Universal 2007 Summer Preview

If you haven’t checked out the Exclusive RopeofSilicon 45 Movie Summer Preview for 2007 you really should, but in case you are more of a studio specific kind of person here I have for you the preview for Universal Pictures’ summer slate. To check out the image galleries which include new images for several of the films below just click on the preview picture.

GEORGIA RULE
May 11, 2007
Three generations of top actresses unite in a film from director Garry Marshall (Beaches, Pretty Woman, Runaway Bride) about the power of redemption, freedom in forgiveness and unbreakable bonds of motherhood–Georgia Rule.

Rebellious teenager Rachel (Lohan) screams, swears, drinks and is–in a word–uncontrollable. With her latest car crash, Rachel has broken the final rule in mom Lily’s (Golden Globe winner Huffman) San Francisco home. With nowhere else to take the impulsive and rambunctious girl, Lily hauls her daughter to the one place she swore she’d never return…her own mother’s Idaho farm.

Matriarch Georgia (two-time Oscar® winner Fonda) is not your typical sweet and doting grandmother. She lives her life by a number of unbreakable rules, demanding anyone who shares her home do the same–God comes first and hard work comes a very close second. Now saddled with raising the young woman, it will require each patient breath she takes to understand Rachel’s fury.

But as Rachel succumbs to her summer of misery and shakes up the tiny Mormon town, Georgia notices something is changing within her granddaughter. Given structure and responsibilities, Rachel is letting her guard down and learning compassion…especially for her mother. Her journey will lead all three women to revelations of buried family secrets and an understanding that–regardless what happens–the ties that bind can never be broken.

KNOCKED UP
June 1, 2007
On the heels of 2005’s blockbuster The 40-Year-Old Virgin, writer/director Judd Apatow again mines hilarity from the relatably human in a comedy about a one-night stand with unexpected consequences: Knocked Up. Katherine Heigl (Grey’s Anatomy, Roswell) joins Virgin alums Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann for a comic look about the best thing that will ever ruin your best-laid plans: parenthood.

Allison Scott (Heigl) is an up-and-coming entertainment journalist whose 24-year-old life is on the fast track. But it gets seriously derailed when a drunken one-nighter with slacker Ben Stone (Rogen) results in an unwanted pregnancy. Faced with the prospect of going it alone or getting to know the baby’s father, Allison decides to give the lovable doof a chance.

An overgrown kid who has no desire to settle down, Ben learns that he has a big decision to make with his kid’s mom-to-be: will he hit the road or stay in the picture? Courting a woman you’ve just Knocked Up, however, proves to be a little difficult when the two try their hands at dating. As they discover more about one another, it becomes painfully obvious that they’re not the soul mates they’d hoped they might be.

With Allison’s harried sister Debbie (Mann) and hen-pecked brother-in-law Pete (Rudd) the only parenting role models the young lovers have, things get even more confusing. Should they raise the baby together? What makes a happy lifetime partnership after all? A couple of drinks and one wild night later, they’ve got nine confusing months to figure it out…

I NOW PRONOUNCE YOU CHUCK AND LARRY
July 20, 2007
Adam Sandler (Click) and Kevin James (Hitch) team as two straight guys who stumble down the aisle with the best of intentions in I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. Chuck Levine (Sandler) and Larry Valentine (James) are the pride of their fire station: two guy’s guys always side-by-side and willing to do anything for each other. Salt-of-the-earth widower Larry wants just one thing: to protect his family. His buddy Chuck also wants one thing: to enjoy the single life.

Grateful Chuck owes Larry for saving his life in a fire, and Larry calls in that favor big time when civic red tape prevents him from naming his own two kids as his life insurance beneficiaries. All that Chuck has to do is claim to be Larry’s domestic partner on some city forms. Easy. Nobody will ever know.

But when an overzealous, spot-checking bureaucrat becomes suspicious, the new couple’s arrangement becomes a citywide issue and goes from confidential to front-page news. Forced to improvise as love-struck newlyweds, Chuck and Larry must now fumble through a hilarious charade of domestic bliss under one roof. After surviving their mandatory honeymoon and dodging the threat of exposure, the well-intentioned con men discover that sticking together in your time of need is what truly makes a family.

THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM
August 3, 2007
Matt Damon returns as the trained assassin Jason Bourne for the latest showdown in The Bourne Ultimatum. In the follow-up to 2002’s The Bourne Identity and 2004’s The Bourne Supremacy–the smash hits that have earned over $500 million at the global box office–acclaimed director Paul Greengrass (United 93, The Bourne Supremacy) joins returning cast members Julia Stiles and Joan Allen and new additions David Strathairn, Paddy Considine and Edgar Ramirez.

All he wanted was to disappear. Instead, Jason Bourne is now hunted by the people who made him what he is. Having lost his memory and the one person he loved, he is undeterred by the barrage of bullets and a new generation of highly-trained killers. Bourne has only one objective: to go back to the beginning and find out who he was.

Now, in the new chapter of this espionage series, Bourne will hunt down his past in order to find a future. He must travel from Moscow, Paris, Madrid and London to Tangier and New York City as he continues his quest to find the real Jason Bourne–all the while trying to outmaneuver the scores of cops, federal officers and Interpol agents with him in their crosshairs.

The Bourne Ultimatum will be shot in Morocco, Spain, France, the United Kingdom and the United States.

MR. BEAN’S HOLIDAY
August 31, 2007
Rowan Atkinson returns to the iconic role that made him an international star in Bean II. In his latest misadventure, Mr. Bean–the nearly wordless misfit who seems to be followed by a trail of pratfalls and hijinks–goes on holiday to the French Riviera and becomes ensnared in a European adventure of cinematic proportions.

Tired of the dreary, wet London weather, Bean packs up his suitcase and camcorder to head to Cannes for some sun on the beach. Ah…vacation. But his trip doesn’t go as smoothly as he had hoped when the bumbling Bean falls face first into a series of mishaps and fortunate coincidences, far-fetched enough to make his own avant-garde film.

Wrongly thought to be both kidnapper and acclaimed filmmaker, he has some serious explaining to do after wreaking havoc across the French countryside and arriving at his vacation spot with a Romanian filmmaker’s precocious son and an aspiring actress in tow. Will Bean be arrested by the gendarmes or end up winning the Palme d’Or? It’s all caught on camera as Atkinson again applies his awkward athleticism to a comedy of errors in Bean II.

ILLEGAL TENDER
TBA 2007
After the gangsters who killed his father come to settle a score, a teenage boy and his mother turn the tables on the killers. Producer John Singleton (“Four Brothers,” “Hustle & Flow”) and writer/director Franc. Reyes (“Empire”) join forces to tell the story of one Latino family’s quest for honor and revenge as the hunted become the hunters in the new thriller “Illegal Tender.”

Wilson De Leon, Jr. (Rick Gonzalez) is an exceptional college student with an adoring girlfriend, doting mother and a future full of promise. He has never wanted for anything, and he has never been forced to stand his ground. But when ghosts from his mother’s past come back to haunt his present, he must defend his family…and quickly turn into the strong man his father prayed he’d become.

Nothing could stop Wilson’s mother, Millie (Wanda De Jesus), from protecting her two boys. Forced to flee her home after gangsters killed her husband, she made an oath to give her children only the best. But all that changes when an enemy from the past catches up with them. It’s finally time to take action–and now, they’re done running.

Weapons at the ready, Wilson, Jr. and Millie prepare for a final showdown with the murderer who robbed him of a father and her of a husband. Now, in a battle fueled by family ties and blood feuds, it will become very clear what happens when anyone tries to come between this son and his mother.

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