If you’re curious how Warner Bros. Green Lantern movie came together and why certain decisions were made, you’re in the right place.  That’s because last summer I got to visit the production on the last day of filming in New Orleans.  While there, I got to participate in a group interview with producer Donald De Line, production designer Grant Major, costume designer Ngila Dickson and Geoff Johns (Chief Creative Officer at DC Comics).

During the interview they talked about the design of the aliens and the look of OA, is the Green Lantern movie more Star Wars or Superman, how the film is a space opera on a grand scale, designing costumes for aliens and such a wide cast, are the different colored energies going to be explained in the movie, casting the actors, the decision to release in 3D, are there any hidden easter eggs for the fans, and a lot more.  Hit the jump to either read or listen to the interview.

With the final Harry Potter film set to be released this summer, Warner Bros. will be down one major franchise. In the search for replacing the most successful film franchise in history, the studio has tapped Ed Whitworth to write the big-budget adaptation of T.A. Barron’s The Lost Years of Merlin. The five book series chronicles the rise of the young wizard, beginning as a boy washed up on the shores of Wales with no memory and no home. The project was previously at Paramount before Warner Bros. snatched it up.

Heat Vision reports that Donald De Line (Green Lantern) will be producing. Whitworth is a novice scribe, who has been working as a script reader for Oprah’s Harpo Productions. An Oxford grad, he most recently wrote a biopic of Colin Powell on spec which garnered him a lot of attention in the development community. For the first film he will combine the first two books in the series. Hit the jump for a synopsis of the books.

After Warner Bros. showed 4,000 WonderCon fans almost ten minutes of footage from Green Lantern (which was the same footage I saw at CinemaCon the day before), I went backstage to talk with producer Donald De Line.  While the buzz on Green Lantern has been low, by Monday night, everything will have changed.  That’s because the ten minutes of footage played huge and WB will be releasing almost four minutes of it online either later today or tomorrow.  So if you’re at home and wishing you could have been here, you’ll get a taste of it very soon.  Trust me, the footage looks so much better than I expected and Green Lantern has joined Thor, Captain America and X-Men: First Class as the can’t miss comic book movies of the year.

During the interview with De Line we talked about the 3D post conversion and how it’s been planned all along, who and what Parallax is, reveals there are 25 fully CG-animated Green Lantern characters besides Kilowog, Tomar-Ra and Sinestro, says around 25-30% of the film takes place on Oa and he talks about creating the planet, talks about his custom-made Green Lantern sneakers and shows them to the camera (they are really cool), and he explains why they couldn’t do Ryan Reynolds costume practically and reveals:

“When he’s brought to Oa for the first time, they map his body, he’s the first human being to be a Green Lantern. So they don’t really know what he’s made of, so we have this really cool sequence where they dissect and scan Hal Jordan and the ring creates this suit for the first time for a human being.”

Hit the jump to read or watch the interview.

Warner Bros. has released 8 movie clips from their upcoming live-action/CGI feature Yogi Bear.  While the trailers haven’t exactly won me over, I also realize I’m not the target demo and kids will probably love this movie.  Hit the jump the clips of Yogi (voiced by Dan Aykroyd), Boo Boo (voiced by Justin Timberlake), Anna Faris as visiting nature documentary filmmaker Rachel Johnson, Tom Cavanagh as the diligent Ranger Smith, T.J. Miller as Smith’s over-enthusiastic deputy, Ranger Jones, Andrew Daly as the conniving Mayor Brown; and Nate Corddry following behind as Brown’s Chief of Staff.

Warner Bros. has released 44 high resolution images from their upcoming live-action/CGI feature Yogi Bear.  While the trailers haven’t exactly won me over, I also realize I’m not the target demo and kids will probably love this movie.  Hit the jump for images of Yogi (voiced by Dan Aykroyd), Boo Boo (voiced by Justin Timberlake), Anna Faris as visiting nature documentary filmmaker Rachel Johnson, Tom Cavanagh as the diligent Ranger Smith, T.J. Miller as Smith’s over-enthusiastic deputy, Ranger Jones, Andrew Daly as the conniving Mayor Brown; and Nate Corddry following behind as Brown’s Chief of Staff.

The first footage from director Martin Campbell’s Green Lantern has hit the net as Entertainment Tonight has released a preview for their Tuesday show.  It appears that on Tuesday, they’ll be world premiering footage from the Ryan Reynolds movie and to get you to tune in, they’ve released 30 seconds from the movie.  If you’ve been waiting to see what Reynolds costume looks like as it’s all CGI, hit the jump.  You’ll also get a look at Blake Lively, another Green Lantern (I won’t spoil who), and you’ll get a taste of the first comic book movie to take place partly on another planet.  What are you waiting for!

In early August, just a few days after Comic-Con, I was invited, along with a few other online journalists, to visit the set of Green Lantern on its last day of filming in New Orleans.  While I’m only allowed to write a “preview piece” for now, at some point down the road Warner Bros. will lift the embargo and I’ll be able to go into intimate detail about what I saw and learned while on set.

However, even though we’re only allowed to write a preview today…as most of you know, Peter from Slashfilm and I record video blogs all the time.  Since we were both on set the same day, when we got back to the hotel, we recorded an epic 50 minute video blog about everything we saw, learned, and thought about Green Lantern.  But since we knew WB would let us write a preview before allowing us to post our full set visit, we also recorded a 6 minute preview video blog.  So if you’d like a tease of what we thought about Green Lantern…hit the jump.  You can also check out some concept artwork that Warner Bros. sent over:

Zach Snyder’s (Watchmen, 300) first animated film was plagued by a title that would have likely had people scratching their heads when it hits theaters on Sept. 24.  So, in the name of mass consumption, Warner Bros. has switched from Guardians of Ga’Hoole to just simply Legend of the Guardians, according to Heat Vision.  I am all for helping audiences pronounce your film, but did they nearly neuter the film by overdoing it a bit?

Despite that concern, the film, based on a book series about owls (I know, let me explain) by Kathryn Lasky, is shaping up nicely, with a voice cast including Hellen Mirren, Hugo Weaving, Abbie Cornish, Geoffrey Rush, Emilie de Ravin, and Sam Neill. According to IMDb, the film revolves around this interesting plotline:

Soren, a young barn owl, is kidnapped by owls of St. Aggie’s, ostensibly an orphanage, where owlets are brainwashed into becoming soldiers. He and his new friends escape to the island of Ga’Hoole, to assist its noble, wise owls who fight the army being created by the wicked rulers of St. Aggie’s.

Sounds cool, doesn’t it.  Hit the jump for the official synopsis from Warner Bros.:

Since director F. Gary Grey’s “The Italian Job” first came out, rumors have been circulating that Paramount was developing a sequel. In fact, when I was on the set of “Observe and Report”, producer Donald De Line told us, “we developed a script which was “The Brazilian Job” and they were all excited about the script at Paramount, and we actually budgeted it and everything and we were kind of ready to go, and then a lot of things were happening with various management changes and it got tabled”. Of course with a cast featuring Mark Wahlberg, Charlize Theron, Donald Sutherland, Jason Statham and Edward Norton, it’s no surprise that people would like to see another adventure.

Anyway, since that set visit, nothing has been reported on the movie and many have wondered if a sequel would ever happen. So when I got on the phone today to talk with director F. Gary Grey about his new movie “Law Abiding Citizen”, I got an update on the project. Hit the jump to read what he had to say:

Has this ever happened? Has a studio told everyone who they were thinking about casting on the front page of Variety or The Hollywood Reporter and then opened it up to public debate? Cause that’s what they did for “Green Lantern”, and it’s kind of shocking. According to the Reporter, the holding deal on all three actors expired Monday, which means they have to pick someone quick. Also, the article says the studio, producer Donald De Line, and director Martin Campbell each had a different choice.

So this is where you come in. Since they couldn’t reach a consensus, they’ve opened it up to the fans and online community. Which is crazy. They’ve pretty much raised their hands and said we give up. We can’t decide. Whatever the fans think is how we’re going to go. So if you have an opinion on the three actors up for the role, I’d leave a comment. You know the studio is spending the weekend reading every site so make your voice heard. Of the three, I’d take Ryan or Bradley. I just wish there was a 4^th actor as neither seems like the perfect pick. That’s probably why they can’t decide…