Thai Cinema Chain Pulls ‘Mockingjay’ On Account of the 3-Finger Salute

Thai Cinema Chain Pulls ‘Mockingjay’ On Account of the 3-Finger Salute
Ariana Bacle — Entertainment Weekly

Had tickets to see The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1 in Thailand? You might be seeing a Woody Allen film instead.

Apex, a Thai cinema chain, was scheduled to begin showing the Hunger Games movie Thursday, but decided to pull the film from two of its theaters and replace it with Allen’s Magic in the Moonlight.
The decision comes on the heels of a government event where five students were detained after flashing T-shirts with protest messages and giving the three finger salute—the same salute Katniss gives in The Hunger Games to represent her district, and the salute Thai protesters took…

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Paramount Will Fight ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ Sequel

Paramount Will Fight ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ Sequel
Entertainment Weekly

A studio spokeswoman said Wednesday that Paramount would fight the proposed follow-up to the 1946 holiday classic starring Jimmy Stewart as George Baily, a desperate family man who imagines what his town would be like if he’d never been born. Star Partners and Hummingbird Productions announced plans Monday to create a sequel titled It’s a Wonderful Life: The Rest of the Story.

Bob Farnsworth, president of Nashville, Tenn.-based Hummingbird Productions, told trade publication Variety that the film was set for release in 2015 and would star Karolyn Grimes, who played George Bailey’s daughter…

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MPAA Losing Money by Fighting Piracy

MPAA Losing Money by Fighting Piracy
David Lieberman - Deadline.com

MPAA’s Anti-Piracy Fight Contributed To Financial Loss In 2012 While Chris Dodd Collected $3.3M

The Hollywood’s lobby group’s finances took a hit in 2012, a tax filing shows — but CEO Chris Dodd did just fine even as the MPAA licked its wounds from its failed effort to promote tough anti-piracy legislation.  Dodd’s compensation came to $3.3M last year. (The package: $3M base compensation, $250,000 bonus, $41,930 other compensation, $13,753 retirement benefit, and $19,585 non-tax benefit.) That’s up 36.5% but it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison since he worked a partial year in 2011…

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Missing the Point Entirely - A ‘Hunger Games’ Theme Park

Missing the Point Entirely - A ‘Hunger Games’ Theme Park
Devin Faraci - Baddass Digest

What if The Hunger Games: Catching Fire turned out to be a really great movie that was very smartly about subversion, and what if the people releasing the movie - Lionsgate - sort of never got it and didn’t understand the concept of bread & circuses distracting the masses from the harsh realities of a system they could - and should - overthrow. Well, they might open a theme park based on the kids-killing-kids fun of The Hunger Games

Actually, they are.

Wow. They’ve got to be joking. This is a joke, right? Right???

Talk about missing the point indeed. This is truly the definition of…

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Elysium — Review

3 of 5 stars
Elysium

When your first film is a major commercial and critical success like District 9, seeds of anticipation and worry are planted in the collective mind of your audience. Questions start crowding to the surface: “Is this guy for real? Is he a one-hit wonder? Can he do it again?” Needless to say: Neill Blomkamp‘s Elysium had ginormous shoes to fill, serious expectations to meet, and a lot to live up to. Did it succeed? Yes… and no. Mostly no.

It’s Better Up There

The year is 2154, and society is divided into two classes: the wealthy, who live on a man-made habitat called Elysium, and the…

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Boycott of ‘Ender’s Game’ — Author’s Anti-Gay Stance

Boycott of ‘Ender’s Game’ — Author’s Anti-Gay Stance
Todd Cunningham - TheWrap.com

The group Geeks Out has launched an online protest and is asking people to “Skip Ender’s Game” because of anti-gay marriage comments made by Orson Scott Card, author of the 1985 book upon which the Lionsgate film is based.

“Do not buy a ticket at the theater, do not purchase the DVD, do not watch it on-demand. Ignore all merchandise and toys,” the site implores. “By pledging to Skip Ender’s Game, we can send a clear and serious message to Card and those that do business with his brand of anti-gay activism—whatever he’s selling, we’re not buying.”

I’m doing the risky thing by going a…

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Disney, Jerry Bruckheimer Sued Over ‘Pirates’ Franchise

Disney, Jerry Bruckheimer Sued Over ‘Pirates’ Franchise
Tim Kenneally - TheWrap.com

The company has been hit with a copyright infringement lawsuit by a man who claims that he came up with numerous elements of the hugely successful “Pirates” film series, including characters, supernatural elements, storylines, plots, themes, sequence structures and screenplay elements, according to court documents obtained by TheWrap.

In the suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Florida on Tuesday, Florida resident Royce Mathew claims that Disney infringed on a story that Mathew had written, and fraudulently procured a settlement from him when a previous lawsuit was filed.

In addition…

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China Gets Special Version of Iron Man 3

China Gets Special Version of Iron Man 3
Variety

Disney is making a different version of some movies, such as Iron Man 3, for the Chinese theater-going public. The changes include such things as China landmarks, celebrity Chinese stars, omitted lines of dialogue, etc. These details are meant to make the film more appealing to the ever-growing number of Chinese moviegoers — something Hollywood isn’t ignoring.

Many blockbuster smashes, like the Marvel super-hero films, get more than half of their revenue from international box offices. So making a movie that strongly appeals to Chinese moviegoers just makes good business sense.

But not…

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Ashley Judd Will Not Be Running for Senate

Ashley Judd Will Not Be Running for Senate
Erik Hayden - Hollywood Reporter

Despite months of speculation that she would be running for Kentucky’s Senate seat in 2014, Ashley Judd decided against the idea officially on Wednesday.

“After serious and thorough contemplation, I realize that my responsibilities & energy at this time need to be focused on my family,” the Olympus Has Fallen actress wrote on Twitter.

This was totally not on my radar at all. I can’t say I’m sorry that an actress is not going to be running for political office — though on second thought maybe that would be better than the clowns we have now…