On the latter point, a sea voyage in 1922 on the Wisdom II, a ship whose goal was to seek out adventure and document it in print and film, would carry Cooper and his fellow seafarers to places where head hunters appeased angry spirits with human sacrifices, to an African kingdom ruled by the reputed descendant of King Solomon, to a jungle-covered plateau isolated by smoldering volcanoes, and to encounters with stormy seas and cut-throat pirates. But it was on one remote island during the wanderings of the Wisdom that Cooper and a landing party discovered hundreds of gigantic lizard creatures, a real-life encounter with a primordial lost world which would grow in his imagination into the giant gorilla Kong and the prehistoric creatures populating Skull Island. The character of Carl Denham, the movie producer in King Kong who leads the Venture on the film-making expedition to Skull Island, was largely patterned after Cooper himself. In the film’s opening, a night watchman where the Ventureis docked says of Denham: “They say he ain’t scared of nuthin.’ If he wants a picture of a lion he goes up to him and tells him to look pleasant!” Such was Cooper who, with Ernest Schoedsack, had plunged into the jungles of Siam where man-eating tigers prowled to capture some hardy specimens for their adventure story Chang, the 1927 release that would actually become famed for the stampeding herd of wild elephants Cooper and Schoedsack orchestrated for their film. Before Chang had been the adventure of Grass, a 1925 release and one of the pioneering documentary films that saw Cooper, Schoedsack, and an heiress and former spy named Marguerite Harrison join the nomadic Bakhtiari tribe on an arduous seasonal journey across a raging icy river and over a towering, ice-capped mountain range to a distant, verdant land. A trilogy of Cooper-Schoedsack movie expeditions was capped by the 1929 fictional drama The Four Feathers, a swash-buckling adaptation of the A.E.W. Mason novel that included location shooting in Africa that was duplicated on California sets—the first time a far-flung location was so matched by Hollywood illusionists. What else did Merian Cooper bring to Kong? Before the movie expeditions and Wisdom voyage was the hard school of war. In World War I, Cooper was one of the pioneer warriors of the air, flying the infamous De-Haviland 4 planes that earned the dubious nickname “flaming coffins.” In one raging dogfight, Cooper was shot down in flames but survived through his steady nerve and skill as a pilot. After recovering while a German prisoner-of-war, Cooper was charged with leading American humanitarian missions in Poland before he left to help form the Kosciuszko Squadron, a group of all-American, battle-hardened pilots who thirsted for adventure and the cause of fighting the Bolsheviks who were invading Poland. After flying dozens of dangerous combat raids, Cooper’s luck ran out and he was again shot down and captured by the enemy. Only an assumed name prevented his being executed outright—as a leader of the Kosciuszko Squadron he had a price on his head. Cooper endured hellish months in Soviet prison camps, surviving through his own steely will and the help of his later movie partner, Marguerite Harrison. Finally, fearing his imminent execution, Cooper made a great escape with two Polish prisoners to the barbed-wire frontier border of Latvia and freedom. Back home, where he settled in New York, Cooper’s love of flying eventually led him to become a pioneering executive in the nascent field of commercial aviation, including being an elected director of Pan-American Airways. In addition to being a major player among New York’s business elite, Cooper became a confidant of movie producer David O. Selznick. In 1931, when Selznick became executive vice-president in charge of production at RKO, he invited Cooper to join him and installed Cooper as one of his trusted executive assistants. It was there that Cooper had the power and the backing to make the film which had become his obsession, the story he had been fleshing out since the late 1920s while a restless New York business executive whose memories of adventure were taking the form of the ultimate movie expedition.
In 1991, King Kong was awarded preservation priority status as one of 25 classic movies added to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry and in 1998 King Kong was named one of the top 100 American films by the American Film Institute (#43 on the list). That Kong endures is a testament to the vision of Merian Cooper who in a magical act of motion picture alchemy combined his wildest imagining with the memories of true-life adventure, leaving the world a great legacy of the imagination.
Article from the Kong Of Skull Island website by Mark Cotta Vaz.
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Ahead of the full trailer release Warner Bros. has released two (or technically three) posters and a German TV spot. The posters include one that feature a close up of Kong's face, the other is a distance shot with the setting sun behind him and people wading in water in front. Both are pretty awesome. The TV trailer combines a few of the teasers that have been released with other footage. Check out the posters and and the trailer below.
Entertainment Weekly posted an interview with director Jordan Vogt-Roberts that shed some more light on the film and also one other big reveal Kong himself. The pic above reveals Kong looking more ape like similar to the original 1930's Kong rather than gorilla like similar to the '70's and 2005 versions.
Vogt-Roberts also confirmed this take stating "We sort of went back to the 1933 version in the sense that he’s a bipedal creature that walks in an upright position, as opposed to the anthropomorphic, anatomically correct silverback gorilla that walks on all fours. Our Kong was intended to say, like, this isn’t just a big gorilla or a big monkey. This is something that is its own species. It has its own set of rules, so we can do what we want and we really wanted to pay homage to what came before…and yet do something completely different." He also stated "A huge part of the movie was designing him and creating the creature so that when you did see him it sort of short circuited your brain and was divisive to people, where certain people immediately say ‘That’s a threat,’ certain people immediately say, ‘That’s a God,’ certain people immediately say, ‘That’s a savior.’ Visually and instantly, what happens when you see this thing towering over you and what is your sort of emotional and intellectual response?" And in reference to Kong's size and when he'll show up in the film he stated "Well, the reveal you can wait for in the film itself, but you’ll see, I shot this on anamorphic lenses, which a lot of people said, ‘You’re crazy, you’re taking away more space to show how big he is!’…It seemed like a bigger challenge to communicate scale in that way. We’re also fundamentally not playing the same game that Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla did and most monster movies do, which I’m sort of sick of the notion that a monster movie needs to wait an hour or 40 minutes until the creature shows up. Kong traditionally does not show up in these movies until very, very late, and the monster traditionally does not show up until very, very late in a monster movie, so a lot of these movies tend to have this structure that’s a bit of a slow burn. Something about this movie made me want to reject that and play a very, very different game." You can read the entire interview at Entertainment Weekly's site here.
Check out the giveaway details below. OFFICIAL CONTEST RULES AND INFORMATION Prize: 1. The prize (one poster) will be shipped to the contest winner so entrants must include a valid mailing address. This contest is only open to participants in the United States and Canada. 2. In the event the winner chooses not to (or cannot) accept a prize, he or she forfeits all claim to that prize, and a new winner will be chosen. 3. One entry per person. Prizes are non-transferable. No substitution of prizes allowed. Duration of contests: The Kong: Skull Island NYCC Poster Giveaway runs from Oct 15 until 11:59 PM on Oct 22, 2016. How to enter: 1. Submit your name, email address, and mailing address for the random drawing. 2. Be sure to write “Kong: Skull Island NYCC Poster” in the subject line of your email entry. Kaiju Battle maybe running multiple giveaways, so any entries without “Kong: Skull Island NYCC Poster” in the subject header will be discarded. Determination of winner: 1. Only contestants who have submitted the requested information will be entered in the final drawing, and will be randomly drawn from the eligible entries to determine the winner for this contest. 2. Kaiju Battle is not responsible for typographical, electronic or other errors that will affect the offering, outcome, administration of the contest or the announcement of prize. Void where prohibited or restricted by law. 3. The decision of Kaiju Battle is final. Entrants agree to be bound by these Official Rules and by the decisions of the Kaiju Battle judge, which are final and binding in all respects. 4. The winner will be notified via email. Just email the following info “Kong: Skull Island NYCC Poster” Name: Email address: Mailing Address: to kaijubattle@gmail.com (please do not use the contact link on the site) and you’re in the giveaway. Good luck! About Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. is an American entertainment company owned by Time Warner, headquartered in Burbank, California. Warner Bros. has subsidiaries including DC Entertainment, DC Films, Warner Bros. Interactive, Warner Bros. Television, Warner Bros. Animation, Warner Home Video, New Line Cinema, Castle Rock Entertainment and Turner Entertainment, as well as half of The CW Television Network with CBS Corporation. Warner Bros. is a member of the Motion Picture Association of America. About Legendary Entertainment Legendary Entertainment is an American media company based in Burbank, California. The company was founded by Thomas Tull in 2000 and in 2005, concluded an agreement to co-produce and co-finance films with Warner Bros., and began a similar arrangement with Universal Studios in 2014. Since 2016, Legendary has been a subsidiary of the Chinese conglomerate Wanda Group. About New York Comic Con The New York Comic Con (NYCC) is an annual New York City fan convention by ReedPOP dedicated to comics, graphic novels, anime, manga, video games, toys, movies, and television. It was first held in 2006
Rodan could certainly fit the bill to help bridge the crossover from Kong to Godzilla being a dinosaur based character much like Godzilla. The image definitely fits Rodan in a number of ways the beak, possible wings, that it suggests it could be flying over the island, among other things. Yes this is speculation but when you look at some fans concepts for what the Legendary versions of the Toho monsters will look like, it is not such a far stretch . We will see if this or other speculation pans out, till then my money is on Rodan.
At NYCC one of the giveaways floating around was the Kong: Skull Island LandSat poster. At first glance it just appears to be a satellite image with a written message in the lower left corner, and coordinates, dates and other info on the bottom. But shining a black light on it opens up a bunch more secrets. They give hints that Kong is young and still growing (which will fix the size issue with Godzilla) an "Apex Primate", the island is not like any other with crazy weather, creatures and such, including a "Hypervore" could this be reference to Godzilla, and of course Monarch is involved. check out the pics below the black light images are from Twitter.
Legendary/Warner Bros has announced the official website here not to much on it yet but more will come I'm sure.
MTV offered a sneak peek at next years Kong: Skull Island at the MTV Movie Awards it gives us a behind the scenes look at the film (we posted a number of shots on our Facebook page from locations where the filming is taking place). Check out the video above and look for more coverage as we get closer to the films release March 10, 2017.
Kong, a 3D animated feature. Aquamen Entertainment and Pigmental Studios are teaming with Chinese and Korean partners on this $40 million 3D animated film. Based on the main character (Sun Wukong) in the Chinese classical novel Journey to the West. Concept design by: Arnaud Valette (Man of Steel, Prometheus) and Justin Goby Fields (Maleficent) Music by: Mark McKenzie (Mr. & Mrs Smith) (Note this is not directly related to the American King Kong or the Netflix series) Chinese producer Gary Zhang, who is co-producing $50 million animated 3D project Kong with Korean filmmaker JJ Kim, has unveiled U.S. talent for the film, including Mulan and Walking With Dinosaurs director Barry Cook. Zhang and Kim’s production company Aquamen, so called as they are both Aquarians, made the announcement at an event in Beijing. Co-director on the project will be Iain McCaig, who was a conceptual designer on the Star Wars and Harry Potter series. As well as Cook and McCaig, the project will hire 11 other Hollywood animation and special-effects industrial artists to form the creative team. “Teaming up Barry Cook and Iain McCaig to co-direct Kong should doubly insure that classic Chinese culture can enter the international film market. The strong technological support allows Kong to revolutionize Chinese animation,” the Aquamen producers said in a statement. Kong will be based on the Chinese classic Monkey King legend and will mix science fiction elements into the traditional epic mix, featuring aliens, robots and fantasy elements. It was announced at the Berlin film festival last year, and more details emerged in Cannes. |
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