Every year studios travel to Las Vegas to show the attendees at CinemaCon the biggest and best movies on their upcoming slate. Last night it was Paramount’s shot and they revealed not only new footage from G.I. Joe: Retaliation, but also gave us our first look at the Tom Cruise-starring adaptation of Lee Child’s One Shot. This morning it was Warner Bros. turn. I’ve already reported on what the studio brought for The Dark Knight Rises and The Hobbit, their two biggest titles of 2012, but if you think that’s all there was then you are fortunately mistaken, as they also delivered first looks at both The Campaign and The Great Gatsby.
Starting with the new Will Ferrell-Zach Galifianakis comedy, director Jay Roach came out to address the audience and explained that they were originally planning to release The Campaign towards the end of the presidential election, but ended up moving it to the summer because they were afraid that the ridiculous of real politics would make their movie look tame by comparison. Lucky for us, I highly doubt that’s going to happen, as the comedy not only looks totally off the wall, but also hilarious.
The movie centers on two rival politicians who are running for a congressional seat in the smallest district of North Carolina. Cam Brady (Ferrell) is a career politician who has always run unopposed, but in this particular year he finds some competition in Marty Huggins (Galifianakis), an effeminate, mustachioed man with not a clue in the world. Mixing in some solid political humor – such as Brady parodying Rod Blagojevich by saying that his hair is strong enough to lift a car off of a baby – with a little blue comedy – such as Marty’s young son admitting that he let a goat lick his wiener at the petting zoo – the entire trailer got great reactions from the crowd and was filled with laughs. By the end of the footage, which featured Cam accidentally punching a baby instead of Marty and then commenting on the infant’s iron-like jaw, I was totally sold.
Changing the tone completely, then, was the preview for Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Because of the unfinished nature of the footage – it was largely scenes clipped together out of context – it’s a bit hard to give you a recap of exactly what I saw, but I can comment on the presentation. The material kicked off with a party at Gatsby’s mansion, and it took less than a second to recognize Luhrmann’s style, as the frame was filled with depictions of the lavish upperclass life. The video also featured some voice-over narration by Tobey Maguire, who plays Nick Carraway, with lines taken directly from Fitzgerald’s novel (most notably the final lines of the book). Finally, while it could end up changing by the time the movie is released, the footage was played with modern pop music. Considering this is a regular staple of the writer/director’s movies, I wouldn’t be surprised if it makes it into the final cut.
The Campaign arrives in theaters on August 10th, while The Great Gatsby will be in a theater near you this Christmas.
