Ale
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Six "I Am Legend" Posters
Today we have six Korean posters for the upcoming Will Smith film "I Am Legend." They feature major cities all over the world (Paris, London and more) in complete ruins.
"I Am Legend" follows Robert Neville (Smith), the last human being on earth. A mysterious plague has transformed all humans into an army of vampires and Neville spends each day preparing for the battles he must wage at night in order to survive.
Directed by Francis Lawrence (Constantine), the film hits conventional and IMAX theaters on December 14th.
http://www.worstpreviews.com/headline.php?id=6742 -
Thursday, Nov. 29, 2007
By REBECCA WINTERS KEEGAN
The Legend of Will Smith. How one man built a global movie-magnet machine.
Will Smith plots his strategy for world domination from the head of the kingly wooden dining table in his sweeping Calabasas, Calif., home. "We call it Global Willing," says Smith of his travel itinerary to warm up the globe for his next film, I Am Legend, in which he plays the only survivor of a man-made plague that has wiped out humanity. "We're going to Hong Kong, Tokyo, Korea ..." It's the morning after Thanksgiving, and Smith, 39, is sleepy-eyed and unshaven after hosting 30 friends and family members for dinner. His wife Jada Pinkett Smith enters with breakfast and a kiss, asking, "Want jelly with that, baby?" Even Hollywood's Genghis Khan needs some tenderness before he sacks the box office.
With his ready grin, jug ears and baritone belly laugh, Smith's image is that of the happy-go-lucky Everyguy. But you don't accrue $4.4 billion in worldwide box-office receipts and two Oscar nominations without machine-like drive. Smith's four most recent movies--The Pursuit of Happyness, Hitch, Shark Tale and I, Robot--have each grossed more than $300 million worldwide, vaulting him into a category usually reserved for white guys named Tom. Because Smith has mastered the delicate art of appearing artless, few moviegoers realize that his is one of Hollywood's most meticulously planned and executed careers.
Willard Christopher Smith Jr. hatched his scheme for global supremacy at 16, after his first girlfriend cheated on him. "In my mind, she cheated because I wasn't good enough. I remember making the decision that I will never not be good enough again," he says. Sure, he may have overcompensated, but how else are movie stars made? Smith grew up the second of four children in middle-class West Philadelphia; his parents Willard and Caroline divorced when he was 13. From his father, who worked seven days a week running a refrigerator company, Smith inherited his work ethic. From his mother, a school-board employee, he derived the notion that "education is the elixir for all problems," he says. "Every problem Jada and I have ever had, we found the answer in a book." The Smiths have a family library stocked with everything from The Complete Idiot's Guide to Hinduism to homeschooling texts for their children--Willow, 7, and Jaden, 9, and Smith's son from his first marriage, Trey, 15.
His high school teachers nicknamed Smith "Prince" for his knack for charming his way out of trouble. It was at a party in the basement of a neighborhood DJ, "Jazzy" Jeff Townes, that Smith's magnetism first paid off professionally. He won over Townes and the DJ's manager, James Lassiter, who has steered Smith's career for the past 22 years and who runs Overbrook Entertainment, the production company named for the high school they attended. Before Smith finished his senior year, DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince released their first album, and Smith decided to forgo college for show business. The duo's parent-friendly, PG-rated rap would earn the first Grammy for a hip-hop act. While touring Asia with Run-D.M.C., Smith witnessed "10,000 Japanese b-boys [hip-hop fans] at the airport," he says. When DJ Run took off his Adidas sneaker and held it up, "10,000 kids took their shoes off. It was such a bizarre, exciting, intimidating experience." Smith, who once saw acclaim in his Philly neighborhood as his life's goal, began to dream about conquering London and Tokyo. "Now it's an addiction for me to see where my artistry can touch people."
In 1990, at 21, the rapper got his first acting gig, essentially playing himself--a likable city kid--living the lush life on the class-conscious sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Lassiter told him, "'Listen, if we're going out to L.A., we probably should have a goal,'" Smith says. "I said, 'I want to be the biggest movie star in the world.'" Lassiter, seeing promise that few others in Hollywood would, took his friend seriously and found a list of the 10 top-grossing movies of all time. "We looked at them and said, O.K., what are the patterns?" Smith recalls. "We realized that 10 out of 10 had special effects. Nine out of 10 had special effects with creatures. Eight out of 10 had special effects with creatures and a love story." Meanwhile, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was becoming a hit, and Smith was soaking up an acting education on the show's set. Waiting backstage, he would mouth the lines of guest stars like Don Cheadle as the more experienced actor delivered them. "Will was so intent," says the show's creator, Andy Borowitz. "He was like a kid waiting for his bar mitzvah." In 1992, when Borowitz accepted an NAACP Image award for the series and thanked "the next President of the United States, Will Smith," his leading man relished the moment. "I got the feeling he loved it not totally ironically," Borowitz says.
Despite his growing fan base, in Smith's first five years in Los Angeles, he couldn't get a meeting with a director or studio. "Nobody cared," says Lassiter. "'You're a rapper. You got lucky, and you got this television show, but that's all you can do.'" At this point, many would-be movie stars would have been weighing Plan B. Not Smith. "I don't want to get too metaphysical, but by even contemplating a Plan B, you almost create the necessity for a Plan B," he says.
Smith's role as a slick young con man claiming to be Sidney Poitier's son in the 1993 drama Six Degrees of Separation turned some heads. But it was the cheerful, over-the-top 1995 action film Bad Boys that established the erstwhile Prince as a box-office royal in the making. Since then, he has consistently delivered hits, most often as a good-natured guy saving the rest of us from the trauma of aliens, robots, crooks or poor dating habits. Commercial disappointments, like the golfing flop The Legend of Bagger Vance, are rare. "I look at movies in their essence," Smith says. "Will that idea sell? The last man on Earth is the essence of I Am Legend. It's a concept that's primal and connects to all those ideas of loneliness and abandonment." Occasionally Smith chooses art over commerce, on a character drama like Ali or Pursuit of Happyness, his two Oscar-nominated roles, but even then his pragmatism outweighs his passion. "Pursuit of Happyness is essentially a movie about a black homeless guy who gets a job," he says. "There's nowhere near my fee for that movie. This thing has to be under $50 million." The downbeat Happyness surprised everyone, not least of all Smith, by earning $305 million worldwide.
The math of moviemaking enthralls Smith, who calls himself a "student of universal patterns." To hear him talk about analyzing the weekend box office with Lassiter is to see flashes of the aspiring engineer who almost attended MIT. "Every Monday morning, we sit down--'O.K., what happened this weekend, and what are the things that resemble things that have happened the last 10, 20, 30 weekends?' It is so much fun to look at something everyone's looking at to see if a different pattern comes out for you." With Legend, Smith hopes to break one of Hollywood's rigid rules. "Summer movies are about things that happen, and fall movies are about how people respond to things that happen," he says. "The drill was to try to blend those two things, to make a movie that is 100% about following the character [scientist Robert Neville] and how the character reacts to what happened [the destruction of humanity]." Smith traditionally owns July 4 weekend, with things-that-happen movies like Independence Day. "There is a youthful energy that I have that fits during that time of release and rejuvenation," he says, expressing a level of self-knowledge rare for people who make their living playing make-believe. For a December release like Legend, "I have to focus more 'cause it's not my natural lane."
A career axiom that Smith figured out early on still stymies plenty of big-name American actors. "Movie stars are made with worldwide box office," Smith says. "You put a movie out in the U.S., and let's say it breaks even. Then the studio needs you to go around the world and get profit. Being able to get $30 mil in England, 37 in Japan, 15 in Germany is what makes the studio support your movies differently than they support other actors' movies." He has built his global audience systematically: with each film, Smith introduces himself to a new people, often piggybacking on a local event that will attract worldwide attention. For Men in Black II, he toured in South Korea during the World Cup; for Hitch, he hit Brazil during carnival; for next year's fallen-superhero tale Hancock, he's trying to get into Beijing during the Olympics.
Smith applies the same kind of arithmetic and discipline to his personal life, and as a result, he enjoys a Hollywood rarity: a stable 10-year marriage. "Our first official date was with a relationship counselor," he says. "The math of it is simple. Start while it's good. Do it three times a week while you're laughing and still having fun. You get so much more work done. You head off problems. Do it during the ether time, and do it aggressively. There's nothing you've ever been successful at that you didn't work on every day." Who knew one man could learn so much from being cheated on at 16?
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/...89234-1,00.html
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Nov 28, 2007, 04:00 PM | by Sean Smith
Power Lists are so over. Magazines, including EW, have done them for decades, but as way of digging deep into Hollywood's DNA, "power" has become sort of beside the point. "Power" just tells you who's in charge. It doesn't tell you who's shaking things up. So EW decided to go in search of the people who are rocking the industry's world this year, the people with ideas – innovative, creative, dangerous, renegade ideas – who are changing the way movies are made. We went looking for the 50 Smartest People in Hollywood.
Below are the results of three months of constant research, hundreds of hours of conversations with the brightest minds in the industry, and weeks of heated debate. We started with a list of more than 300 contenders, and it proved surprisingly hard to chop them down to a trim 50. We had to establish strict criteria to determine who would – and who would not – make the cut. Here were our rules:
1) Every person on the list had to be smart not just in general, but smart right now. They had to be leading the industry forward in some way, today.
2) The list would be about the movie business only. (We'll do a Smartest People in TV list, too, next year).
3) The list would represent a broad range of intelligence in the movie business – not just the suits and the stars, but the composers and the costume designers, too.
4) "Smart" could mean many things. It encompasses books smarts and street smarts, financial genius and emotional intelligence. We weren't interested in IQ. What mattered was the originality of each person's thinking and the reach of their ideas beyond the borders of their own careers.
5) At 50 names, the list could not possibly include every smart person in Hollywood. Each person on this list needed to help paint a portrait of where movies are today and where they're headed. Each person on this list tells a different story about the movie business today. They are all smart, certainly, but they also symbolize, collectively, Hollywood now.
6) We ranked them first, and primarily, by their overall impact on the industry this year, and then factored in the influence of each person within their own profession. It allows for a diverse and surprising list, where a cinematographer (Emmanuel Lubezki) can take the #24 slot, while an Oscar winning director (Michael Moore) can come in below him at #27. It will also give you, we're sure, plenty to argue with us about.
We hope you're happy to see a few familiar faces rewarded on this list and are intrigued by the people you've never heard of. You'll find the complete package – with #5 entry Will Smith on the cover – on newsstands this week and, of course, here on EW.com, along with a quiz to test your Hollywood IQ. (Yes, you'll be graded, but we won't tell anyone your score.) Feel free to tell us how brilliant or idiotic our choices on the comments section below. And make sure to tell us who you'd nominate as one of the 50 Smartest People in Hollywood. We'll take it under advisement.
The list after the jump...
Entertainment Weekly's 50 Smartest People in Hollywood:
1. Judd Apatow, director/writer/producer
2. Steven Spielberg, director/producer
3. James Cameron, director/producer
4. Ari Emanuel, partner of the Endeavor Agency
5. Will Smith, actor/producer
6. Meryl Streep, actor
7. Peter Rice, president of Fox Searchlight
8. Tyler Perry, actor/director/writer/producer
9. David Heyman, producer
10. John Knoll, visual-effects supervisor of Industrial Light & Magic
11. Brian Grazer, producer
12. Dick Cook, chairman of the Walt Disney Studios
13. George Clooney, actor/director/producer
14. Jerry Bruckheimer, producer
15. Amy Pascal, co-chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment
16. Peter Jackson, director/producer
17. Will Ferrell, actor/producer
18. Robert Zemeckis, director
19. Tom Rothman, co-chair of Fox Filmed Entertainment
20. Ben Stiller, actor/director/producer
21. Johnny Depp, actor/producer
22. Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation
23. Brad Bird, writer/director
24. Emmanuel Lubezki, cinematographer
25. Zack Snyder, director
26. Stacey Snider, CEO of DreamWorks SKG
27. Michael Moore, documentarian
28. Paul Greengrass, director
29. J.J. Abrams, producer/director
30. Jodie Foster, actor/director
31. Kathleen Kennedy, producer
32. Thelma Schoonmaker, editor
33. Angelina Jolie, actor
34. Sacha Baron Cohen, actor/writer/producer
35. Tim Palen, co-president of film marketing for Lionsgate
36. Modi Wiczyk, co-CEO of Media Rights Capital
37. Guillermo del Toro, writer/producer/director
38. Diablo Cody, screenwriter
39. Mary Zophres, costume designer
40. Jeff Skoll, founder of Participant Productions
41. Stefan Sonnenfeld, president of Company
42. Daniel Battsek, president of Miramax Films[
43. Beth Swofford, agent at CAA
44. Roderick Jaynes, editor
45. Cate Blanchett, actor
46. Jeff Walker, Comic-Con impresario
47. Amy Powell, senior vice president of interactive marketing at Paramount
48. Gustavo Santaolalla, composer
49. Sarah Polley, actor/writer/director
50. Ben Affleck, actor/director/writer/producer
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http://www.etonline.com/news/2007/11/55976/index.html
:wickedwisdom: :wickedwisdom: :wickedwisdom: :wickedwisdom: :wickedwisdom:
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WHAT: WILL SMITH will be immortalized at one of Hollywood's most
famous landmarks when he places his hands and feet in cement
in the forecourt of the world-famous Grauman's Chinese
Theatre.
WHO: WILL SMITH, the star of the upcoming action thriller I AM LEGEND, a two-time Oscar nominee for THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS and ALI and the star of such hit films as MEN IN BLACK, INDEPENDENCE DAY and I, ROBOT.
WHEN: Monday, December 10 WHERE: Grauman's Chinese Theatre
----------------------- -----------------------------
Crew Arrivals: 10:30 AM 6925 Hollywood Blvd.
Ceremony: 11:30 AM Hollywood, CA
- Your coverage of this event is invited -
This film has not yet been rated by the MPAA.
www.iamlegend.com
For downloadable general press information and photos from I AM LEGEND, please visit: http://press.warnerbros.com
I AM LEGEND will be released nationwide on December 14, 2007.
The film will distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company, and in select territories by Village Roadshow Pictures.
http://www.newsobserver.com/1566/story/796548.html
:clap2: :birthday: :adore:
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Speaking to Monkey Peaches, Han Sanping, president of China Film, mentioned that he’s involved in the remake of “The Karate Kid” that Will Smith’s shingle is producing.
According to Sanping, the new film will be titled “The Kung Fu Kid” and could possibly feature Jackie Chan as Mr Myigai. Um, what? (is this guy ****ing with us??!). And if Chan’s not available? Stephen Chow (“Kung Fu Hustle”) will doing his best Pat Morita impersonation down a lens.
Pinch my left one til it bleeds. Please.
A couple of months ago rumours surfaced that Jaden Smith, Will’s son, might play the new martial-arts training tyke in the movie. Smith’s rep’s denied the claims pretty quickly. So why is this chap claiming the youngster is indeed still in the mix? He’d know, right? Or does he?
But not just that, Sanping tells the site that Jaden’s pop, The Fresh Prince himself, has already agreed to play the villain in the movie. Huh? Martin Kove must be spitting chips!
Sanping – who sounds like he could be full of vocal farts – also has a film in the works called “Tai Chi Tiger” that Keanu Reeves will produce and act in.
http://www.moviehole.net/news/20071127_jac..._mr_myiagi.html
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Quiet Riot - Cum on Feel the Noize :wickedwisdom:
R.I.P Mr. Kevin DuBrow :therain:
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Attn All Users - Scheduled Maintenance
Given the recent spamming issues, The WillSmith.com message board will be temporarily taken down for maintenance tomorrow and will be restored within 72 hours.
Please make alternative arrangements to communicate with your contacts during this time.
We appreciate your patience,
WS Staff
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UK Release date brought forward from 8th of January to 21st December!!!
http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/3389/l1yq2.jpg
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DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince - Don't Fight the Feeling :wickedwisdom:
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That guy has been banned loads of times. Wsstaff is checking the site everydays so he'll be banned soon (again).
Why y'all always have to be complaining about ws.com? You never talk about the interesting things posted on there. It's not fair.
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Who cares if Will is a Scientologist? Come on! He's Will Smith!
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In the '90s, Tatyana Ali became famous as Will Smith's younger cousin on "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air."
As Fresh as Ever
The 28-year-old Harvard grad surfaced at The Diversity Awards in L.A. last week, looking almost exactly the same!
This past summer, Tatyana starred on the reality series "On the Lot" and is getting ready to independently release her second album, "The Light."
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I Am Legend -- "We are seeing mutations. Cannibalistic hunger. Typical human behavior is now entirely absent." Other movies will garner the Oscar nominations this season, but this apocalyptic thriller, starring Will Smith, should rule the box office. Its "last man on Earth" storyline comes from a 1958 book, but you may recognize it from the 1971 film "Omega Man."
http://www.silive.com/entertainment/tvfilm...lm_preview.html -
Will Smith seems dead set on saving humanity one movie at a time
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We tried. We emailed them and they said they can't do nothing about it. We did all we could.
At least they are checking the site these days and banning all the guys who are making trouble.
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Bobby Brown - Every Little Step :wickedwisdom:
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"I Am Legend" On Screen, Family Guy At Home
New York, Nov.19, 2007
(CBS) Will Smith lights up the cover of the December issue of "Men's Vogue" with the honest expression that is a reflection of his down-to-earth personality, a rarity on the Hollywood scene.
He also makes a frank admission that he's counting on the success of his latest film, "I Am Legend."
"It's gonna be real scary if "I Am Legend" doesn't work, because I got everything I wanted [in a film]," Smith told the magazine.
Smith's new film, due in theaters Dec. 14, is a post-apocalyptic thriller about the sole survivor of a man-made incurable outbreak that swarms New York City.
While working in Hollywood, Smith has stayed grounded and under the celebrity radar, due to his solid marriage with actress Jada Pinkett Smith and, he says, his friendship with fellow actor Tom Cruise.
"We push one another to be better…There's a comprehension of what each of us goes through that everybody else can't understand," Smith said. "I've studied Buddhism and Hinduism and I've studied Scientology through Tom. And nobody's saying anything different!...I don't think that because the word someone uses for 'spirit' is 'thetan' that the definition becomes any different."
Smith admits that it's not easy to maintain a happy marriage in Hollywood, and that you have to invest all you've got into making it work. "Counseling, individual learning, books, conflict resolution," Smith confided. "It is a full time job to try and be happy. People tend to think that they can go to work for 50 or 60 hours a week and then come home and their relationship is just supposed to work."
The couple wed in November of 1997, when Smith was 29 and Pinkett Smith was 26.
He is not much of a figure on the party circuit. "Will literally takes three sips and he's buzzed," says his "Hitch" co-star Eva Mendes. "It's not even like three sips of whiskey; it's literally a piña colada or a daiquiri--he loves girly drinks--and he's down."
Other Hollywood stars have taken notice of Smith's one-of-a-kind demeanor.
"I don't say this kind of stuff about people, but he's godly," says Smith's "John Hancock" co-star, Charlize Theron.
Spotlights illuminate the Brooklyn Bridge in New York during the filming of Will Smith's new movie, "I Am Legend," on Jan. 23, 2007. Local residents were warned prior to the filming not to panic if they see Army helicopters and vehicles in the area; these are only part of the movie, which has been filming in a number of Manhattan locations for several months.
Actor Will Smith is seen on the set of his new movie, "I Am Legend," which being filmed underneath the Brooklyn Bridge in New York on Jan. 23, 2007. Coast Guard and Army helicopters and military vehicles are helping to create the war-zone action for the week-long shoot that is expected to cause intermittent afternoon traffic delays in the area.
Actors are seen on the set of Will Smith's new movie, "I Am Legend," during a shoot underneath the Brooklyn Bridge in New York on Jan. 23, 2007. Local residents were warned prior to the filming not to panic if they see Army helicopters and vehicles in the area; they are only part of the filming of the science-fiction thriller, which is due to be released in late 2007.
Extras are seen walking past a military Humvee during the filming of "I Am Legend" in New York on Jan. 23, 2007. The movie, starring Will Smith, is about the last human in New York. The film is planning to stage the evacuation of Manhattan by barge this week. Police and Coast Guard members will be providing security for the scene, which may involve about 1,000 extras and a large crew.
Oscar nominee Will Smith is seen on the set of "I Am Legend," which is being filmed underneath the Brooklyn Bridge in New York, on Jan. 23, 2007. Smith plays the last person in New York, who has to deal with nightly attacks from the rest of the world - all of which has been transformed into bloodthirsty vampires. The Mayor's Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting says the movie will employ about 3,000 New Yorkers
http://www.showbuzz.cbsnews.com/stories/20...in3522621.shtml
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Someone made a question and you said he should be banned for asking that, and you also said those things don't happen on jjfp.com. We told you everyone has the right to ask what he/she wants but it seems like you still don't understand it. That's your best way to help the site? Please. That guy wasn't insulting WS, he was just ASKING. And the decision of leaving the site was yours, and only yours.
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I know the mods suck, but there are good members on there, believe it or not. Who said you are not welcome over there? You went to ws.com complaining about how bad was that site compared to this one, so the members didn't like that, obviously.
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Let's be honest...who cares about willsmith.com anyway?!
Me.
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Does Will have a star on the Hollywood walk of fame?
My girlfriend asked me this and I thought that somebody here might know.
Not yet.
Will 'not inspired' to play baddie
in Will Smith Movies
Posted
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Will Smith has revealed that he might never play a baddie because he likes making people laugh too much.
The Hitch star, who returns to the big screen next month in I Am Legend, told Empire magazine: "I enjoy inspiring good feelings, that is fun for me. Comedy I would say is my most fun, how people react to The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air, there is nothing that matches that.
"I haven't been inspired to play a bad guy, I'm sure there is a bad guy at some point that has the right message. Scarface had the right message about power and drugs and it showed you exactly where that mess was going to end up, so even though it's a tragic story there is a positive message in it."
I Am Legend sees Will play scientist Robert Neville, the last man on earth after a deadly virus wipes out New York. But he soon discovers he's not alone and there are mutant survivors of the plague watching his every move.
http://www.metro.co.uk/fame/article.html?i...mp;in_a_source=