film. It was very early in the days of MovieByte when these films first began making their appearance. Joe and I also talked about it on episode 7 of The MovieByte Podcast. The first installment was…

As you can see, I have just rolled out the second major redesign (or third version) of the MovieByte website. It represents several months of late nights listening to music, designing in Photoshop, and writing code like a mad-man — while still working my 40-hours-a-week day job and cranking out a podcast (almost) every week and keeping the site populated with content. I tell you all this so you can feel sorry for me.

I’m kidding, I loved doing it!

Previous Designs

The first iteration of the site when we initially launched in 2012 felt a bit heavy. Oh the site was plenty fast, but I mean in…

Showrunner Bruce Heller revealed that a “prenatal Robin” storyline is in the works for Gotham. Also coming in a future episode is the return of the pint-sized Poison Ivy — though her BFF Harley Quinn will be sitting this season out.

Speaking to EW, Heller revealed his approach to Robin. “We’re going to do a prenatal origin story for Robin down the line,” Heller said. “There are no MRIs involved. There’s an episode coming up where we learn how Robin’s parents got together.”

I checked into this show because, you know, why not. I didn’t expect it to like it much or for it to be particularly…