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'Angry Birds' will celebrate its 10th anniversary with another movie
How will you celebrate the 10th anniversary of one of Finland's biggest exports? No, I'm not talking about electrical machinery or oil -- I mean Angry Birds. Well, Columbia Pictures and Sony are doing so with a sequel to the furious fowl's silver screen debut, aptly titled The Angry Birds Movie 2. A Rovio blog post details that the film will be released September 20th, 2019 and that Thurop Van Orman and John Rice will serve as director and co-director, respectively. Maybe the production team can come up with a better title in two years' time.
'Pixels' looks like another horrible video game movie
Pixels is a live-action movie about an alien-controlled cadre of classic video game characters wreaking havoc upon humanity by turning everything they touch into, well, pixels. It's based on the charming 2010 short by the same name that Sony thought would make a great feature-length movie starring Happy Gilmore (Adam Sandler) and Paul Blart (Kevin James). A mulleted Peter Dinklage is along for the ride too, in what looks like a less challenging role than his voice work in Destiny was. His character bears more than a passing resemblance to Dog the Bounty Hunter, because sure why not? At one point, Pac-Man's creator Toru Iwatani (played by Denis Akiyama) gets his hand chomped off by the big yellow guy himself. And just when I thought it couldn't get any more stupid, out came trite "homages" to iconic scenes from Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Independence Day. All this to say: The movie looks absolutely abhorrent.
Columbia Pictures flicks restored to Netflix Instant Watch
We all remember the terrible tale of NXE-eve, when Superbad, Karate Kid and more went from fully available to not-on-Xbox and in some cases eventually disappeared entirely. Fear not, as whatever the licensing issue was, it appears to have been amicably resolved, sending Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story and many of the rest flowing though a series of tubes near you.[Via Xbox 360 Fanboy]
Columbia Pictures flicks -- mostly -- back on for Xbox 360 Netflix streaming
We never got a satisfactory answer for why they disappeared in the first place, but it seems the majority of the Columbia Pictures' movies on Netflix Instant Watch lists suddenly switched to "not available on Xbox 360" are once again open for streaming to all devices. The Karate Kid series, Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day and others now stream to Microsoft's box, however Columbia Pictures movies tagged with the "available through Starz Play" logo -- including Bad Boys and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story -- are still out. Hopefully the remaining relevant parties are contacted soon, as Detectives Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett have work to do, but this is a great start.[Thanks, Hunter!]
Xbox 360's lack of Sony Pictures films streaming on Netflix "unrelated" to competition
You probably recall that two days ago, when the new Xbox Experience launched, sadly, about 300 Sony Pictures films were unavailable for Netflix Watch Instantly on NXE, thus quashing your hopes of streaming The Karate Kid series. At the time, it seemed possible that missing titles were due to the fact that Xbox 360 manufacturer Microsoft and Sony are direct competitors. Well, according to a Sony spokesperson, the problem isn't specific to the Xbox, nor is their beef competition-related in any way. Sony also says it is in talks with the several "relevant parties" to work out these vague licensing issues, though there was no word on when the issue would be resolved. We really do hope it's soon because we're dying to see how everything turns out with the Cobra Kai.[Via Joystiq]
Sony Pictures celebrates NXE eve by... blocking Xbox 360 Netflix movie streaming
Just hours before the Xbox 360's newest dashboard update hits tomorrow morning (10:00 a.m. GMT), our friends at Joystiq noticed the list of movies available for Netflix Watch Instantly streaming has suddenly dropped. The culprit? Sony Pictures Home Entertainment subsidiary Columbia Pictures, flicking previously available titles like Superbad, Bad Boys, and We Own the Night over to "Not available on Xbox" status (curiously, SPHE movies are still available to all.) Word from the official Netflix blog cites "the ebb and flow" of what is available on license at any given time causing a few hundred titles to be "temporarily" unavailable on the console, while still open for streaming for other devices, with an eye towards licensing them for the Xbox 360 soon. There's no way to know what movies won't work until adding them to your queue, so when you find your Karate Kid trilogy watching time suddenly wide open for more Gears of War 2 or Left 4 Dead action, just remember you have Sony to thank.[Via Joystiq & Multiplayer]
Zootfly scares up Ghostbusters details
Yesterday we caught a glimpse of some seriously impressive footage of what looked to be a modern day revival of the Ghostbusters franchise. Peeling back a layer of the mystery found European developer Zootfly at the helm, as well as more questions to be asked. The most prominent of which being, "Just what the heck did we see?"In-game footage of an early version of the game, running on an Xbox 360 apparently. Updating their website this morning, Zootfly not only expressed their excitement over the response from their new found fan base, but also dropped a few lines concerning Ghostbusters. The bad news? The game is currently on hold as they negotiate with the owners of the Ghostbusters IP, Columbia Pictures, who just so happens to be sister company of Sony Pictures. The good news is that regardless of how that battle turns out, we may be seeing the game anyways in the form of TimeO -- a homage to Ghostbusters as opposed to the real deal itself. Less appealing to the mainstream, but quite interesting nonetheless. Should Zootfly be granted use of the Ghostbusters license, what say we eBay some Ecto Cooler to celebrate?
