There are a lot of vampire films out there, perhaps too many, but the team behind Dracula Untold is out defy that by doing something different, combining historical facts with the fantastical.  Bram Stoker’s Dracula may haven been inspired by Vlad the Impaler, but first-time feature writers Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless decided to take the connection literally.  In Dracula Untold, Dracula is Vlad the Impaler.

Back in September 2013, we got the chance to visit the film’s Belfast, Ireland set where stars Luke Evans, Sarah Gadon and Dominic Cooper as well as producer Alissa Phillips, production designer Francois Audouy and costume designer Ngila Dickson were all on hand to talk about what’s going to make their vampire movie a standout.  Hit the jump for over 50 must-know facts about Dracula Untold.

Having just come off Antiviral, Enemy and Belle, Dracula Untold was a big one for Sarah Gadon.  She was on the hunt for a love story and while that isn’t what one might expect from a Dracula film, that’s exactly what was at the heart of this one – the romance between Luke Evans’ Vlad and Gadon’s Mirena, and the lengths they go to to keep their family together.

While talking to Gadon on Dracula Untold’s Belfast, Ireland set, she explained how Mirena serves as a moral compass of sorts for Vlad, revealed how she avoided wearing corsets, discussed her connection with her on-screen son, Art Parkinson, talked about working with her “baby Spielberg” director, Gary Shore, and loads more. Hit the jump to check it all out.

Universal has released the first Dracula Untold trailer.  The movie tells the origins of the man who would become the infamous vampire.  This trailer goes beyond the scant logline, and explains that Dracula started out as a good guy, but in order to protect his family, he had to become the bloodsucking bad guy we all know today.  It looks more interesting than I thought it would be, and I really like the costumes.  At the very least, there seems to be some potential for a good story rather than just pretty visual effects and cashing in on the brand.

Hit the jump to check out the Dracula Untold trailer plus five new images.  The film opens October 17th, and stars Luke Evans, Sarah Gadon, Diarmaid Murtagh, and Dominic Cooper.

A new Maps to the Stars trailer has gone online, and this one is a French, NSFW version (it’s NSFW because of language and nudity, not because it’s French).  The film follows an archetypical Hollywood dynasty including a writer of self-help manuals, his wife who manages the career of their 13-year-old son, and their daughter, who was recently released from a sanatorium where she was treated for criminal pyromania.  The plot also includes Havana, an actress who wants to remake a movie that starred her now-deceased mother.  Like yesterday’s trailer, I’m still not quite sure what to make of the movie.  There are clearly some darkly comic elements, but there’s also some serious intensity, and it’s sometimes difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins.  I can’t wait to see this flick.

Hit the jump to check out the trailer.  The film stars John Cusack, Julianne Moore, Mia Wasikowska, Robert Pattinson, Olivia Williams, and Sarah Gadon.  Maps to the Stars opens in France and Italy on May 21st, and will probably make its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.  A U.S. release date has yet to be announced.

The first Maps to the Stars trailer has been released.  The film follows an archetypical Hollywood dynasty including a writer of self-help manuals, his wife who manages the career of their 13-year-old son, and their daughter, who was recently released from a sanatorium where she was treated for criminal pyromania.  The plot also includes Havana, an actress who wants to remake a movie that starred her now-deceased mother.  I’m not quite sure what to make of the footage in this promo trailer, and that’s part of what makes me so excited for this movie.  The other part is that this is a new David Cronenberg movie, and I’m eager to see anything he does.

Hit the jump to watch the Maps to the Stars trailer.  The film stars John Cusack, Julianne Moore, Mia Wasikowska, Robert Pattinson, Olivia Williams, and Sarah Gadon. 

A24 Films has released a full theatrical trailer and an excellent poster for Prisoners director Denis Villeneuve’s upcoming psychological thriller Enemy.  The twisty premise revolves around a university lecturer (Jake Gyllenhaal) who discovers that he has a double, whom he tracks down and engages, resulting in “a complex and dangerous struggle.”  The pic earned strong marks when it played at the Toronto International Film Festival last fall, and this trailer does a nice job of teasing the dark and haunting tone with which this fascinating premise is executed.

Hit the jump to watch the trailer and to check out the fantastic theatrical poster.  The film also stars Melanie Laurent, Sarah Gadon, and Isabella Rossellini.  Enemy debuts exclusively on DirecTV February 6th followed by a theatrical release on March 14th.

Yesterday, we reported that Shailene Woodley (The Descendants), who was set to play Mary Jane in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, had been cut from the picture because director Marc Webb wanted to “streamline the story and focus on Peter and Gwen and their relationship.”  The character would appear in The Amazing Spider-Man 3, but would likely be recast.  However, a new wrinkle has emerged as the production has possibly cast their new MJ already by hiring Sarah Gadon (Cosmopolis).

Hit the jump for more.  The Amazing Spider-Man 2 opens in 3D on May 2, 2014. [Update: The actress has taken to Twitter to clear things up: "To all those a twitter, I will not be playing MJ in Spider-Man. I have a role in the film, but it is not that one :)."]

The cast is finally coming together for director David Cronenberg’s next film.  Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis star Robert Pattinson has long been attached to appear in Maps to the Stars, and now THR reports that Julianne Moore, John Cusack, and Sarah Gadon (A Dangerous Method) are set to round out the cast.  Written by Bruce Wagner (Wild Palms), the film is described as a ghost story that “offers a critique of celebrity-obsessed society in Los Angeles,” the latter of which is quite a popular topic in film culture at the moment with Sofia Coppola’s similarly-themed film The Bling Ring set to hit theaters this summer.

There’s no word on the characters that the aforementioned actors will play, but production is set to begin in July in Toronto and Los Angeles with Entertainment One Films onboard to finance and distribute the indie.  Cronenberg previously stated that he was hoping to nab Viggo Mortensen to star in Maps to the Stars as well, but one assumes Cusack ended up taking that role instead.

Director Peter Lepeniotis has landed a solid voice cast for his upcoming animated feature, The Nut Job. Katherine Heigl (Grey’s Anatomy), Will Arnett (Arrested Development) and Brendan Fraser (The Mummy) are among the actors that will lend their voices to characters in the film. The Nut Job will be based on Lepeniotis’ 2005 short film, Surly Squirrel. Disney veteran Lorne Cameron (Over the Hedge) scripted the film, “an action-packed comedy set in the late 1950s in fictional Oakton [that] follows the travails of the mischievous squirrel Surly and his rat pal Buddy as they plan a nut store heist that gets out of hand.” Hit the jump to see who else is joining the picture’s voice cast and to check out Surly Squirrel. 

When I’m in the checkout line at the supermarket, and I see all of the celebrity magazines, I’m confused.  People who would buy those magazines and tabloids don’t seem to realize that celebrities are strangers.  If Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have a baby, then I don’t see how that impacts anyone’s lives but their own.  But celebrities are viewed as a commodity, and Brandon Cronenberg‘s clever film Antiviral carries out this extension of human commodity into a perverse economy where there’s just enough shreds of truth to make us wonder if his world could really happen if the science was possible.  However, despite the fascinating ideas at the forefront, the story and characters almost feel perfunctory, and any attempts to make the movie feel like a thriller come off as heavy-handed.  Cronenberg has crafted a film that is sick, sad, smart, and serviceable.

A frequent theme in the oeuvre of writer-director David Cronenberg is how we become alienated through the ubiquitous.  We fail to notice how everyday facets of our lives are changing us on a fundamental level, and causing us to be alienated from ourselves and each other physically, mentally, and emotionally.  In Videodrome, Crash, and eXistenZ, Cronenberg explored how technology warped our relationship to the world to the point where technology became organic and the organic became mechanical.  In his last movie, A Dangerous Method, Cronenberg explored how psychotherapy causes people to become distanced from their emotions and psyches.  In his latest film, Cosmopolis, Cronenberg turns his eye to capitalism, and has created a darkly comic, coldly calculating look at a world where everything is for sale and nothing has value.  Like A Dangerous Method, Cosmopolis suffers from the lack of an emotional impact, which is the inevitable result of a story where characters have become disconnected from emotion, but the story will still leave your head spinning.

A new trailer for David Cronenberg‘s Cosmopolis has gone online.  The plot centers on wealthy businessman (Robert Pattinson) who loses his fortune in a single day, and this trailer does a good job of conveying that basic plotline.  But as we’ve seen from previous trailers, the flick looks far stranger and unwieldy than such a simple premise.  This new trailer feels like it’s trying to smooth out the edges of an insane-looking flick.

Hit the jump to check out the trailer.  The film also stars Juliette Binoche, Sarah Gadon, Mathieu Amalric, Jay Baruchel, Kevin Durand, K’Naan, and Emily Hampshire.  Cosmopolis opens in limited release August 17th.

Tonight brings casting notices for a pair of actors I always enjoy:

• Adam Brody will star in the indie drama All the Wrong Reasons alongside Kevin Zegers, Sarah Gadon, and Emily Hampshire.
• Anna Kendrick has signed on to lead the indie comedy Drinking Buddies, the latest from writer/director Joe Swanberg (Hanna Takes the Stairs).

Hit the jump for details on both projects.

The first trailers for David Cronenberg‘s adaptation of Don DeLillo‘s novel Cosmopolis have been delightfully intense.  The movie looks like a return to the strange and surreal for Cronenberg, and a huge departure for star Robert Pattinson.  For those unfamiliar with the film, Pattinson plays a successful banker whose entire life unravels over the course of a single day.  In advance of the film’s debut at the Cannes Film Festival, the first clip has gone online.  It’s as bizarre as the trailers have led us to believe, and the dialogue definitely seems to have the odd, detached style of DeLillo’s writing.  I’m now even more anxious to see how Cannes reacts to the picture.

Hit the jump to check out the clip.  The film also stars Sarah Gadon, Kevin Durand, Jay Baruchel, Samantha Morton, Juliette Binoche, Paul Giamatti, and Mathieu Amalric.  The 2012 Cannes Film Festival runs from May 16 – 25th. [Update: We have added a new trailer and two more clips.]

Last month, we showed you a brief trailer for David Cronenberg‘s adaptation of Don DeLillo‘s Cosmopolis, which featured a potentially surprising and exciting turn from star Robert Pattinson.  In the film, Pattinson plays a newlywed billionaire who ends up losing his bride and his billions in a single day.  Two full trailers have now gone online, and Cronenberg is the star of both.  Pattinson still looks good, but these trailers show off a David Cronenberg surrealism we haven’t seen in some time.   And judging by these trailers, it’s very good to have it back.

Hit the jump to check out the trailers.  The film also stars Sarah Gadon, Kevin Durand, Jay Baruchel, Samantha Morton, Juliette Binoche, Paul Giamatti, and Mathieu Amalric.  Cosmopolis will premiere next month at the Cannes Film Festival.