Rama's Screen

Just the other day, LA TIMES reported that Ben Stiller is replacing Eddie Murphy for the TOWER HEIST formerly known as Trump Heist, which will be directed by Brett Ratner (Rush Hour movies). It was supposed to be a black version of Ocean’s Eleven with Dave Chapelle, Chris Rock, Chris Tucker as the stars but now it’s either Stiller would be the only white folk in the gang or the formula has completely changed because Roger Friedman is now saying that Noah Baumbach (The Squid And The Whale, Fantastic Mr. Fox), who directed Stiller’s upcoming dramedy GREENBERG, has been hired to do a rewrite.. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in 2007, Director Brett Ratner (Rush Hour films, Red Dragon) and Eddie Murphy talked about an idea of making a heist movie, think urban Ocean’s Eleven, about a team of African-American actors like Chris Tucker, Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, working as blue collar workers and they rip off the Trump Tower. You would think an idea like this would be long forgotten by now, but lo and behold, it really is in development but Murphy is no longer attached… Read the rest of this entry »

Somebody has figured out a great way, via tumblr, to make fun of the mediocre director of our time, Brett Ratner (Rush Hour, X-Men 3, After The Sunset). Ratner haters out there can use these as signs of victory, a sweet revenge for all those times when they couldn’t get their 2 hours and money back. Check out some of the hilarious images after this jump… Read the rest of this entry »

UPDATE: Steve Of Collider said the following info is premature because.. “it’s not clear who will be back on “Beverly Hills Cop 4″ as the studio is hiring a new writer and they are starting over.”

Real quick now, Clint of Moviehole reported that BEVERLY HILLS COP 4 which will be directed by Brett Ratner will be a…”true sequel” to the 1984 hit. That would ease the pain a little bit. It’ll be like the last 2 films never existed. It also means that we’re going to see Rosewood and Taggart again. Those 2 cops were played by Judge Reinhold and John Ashford who didn’t reprise his role in the third installment due to scheduling conflict. He dodged a bullet there.

We previously learned that the script by Derek Haas and Michael Brandt was an original work, an action/thriller cop movie that got adjusted and converted into BEVERLY HILLS COP 4 so there’s a slight chance this might be Murphy’s way to redeem himself from Meet Dave, Imagine That, Norbit, Daddy Day Care and a string of torturous movies over the past decade.
Still not excited about this yet? I don’t blame you. You can bring back Ashford, Reinhold, Murphy and everybody from the past and it still won’t be enough, this sequel lost me at Brett Ratner and BEVERLY HILLS COP 4.

Many fans would agree that X-Men: The Last Stand was lame, that mediocre director Brett Ratner pretty much ruined what Bryan Singer had set up with first two films and the complaints go on and on. I gotta say, it’s easy to agree with them because the movie completely lost me at Jean Grey eliminating Cyclops, I didn’t care anymore about what happened after.
Brett Ratner has had it up to here. He blasts his haters recently via Digitalspy,..

“You can’t make these people happy. I’m kind of the anti-Christ to these comic book geeks. Every single person that wrote s**t went to see that movie multiple times because a movie doesn’t gross $200 (£120) something million unless people go to see it more than once.”
“Every single person who said, ‘I’m never seeing that movie’, they were the first ones there. What are they concerned about? It’s out of the filmmaker’s hands. A film is a collaborative effort. How’s a person sitting at home going to worry about how a movie is going to turn out to be?”
“The most ridiculous statement I’ve read is – and of course I looked at the internet after the movie came out – that I buried the franchise.
“If I buried the franchise how the f**k did they make a Wolverine? I mean, that’s ridiculous. And they’re making three other f**king X-Men movies. Mine kept the franchise alive!”

Be that as it may, but even WOLVERINE was a disappointment, so yeah the franchise IS alive,.. but it’s alive NOT true to the fans.
On second thought, Brett Ratner’s movie didn’t keep the franchise alive.. I think the franchise would’ve survived and still continued either way if his version hadn’t been made at all.
X-Men: The Last Stand earned $234 Million domestically and a total of $459 Million worldwide, it wasn’t a box office flop but just like Indiana Jones: The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, just because it’s a success doesn’t mean it’s something to be proud of.

Moviehole recently chatted with writer Derek Haas who’s working with fellow scribe Michael Brandt on the screenplay for BEVERLY HILLS COP 4 which will be directed by Brett Ratner. Previously it was Brandt who spoke and said that they’re using their old draft titled DYING DAY, very dark story that had everybody died in the end, and they basically turned it into BHC 4. Now Haas revealed just a little tiny bit of how the conversion is going to work..

‘’We’re working on the second draft and then we’ll see’’,
“As I’m sure you know, nothing is ever certain in Hollywood.”
‘’Michael and I wrote a spec script called Dying Day, a dark action movie about two FBI field agents in LA who discover their whole office is crooked. Paramount bought it and asked us to convert it into the next Axel Foley movie… which sounded like a cool challenge.. Someone at a different website reviewed our first draft of the [Beverly Hills Cop] script and railed on it for not having any jokes. No shit! Like with the first Beverly Hills Cop, we’re writing a straight up action movie that works as a police thriller, then Eddie Murphy is going to come in later and point out where he thinks he can riff. We haven’t gotten to that point yet.’’

Turning a dark thriller into comedy seems like something that could backfire. Why on earth would we wanna watch BEVERLY HILLS COP 4 if the hero won’t appear until way later on in the film?! Fans who’ve seen the first three movies would hav a certain expectation, they wouldn’t wanna have to wonder what genre they’re watching, like some of those movies out there trying to be comedy while being dramatic and thrilling and dark and sci-fi and scary and sad all at once that they don’t even know their own identities (The Spirit, Push, What Just Happened). I don’t see why Haas and Brandt couldn’t just start from scratch with action/comedy in mind and run with it.
By the way, just to recap, Brett Ratner once said they’re not going to call it BEVERLY HILLS COP 4, the movie will simply be considered the New BEVERLY HILLS COP

Last year, producer Avi Lerner learned that half-ass mediocre director Brett Ratner wasn’t fully committed to the project CONAN Reboot because Ratner wanted to do BEVERLY HILLS 4 first before everything else. And truth be told, I didn’t want to see Ratner helm this new take anyway because he won’t do the story justice and then he’ll throw in Chris Tucker and make Jackie Chan do cameo and just ruin the whole damn movie.
We don’t need to worry about that anymore because producer Joe Gatta talked to Empireonline.com about CONAN and RED SONJA and he revealed that Brett Ratner is NO longer attached to CONAN.

“We’re currently in the process of hiring a director,” he told us. “For the past six months we were discussing the movie with Brett Ratner, and for more timing issues than anything else we had to part ways with Brett. We all wanted him to do it, believe me; just the timing didn’t work. But you never know what can happen.”
“We have a potential start-date on Conan of August 24. And we’ll be shooting in Bulgaria. I would say though the emphasis is on Conan [rather than Red Sonja]. It’s our crown jewel here at the company and that will be the leader. Red Sonja probably won’t happen until next year, as far as making it goes. So we want to launch Conan and reinvent the franchise.”

I never thought I’d say this, but thank heavens for timings that don’t work. No word yet on who’s going to fill Arnold’s big shoes for this reboot but I wouldn’t be surprised if the new guy would get to do both movies CONAN and RED SONJA, hey, that’s what Arnold did back then.

“We’ll have an open casting call: as soon as we hire our director the search is on.”

This reboot is said to go loyal to the 1930s original stories by Robert E. Howard’s original pulp stories, they’re aiming for an R-rating presentation with a $85 Million budget production. Previous casting rumors included American Gladiator’s Mike O’Hearn as CONAN and Djimon Honsou as Thulsa Doom.. but those were just rumors.
Casting call could mean an unknown might get his big break.
Who do you think should direct CONAN and who should play the legendary Barbarian?
I’m thinking.. Patrick Tatopoulos (Underworld: Rise of the Lycans) should direct and that freak of nature from Son Of The Beach, Roland Kickinger should get the shot.

Did you know they’re developing a MILLI VANILLI Movie?! And by they I mean screenwriter Jeff Nathanson and producer Kathleen Kennedy and Universal Pictures. Why would anyone wanna have a full feature length biopic about two guys who pulled a scam, earned grammy and got caught lip syncing on a live performance? Because it’ll crack us up. Sounds like it should be a comedy genre.

But this is all just a rumor that we shouldn’t take seriously, including the following info… Via The Daily Swarm, Brett Ratner (Rush Hour movies) is in talks to direct this project. Of all the movies Ratner intends on destroying, BEVERLY HILLS 4, CONAN, finally he’s found the one that would give him an Oscar, right before he wakes up from his dream to find that he’s just an average director all along.
Girl you know it’s not true.