Sci-Fi Film and Television Developments

Sucker Punch!

11/12/09 – SCI FI Wire reported that Carla Gugino, who played Sally Jupiter/Silk Spectre in Zack Snyder's Watchmen, is back in Snyder's upcoming fantasy action movie Sucker Punch, playing a psychiatrist in an asylum—and an alternate-universe dominatrix version of the character.  Sucker Punch is Snyder's original story of girls in a 1960s asylum who lead a dual life in an action-packed alternate reality. Jena Malone, Abbie Cornish, Emily Browning, Vanessa Hudgens and Jamie Chung star as the patients who plan their escape via their fantasy world. Gugino also stars, wearing an outfit that will make her Sally Jupiter costume look tame.  "I play Dr. Gorsky, who is a psychiatrist in an insane asylum," Gugino said. "In an alternate world, I play Madame Gorsky, who is a dominatrix choreographer/madame in a brothel. I sing and I dance and I'm Polish. That's all I have to say."  Many of the same crew from Snyder's Watchmen returned for Sucker Punch, which is also filming in Vancouver, Canada. "I was just so excited to get to go back up and work with everybody again," Gugino said. "I mean, I'm up there with my whole crew that I know from that, so it's nice."  Sucker Punch is due in theaters in 2011.

8/28/09 - Oscar Isaac has joined the ever-growing cast of Zack Snyder's fantasy action movie Sucker Punch, along with Jon Hamm, Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jamie Chung, Jena Malone, Carla Gugino and Vanessa Hudgens, Variety reported.

8/19/09 - Jon Hamm has joined the cast of director Zack Snyder's action fantasy movie Sucker Punch for Warner Brothers and Legendary Pictures, according to The Hollywood Reporter:  Hamm joins Emily Browning, Vanessa Hudgens, Jamie Chung, Jena Malone, Abbie Cornish and Carla Gugino in the 1950s-set tale of a girl (Browning) confined to a mental institution by her stepfather, who intends to have her lobotomized in five days. She and her friends enter an alternate reality where they begin planning an escape.

6/25/09 – SCI FI Wire reported that director Zack Snyder said his new movie, Sucker Punch, will be something altogether new.  Snyder said that he plans to take movie action to a level. "Damon Caro is my stunt choreographer and fight choreographer, and I like fight choreography," Snyder said. "I'm not a gimmick-based filmmaker. I'm not looking to do a big rubber CGI double jumping from building to building and an unkillable crazy hero. So I do like sort of hard effects. Give me a machine gun and some kind of cool fighting hand to hand, and let's get it on. To me it's about trying to use technology to kind of just seam up the impossible parts of it, but still stay as raw as you can."  Sucker Punch is the story of a girl committed to a mental institution in the 1950s who uses the alternate reality of an imaginary world to plan her escape.  "The movie is a stylized motion picture about action and sort of landscapes of the imagination and things of that nature," Snyder said in our exclusive interview. "So Sucker Punch was a title that I had had for a long time that really just, to me, was about a pop-culture reference. It's about hopefully what the movie feels like when you watch it, more than a specific 'Oh, it's a story of this person.' It's all stylized."  The lead actresses are going through training for the insane fights Snyder wants them to perform with guns and knives. Emily Browning, Jena Malone, Jamie Chung, Vanessa Hudgens and Abbie Cornish star as the inmates with butt-kicking alter egos. Snyder told us that the characters remain as he conceived them, even though actors such as Amanda Seyfried, Evan Rachel Wood and Emma Stone had been considered before he finalized the cast.  "The characters are the same," Snyder said. "They're all inmates in an insane asylum in upstate New York, so they have personas that they sort of adopt, but it's all imagined."  Perhaps that explains why Jamie Chung could play a character described as a country girl. "I don't know if you'd call her a country girl," Snyder said. "Her icon is kind of tough."  Sucker Punch is due in theaters March 25, 2011.

4/21/09 - Jamie Chung and Jena Malone have snagged starring roles in Sucker Punch!, Zack Snyder's all-female action fantasy for Warner Brothers, according to The Hollywood Reporter.  Chung and Malone join Emily Browning, Vanessa Hudgens and Abbie Cornish in the movie, which Snyder is directing and producing with his Cruel & Unusual Films partner, wife Deborah Snyder.  Set in the 1950s, Sucker centers on a girl confined to a mental institution by her evil stepfather, who intends to have her lobotomized in five days. While there, she imagines an alternate reality to hide from the pain and in that world begins planning her escape, needing to steal five objects to help get her out.  Several actors have been in talks and negotiations to star in the movie, including Amanda Seyfried, Evan Rachel Wood and Emma Stone, but have fallen away because of scheduling conflicts.  Chung, replacing Stone, plays Amber, a country girl with a big heart. Malone, taking Wood's part, plays Cornish's younger sister. Both characters are inmates.

3/4/09 - Amanda Seyfried is in negotiations to star in Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch, and Vanessa Hudgens, Abbie Cornish, Evan Rachel Wood and Emma Stone are in talks to appear in the action fantasy film, according to The Hollywood Reporter.  Set in the 1950s, Punch follows a girl who is confined to a mental institution by her stepfather, who intends to have her lobotomized in five days. While there, she imagines an alternative reality to hide her from the pain, and in that world, she begins planning her escape, needing to steal five objects in order to get out before she is deflowered by a vile man.  Snyder, who co-wrote the script with Steve Shibuya, has described the fantasy world as "Alice in Wonderland with machine guns," blending such elements as dragons, B-52 bombers and brothels. Seyfried would play Babydoll, the institutionalized girl.  If deals are completed, the rest would play Seyfried's fellow inmates, who also travel into the alternate reality. Hudgens would play a character named Blondie, Cornish would play Sweet Pea, Wood would play Rocket, and Stone would play Amber.

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