Will ‘Monsters, Inc. 2′ Be A Prequel?

To date, Pixar has done no wrong in my eyes and with a combined box office haul in the billions apparently the majority of the world agrees with me. Every time the studio announces a new project the worldwide consensus is that it will earn major dollars.

When Pixar announced their plans last year for Monsters, Inc. 2, many people where wondering if they could make a film entirely about monsters that make kids laugh. At the end of the first film, the monster society discovered they could produce more power from a child’s laugh than they could a scream – it was a great ending for the film but it didn’t feel like a strong enough motivator for a sequel.

According to the Dutch site Animatie, it appears that Disney and Pixar might not have to face that problem, as they are apparently planning on making Monsters, Inc. 2 a prequel and not a sequel. The story will apparently take audiences back to Sully (voiced by John Goodman) and Mike’s (voiced by Billy Crystal) college days where they were fierce rivals. While teaching their classes advanced techniques of scaring, Mike and Sully go from working against each other to becoming the best friends audiences know and love from the first film.

This information apparently came from a Disney catalogue of upcoming films sent to a French theater, and since there hasn’t been any confirmation by Pixar or Disney in regards to its validity you should take this RUMOR with a grain of salt.

However, in my opinion, this isn’t a bad direction to take the Monsters, Inc. franchise in. Besides giving viewers a chance to see how Mike and Sully became such good friends, a prequel would also open up the story to explaining the reasons behind Randall’s (voiced by Steve Buscemi) disdain for Sully. Taking the story back a few years really gives Pixar a multitude of options and gives them the ability to introduce a slew of new characters.  I’m sure the extra stock of marketable (read: sellable) merchandise wouldn’t hurt, either.

Monsters, Inc. 2 should scares its way into theaters November 2012. How do you feel about it being a prequel instead of a sequel?

Follow us on Twitter for TV and Movie News @Walwus and @ScreenRant

Source: Animatie via /Film

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Grabbers – Alien Monsters Meet Drunken Irishmen

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus, Sharktopus, The Squid and the Whale – people everywhere love nothing better than a movie whose main villain is an eight-armed suction cup-covered sea creature from the deepest parts of the ocean’s recesses (OK, The Squid and the Whale is a stretch).

Variety is now reporting that Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has recently bought the UK rights to the upcoming Irish horror-comedy Grabbers.

The movie, which recently began filming in Belfast and Donegal, is directed by independent filmmaker Jon Wright and was written by Kevin Lehane.  Special FX house Nvizible – whose most recent work can be seen in the films Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Clash of the Titans – has signed on to work on the digital creature effects for Grabbers.

While the title conjures memories of the cult-favorite Tremors (anyone remember the video game Graboids?), the story for Grabbers is unique and sounds completely hilarious. Check out the synopsis and first poster below:

Ciarán O’Shea, the handsome though washed up policeman of sleepy Erin Island, has a daily routine consisting mainly of hanging out at the pub with the local drunks and various other charmingly eccentric characters. But his day is about to go horribly wrong.

Teamed up with the unwanted help of Lisa – an uptight workaholic policewoman from the Irish mainland – they suddenly find themselves dealing with dead whales, decapitated fishermen and weird alien creatures or “grabbers”. Like a giant squid with tentacles, fanged jaws and a three-foot barbed tongue, they’re making mincemeat of the locals.

Faced with another imminent attack, O’Shea and Lisa figure out that the only person to survive the last onslaught only did so because he was so drunk his blood was literally toxic to the monsters. So there is only one thing for it: They have to get the entire village as drunk as possible in order to survive the night … a task that the villagers apply themselves to with gusto.

But one person must remain sober so for the first time in years O’Shea has to face up to things without a drink. When things don’t go to plan, an extremely drunk Lisa and a very sober O’Shea have to reconcile their differences and somehow save the day.

Grabbers stars Richard Coyle (Prince of Persia: The Sand of Time) , Bronagh Gallagher (Sherlock Holmes), Russell Tovey, Stuart Graham, Jonathan Ryan (The Tudors) and Roz McCutcheon.

So to recap – when an island off the coast of Ireland is invaded by bloodsucking aliens, the heroes discover that getting drunk is the only way to survive…hilarity ensues. Surely I can’t be the only person looking forward to seeing Grabbers on the big screen? Sadly, U.S. audiences may have to wait for it on DVD or NetFlix Instant Que because Sony has only secured the UK rights.

I think the tagline for the movie sums everything up quite nicely – “In 1759 Ireland invented the pint. In 2012 it’ll save their lives.” If Grabbers turns out as fun to watch as it sounds in concept, then the film will join the ranks of Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead as one of the great horror/comedies in recent cinema history.

Grabbers makes you down a fifth to stay alive in 2012.

Follow us on Twitter for TV and Movie News @Walwus and @ScreenRant

Source: Variety

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New ‘Monsters’ Clip & Interview With Director Gareth Edwards

We here at Screen Rant occasionally like to use our platform in order to help support films that we enjoy – films that could more exposure to a wider audience. You might remember that a couple of weeks ago (after a bit of prodding from other Screen Rant staff members) I watched and reviewed a film called Monsters, which was made on a micro-budget by newcomer director, Gareth Edwards.

In my official Monsters review, I praised Edwards for making a sci-fi movie that took the genre back to its roots: where real life and experience is explored by juxtaposing what is fundamentally human against circumstances or organisms that are extraordinarily inhuman.

Well, we’ve been holding on to a clip from Monsters that will better give you an idea what this movie is all about. It was also exactly a month ago today that I was lucky enough to sit down with Gareth Edwards at the New York Comic Con for an interview.  What started out as a routine chat quickly became a passionate discussion about the wide range of possibility that is currently open to filmmakers working in the digital era, as well as the wide divide amongst sci-fi fans over what they expect from the genre today.

Check out the Monsters clip below, followed by a few bits of background info about the film and snippets from my interview with Edwards.

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Edwards and the film’s two leads – Scoot McNairy and Whitney Able – filmed on location in several South American countries with only loose ideas about the story they wanted to tell. Edwards later manipulated that footage to make it feel cohesive. Guerrilla filmmaking at its best.Edwards shot 4.5 hours of film and spent months cutting that down to a 90 minute story.He wanted a monster movie that was “10 minutes of nuts and 80 minutes of therapy.”He believes that many monster movies have great effects but lame characters; his movie wanted to avoid that.One possible theme for Monsters is that “You can’t fight nature.” It’s a theme that runs parallel between the aliens’ maturation on Earth and the main characters, their attraction and the issues in their respective lives.Scoot McNairy and Whitney Able eventually got married after shooting Monsters. The chemistry you see onscreen is real.The Monsters themselves originated from theories about a Jupiter moon, Uropa, which has a deep-sea ocean. They are ocean creatures.The film cost more than the rumored 15k, but was still relatively inexpensive to make and is already in the black.Edwards is cool with both the positive and negative Internet attention – anything to gain exposure.Edwards filmed Mexico’s famed “Día de los Muertos” festival and twisted that footage into a protest against the aliens for the film.

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Screen Rant: Good science fiction (to me) usually functions as allegory, reflecting real-world issues or experiences. Can you talk about the allegory at work in Monsters?

Gareth Edwards: The allegory that was there on purpose I guess was more about the war on terror. Like, of course in the world there are things that are bad, but at what price is it worth getting rid of them? Like, if you kill more people to get rid of them than they killed, is that worth it? Is it worth it if tons of foreigners die to save one Westerner? So those are the sort of questions I was interested in – inside amongst the movie – they’re the allegorical things I’m happy with.

There’s a lot of other [allegories] – like immigration – that weren’t there by design, but I totally get the fact that since we chose Mexico and the boarder with America that it was going to be a major talking point for some. And it became a major talking point as we were filming – like when you were explaining to the non-actors, the Mexican people, etc., what our film was about – when we’d talk about the wall and things like that – they would respond quite heavily because they live with that [sort of stuff] all the time.

Continue to discussion about the modern sci-fi genre…

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