Variety is reporting a diverse group of actors and directors are teaming up and spreading out across New York to shoot New York, I Love You. The film will be a “mixture of contemplative romance and unabashed civic boosterism.” The anthology of shorts follows the format of “Paris, je t’aime,” (which means “Paris, I love you” in French) a surprise specialty hit released last year.

Orlando Bloom, Olivia Thirlby, Hayden Christensen, Ethan Hawke, Scarlett Johansson, and Natalie Portman are among the actors who will be directing segments of the film. The film is already garnering attention for marking the directorial debuts of both Johansson and Portman.

Directors who have signed up for the project include Mira Nair, Brett Ratner and Alan Hughes, plus international directors Fatih Akin, Andrey Zvyagintsev and Wen Jiang.

Paris je t’aime quietly racked up $5M in domestic box office last year and kicked off producer Emmanuel Benhiby’s planned global series that could see numerous locales get the “I love you” treatment, with Shanghai and Africa on the drawing board.

Actors who have already been confirmed for New York, I Love You include Carlos Acosta, Kevin Bacon, Justin Bartha, Rachel Bilson, James Caan, Bradley Cooper, Chris Cooper, Drea de Matteo, Irrfan Khan, Cloris Leachman, Blake Lively, Emilie Ohana, Maggie Q, Shu Qi, Eli Wallach, Saul Williams, Robin Wright-Penn, Anton Yelchin and Ugur Yucel.

Well, it appears the sequel could get made since the movie “jumped” all over the competition this past weekend.

Opening on Thursday, and including the President’s Day holiday weekend, Jumper pulled in just over $38 million in the United States, with a reported $28 million internationally in 30 countries.

That’s a $66 million bonanza for Doug Liman, who has inexplicably struck gold again after hits with the Bourne films and Mr. and Mrs. Smith. I suspect the poor reviews may hurt it next week, but who knows…some people just love these kinds of movies and don’t care about the lack of good storytelling, so it could continue to make money.

Now that a sequel is likely in the works, Liman has already told Collider some inside secrets on what it could be about and what other things “jumping” involves:

“this power can be used to leave this planet, this power can be used ultimately to go back in time, this power can be used if you go and work for the government you’d be the ultimate Jason Bourne.”

“The kind of jumping that we’re showing in the movie which is a kind of worm hole jump which is why those scars are left behind, if you can travel through space through a worm hole from a scientific Einstein point of view, you could also travel through time…I’ve left the door open to time travel because of the specific kind of teleportation that I chose to portray in this film”

Well, as I said before, the whole idea behind the film rocked and this additional stuff could really be cool. My only hope is that the sequel somehow improves on the original and is a good movie.

If you think about it though…teleporting, time travel…these guys have some major powers, no wonder the Paladin are jealous and want them dead.

Source: Dark Horizons

Jumper ended up being pretty much what I knew deep down inside it probably would be. But I was too excited to care so I left work and galloped to the theater near my house.

The opening line to Jumper begins with a narration by Hayden Christensen talking about what she’s done so far that day. It involved things like eating a picnic on the Sphinx, surfing in Bali, drinking coffee in some European country and oh yeah, watching the final quarter of Game 4 of the NBA Finals.

All before lunch.

I know this may seem super lame, but when was the last time a Game 4 of an NBA Finals was played BEFORE LUNCH?

Nitpicking at that line may seem a bit too much, but it just ended up being indicative of the rest of the movie.
Jumper was so close, yet something was just off. That bad first line seemed to trickle down to the rest of the film.

The idea and premise of the story was awesome and I’d like to read Steven Gould’s novels upon which Jumper is based on so I might get the real story of what happened.

Christensen stars as David Rice, a kid who learns one day that he can teleport. It happens the first time when he gets trapped under some ice after chasing a snow globe he tried to give to a young Millie, playing by Rachel Bilson.

With an abusive father at home, Rice decides to “jump” himself out of his current situation and into a life of freedom and excitement. He robs banks, stocks up on money and does whatever he wants.

What he doesn’t realize is that a secret, ancient organization called the Paladin like to hunt down and kill jumpers. He soon comes to understand he’s not the only one in the world who can teleport.

Samuel L. Jackson is a top Paladin, although we’re not sure if he’s the leader or not. He’s his usual good self here, although you kind of feel like Jackson is getting a bit too used to roles like this.

The special effects and visuals in the film are stupendous. I really, really enjoyed the jumping from place to place, the way teleporting works and the rules it has. For instance, a jumper needs to study a location and know it before he can jump there. He can do this via a photo, but the main law is that he cannot teleport anywhere that he doesn’t see first.

It also appears that jumping to a place in a photo the first time causes some serious damage around the landing site.

Here is the downside: If the Paladin finds out where your landing sites are…watch out.

There are also rules between jumpers…like teleporting leaves an invisible tear in the air that another jumper can follow through.

The action sequences, the battles, the chase scenes, the science behind it seems pretty sweet.

The potential was there for an awesome mythology but it didn’t quite make it.

If you liked the way The Matrix started, with Neo learning his gifts and discovering his calling, then you’ll be bummed that Jumper couldn’t find the same magic. And it surprises me considering that it was directed by Doug Liman, who was behind The Bourne Ultimatum and Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

The choice of Christensen was a poor one. You need your lead actor in a movie like this to be engaging and dynamic, and neither describe poor Hayden. He tries here, but he just can’t pull off what he needs to in order to really bring Rice to life.

It’s sad really. There is a great superhero story here, but it was all told in a matter-of-fact style and it was nothing special. The discoveries are predictable and the Matrix-like moment we see towards the end was no surprise.

The biggest shocker is that the movie is MADE for a sequel. The ending essentially lays the groundwork for the next film.

Was that good or bad? Probably bad if this film fails miserably and judging from the 18% on Rotten Tomatoes that it’s getting…it could do just that.

I wont lie and say I didn’t have fun in this movie, but I’m the kind of guy who loves to see new ideas in visual effects shown in movies, so that part was great to behold.

But otherwise…it just didn’t live up to what I hoped it could have been. It was just an average film.

AML Rating: C+

Update: You can see the HD versions of the trailer at Apple.com. 

“Jumping” out at me about this movie is the awesome special effects you see and the premise of the story. From IMDB, the plot goes something like this:

A genetic anomaly allows a young man to teleport himself anywhere. He discovers this gift has existed for centuries and finds himself in a war that has been raging for thousands of years between “Jumpers” and those who have sworn to kill them.

The teleport aspect of it sounds pretty “yawn” until you see it in action. Not only can you just teleport anywhere, you can teleport things you are in. For example, the trailer shows a guy in a car bypassing traffic jams by “jumping” past it, the car and himself.

Some of the fight scenes and action sequences that including the teleporting look fantastic.

Now, the first downside people might see here is Hayden Christensen. I think most of the world knows the guy from the new Star Wars movies where the writing he was handed could even make great actors like Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor look like newbies.

But he did a little film called “Shattered Glass” in which he was pretty dang good. That’s where I realized he was a good actor despite the crap we kind of saw in the Star Wars movies.

I look forward to seeing what he can do here. He stars alongside Samuel L. Jackson, Diane Lane and Rachel Bilson. It’s also directed by Doug Liman, who has done movies like ALL the Jason Bourne films, “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” and some Arrested Development stuff.

All in all, it looks intriguing. Some of these lesser known sci-fi movies can really turn out well, like the awesome “Equilibrium“.

Check out the poster below: