Those Van Damme Remakes!

Action remakes, on the whole, are few and far between. Yes Statham did The Mechanic, The Rock did Walking Tall, Samuel Jackson had a crack at Shaft, Stallone tried to do Get Carter and there are a handful of driving ones like The Italian Job, Death Race and Gone in 60 Seconds but when compared to the horror genre, for example, action doesn't get the rape and plunder treatment very often.
There's a good reason for this.
The reason is that the action genre has always been happy to have its box full of bona fide original classics and then it's a thousand imitators.
You've got a million mercenary/man on a mission movies, a million one man against a thousand nameless terrorist movies and, of course, you've got your competition/martial arts movies.
You know what you're getting and you get what you want but the best thing about all this was that the action genre was always happy to rename, recast and re-situate their films. They'd set it in a different place or, even, in a different time, they'd add a new character beat or a back story that wasn't there before and, bingo! a brand new film.

So it is with much grinding of the teeth, pulling out of hair and sheer brain-numbing, slack jawed amazement at the pointlessness of it all that I shudder to announce remakes of not just Bloodsport but also Kickboxer.
James McTiegue, the man behind V For Vendetta will helm Bloodsport with a script by Taken's Mark Kamen. It doesn't matter that there are already 4 Bloodsports, 8 Bloodfists and 4 Best of the Bests (not to mention a gazillion other similar titles), they have decided, in their infinite wisdom to still call this film Bloodsport even though it's not about Frank Dux, it's set in Australia and Rio De Janeiro and it's all about Brazil's Vale Tudo martial art.
Van Damme has apparently shown interest in appearing in the film but Kamen made this rather ridiculous, slightly pompous and rather harsh statement against that happening:
“This is a character driven, politically motivated film. It has nothing to do with splits or muscles or grudge matches and as I said, if the title were not attached to the rights, you would not associate one film with the other.” - Source: Slashfilm
SO it's NOT Bloodsport then is it??!! So DON'T call it Bloodsport!!

Which brings us to Kickboxer, of which there are already 5 in the series! It appears to be an even more pointless remake considering they are remaking Bloodsport and, let's be fair, the concepts are not so miles apart. All we know about the Kickboxer reboot right now is its director, Stephen Fung who made Tai Chi Zero.

I don't know what to think. I mean I love having more action movies and I would love to see the revitalisation of the fight-competition genre but would it be so hard to give these movies different names at the very least?

I am going to leave you with some words from Chris (with a C) who is one half of the fantastic team who bring you the simply radiant and sublime WAFU FM podcast. WHICH YOU SHOULD ALL BE LISTENING TO EVERY WEEK!
He writes:
There are certain films that you don't need the remake rights, and the name, to remake...Kickboxer is one of them. There are about 20 films that, plot wise at least, are almost identical to Kickboxer that aren't remakes. So why bother? It's not like Kickboxer is a well known instantly recognizable name unless you're a Van Damme fan...in which case you're probably not very interested in a fucking remake of Kickboxer.

And as for the guy in the comments who seems to be seriously suggesting Taylor Lautner for the lead role...shame on you, sir. Fucking shame on you. Shame....I can't believe any grown man would suggest that guy for any movie, never mind a remake of Kickboxer. God, I hate people.

~Chris

I really couldn't put it better myself (and I tried!)
- The Kick Ass Kid

EXPENDABLES 3 ROUND UP

Trying to keep up with the Expendables 3 casting rumours has become a 24/7 job as firstly, there are so many stars to choose from and secondly, so many sources of possible casting news. These include Sly's personal Twitter feed, IMDB, TheExpendablesPremiere.com, TheArnoldFans.com and, practically, every news agency under the sun.
With Stallone, Willis, Arnold and Statham all doing press tours on various other movies right now, interview snippets and sound bites have been pouring in daily.

Cold hard facts are not easy things to come by in the casting, with everyone reporting something different.
Going strictly from Sly's Twitter feed this year, what we can say for certain is that
Stallone
Lundgren
Rourke
and
Wesley Snipes will be in the cast as will new comers UFC champ Ronda Rousey and boxing star Victor Ortiz
Staying with Sly's twitter feed for the moment, he has also hinted at, but not solidly confirmed, Jackie Chan, Steven Seagal, Mel Gibson, Gina Carano and even Antonio Banderas although Carano and Banderas haven't been mentioned anywhere else whereas Jackie Chan and Mel Gibson have been confirmed in other interviews, like the one below, and the Steven Seagal rumour has only been confirmed by a Bulgarian news outlet and not the star himself.
Lastly Sly said recently in an interview with TheArnoldFans.com:
"We have a great director and the best stunt coordinator in the world. I said we’re going to make this like there’s no two other Expendables and that this is the first one. And we got Mel Gibson, Nic Cage, Jackie Chan and Wesley Snipes and now I have FIVE NEW guys that you have never heard of."

This would seem an odd claim to make as inside sources claim Mel Gibson hasn't confirmed yet (Source: Cinemablend.com), Nic Cage told DenOfGeek "I'm not in Kick-Ass 2 and I don't think I'm in Expendables 3 and I like those guys, but I would say it would be highly unlikely that I'd be in that movie" and I haven't read anything official about Jackie Chan since he made his statement that he would definitely do it but only if his part was substantial.

Statham has confirmed in several interviews that he is definitely returning and as Sly's right hand man in the first two it would seem odd if he didn't.
I have read that Schwarzenegger is definitely returning but nothing concrete from Willis yet.

We are also going to assume that Jet Li, Randy Couture and Terry Crews are also back. Terry Crews says that he is and in the same interview he confirms Milla Jovovich's definite involvement, which was another long-running rumour that's been buzzing about.
IMDB lists Jovovitch and Li but, weirdly, not Couture and Crews.

There's lots of worrying news about the stupidly named, vacant eyed, bland and probably brainless nobody Kellan Lutz (who's apparently from those fucking Twilight movies) being in talks for EX3 too but I hope that's just his agent's wishful thinking (or tactic) and/or he is the young meat puppet that gets killed in the first 5 minutes like Thor's brother in EX2.

So that's about it, so far. No word yet on who will be Statham's British counterpart. There was Vinnie Jones murmurings but I still hold out hope for Darren Shahlavi.

Plotwise the film is meant to centre around either The Expendables against a young group of computer criminals, The Expendables saving the President or both. I hope the computer nerd villain storyline is just a rumour because we've already seen Die Hard 4.

So what do you think? and who would you cast?
The film is scheduled for release August 2014

- The Kick Ass Kid

ROCKY living with a new CREED

Director Ryan Coogler and actor Michael B Jordan are planning, with a little help from their friends at MGM and a certain Mr.Stallone to breathe life back into the Rocky franchise in a rather ingenious way.

The plan is to make a movie, titled CREED, about Apollo Creed's grandson, to be played by the aforementioned Michael B Jordan who would be tempted to become a boxer and get trained by, none other than, Rocky himself.

Apollo Creed was originally played by Action Jackson, Carl Weathers in Rocky 1 thru 4 and the fanboy in me wants Weathers to some how appear in this film despite having been killed by Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren)

With any of Sly Stallone's franchises my personal preference is when he has creative control. The studios and even Sly don't seem to give him the credit he deserves. That being said any of his three franchises continuing is a plus in my book and as Stallone, himself, proved with, the very successful, part 6, there's life in the old pugilist yet.

Cue Frank Stallone and let's get this training montage started!!

- The Kick Ass Kid