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The casting in 20th Century Fox's "X-Men" movies was always a mixed bag. Some picks were perfect at bringing the comic character to life — Patrick Stewart as Professor X, Alan Cumming as Nightcrawler, Kelsey Grammer as Beast, etc. Others were swings and misses — Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique, Oscar Isaac as Apocalypse (but really any actor would have struggled inside that makeup), etc. Then there were some in the middle — actors who didn't really match the character on paper but still worked well due to the strength of their performances, like Sir Ian McKellen as Magneto and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine.

Marvel first started pursuing an "X-Men" movie in the 1980s, more than a decade before it was finally released. In 1990, Stan Lee and longtime "X-Men" comic book writer Chris Claremont met with James Cameron about him directing the movie, but Cameron was more interested in a "Spider-Man" movie (which...

Al Ruddy, two-time Oscar winner for producing “The Godfather” and “Million Dollar Baby,” died May 25 at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. Ruddy was also co-creator of “Hogan’s Heroes” and of “Walker, Texas Ranger.” He was 94.

After the success of sitcom “Hogan’s Heroes,” Ruddy went on to produce “Little Fauss and Big Halsy” and “Making It” before coming on to Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather,” which was nominated for 11 Academy Awards.

Al Pacino said in a statement, “Al Ruddy was absolutely beautiful to me the whole time on ‘The Godfather’; even when they didn’t want me, he wanted me. He gave me the gift of encouragement when I needed it most and I’ll never forget it.”

After “The Godfather,” he produced his own story treatment for “The Longest Yard.”

Ruddy went on to produce notable films including “The Cannonball Run.” Other features he produced included “Matilda,” “Coonskin,...

Albert S. Ruddy, who earned two Best Picture Oscars for producing The Godfather and Million Dollar Baby and co-created TV shows including Walker, Texas Ranger and Hogan’s Heroes, died May 25 at UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center after a brief illness, a family spokesman said. He was 94.

Ruddy is one of nine producers ever to earn two or more Best Picture Oscars, and has the distinction of winning them with the largest interval in between — 32 years.

He recently was portrayed by Miles Teller in the Paramount+ miniseries The Offer, which chronicles Ruddy’s experience making the 1972 film that Coppola directed and adapted with Mario Puzo from the latter’s bestselling novel.

Related: Peter Bart: ‘The Offer’ Spins A Mafia Tale About ‘The Godfather’ That’s Really More Fiction Than Fact

“Al was truly one of the great Hollywood mavericks,” The Offer director Dexter Fletcher said in a statement. “One of...

One of the most legendary pieces of an iconic role almost going to a different actor is when Tom Selleck was initially offered the lead as Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark. He famously nailed his audition (which you can watch here) and was offered the part. However, he had just shot the pilot for Magnum P.I. and when that show was picked up, his opportunity to play the whip-wielding archeologist slipped through his fingers. He eventually got to star in his own period adventure movie in 1983, High Road to China, which is a bit of an unseen gem.

Selleck, who’s never had particularly sour grapes over the casting, writes about his shot at playing Indy in detail in his new memoir, “You Never Know:, lavishing praise on Spielberg, Lucas, Ford, and overall proving to be a good sport about the whole affair. Yet, one thing...

Long before X-Men films and Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine became popular among movie lovers, James Cameron had plans to make an X-Men film. The Avatar director’s ex-wife and Oscar winner Kathryn Bigelow was set to direct the film. The reported lineup for the film was also pretty awesome, including Bob Hoskins as Wolverine and Angela Bassett as Storm. However, one Marvel character ruined these plans and the film never got past the planning stage.

Hugh Jackman as Logan / Wolverine in X-Men: The Last Stand

Bryan Singer’s X-Men films re-ignited audience interest in superhero films, particularly the Marvel films. If the film produced by James Cameron happened way back in the ’90s, it would’ve turned around the fate of Marvel Studios.

James Cameron Planned To Produce An X-Men Film Directed By Kathryn Bigelow Titanic director James Cameron planned to produce an X-Men film directed by his ex-wife Kathryn...

Netflix is developing a live-action feature take of the bestselling Boom! Studios comic series Irredeemable and its sister title Incorruptible with BAFTA-winning The Harder They Fall filmmaker Jeymes Samuel directing, Oscar-nominated scribe Kemp Powers writing and producers Shawn ‘Jay-Z’ Carter and James Lassiter on board.

Samuel will also produce. Carter and Lassiter will produce through their overall deal at the streamer with Stephen Christy and Ross Richie from Boom! Studios. Powers and Adam Yoelin will serves as EPs.

In the graphic novel series, when the world’s most powerful and beloved superhero, the god-like Plutonian, inexplicably begins slaughtering everyone on Earth, the only person that can stop him is his former arch-nemesis, the super-powered villain Max Damage. Unwillingly thrust into the role of savior, Max must uncover the Plutonian’s mysterious past in order to discover how to bring him down. But can he discover what made the Plutonian go...

In 1984, Tom Selleck was riding high off of the success of Magnum P.I. on tv, but here's the thing - he wanted to be a movie star. He'd nailed the audition for Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark, but lost out at the eleventh hour when Magnum P.I. went to series. In 1983/84, he had a slew of movies come out, including two Indiana Jones-styled adventure movies, the underrated High Road to China and the dull Lassiter. Runaway would be different, in that it was a futuristic…...

Pineapple Margaritas on the house!

A third Psych movie has been given the go-ahead at Peacock, with James Roday Rodriguez and Dulé Hill on board to reprise their respective roles as Shawn and Gus. The third installment in the franchise follows 2017’s Psych: The Movie and 2020’s Psych 2: Lassie Come Home. The movies, of course, were preceded by Psych‘s eight-season run on USA Network.

More from TVLineJames Roday Details 'Deeply Personal' Decision to Reclaim Birth Name Rodriguez: 'I Want to Be the Most Honest Ally for My Community'Psych's James Roday Rodriguez Explains the Sequel's 'Silly Meta' Million Little...

Fresh off the long-awaited arrival of Zack Snyder’s Justice League (a.k.a. the fabled Snyder Cut), HBO Max has no need to appease fandom culture in April 2021. But the streaming service is gonna do it anyway!

The most notable new release for HBO Max this month is the HBO series The Nevers. This show, created by Joss Whedon, is set in a 19th century steampunk London and finds a sizable portion of the population (predominantly women) having been “Touched” by mysterious paranormal powers. There’s an interesting bit of irony at play here, as HBO Max is following up the Snyder Cut with a show created by his original Justice League replacement. Or at least there could have been an interesting bit of irony here, if Whedon had not bowed out from the show and been enthusiastically left out of the marketing material by HBO.

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We waited for it, and now it's here: Psych 2: Lassie Come home officially arrives tomorrow, with the launch of Peacock.  You may want to just jump right in and find out where Shawn and Gus are in 2020, but you might also be in the mood for a slow build. You could, theoretically, rewatch all eight seasons of Psych, plus Psych the Movie, but that would take days!  Instead, we've put together a list of the most essential Psych episodes that will help prepare you for Psych 2, starting back at the very beginning and making a few important stops along the way. Watch Shawn and Juliet fall (slowly) in love. Watch Shawn and Gus fall in (platonic) love. Watch Lassiter's heart grow three sizes over...

It’s taken longer than expected but the second Psych movie is set to air this spring and star Maggie Lawson is already hoping for more.

Psych 2: Lassie Come Home was originally planned to launch last year but moved from USA Network to forthcoming streaming service Peacock. Lawson told Deadline that it will air this spring after the NBCU platform launches in April.

The film, which is named after Tim Omundson’s Santa Barbara Police Chief Carlton Lassiter, will explore the marriage between Shawn, played by James Roday, and Lawson’s Juliet after the pair’s nupitals at the end of the first movie.

“One of the things I love about this movie, this time around is, I feel that for Shawn and Juliet there’s been eight years of ‘will they, won’t they,’ then it was ‘they will,’ then there was like a little, ‘where are we,...

This article is dedicated to Andrew Copp: filmmaker, film writer, artist and close friend who passed away on January 19, 2013. You are loved and missed, brother.

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Looking at the Best Actor Academy Award nominations for the film year 2012, the one miss that clearly cries out for more attention is Liam Neeson’s powerful performance in Joe Carnahan’s excellent survival film The Grey, easily one of the best roles of Neeson’s career.

In Neeson’s case, his lack of a nomination was a case of neglect similar to the Albert Brooks snub in the Best Supporting Actor category for the film year 2011 for Drive(Nicolas Winding Refn, USA).

Along with negligence, other factors commonly prevent outstanding lead acting performances from getting the kind of critical attention they deserve. Sometimes it’s that the performance is in a film not considered “Oscar material” or even worthy of any substantial critical attention.

DVD Release Date: Sept. 11, 2012

Price: DVD $64.99

Studio: CBS Home Entertainment/Paramount

Tom Sellect broods in Blue Bloods.

Tom Selleck (Lassiter) leads a handsome ensemble cast in the television police crime drama show Blue Bloods: The Second Season, which arrives on disc on the eve of the series’ Season Three premiere.

The story of a multi-generational family dedicated to New York City law enforcement stars Selleck as Frank Reagan, the New York Police Commissioner who heads both the police force and the Reagan brood.

He runs his department as diplomatically as he runs his family, which includes his unapologetically bold father Henry (Len Cariou, Thirteen Days), the former commissioner; his eldest son Danny (Donnie Wahlberg, the Saw franchise), a seasoned detective and Iraqi war veteran who uses dubious tactics with his partner Jackie (Jennifer Esposito, TV’s Samantha Who?) to solve cases; and his daughter Erin (Bridget Moynahan, Battle Los Angeles), an Assistant D.

 

In 2000, director Bryan Singer helped to usher in the new era of comic book movies that we all know and love today with X-Men. The film, starring Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman and Ian McKellan, grossed nearly $300 million and launched a $900 million franchise. But a decade before the film was released, an earlier plan to bring the X-Men to the screen was in the development stages. Would you believe that couple (at the time) James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow (director of Best Picture winner The Hurt Locker) were attached as producer and director, respectively? It's true, as Chris Claremont, long-time comics writer for the X-Men, revealed at a recent Columbia University Q&A panel.

 

Claremont said his choices for the roles of Wolverine and Storm were Bob Hoskins and Angela Bassett. In the comics, Wolverine is meant to be a dimunitive tough guy. Claremont felt Hoskins was the right guy for...

Long before Bryan Singer helped usher in the super hero craze [Blade, really started it] legendary X-Men comic book writer Chris Claremont had a plan to give us an X-Men film with James Cameron producing, Kathryn Bigelow directing, and starring Bob Hoskins as Wolverine and Angela Bassett as Storm. Now, we've heard from Claremont before on the subject of Hoskins as Wolverine but this time he shares a little more detail on why that never came to pass and whose to blame. "James Cameron, Bob Hoskins, Angela Bassett -- ahhh. Fanboy heaven. I would have been happy as a clam," Claremont said. Claremont stated that he saw Bob Hoskins in 1984's Lassiter and just knew that he was the actor had the right intensity to portray Wolverine on the silver screen. James Cameron, fresh off success from Terminator and Aliens, had just launched his own studio, Lightstorm Entertainment, in 1990, and on one...

DVD Release Date: April 24, 2012

Price: DVD $24.95

Studio: Hen’s Tooth

Tom Selleck goes black tie in 1984's Lassiter.

Tom Selleck (TV’s Blue Bloods) is a suave, debonair man-about-town…and a notorious thief—in the 1984 action adventure crime film Lassiter.

Whether he’s charming high society’s elite at a black-tie dinner or emptying their safes in the dead of night, Nick Lassiter certainly excels at what he does. On the eve of World War II, Lassiter finds himself in London, where local authorities are well aware of his history as a notorious cat burglar. When word leaks out that a cache of uncut diamonds is to be smuggled through the German embassy, Lassiter is coerced by police and the FBI to perform one last heist on their behalf.

Directed by Roger Young (Kiss the Sky), Lassiter also stars Jane Seymour (TV’s Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman), Lauren Hutton (The Joneses...