Latest news with #Verhoeven
Mint
05-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Mint
'It made me an icon': Sharon Stone on her infamous Basic Instinct leg-crossing scene
Washington DC [US], August 5 (ANI): Actress and film producer Sharon Stone shared that she had the legal right to remove her leg-crossing scene from the 1992 movie, 'Basic Instinct', but chose not to, reported People. The controversial scene featured Stone, who played the role of crime novelist Catherine Tramell alongside Michael Douglas (Detective Nick Curran), crossing her legs while being questioned, revealing that she wasn't wearing underwear. "I very much believe that none of us knew at the time what we were getting in regard to that shot, and when Paul [Verhoeven] got it, he didn't want to lose it, and he was scared to show me. And I get that," recalled Stone. "Once I had time to calm down, I didn't make him take it out of the movie when I had the legal right to," she said, adding, "So I did have the chance to do it differently, and I didn't because once I had the chance to step back, I understood, as the director, not the girl in the film, that that made the movie better." Although having claimed in 2023 that she lost custody of her son following her role in Basic Instinct, Stone revealed that she has no hard feelings, reported People. "It made me an icon, but it didn't bring me respect. But would I do it again? We don't get to make these choices in life. I don't participate in the fantasy world in this way," she said. "What I did with what happened is exactly the way I wanted to do it. Verhoeven and I have a wonderful relationship," Stone added, 'Basic Instinct' is set to get a reboot, with the film's original writer, Joe Eszterhas, penning the script. Stone previously said that making the iconic film took a toll on everyone involved. "Paul Verhoeven [director] ended up in the hospital--his sinus thing ruptured, and he couldn't stop having a nosebleed," she said. "There was tremendous pressure on that set." "Now people walk around showing their penises on Netflix, but in the olden days, what we were doing was very new," she continued. "This was a feature film for a major studio, and we had nudity, sex, homosexuality, all these things that, in my era, were breaking norms," she added, reported People. (ANI)
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Rico Verhoeven is the greatest heavyweight champion in all of combat sports
Back in 2005, when he was just 16 years old, Rico Verhoeven made the walk for the first time as a professional fighter against a full-grown adult named Wilbert Dam. It was in the southern part of The Netherlands, not far from where he grew up in Bergen op Zoom near the Belgium border, and kickboxing was already a huge part of his life. His father, Jos, was a karate black belt who had for years been pointing Rico towards the ring lights. And with such names as Ramon Dekkers, Ernesto Hoost and Peter Aerts having been celebrated Dutch champions — and therefore national treasures to a young kid's mind — Rico had all the examples he needed. Advertisement 'I can remember I was just a kid with a dream, man, just a kid with a dream,' he says looking back on it. 'At that time, my dad was behind me pushing me in the direction of like, 'Yo, we're going to do this. We're going to make you big. You've got to become champion.' That was the dream. And then, yeah, all those years later, the dream became reality.' Not much is remembered about Dam today, other than he got whooped by a kid barely old enough to have his driver's license. It was Verhoeven's first victory, in what would become a lifetime of wins. As he gets set to headline GLORY 100, a milestone affair which takes place at the Ahoy in Rotterdam on Saturday, looking back at all he's been able to do in the ring feels closer to fiction than any movie that's been made about combat sports. 'It's just been like one big roller-coaster,' Verhoeven says. 'My life has been a movie, man. I think I first saw [kickboxing] on television, and I saw Peter Aerts become champion for the third time in his career. I was like, 'Wow, that's what I want.' I was maybe nine or something. 'I'd already started training when I was maybe six, so we watched kickboxing a lot, and of course my dad was training me, so that's how I got into the whole thing. And at a certain point, my dad just saw something. He saw a talent, like, 'Hey, when I show him something, he does it and it works.' He thought, 'He's big, he's strong — hey, this might work!'' Advertisement Verhoeven is cooking dinner as he reminisces about his early days in the fight game, back to a time when there was zero fanfare surrounding him. It feels like a lifetime ago. These days, especially in his home country, he's a superstar. And in the twilight of his fighting career, he has become a master at multitasking because, well, he has to. He runs businesses on the side. He does charity work. He acts in movies and does voiceover work. He spends time with the King of the Netherlands, King Willem-Alexander, and he calls Martin Garrix — a Dutch DJ of no small acclaim — a friend. Another one of his buddies, F1 champion Max Verstappen, loves to hang (and train) with the heavyweight champion whenever possible. In other words, he's in high demand. And it's all because of the kickboxing ring, which has given Verhoeven a life he could never have dreamed of. He is not so much just a champion in the Netherlands, as he is a source of national pride. When he makes the walk, the country swoons. When he goes to the grocery store, people do a double take, because — as some have called him — he has become like Holland's Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. Advertisement 'Especially here in the small town that I live in,' he says. 'It's just like you get stopped a lot and people ask for pictures or just want to have a chat, and we just flow with it. People are excited. We take time for them as well. We take time for the fans because they are the ones that are buying the tickets to come and see the fights or buying the pay-per-view.' This weekend Verhoeven will face GLORY's former light heavyweight champion, Artem Vakhitov, in what will be his 13th overall heavyweight title defense. You might remember Vakhitov winning on UFC's Contender Series not that long ago, after which he was offered a contract to compete in the UFC. A segue to MMA will have to hold as he takes on GLORY's greatest boogeyman. The North American audience may not understand, but Europe does. And it's not a stretch to say that Rico Verhoeven is the greatest heavyweight champion in all of combat sports. His run is unparalleled. Verhoeven has held the heavyweight belt for more than a decade. He has won 25 straight fights under the GLORY banner, against the behemoths and Goliaths of the sport, past, present, and future. He has stood alone at the end of one-night tournaments, the most recent of which coming in a heavyweight grand prix in Arnhem last year. He has put exclamation marks on rivalries with Errol Zimmerman and Ben Saddik. He has handled threats from Badr Hari and Gokhan Saki. He has blasted through familiar names in the MMA world, like Sergei Kharitinov and Antonio Silva. Advertisement He even beat his mentor Aerts in Tokyo, nearly a dozen years ago. Boxing has Oleksandr Usyk and Daniel Dubois, the UFC has Jon Jones, Tom Aspinall and Francis Ngannou, and GLORY has Verhoeven, who has held the heavyweight title for more than 4,000 days. Think about that. Four thousand days ago Fabricio Werdum held the UFC's heavyweight title. 'I hate losing,' Verhoeven says, the simplest explanation to a run of dominance imaginable. It's something he hasn't done a whole lot of, which is incredible when you think that Verhoeven last loss under the GLORY banner was at the first one he competed in — 2012's GLORY 4 in Japan. 'It feels like it,' he says when asked if he feels old for 36. 'I've been around for a while around the block. I've literally seen it all and I've traded some punches and kicks with the very best. But I'm having fun with it, still having fun with it, and I'm thankful that we still here are still capable of flowing and entertaining everybody on the highest stage, on the biggest stages in the world.' Advertisement And speaking of stages, whenever Verhoeven does finally hang up the gloves, he says he wants to segue into Hollywood. He starred alongside Frank Grillo in a movie called 'Black Lotus,' which was a lead role, and had a solid cameo in 'Den of Thieves 2: Pantera,' which stars Gerard Butler and O'Shea Jackson Jr. One of Verhoeven's good friends is action man Jason Statham, who has encouraged him to keep at it. It's not a stretch to say that Rico Verhoeven is the greatest heavyweight champion in all of combat sports. His run is unparalleled. 'I can honestly say that I truly found my new passion with acting,' he says. 'It's so much fun. I like to put the work in, I have fun while doing it, and I think that's the most important thing, when you're on the set for 10, 12, 14, 16 hours. I just have fun. 'And it's so cool to see as well, in acting as in — for example — kickboxing or in sports in general, people just keep beating the craft. They keep getting better because, with acting and in sports, we're never finished, and we're never done learning.' First, it's GLORY 100, a 20-fight extravaganza celebrating kickboxing, featuring four world title bouts, four four-man one-night tournaments before the hero's welcome for Verhoeven's main event against Vakhitov. At 36, you're never sure what comes next, but if Verhoeven has his say, he'll do something 'crazy' before he signs off for good. Advertisement 'My eyes are definitely on a crossover fight,' he says. 'Right now the focus is on Artem. But beyond that, I would definitely see myself in a huge crossover fight, and yeah, Francis Ngannou would be one of the names to do it with. Or maybe Anthony Joshua, whatever, I'm down. I'm down to do it. I love it. 'What would be really cool is if we look at a crossover fight and do something totally different that hasn't been done before. So, for example, I don't know, I fight a boxer in boxing and then a boxer fights me kickboxing. That way you both get out of your own comfort zone.' For 20 years, Rico Verhoeven has put together one of the most storied careers in combat sports. But isn't done just yet. There are bigger stages to conquer. 'I'm open to it man,' he says. 'I'm open to just do something crazy, something really crazy, something next level to leave a mark.'
Reuters
22-04-2025
- Sport
- Reuters
San Diego FC acquire Quakes D Oscar Verhoeven on loan
April 22 - San Diego FC acquired defender Oscar Verhoeven on loan from the San Jose Earthquakes. The deal announced Monday runs through the rest of this season, with the Quakes receiving $100,000 in general allocation money. The agreement includes a purchase option in exchange for 2026 GAM and a sell-on percentage. Verhoeven, 18, appeared in seven MLS matches (five starts) for San Jose from 2024-25, including one appearance as a substitute this season. "We're pleased to welcome Oscar to San Diego as we continue to add competition to our group," San Diego sporting director Tyler Heaps said. "He is a high potential fullback and strong competitor that we believe will benefit from being in our environment as he continues to develop." Verhoeven, a California native, represented the United States at the 2023 FIFA U-17 World Cup. --Field Level Media
The Guardian
21-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Is Hollywood really going to ditch the anti-fascist satire in its Starship Troopers remake?
If there is a modern day equivalent in Hollywood to Dutch director Paul Verhoeven, he or she must be hiding in the nearest underground space bunker, desperately praying that irony makes a comeback. Verhoeven arrived at a time when transgressive 'video nasties' were just fading into irrelevance, a period in which filmgoers were just as likely to head to the cinemas for schlocky thrills as they were for biting sci-fi allegory. With films such as 1987's RoboCop, 1990's Total Recall and 1997's Starship Troopers, Verhoeven managed to combine a high-energy, hyper-kinetic thrust that has rarely been achieved since. He remains one of the most subversive and controversial film-makers of his generation – which is why it's so depressing that Hollywood keeps churning out substandard remakes of his best work. Neither José Padilha's 2014 revamp of RoboCop nor Len Wiseman's dry and listless 2012 reworking of Total Recall will be remembered by anyone not personally involved in those insipid productions. Which is perhaps why long-gestating plans to remake Starship Troopers, Verhoeven's hyper-stylised and super-satirical adaptation of the fascistic 1950s space war novel by Robert A Heinlein, have so far failed to make it past first star base. Studios have been trying to rework this thing since at least 2016. The latest attempt, according to the Hollywood Reporter, will see District 9's Neill Blomkamp, once the coming man of sci-fi, taking the reins. You might think that Blomkamp, with his flair for gritty dystopia and penchant for socially conscious sci-fi carnage, would be the perfect film-maker to reignite the spirit of gleeful nihilism that infected Verhoeven's best work from the 80s and 90s. And you wouldn't be far off, except that studio Sony, AKA Columbia Pictures, appears to have decided (according to reports) that the only way to bring this one back to the big screen is to jettison the subversive tone and instead lean in to the Riefenstahlian chest-thumping militarism of the original source novel by Heinlein. Is this the legacy of Trump's return to power infecting Hollywood boardrooms in 2025? Have the studios really decided that the smartest way to reboot Starship Troopers is to just go all in on the laser-soaked Nazi space opera vibes? Heinlein's 1959 novel is all about a society in which people need to get battling the alien space bugs that are threatening Earth quick sharp or face a future without voting rights, basic human dignity or the faintest hint of a social safety net – because nothing says 'civic duty' quite like strapping on a flamethrower and mowing down intergalactic cockroaches to prove you're worthy of democracy. It's hard not to imagine Verhoeven wondering how his cynical parody of militaristic nationalism ended up being remade as a sincere recruitment video for totalitarian space marines. Moreover, why get Blomkamp involved if this is the plan? Is he really the right director to helm a fascist fantasy epic when his entire career has been built on scrappy, anti-establishment sci-fi that makes you want to riot against the nearest dystopian overlord? Is Blomkamp just a bit desperate to get back on the Hollywood hype machine after 10 years spent regretting Elysium and Chappie (and making occasional mournful posts about how much he would really really like to make an Alien film)? Or is he just so fed up with being the poster boy for gritty, socially conscious sci-fi that he's decided to throw caution to the wind and cash the cheque? We'll no doubt find out if this latest attempt to remake Verhoeven's classic actually reaches the stratosphere. In the meantime, let's all sit back and remind ourselves that the real genius of Starship Troopers was precisely in making a film so dazzlingly dumb on the surface that entire generations of rightwing knuckleheads have apparently watched it without realising they're the punchline.
The Independent
15-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
A cult 1990s sci-fi film is getting rebooted with key differences
A reboot of the 1990s cult classic sci-fi film Starship Troopers is in the works with District 9's Neill Blomkamp set to write and direct the new version of the film which will feature some key differences. The original Starship Troopers, made by Dutch provocateur Paul Verhoeven, with Denise Richards, Neil Patrick Harris and Casper Van Dien in leading roles, was critically panned upon release and struggled at the box office, making just $120m against its $100m budget. In the years since has been reappraised, with fans appreciating its satirical take on the military and right-wing politics, which some viewers still miss. Deadline reports that Sony is distributing the new film with Blomkamp directing, with his wife, Terri Tatchell, also working as a producer. The report states that this adaptation will differ from Verhoeven's and is likely to stick closer to the source material. The 1959 novel of the same name by Robert A. Heinlein is a book deeply political in its themes, telling the story of a young soldier named Juan "Johnnie" Rico and his time with the Mobile Infantry, a futuristic military service fighting in an interstellar war against an alien species known as "the Bugs". Heinlein's writing was filled with moral and philosophical discussions of suffrage, civic virtue, juvenile delinquency, corporal punishment, capital punishment, and war; though it's attracted its fair share of controversy by critics who believe the novel promotes both militarism and fascism in the depiction of its futuristic society, which Verhoeven took heavy aim at in his satirisation. There are numerous differences between the novel and the film too. In the book, the lead character of Johnnie is of Filipino descent, whereas in Verhoeven's the character is a white American. Verhoeven used a mostly white cast but the society in the book is portrayed as diverse and multi-ethnic. Another small change was the lack of mechanised battle suits that the soldiers wore, which was removed due to budget constraints. Mark Swift and Damian Shannon, the writing duo behind the Baywatch movie, were attached to a planned reboot in 2016 with the potential for relaunching Starship Troopers as a full-on franchise. The first Starship Troopers did spawn two straight-to-video sequels: Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation (2004) and Starship Troopers 3: Marauder (2008). There were also two animated films: Starship Troopers: Invasion (2012) and Starship Troopers: Traitor of Mars (2017). Blomkamp's last film, a dramatised take on the racing game Gran Turismo, received mixed reviews from critics and made $122m at the box office.
