Ben Wheatley is a busy man. He's been directing the first two episodes of Doctor Who series 8 for a start, the two instalments that will introduce Peter Capaldi to the role of the Doctor properly. And then he's pressing ahead on his adaptation of J G Ballard's High-Rise.

Wheatley confirm the news this morning on his Twitter account that shooting on the movie would start in June. Furthermore, he's now revealed that there's none other than Mr Tom Hiddleston in the lead role. Wheatley and Hiddleston? Yes please.

He posted the following image too...

More on the film as we hear it. It's been firmly added to our 'can't wait to see' list.

Twitter.

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The explosion of the DVD market, and of the current generation of American and international independent cinema, has sent movie bosses scouring the shelves and the planet for interesting directors. Said studios then try and pair those interesting directors with blockbuster movies (a trend that continues later this year with the rather excellent decision to give Gareth Edwards Godzilla to make). But things don't always work out, and ways are parted before a single frame of footage has been shot.

So then: what we've looked at here are examples of where interesting directors were hired for blockbuster movies, only for them to leave the project before the film in question was complete. We've avoided stories of directors not returning for sequels to films they'd previously made (so, Sam Raimi with Spider-Man and Rupert Wyatt with Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes). We've also focused on projects where the film itself came to fruition and was released - had we written this article in 2016, we could have added Duncan Jones'Warcraft movie, which Sam Raimi was attached to for some time). But it's not, so we won't.

Instead, here's a selection of blockbusters where the director's chair changed hands, leaving an interesting initial choice off the end credits...

The Wolverine

The director: Darren Aronovsky

When X-Men Origins: Wolverine didn't go the way Fox wanted, it took a look around at what everyone else was doing with their comic book movies. Inevitably, it noticed that Warner Bros had taken a big gamble on a hugely talented, acclaimed director with its Batman films - in Christopher Nolan - and had reaped the rewards of that.

After being apparently turned down by Bryan Singer, Fox approached Darren Aronosky, then flying high off the back of The Wrestler and Black Swan. He'd worked with Hugh Jackman before on The Fountain, and in October 2010, it was confirmed that Aronosky was indeed set to helm The Wolverine. Six months later, he was off the project.

Why did they pull out? In a statement issued in March 2011, Darren Aronofsky said that "as I talked more about the film with my collaborators at Fox, it became clear that the production of The Wolverine would keep me out of the country for almost a year. I was not comfortable being away from my family for that length of time". Aronofsky's marriage had recently ended, although it's not clear if that was a contributory factor too. Neither Fox nor Aronofsky made a further statement about their parting of the ways.

Who got the job, and how did it turn out?The Wolverine would be beset by further problems, with plans to film in Japan delayed by the tragic earthquake and tsunami in the country in 2011. Photography would not start until the spring of 2012.

A shortlist of directors saw the likes of Jose Padilha, Mark Romanek and Justin Lin as potential candidates to direct the film. Furthermore, Guillermo del Toro admitted he'd met with The Wolverine team about taking the project on, but ultimately passed. Eventually, James Mangold got the job, and steered The Wolverine to middling review but decent box office last year. It's the second-highest grossing X-Men movie to date, and Mangold is now expected back for the next sequel.

The Green Hornet

The director: Stephen Chow

Seth Rogen has spoken with some regret over the big screen take on The Green Hornet, which he co-wrote and starred in. In fact, scrub that: he called it a "fucking nightmare" when he guested on the excellent WTF podcast. "I think we hoped we could be the guys who made the edgy PG-13 movie but we just couldn't really do it", he said.

It started well, though, and when it was announced that Stephen Chow was to co-star in the film and direct, the signs were positive. Because Chow the director is the man responsible for the quite brilliantly manic Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle. He sounded a wonderfully left-field choice for Green Hornet, and the signs were extremely positive. He was officially announced as director of The Green Hornet in September 2008.

Sadly, after being attached to the film and working on it, it was announced in December 2008 that Chow was dropping out of directing Green Hornet, and that he might also be passing on the chance to take the role of Kato in it. Jay Chou would eventually take that role on.

Why did they pull out? The official reason given for Chow's departure from the role of Kato in the film was scheduling problems, with Variety reporting at the time that he had left the project on "amicable terms". He left the directorial post some months before that, with those magical "creative differences" the culprit. In his place came French director Michel Gondry. Gondry had worked on an attempt to get the film made around a decade before, and remains best known for the wonderful Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind.

Gondry shed some apparent light on what the "creative differences" between Chow and the studio were, telling Entertainment Weekly that Chow had " really, really crazy ideas that you would not dare bring to a studio ... AIDS was involved. Plastic boobs were involved, too". A representative for Chow duly issued a denial.

Who got the job, and how did it turn out? Michel Gondry got it. Production was delayed slightly as a result of the personnel changes, and The Green Hornet moved from a summer 2010 release date to Christmas 2010. Then, Sony announced a delay of a further few weeks to accommodate a post-production 3D conversion.

As it turned out, the film won few people over, but didn't do too badly. It grossed over $200m worldwide, and did solid business on home formats. There never seemed much appetite for a sequel to it from anyone involved, though. As Rogen would tell WTF, "Gondry, the director, is wonderful at smaller scale stuff but I think he did not mesh well with [a blockbuster]. It was his first movie with more than a $20 million dollar budget and this was $120 million dollar budget. And we had never made an action movie, he had never made an action movie. And if there is one thing I look back on like, 'what was the problem there?' It was just the budget. We can't make a really edgy fun movie for our types of people for that amount of money".

He told the Doug Loves Movies podcast that he would not do a sequel, and that "I would rather just not work for a year".

The Hobbit

The director: Guillermo del Toro

Still credited on the eventual The Hobbit movies, and very much still on friendly terms with Peter Jackson and his team, Guillermo del Toro was, of course, the man who was originally going to direct the new big screen take on The Hobbit. At the time the plan was for two films rather than three, and del Toro signed on the dotted line back in April 2008.

Del Toro got busy quickly, too. He worked on the scripts with Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, and pre-production work began in earnest in the summer of 2008. By the spring of 2009, the story was locked and the screenplays were being produced, and it seemed like full steam ahead for photography to take place throughout 2010. Even when Peter Jackson announced that production had been delayed until the middle of 2010, del Toro was still involved.

Why did they pull out? Co-funders of The Hobbit films, MGM, was going through heavily-reported financial issues at the time, and as such, as del Toro revealed in May 2010, the films had not been officially greenlit at that time. Furthermore, he added that the films wouldn't be until the MGM financial issues were resolved. Two days later, del Toro walked away from the director's chair, nearly two years after he took the job on.

Who got the job, and how did it turn out? The issues surrounding MGM's financials would delay the formal greenlighting of The Hobbit films until October 2010. At that stage, it was also announced that Peter Jackson would direct (amongst the alternatives believed to be considered were Harry Potter's David Yates, and Brett Ratner). Filming finally got going in early 2011.

As for the films? The general consensus is that the two movies released thus far aren't at the level of Lord Of The Rings, but they're getting better. The first, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, came in for heavy criticism, but still has more fans that detractors.

Crucially for those paying the bills, An Unexpected Journey became the second of Jackson's Tolkien adaptations to break $1bn at the global box office. At the time of writing, The Desolation Of Smaug's total stands at $854m.

del Toro would finally direct a big budget blockbuster, of course, in the shape of 2013's Pacific Rim.

Mission: Impossible III

The director: Joe Carnahan

With each Mission: Impossible film comes a new director. Mission: Impossible II, for instance, was once linked with Oliver Stone before John Woo took on the job. At one stage, it looked as though David Fincher was in line to make Mission: Impossible III, but he would ultimately pass on the project. One man who did sign up for it though was Joe Carnahan, at that stage best known for the superb Narc.

Carnahan signed up to direct the film in early 2003, and spent the next 15 months working on and developing the movie. His cast was set to feature Kenneth Branagh, Carrie-Anne Moss and Scarlett Johansson, and the story would have veered a little closer to the one used in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, with the team being shut down. His movie would have also touched on themes of a private military, operating in Africa.

However, one month before photography was due to commence on Mission: Impossible III, Carnahan quit the project. "Creative differences" were rearing their head once more.

Why did they pull out? Carnahan's departure had been rumoured for a few weeks before it actually happened, and the director has subsequently admitted that he quit before they fired him from the project. The director and studio bosses were reportedly not getting on, although Carnahan has since clarified that there's no bad blood with either Paramount Pictures or Tom Cruise.

Who got the job, and how did it turn out? Given that the writing was seemingly on the wall for Carnahan a little while before he parted ways with Mission: Impossible III, it's perhaps unsurprising that a contingency plan was in place. Cruise - who had been enjoying watching Alias at the time - put in a call to JJ Abrams and offered him the job. Abrams, given that he was working on Alias and Lost at the time, couldn't take the job straight away, and thus production was delayed for a year.

That delay gave Cruise time to go and make War Of The Worlds with Steven Spielberg (also for Paramount), but also cost Mission: Impossible III the services of Branagh, Moss and Johansson. Production would finally start in July 2005, with Simon Pegg, the late Philip Seymour Hoffman and Michelle Monaghan leading the support cast.

The film's box office was good, if a little less than expected. At the time, that was put down to Tom Cruise's infamous sofa-jumping on the Oprah Winfrey Show and the hoo-ha surrounding that. Reviews were decent, and the project was deemed successful enough to get a fourth Mission: Impossible movie moving. And a fifth is now on the way too...

Quantum Of Solace

The director: Roger Michell

Roger Michell is a director we've been chatting a lot about at Den Of Geek, where his films constantly pop up in our lists of underappreciated movies. Film such as Changing Lanes, Venus, Enduring Love and The Mother have sat alongside his higher profile work with Notting Hill and Morning Glory. But had things taken a different turn, Michell would have a Bond movie to his name, too.

Michell was the original choice to direct Daniel Craig's second James Bond movie, Quantum Of Solace. He'd worked with Craig before on The Mother, and whilst he was never officially announced for Quantum Of Solace, subsequent reports have confirmed he was the choice to make the movie.

Michell, though, parted company with the project in October 2006.

Why did they pull out? Originally, it was the helpfully bland "creative differences" that were cited for Bond and Michell parting company. But it turned out to the be the screenplay. Chatting to Metro in 2011, he said that "what I would have done with it would have been to get a really good script before I started shooting, that’s what I would have done with it! That’s why I pulled out of it. We had everything, but no script... I just found it too daunting, the prospect of doing something not very well because you didn’t have a foundation for it. It’s all about the script in this business, it really is".

He added that "so when the Bond people, who I really liked I must say very much, started saying, ‘I know we don’t have a script but could you start storyboarding the action sequences?’, I just thought, ‘how the fuck do I do that?’ It made me miserable. It just made me feel it was the wrong thing".

Who got the job, and how did it turn out? Marc Forster eventually took Quantum Of Solace on. And whilst it has no shortage of people willing to stick up for it, it would be fair to say it is not regarded as the best James Bond movie.

Thor: The Dark World

The director: Patty Jenkins

Patty Jenkins' most high-profile film that she's directed to date has been 2003's Monster, which earned Charlize Theron an Oscar for her portrayal of Aileen Wuornos. She's subsequently picked up an Emmy nomination for her directorial work on the US remake of TV show The Killing.

Marvel Studios, meanwhile, has earned a welcome reputation for being willing to look far and wide for its directors. It was still something of a surprise though when it was announced that Patty Jenkins was set to take on the directorial challenge of the Thor sequel from Kenneth Branagh. It did not take long, though, for this particular union to fall apart. She was confirmed as director in October 2011, and would leave the project in December.

Why did they pull out? As the original parting of the ways statement relayed, Jenkins and Marvel parted company over - yep - "creative differences". The door was seemingly held open for Jenkins to direct for Marvel in the future, and everybody seemed to love each other.

A contrary report popped up in The Hollywood Reporter a week or so later though, claiming several sources as saying Jenkins was "fired without warning". The area of contention, if you believe this particular line, is that "Marvel became concerned that Jenkins was not moving decisively enough and feared the film might miss its November 2013 release date". On the flip side of that, the counter-argument was that Jenkins had been up-front about what she wanted to do with Thor 2, which had got her the job, yet Marvel began to get cold feet.

We should note that neither Marvel nor Patty Jenkins has gone on the record with regards anything in that previous paragraph.

Who got the job, and how did it turn out? Game Of Thrones' Alan Taylor was fairly quickly instilled as the new director of Thor: The Dark World, although if you believe some of the stories doing the rounds during production, that wasn't the happiest of relationships either. Still, Thor: The Dark World would go on to significantly outgross the first Thor movie, would again earn good reviews, and would lead to Marvel pressing ahead with Thor 3. A film that Alan Taylor is not expected to direct.

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Arriving in cinemas at the end of this week is the controversial reboot/remake of RoboCop. It's a project that's had few friends over the course of its production, and the decision to target at PG-13/12A rating really hasn't helped.

The film's star, and the new RoboCop, has been chatting about the movie, and addressing the issue of the rating in a new interview with Collider. He admitted that "I had a couple of brief conversations with José [Padilha, director] about what he wanted to do with the film, I didn’t really know that The Dark Knight was a PG-13 as well... I didn’t know what you could get away with with PG-13".

He added that "after seeing what we got away with with PG-13, that battle became quite irrelevant. The original RoboCop was X-rated and then they had to cut it down so it became R-rated and [Paul] Verhoeven claimed that actually made the movie more violent, because it’s what you don’t see that actually scares you. The violence of the of the original RoboCop was so much aligned with Verhoeven’s cinematic tone and his comedic tone, and our film is carrying José’s tone. He’s a completely different filmmaker, so the violence that we have in our movie completely makes sense in terms of who José is".

RoboCop is out on Friday. Reviews are set to go live at the end of the day.

Collider

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Taking on the role of Alex Murphy in a RoboCop remake could be seen as something of a poisoned chalice. Following up Peter Weller's stunning performance as an ordinary cop turned mechanical future of law enforcement? And in one of the most brutal, incisive genre films of the 1980s to boot?

It's little surprise, then, to learn that Swedish-American actor Joel Kinnaman hesitated before taking the lead in director Jose Padilha's RoboCop remake - just like the rest of the planet, he had doubts as to whether a 21st century take on the original could possibly measure up. Yet as Mr Kinnaman explains himself in the interview below, the new RoboCop doesn't try to ape the classic original - instead, it uses the notion of a man fused with a machine as a jumping-off point for current themes about technology and warfare. And it was this ultimately tempted the actor to finally agree to serve the public trust, protect the innocent, and uphold the law...

I was just speaking to Mr Padilha [the director] next door, and within ten minutes our conversation ran the gamut from philosophy to politics to technology. Was he that dynamic to work with on set?

Yeah. From the start of this movie, we set out to do a big-scale action movie that is a popcorn movie, but also holds a lot of this subject matter, and brings up a lot of interesting philosophical ideas, and also has a lot of drama. So it’s a unique film in that regard.

There’s one particular scene I was struck by, which is the one between you and Gary Oldman where you wake up as RoboCop for the first time. That could have been a special effects moment, but it wasn’t - it was a performance-led moment, an emotional scene.

Yeah. It’s my favourite scene in the film, but also my most difficult scene in the film. It was particular difficult because, what the character’s going through, and what I have to portray, is the deepest existential anxiety and despair. And I couldn’t move. I’m in this docking station, so I had to be completely still, and that was difficult. It’s hard to be emotional and still, because usually you’re doing some kind of movement - you’re using your body.

I wasn’t allowed to use my body, so that was really difficult. When you’re bringing out these emotions, you’re drawing on these physical memories where you’ve had similar experiences, and you’re usually very connected to your body. You might be curled up in a foetus position or rocking back and forth, but here I didn’t have that option at all.

At the same time, you wouldn’t get the time to prepare in the same way. I had someone jerking my head - they put a copper wire behind my head, through the helmet, that they attached to the chair so I couldn’t move. Because as soon as I moved my head, they couldn’t use the shot. So it raised the difficulty level quite a bit. It required even more patience and mental preparation - I had to do it all in my imagination.

The big help in that scene, that made it possible, was having Gary Oldman, which is always an incredible experience. 

What did you think of the themes in the script? Because as you said, it is political and existential and so on.

I was fascinated by it. At first I was bit hesitant - well more than hesitant about the idea of a remake or RoboCop. Because there are a lot of films being remade because there’s a built-in fanbase, and they’re an easy way to make a couple of dollars. So actually, when I was first given the opportunity to pursue [RoboCop], I turned it down.

And then they told me that it was Jose that was going to direct it, and that changed my whole idea, because he’s such an impressive filmmaker to me. His films always carry such a strong social and political point of view. He’s just one of those filmmakers who always has a great idea behind his films. So I knew that if he was behind RoboCop, he would have a very strong idea.

When I met him, and he told me what he wanted to use the concept of RobCop for, and the story he wanted to tell through that concept, I thought it was brilliant. Particularly when we see what’s going on today, and where technology has led us, with all the possibilities that it gives us, but also the dangers that come with that.

I think that our societies - all the different countries and the UN - are going to have to make some difficult decisions about how we’re going to wage war, what’s going to be legal, and when it comes to our national securities, what’s going to be the consequences if we automate the illegal violence.

Verhoeven made the correlation between violence and fascism, and I think that’s very valid. And I think today, that is really relevant. That’s why it was such a great opportunity to do this film. 

I remember reading an interview with Peter Weller, and he said as soon as he met Paul Verhoeven, he knew he wasn’t going to be in an ephemeral film. It wouldn’t just disappear. Did you feel the same when you met Jose?

Yeah, for sure. The only concern I had after meeting Jose was, how the hell is he going to get a Hollywood studio to pay $120m plus to make a movie like this? Because it doesn’t usually happen. I can’t think of another movie that really carries these topics and questions. Not in these big films. 

How do you think he managed to get away with it?

Well, I know exactly why. They wanted Jose because they thought he was an incredible filmmaker. But when the movie starts to come together and there’s a lot of money involved, there’s a fear of alienating different parts of the audience groups. And that’s why so many of these big films can appear a bit bland, because they want them to be available to everyone.

They’re a compromise.

Yeah. But when they do these big movies, they do a test screening. And in the first test screening of RoboCop, it tested very high. Then they asked the people why they liked it, and the first answer was, “I liked it because it was political.” And the second answer was because, “It feels like it deals with current affairs.” And the third answer was, “Because it feels emotional.”

So all these things the studio might have wanted to tone down - maybe tone down a bit of the drama, tone down the political aspects of it, tone down the implications of current politics - that’s what the audience liked. So that’s why the movie that we’re seeing is the director’s cut. And that’s very rare.

To talk more broadly about acting in Hollywood for a moment - and I know you’re a US citizen as well as a Swedish citizen - but there seems to be more opportunities these days for actors outside Hollywood to get leading roles. Do you think that’s fair to say? I mean, we have a British Superman, a British Spider-Man, an Australian Thor.

Well, I think it’s a combination of foreign actors becoming better at American accents, and maybe Hollywood realising that id doesn’t matter where someone comes from. For me, I feel that if I didn’t know I could play an American character... because there aren’t many Swedish actors who could play lead roles in American films or TV series. The accent’s very tough to get to a level where it’s believable.

Many can make it believable that they’ve lived in the United States for a long time, but that they’ve grown up there? That’s the difficult thing. So I knew that if I went to the States and tried to make a career there, I wouldn’t have to be the German prison guard that has to say [adopts German accent] “Left!” you know? I could play a real role.

The American film market... it’s a place where you now get to work with actors from all over the world. If you look at RoboCop, it has a Brazilian director, a Brazilian photographer, a Brazilian composer, I’m Swedish and half American, Gary [Oldman]’s British, Abby [Cornish] is Australian. So it’s an international film. 

So that melting pot of a cast and crew, what was the atmosphere like during the production?

Jose creates a really fun environment. He creates a feeling that the story is what matters. You feel that there’s no room for ego. Part of creating that was, before shooting, we had a three week rehearsal process, where all the actors, every little part, was there. We’d rehearse and walk through the script. We’d rework the script. We’d tweak scenes and completely change the dialogue, and that creates a feeling of ensemble, and I hadn’t had that feeling since I was in the theatre.

I thought it was really impressive. And first of all, that helps the actors in smaller parts really come into a movie. That’s one of the most important things you can do. It’s easy to be a lead actor. That’s the easiest thing to do in a film. The hardest thing is to come in, with five or six days of shooting spread out over a schedule, and you have to find that character - you have to do all that work at home.

And it can easily be a case of doing your job and then get out of there. But with that kind of rehearsal process, it really feels like you’re part of an ensemble telling a story together. I think that his energy spread to the camera crews, too. He’s not going to do a shot because it’s cool. He’s going to do the best shot for the story.

We’d be sitting in the rehearsal, and you’d have Gary Oldman saying, “This whole monologue? It’s not helping the story. Let’s get rid of it.” Very rarely would you find an actor making his role smaller. But that’s part of the intelligence of an experienced, genius actor like Gary Oldman. He understands that it’s better not to say something that doesn’t help the story, and to give each other lines. “It’s better that you say this line.”

It was a good, creative process, where there was no room for ego.

Your next film is Child 44, isn’t it?

I’ve finished it!

Ah, it’s finished. What can you tell me about your role in that, because that’s another dark, potentially difficult film.

I play a semi-sociopath. It’s a story about living in Stalin’s Soviet Union. I play a member of Stalin’s secret police, called the MGB - his version of the Stazi. There’s also a serial killer...

Yes, Andrei Chikatilo.

The Butcher of Rostov. So that’s the motor of the story, but it’s very much about how that society shapes its people and relationships.

Joel Kinnaman, thank you very much.

RoboCop is out on the 7th February in the UK. You can read our review here.

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Heading into UK cinemas at the end of next month is Marvel Studios' latest movie, Captain America: The Winter Soldier. There have been suggestions before that this is a pivotal film in terms of helping to set up Joss Whedon's upcoming Avengers: Age Of Ultron. And as part of a conference call with investors, Disney's CEO Bob Iger has cemented that.

"I’ve really been impressed with the early buzz that we’re seeing for the Marvel films", Iger told some rich people on the phone. "Captain America 2 is just huge and it takes the Captain America story to incredible new levels". He added that the film "will set critical events in motion" that lead to the Avengers sequel, and would also have some impact on Agents Of SHIELD.

The studio clearly has confidence in the new Captain America movie, given that it's already re-engaged directors Joe and Anthony Russo to develop the third film. It arrives in the UK on March 26th, and in the US on April 4th.

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Disney has traditionally been reluctant to make 'proper' sequels (as opposed to straight to video/DVD cash-ins) to its main line of animated features, and it hasn't done so since the release of The Rescuers Down Under over 20 years ago. But there are suggestions that things are beginning to change there.

Rumours continue to swirl that we're going to get a sequel to Wreck-It Ralph, which director Rich Moore never hid he was open to the idea of, although nothing concrete has been heard since. And now Disney's CEO, Bob Iger, has been hinting that Frozen 2 is a possibility.

In a conference call with investors, Iger said of Frozen that "this has real franchise potential". There's already been talking of a Broadway show, and Frozen toys and merchandise is in short supply due to the sizeable demand for it.

Iger didn't overtly say that a film sequel was on the cards, but his words are being taken as a hint that it's a possibility. We'd imagine it won't be the last time we see the film's key characters in Disney screen production, certainly.

More on further Frozen as we hear it...

Source.

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Inevitably, this is one of those stories where pinches of salt will come in very useful. We're deep into rumour territory here.

The hints in question this time though have come in part from the Instagram account of Dwayne Johnson, The Rock himself. The latest round of speculation started with a hashtag that the man posted, which read #JohnStewartCanStillWhupSupermansAss. When you add that to the fact that the man himself confirmed that he had a big meeting with DC, it seemed to point towards him playing Green Lantern, possibly in Zack Snyder's Batman Vs Superman movie (and beyond).

IGN subsequently copied him in on a Tweet questioning whether he had revealed that he’s playing John Stewart/The Green Lantern to which he replied "All I said was #LanternCanWhupSuperman". Which of course does little to dispel the speculation.

It wouldn’t be a huge surprise to see Warner Bros go in a different direction following the performance, or lack thereof, of the previous Green Lantern cinematic outing. We'd wager hard cash and coffee that Ryan Reynolds won't be back for a start. But there are lots of questions here. Is Johnson really going to take on the role of Green Lantern? And if so, will it be in the Man Of Steel sequel, a standalone film, or maybe the Justice League feature?

We have answers to none of these questions at the moment. And if Dwayne Johnson does, he's not telling...

Twitter.

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For some reason, the number three was a common factor in several blockbuster movies of 2007. The third film in the Pirates Of The Caribbean series (At World's End) dominated the box office, Spider-Man 3 marked Sam Raimi's last entry as director in the series, while Mike Myers went for a hat trick of hits with Shrek The Third.

I Am Legend was the third and most financially successful attempt to bring Richard Matheson's classic novel to the big screen, Rush Hour 3 marked Jackie Chan's last action pairing with Chris Tucker, while Zack Snyder's musky sword-swinger 300 was notable for having the number three in the title.

Iffy attempts at numerology aside, 2007 was also a superb for year for movies in general - particularly underappreciated ones, which is where we come in. As ever, the process of narrowing down the selection to just 25 has resulted in some heated debate, and it's with heavy heart that, for reasons of relative box office success, we decided to leave out things like Zodiac (arguably one of the finest films of that year), Gone Baby Gone, Dan In Real Life and The Kite Runner.

Instead, we've tried to home in on some other films that you may have missed, or, if you haven't seen them for the best part of six years, you may feel like tracking down and watching again. So with a bit of help from the great John C Reilly, let the list commence...

25. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

At the time, Walk Hard was the Judd Apatow-produced comedy that failed to ignite, when pretty much everything else he was involved with was hitting big. Fortunately though, this witty, funny send-up of the biopic genre has gradually spread through word of mouth since.

John C Reilly takes the lead role, loosely based on Johnny Cash, and as his life story is played out, a mix of famous musicians - well, takes on famous musicians mainly - weave in and out of his life. Walk Hard continues to leave some people cold, yet it's the kind of film that if you lock into its humour, you're going to be rewatching lots and lots of times. It deserves a far better fate than being the forgotten Judd Apatow movie, certainly...

24. Sex And Death 101

Daniel Waters' screenwriting career has taken in the likes of Heathers and Batman Returns, but he's also directed two movies. 2001's Happy Campers was the first, but it's Sex And Death 101 that's particularly worth seeking out. Starring Winona Ryder and Patton Oswalt, the setup sees a man receiving an e-mail that lists all the people he's ever had sex with in his life, and also those who he is set to engage in some clothless cuddling in the future. There's a further twist in the tale when Winona Ryder's character turns up with motives of her own.

Sex And Death 101 may not get to the levels of wonderful darkness that Heathers set, but it's a low-profile, surprising film, with some excellent performances. It's certainly a shame that Waters hasn't directed a motion picture since.

23. The Nines

From the early career of Ryan Reynolds comes The Nines, which sees him featuring alongside Melissa McCarthy and Hope Davis. Each of them take three roles, in a film where three different stories intertwine. We've seen that approach before, but here, they intertwine in interesting ways, with dashes of sci-fi and fantasy liberally thrown into the proverbial mix.

John August directed this one, his sole directorial feature effort to date. He has, however, penned screenplays for the likes of Titan A.E., Big Fish and Frankenweenie, and it's perhaps unsurprising that his storytelling here is so interesting. The film made less than $100,000 at the US box office though, meaning The Nines has tended to be a chance discovery rather than anything more revered. It's certainly worth scouring the bargain bins for.

22. Mr Brooks

Ah, it's the Costner slot. Our love of Kevin Costner movies is a barely-kept secret, although we'd hardly bang a drum and suggest Mr Brooks is one of his best. It is, however, one of his most interesting, and it's also an excellent central role that he's cast in. For Mr Brooks is family man on the one hand, and a serial killer on the other. And this was made at a time when Showtime's Dexter TV series hadn't yet taken hold.

The support doesn't help Costner enormously here - Dane Cook and Demi Moore help flesh out the cast - but the unpredictable nature of the story, and Costner's unnerving central performance are well worth spending a couple of hours in the company on.

21. Trick 'r Treat

Had this horror anthology been given a proper theatrical release, we'd wager that it would have grown into a sleeper hit. Shown in only a few cinemas, it had to make do with a slowly-building fan following instead. Telling four interlocking stories all taking place on Halloween night, Trick 'r Treat takes in werewolves, vampires, a fatal bus crash in a small town, and a creepy kid with a sack over his head menacing Brian Cox's ornery old party pooper.

Inevitably, some sections are better than others - the Anna Paquin-starring Surprise Party is the best story, for our money - but it all adds up to a hugely entertaining whole, and it's a more satisfying anthology outing than more recent attempts like V/H/S or The ABCs Of Death. Running at a brisk 90 minutes, Trick 'r Treat is well worth hunting down for an evening of knowingly comic thrills and chills.

Here's hoping that director Michael Dougherty's planned Trick 'r Treat 2 recaptures the same sense of macabre fun.

20. Shoot 'Em Up

Like an over-excited puppy, Shoot 'Em Up has more energy than sense, but it's a thrilling ride precisely because of its relentless pace and barking-mad humour. Clive Owen plays the handsome action man who becomes the unwitting protector of a newborn baby, making this the movie equivalent of Yoshi's Island on the Super Nintendo - with Monica Belucci in tow, Owen tries to keep one step ahead of Paul Giamatti's ruthless assassin, Karl Hertz, who for some reason wants the infant dead.

The explanation for Giamatti's attempted infanticide is too ridiculous to contemplate for long, but director Michael Davis doesn't allow us to. Channelling the action of John Woo while adding his own curious comic touches - there's a running gag involving carrots, which may or may not be a homage to Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd - Shoot 'Em Up adds up to a high-calorie, low-fibre head rush of action. Audiences didn't turn up to see it in the numbers the film deserved; as a minor cult classic, it more than deserves a watch.

19. The Counterfeiters

The deal with the Best Foreign Language film Oscar is that, once won, the majority of the films go away again, rarely to be mentioned in polite society. That seems an unfair fate for the excellent The Counterfeiters, an Austrian movie that tells the story of the counterfeiting operation set up by the Nazis in the 1930s.

It proves to be a slice of history well explored, made better by being willing to go a little deeper, and ask serious questions of its characters. Director Stefan Ruzowitzky keeps his focus throughout (he was also responsible for the haunting Anatomy, and its sequel), and if you're looking for a film to pair with Downfall in a double bill. this one's a strong choice.

18. Persepolis

A film whose name is popping up on more than one occasion on Den Of Geek of late, Persepolis is proof that animation can be used to broach any topic with exceptional skill. An adaptation of Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical comic strip, the film takes a look at life in revolutionary Iran, framed through the eyes of a young girl coming of age.

It's a heartfelt, powerful piece of cinema too, wonderfully realised and capturing the look of the comic book that it's based on. The Iranian government really wasn't that keen on it, and Persepolis has caused no little controversy. Yet it's a powerful piece of cinema, made all the better by being so accessible.

17. Waitress

There's a sadness not far away from any viewing of the rich indie comedy-drama waitress. And that's because the film was the work of Adrienne Shelly, who wrote, directed and took a supporting role. She was murdered not long after it completion.

It's a strong film she left behind. Keri Russell stars as the waitress of the film's title, married to an unpleasant man, played by Jeremy Sisto. She sees, of all things, a pie contest as her ticket to a better life. There's the small matter of her pregnancy too. The film also earns several extra bonus points for including Nathan Fillion in its cast.

It's a really strong movie this, bursting with talent, life and authenticity. Shelly's loss is still very much felt.

16. Eagle Vs Shark

A pair of fancy dress costumes provide the title's inspiration for this off-beat comedy, which stars Flight of the Conchords' Jemaine Clement and Lily Horsley as a pair of awkward would-be lovers in small-town New Zealand. Although very much a romantic comedy, there's a spikiness to writer and director Taika Waititi's film that steers it well clear of sickly sweetness, and its often quite dark humour makes it all the more unusual. Clement's character, for example, isn't necessarily a likeable one - something that won't endear Eagle Vs Shark to every viewer, but ultimately makes for a far more interesting, quirky film. And if the title sounds like a classic kung-fu film from the 1970s, rest assured that the concluding combat sequence is well worth sticking around for.

15. The Lookout

So far as we can work out, The Lookout was a thriller that got extremely good reviews but little to no distribution, at least in UK cinemas. We stumbled on the film on Netflix quite by accident, and discovered that The Lookout is truly deserving of the description 'hidden gem'. Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as Chris, a young man left with brain damage and short-term memory loss after a near-fatal car accident. Having been lumbered with a somewhat thankless job as a cleaner in a bank, he hopes to one day get a job as a clerk in the same building.

In a bar one evening, Chris is approached by a sly-looking chap (Matthew Goode) who begins to manipulate him into helping out with a robbery at the bank, and thus a low-key yet engrossing thriller kicks into gear. Screenwriter and director Scott Frank previously wrote such films as Get Shorty and Out Of Sight, among other things, so it's little surprise that those genre elements are all so effectively in place.

Where The Lookout really succeeds, though, is as a study of its central character. Gordon-Levitt is entirely convincing as a young man ridden with guilt over the car accident he caused, and struggling to overcome the mental scars that come with it, making for a truly sympathetic protagonist who's easy to root for. Jeff Daniels is equally good as his blind, dishevelled and loveably self-confident roommate, and he's another perfect reason to dig out this mystifyingly overlooked movie.

14. 2 Days In Paris

You think of Julie Delpy walking through a European city having conversations, and inevitably your mind turns to the outstanding Before... trilogy of films that she's made with Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke. But she turned her hand to directing too, and 2 Days In Paris - subsequently followed by 2 Days In New York - is a very good film in its own right.

Delpy wrote, directed, edited, did the music and stars in the film, which sees her in a relationship with Adam Goldberg's Jack. Jack isn't the most active and positive of men though, and the film develops as Delpy's character meets old flames, much to Jack's chagrin.

Delpy goes for humour and wit over darkness though, and her film is really something of a delight. It's an intelligent, smaller movie this, below the level of the Before... films perhaps, but with an identity of its own. The sequel's really good too.

13. Into The Wild

Sean Penn is a really good film director. Our favourite of the movies he's helmed remains The Pledge, but Into The Wild is hopefully the kind of film you read lists like these to find out about. It stars Emile Hirsch in an adaptation of Jon Krakauer's book, telling the story story of Christopher McCandless. McCandless, played by Hirsch, graduated from university, gave away the contents of his hardly-empty savings account to charity, and hitchhiked his way to Alaska.

His journey brings him into contact with some life-changing characters, and Penn's movie quite brilliantly puts all this across. In different hands, this would be a non-too-subtle lecture on materialism. But that's not how it works. It makes its point, delivers handsomely as a film, and hopefully will encourage a few people to seek out some of Penn's other directorial work.

12. In The Valley Of Elah

Tommy Lee Jones consistently comes across as the last person you'd want to invite around for dinner - well, you'd at least want to skip to the drinks at the very least - but as an actor and chooser of material, he's one of his generation's very best. Take In The Valley Of Elah as a case in point: starring alongside Charlize Theron, he plays a retired military investigator trying to get to the bottom of the disappearance of his son.

Paul Haggis - in his first film since he won Oscar gold directing Crash - puts together arguably his best film here, an intelligent, thoughtful piece of cinema. A haunting performance from its leading man - Oscar nominated for his work, in a rare piece of recognition for the film - is its absolute highlight.

11. Sunshine

Danny Boyle's not the first director to make a film about throwing bombs at the sun (see also 1990's Solar Crisis, if you dare), but it's undoubtedly the best. Cillian Murphy leads an eclectic cast, including Chris Evans, Rose Byrne and Michelle Yeoh, on a last-ditch mission to save the Earth from a fatally cold winter. The hope is that, by flinging a colossal incendiary device into it, the resulting explosion will jolt the sun back into life.

Boyle's approach to the material recalls the atmosphere and slow build-up of genre touchstones like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Solaris, and Murphy's restrained, cerebral performance adds to the scientific tone. If we're being honest, we far prefer the more dramatic half of Sunshine to the second, where it takes an abrupt detour into Event Horizon-like outer space horror. Having said this, Boyle gets far more right than he gets wrong, and the film deserved to do better at the box office than it did.

After Sunshine's complex shoot, Boyle vowed never to approach a science fiction film like it again. We're hoping that he'll eventually find another genre script that coaxes him back.

10. The Mist

From a simple premise - shoppers in a supermarket are trapped by an evil-looking mist - Frank Darabont fashions a superb horror film with a razor-sharp edge. Thomas Jane plays a tough-looking poster designer (allowing Darabont to sneak in some gorgeous art by Drew Struzan) who's among the trapped shoppers, while Toby Jones, William Sadler and Marcia Gay Harden round out the eclectic supporting cast.

They're joined by some fabulously-designed monsters, which owe as much to HP Lovecraft as Stephen King (on whose short story The Mist is based), and some of them are genuinely vicious and menacing. Not more vicious, it has to be said, than Darabont, who diverges from the source story to craft a truly show-stopping conclusion. In his hands, The Mist becomes as much a story about survival in the wake of unfathomable disaster as a monster-filled B-picture.

9. The Diving Bell And The Butterfly

This adaptation of a memoir by Jean-Domique Bauby received a brief flare of awards recognition in 2007, but The Diving Bell And The Butterfly wasn't what you'd call a box-office hit. But while its subject matter - about a writer left a prisoner in his own body after a near-fatal stroke - makes it a difficult film to watch, Diving Bell rewards at every turn with its beautiful performances, unsentimental writing and inventive filmmaking.

Together with Steven Spielberg's regular cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, director Julian Schnabel sweeps us up in Bauby's interior world, from his private frustrations to his dreamy flights of fancy, and as the central character, Mathieu Amalric is captivating throughout. With support from Max von Sydow, Emmanuelle Seigner and Anne Consigny, The Diving Bell And The Butterfly takes Bauby's unique and heartrending personal story and turns it into a broader meditation on isolation and mortality.

8. Son Of Rambow

There's something truthful as well as nostalgic about this coming-of-age drama set in the 1980s, but then, that might be because it reflects our own childhood fascination with action movies and recreating scenes from them. Bill Milner and Will Poulter play two British schoolboys who bond over their mutual love of the 1983 action film, First Blood. Obsessed with its heroism and action, the boys set about making their own low-budget sequel, and before long the entire school's playing their own parts in the pair's ramshackle Son Of Rambow.

Writer and director Garth Jennings (previously of Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy movie fame) brings a real lightness of touch to the story without drifting into mawkishness, and he perfectly captures the illicit excitement of watching a film you're much too young to see - a childhood rite of passage as special as hot summer holidays, collecting Panini stickers and eating crisps at dodgy school discos. A wonderful, heart warming film.

7. Stardust

Before Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn brought Kick-Ass to the screen, they collaborated on this flawed yet brilliant adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Stardust. Capturing the feel of the adventure movies of the 80s, and luring in Robert De Niro for a WTF cameo, Stardust is erratic, very British, funny and really well realised. 

With brilliant production values, a pure commitment to entertain and an underrated score, Stardust really is a treat. What's more, it's a treat with very broad appeal, that different ages can get lots of things out of, without isolating anyone along the way. Remember when there used to be lots of live action films like that?

6. Control

In his feature film debut, Anton Corbijn brings his photographer's eye for light and shade to this detailed and desperately sad drama about the life and death of Joy Division musician Ian Curtis. Sam Riley is uncanny as Curtis, an artist stuck between his love for music and the terrible toll each live performance takes on his psyche.

Shot in black-and-white, Control even looks like a Joy Division music video (Corbijn shot the video for the song Atmosphere in 1988), further adding to its grimy, late-70s atmosphere. Control's writers are careful to bring some great moments of humour to this difficult story, but the overwhelming feeling as the final credits roll is of a unique talent who passed far too soon. Impeccably acted and directed, this is surely one of the best musical biopics of recent years.

5. Timecrimes

The first half an hour or so of Nacho Vigalondo's one-of-a-kind Spanish science fiction film is, for this writer at least, utterly terrifying in its unpredictability and sheer febrile weirdness. The second half can't quite match the allure of the first, but it's an incredibly clever film, and a triumph of low-budget filmmaking.

Karra Elajalde plays Hector, the somewhat unseemly middle-aged man at the centre of the film, whose idle act of voyeurism leads him into a time loop from which he's unable to escape. Stalked through the Spanish countryside surrounding his house by a bandaged, eerily silent killer, he attempts to use a time machine to alter the events of the past, only to be drawn further into a whirlpool of paradoxes and complexly-linked events.

Imagine the knottier time continuum aspects of Primer, but fused with the bewildering, paranoid pace of a horror thriller, and you'll have some idea of Timecrimes' unsettling impact. We did a full look back at the film here.

4. Eastern Promises

Devotees of director David Cronenberg's 70s and 80s body horror output would probably have laughed at the notion of Canada's king of venereal nightmares turning his hand to the gangster genre. But just over 20 years after he made The Fly, along came Eastern Promises, a crime thriller that somehow seems grand and operatic even though it takes place in a small part of dreary London.

Two years after appearing in the brilliant A History Of Violence, Viggo Mortensen pairs with Cronenberg again to play Nikolai, an enigmatic and hangdog driver for Russian Mafia boss Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl). Naomi Watts plays the British midwife (herself of Russian descent) who provides a means of entry into the vory v zakone's incredibly grim underworld of sex trafficking and violence, while Vincent Cassel represents its dark, dangerously unstable heart.

As harsh and confrontational as you'd expect from a Cronenberg film, Eastern Promises is acted with real care and an almost forensic fascination for its subject - Mortensen's Oscar nomination for Best Actor was richly deserved, even if he did deserve similar recognition for his work in A History Of Violence. Above all, Cronenberg's control of pace and tone turns Eastern Promises from just another thriller into a truly unforgettable creation. That he couldn't get the funding together for a sequel is a travesty.

3. The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford

The meditative pace of Andrew Dominik's western drama makes it feel like something from the New Hollywood era, and that's meant as a huge compliment. In a nutshell, Assassination is about the relationship between the legendary outlaw Jesse James (Brad Pitt) and Robert Ford (Casey Affleck), his friend and fellow criminal who would eventually turn against him. Roger Deakins invests every frame with loneliness and beauty, and one robbery scene, which takes place on a train at night, looks extraordinary.

Dominik resisted the studio's intention to craft the film into something faster moving, and wisely so: what could have been a forgettable horse opera instead becomes a story about how once ordinary people acquire mythical status. James himself seems to be strangely aware of his place in history, and his subtle attempts to manipulate Ford into sealing his future legacy makes for one of the most unusual screen relationships of the 2000s. This is a sublime, must-see film.

2. Breach

Chris Cooper has put in some memorable screen performances across his career, but there's a strong case for his lead turn in Billy Ray's Breach being his best. Based on a true story, he plays Robert Hanssen here, an agent suspected of being a Russian mole.

Ray, who previously helmed the also-strong Shattered Glass, gets a strong performance too from Ryan Phillippe as Eric O'Neil, the young FBI agent who works for Hanssen (who may or may not have motives of his own). The taut exchanges between the pair offer an accurate flavour of the tense, claustrophobic spy thriller that Ray shapes out of the material.

There's a uniformly excellent support cast here, featuring the likes of Laura Linney, Gary Cole, Kathleen Quinlan and Dennis Haysbert. But it's Cooper who's the absolute standout, delivering a nuanced, uneasy, magnetic performance, that lifts Breach from being a very good movie to something really rather special.

Since Breach, director Billy Ray has worked on several screenplays, to the likes of The Hunger Games, State Of Play and Captain Phillips. But we're keen to see him direct again. Not only does he focus on interesting stories, but he draws super performances from his cast, and in the form of Breach, makes criminally underrated pieces of cinema.

1. Elite Squad

Brazilian director Jose Padilha's Elite Squad is like Judge Dredd without the sci-fi overtones. It presents late-90s Rio De Janeiro as a crime-ridden dystopia where the cops are so corrupt as to be indistinguishable from the criminals, where slums are cleared out to make the place more comfortable for a visiting pope John Paul II, and where an elite form of militarised Special Operations police (the BOPE, or Elite Squad of the title) act as state-sponsored judges and executioners.

Although a hit in Brazil, Elite Squad was heavily criticised by some reviewers for its violence and perceived fascism, yet we'd argue that Padilha doesn't glorify what goes on in the film - rather, it presents the full horror and despair of the book Elita de Tropa (a fictionalised account of real events, written by a sociologist and two former BOPA members) and wonders aloud how the city can ever extricate itself from its cycle of death and corruption.

The cast, headed up by Wagner Moura as the merciless Captain Nascimento, is uniformly superb, while Padilha becomes a palpable presence in the film, bringing the verite-like immediacy of his first feature, the documenrary Bus 174, to this blistering drama thriller.

Angry, aggressive and intelligently made, Elite Squad is, for us, among the very best films of 2007. Incredibly, the sequel Elite Squad: The Enemy Within (2010) is even better.

See also:

The top 25 underappreciated films of 2000

The top 25 underappreciated films of 2001

The top 30 underappreciated films of 2002

The top 25 underappreciated films of 2003

The top 25 underappreciated films of 2004

The top 25 underappreciated films of 2005

The top 25 underappreciated films of 2006

The 250 underappreciated films of the 1990s

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Gary Oldman: quite possibly the finest actor of his generation. A charismatic force of nature, capable of blazing through the screen as a central villain (like killer cop Norman Stansfield in Leon), or even in relatively small roles, like the bizarre Drexl Spivey in True Romance. Then there are the stunning character portrayals, like Sid Vicious in Sid & Nancy, or Beethoven in Immortal Beloved, or the troubled Jackie Flannery in the little-seen but wonderful State Of Grace.

Typecast for a time, at least in Hollywood, as the go-to villain type - see Air Force One,The Fifth Element or Lost In Space to name three - Oldman has since, as he puts it, "turned the ship around", and has more recently starred as Sirius Black in Harry Potter, Jim Gordon in the Dark Knight trilogy, and British spy George Smiley in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

Most recently, he's appeared in RoboCop, playing the conflicted science genius Dennett Norton in Jose Padilha's remake. The sci-fi scientist is the kind of genre staple we've all seen a legion times, and Oldman could easily have sleepwalked through it, cashed the paycheque and moved on. But as ever, he didn't; as he did with Jim Gordon, or Sirius Black, or even Rolfe in the critically-panned Tiptoes, Oldman brings something special to the character - there's the sense that some sort of emotional war is being played out behind his eyes.

Given just how intense Gary Oldman is capable of being on screen, we were nervously wondering what he'd be like in person. Yet the Oldman we sat down with in a London hotel one rainy afternoon couldn't be different from most of the characters he's played; if he's like anyone, he's like Jim Gordon on a day off. He sits well down on a comfy sofa, relaxed, and speaking in a gentle, quiet voice that phases melodically from a London accent (he was born in New Cross) to American (he now lives in California) with an occasional hint of Royal Shakespeare Company-trained luviness sprinkled on top.

Taking time to answer each question, and pausing as if to make sure he has every statement exactly right, he's the very definition of reserve. And while we dearly wish we had more time to talk about some of his other stunning performances and career moments (say, an entire afternoon rather than a dozen minutes), what he has to say about the new RoboCop, Paul Verhoeven's classic original, politics, and refusing to play the villain in Batman Begins makes for some fascinating reading.

Were you familiar with the original RoboCop movie before you signed on for this one?

You know, it's always interesting when you've got someone like Paul Verhoeven, who's a maverick kind of outsider, who comes in and tinkers with Hollywood or pop culture. That's what fascinates me with this remake - you've got someone [like Jose Padilha] who first and foremost is a physicist, a brilliant guy, a documentarian, a Brazilian, doing RoboCop.

And I always think it's fascination when you have people like this doing genre films. You've got Alfonso Cuaron doing Harry Potter, Tomas Alfredson doing Tinker Tailor - they give it their own... spice. It has an edge to it.

Do you feel the themes in the script chime with your own world view? Because it has quite a dystopian view of the present in the way it relates to current events.

Yeah. It's as if we've... with the original, it was a kind of fantasy about a future, that as you watch it as a viewer, it's sci-fi. This one, I think you watch it and it's science fact - you watch it and it looks recognisable. I think the debate of security and safety versus liberty, and how, in the name of security, liberty has been encroached upon... drones is a big argument at the moment, and how they're saying troops on the ground will be robotic troops at some point.

Freedom of choice. The cynicism of the media. He's sort of touched on all of this. And in many ways, there's also the question of the soul versus machine - is it morally and ethically right? Just because you can do it, should you do it? All those questions are important. It's a political film wrapped up in a [sci-fi story].

I mean, if this was a political movie, but Paul Greengrass was doing it, it would hold up, wouldn't it? So it's got a lot going for it.

Do you think it holds up against the first one?

I think it dares to be its own thing. It does similar things to the original, because that looked at how the media represented real-world events, and the role of the police, corporations - as a corporate satire, it was really brilliant. The remake explores those themes in a different, modern way.

Yeah. I like the touch of the inside marketing. "Let's make him look like a Transformer - the kids want him to look like a Transformer. What do you think? Shall we go for the silver suit or the black suit?" Even the candidates!

It's a PR campaign, essentially, isn't it? He's a puppet.

Yeah, yeah. That idea of, "No, I'm going to give them a man inside a machine. That's what the public wants." And the more you find out, the more... I live in America at the moment, in California. But you look at American politics at the moment, and it's one mess after another, one scandal after another. I mean, it's falling around him. The empire is crumbling.

You mean it's crumbling around Barack Obama?

Right, yeah. And you've got footage of him speaking in 2008 and 2009 talking about Bush, and how against the Executive Order he is, and how everything was going to be transparent, and now he's doing the same thing but on steroids. It's Bush on steroids.

I saw the movie - I've only seen this version of RoboCop once - but I thought, "My God, this is the world we're living in." I could turn on the regular TV and see this. 

On the news just now, I saw Britain's top-secret drone aircraft being unveiled on the BBC.

Really?

Yes. Quite a coincidence, given the premise of the film.

Yeah. And we're going to have drones delivering things. [Laughs]

So when it comes to the roles you've taken - and I mean all of them - you always bring something else. In RoboCop, he isn't just a stock sci-fi scientist, though he could easily have been.

Jim Gordon could have been a stoic cop, but he was so much more. So what's your process for bringing the nuances to those characters?  

Well, it was almost there on the page. And then we were very fortunate to have rehearsals, and we sat around with the script and the other actors and Jose, and we weeded out all those things that are what I call "Stupid people doing stupid things." Because it's a certain type of genre, filmmakers think they have the license to just insult you, you know? And you sit there watching these movies and rolling your eyes, thinking, "Oh come on, how could that happen", or, "That's ridiculous."

And I think what Jose wanted to do was weed out all those moments and make it as smart as it could possibly be. Then we talked about who Norton [Oldman's character] was, and how he underestimates Sellars [Michael Keaton's OmniCorp CEO]. He's in a situation where he's working for a company that he knows has a military aspect to it. He's in the research department, he's the head of the research department, which is very much experimentation. And he tries something and it doesn't work, so he goes back to the drawing board, and he doesn't have a clock.

Then he's reluctantly taken into this project with the promise of unlimited funding. And he's flattered - that's one of his weaknesses, his vanity. So he goes on board, and he's in this hideous cut-throat corporate world, where it's all about release dates and deadlines. And he's up against the wall. He's challenged, ethically.

My thing is, what's he going to do? He forms a relationship with this man [Alex Murphy], who trusts him. Is he going to walk away and let someone else come in who doesn't have that relationship and doesn't really care? Or does he stay and give him a little tweak?

I'm not sure whether in the script the end's the same, but we wanted Norton to ultimately take responsibility, and that redeems him. And in a world where nobody wants to take responsibility for anything, that makes him unique in my book. 

In Hollywood, things seem to have changed a great deal over the last 10 years. In the 80s and 90s perhaps, British actors or European actors tended to be cast as villains, certainly in mainstream films. Whereas now you can have a British Batman, a British Superman, a British Spider-Man. What's changed?

Well I think what happens is a trend. And someone starts the trend, and it's so blinkered that they go, "Oh yeah, now it's this," and off they go.

I got typecast as a villain, the bad guy, and I wanted to turn that around. Slowly, slowly, I turned that ship around, but you're at the mercy of the imagination of who's casting you. And Chris Nolan came to me with a villain, and I said, "I don't want to play the villain." I think it was [suggests scary mask over face, with hands].

The Scarecrow?

Yeah, maybe. I said I wasn't interested. I said, "What about Commissioner Gordon?" And to his credit, he thought about it, came back and said yes. Now, Chris auditioned people for Batman, and there are qualities you have to have, and you have to have a good jaw. You've got to look good in that suit as well. So he cast, he auditioned, liked Christian [Bale], called him back, did another test to be sure, and cast him as Batman. And that caused a whole trend, like dominoes. I think it takes one person with imagination like Nolan.

Gary Oldman, thank you very much.

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We're playing good cop, bad cop with this story. Good cop: plans are afoot for three new The Transporter movies! Bad cop: none of them will have The Statham in them.

Instead, the idea is to do the origin story of his character, Frank Martin, and recast the role.

It is our job to remain professional, and not to let our feelings show through when we're reporting stories such as this, and rest assured we're fully going to be behave ourselves.

The Transporter 4, which will be made without The Statham for fuc...oops nearly, will be a Chinese co-production, and if it does well - in spite of not having The Statham in it - the two further sequels will be activated.

Jason Statham will not be appearing in these films.

There's no release date that we know of for the Statham-less Transporter 4 WHATKINDOFBLOODYIDIOTMAKESATRANSPORTERFILMWITHOUTSTATHAMSORRY but when we have one, we'll think about passing the news on.

The first three Transporter movies, all of which star Jason Statham, are available in a very attractive boxset.

THR.

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