USA Today reports that the hacker group known as Guardians Of Peace issued a message last night, stating that “The Interview” could be released…but only if changes were made. Here is the anonymously posted message: 

This is GOP.

You have suffered through enough threats.

We lift the ban.

The Interview may release now.

But be carful.

September 11 may happen again if you don’t comply with the rules.

Rule #1: no death scene of Kim Jong Un being too happy

Rule #2: do not test us again

Rule #3: if you make anything else, we will be here ready to fight

There are conflicting reports of…

February has typically been a dumping ground for not-so-great films. But I want to believe that Kingsman is not a dumping ground film.

In Kingsman, Matthew Vaughn hopes to put a new twist on the super villain and spy flick. If you’re hoping to avoid spoilers, this trailer is probably not for you. But, it’s a comedy flick, so what’s to spoil. I’ll certainly be going to the theater for the laughs, not necessarily the plot. And it certainly looks to be pretty humorous and tongue-in-cheek.

On interesting thing I never took note of before, Mark Hamill has a part in this film. That’s… Read The Rest

Just a quick note to let you know what you can expect from MovieByte over the next couple weeks.

Today and tomorrow will be typical days for MovieByte. I’ll post a few items of interest to me. Joe and I will also be recording The MovieByte Podcast Tuesday evening for release Wednesday morning (Christmas Eve) as usual. We will be joined by Clark Douglas to talk about The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies. As is usually the case, the production of the Podcast will take up all my time and energy and that will be the only thing to come out on Wednesday.

Thursday, Christmas Day, I will be taking…

On June 12th 2014, I visited the London set of Avengers: Age of Ultron. In October, we posted our on set interviews with Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr. Today we’ve been given the green light to publish our interview with Avengers series director Joss Whedon. Here is a short snippet from Joss explaining why he decided to come back for the sequel:

I didn’t actually want to make the film necessarily. I was ragged from the first one, and so I just turned off my brain. I was like, do not think of cool ideas for the next one. Just get through this. But after a few months when they talked…

Writer-producer Dean Devlin tells Nerd Report that he and director Roland Emmerich are currently working on just one of theIndependence Day sequels — and waiting on the third installment for now.

That means that when Stargate rolls around on Emmerich’s directing schedule, it may only have to wait for one Independence Day movie and not two.

“Unfortunately, we have to wait until we finish Independence Day for that,” Devlin said of the Stargate reboot. “Roland wants to direct that one too. Hopefully we go into that right afterwards.”

“He’d like to direct the first one. I don’t know if he…

Nothing reverted back to the way it was before, but in time it became possible to look at things that would have been uncomfortable in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

It would have been expensive for the studios behind those films to hold them back indefinitely, but it would also have seemed, well, wrong. Ultimately, we value free expression. In America and in much of the rest of the world, it’s become the natural state of things, and we push back when it’s challenged. And now there’s a movie that we can’t see because it offends North Korea—or, if we’re withholding judgment, hackers…

Yes, that is his voice in the film’s teaser trailer. Although this has been roundly confirmed, particularly after a brief period of time when everyone was convinced that the voice belonged to Benedict Cumberbatch—who isn’t even in the film! probably!—it’s nice to hear Serkis confirm it. He even added another tidbit to this confirmation: The voice he used in the teaser is the actual voice of his character. Creepy.

Alright you haters, I know a thing or two about a thing or two, and I was right.

Already committed to a new trilogy from the outset, as per the standard contract of all Hollywood tentpoles, actor Mark Wahlberg confirmed he will fulfill his obligation to star in “Transformers 5” by starring in “Transformers 5.” “Yeah, I committed to doing a couple more… you know I can’t speak for Mr. Bay, but something tells me we’ll be on the set soon,” he told MTV today.

MAKE. IT. STOP! End the madness!

In response to Sony yanking “The Interview,” a small handful of theaters—Capitol Theater in Cleveland, Plaza Atlanta in Atlanta, and the Alamo Drafthouse in Dallas—revealed they would instead screen Trey Parker and Matt Stone‘s hilariously wrong puppet comedy “Team America: World Police.” It’s a fitting replacement, with the plot centering on a maniacal Kim Jong-il, who, among other things, sings a song called “I’m So Ronery,” gets impaled, and is revealed to be an alien from another planet. Ten years ago, this was deemed acceptable for wide release in cinemas around the world. Today? Not so…