Movie Make-out

Variety reports that Bridget Johnson has picked up Lizzy Weiss’s "original" screenplay, Bumped, and signed "McG protegé"(?) Anna Mastro to direct. Described as The Breakfast Club in an airport… and not realizing that just such a rip-off was already made, two years ago.

Sigh.

Why, Hollywood, why?

The full trailer for Iron Man is up, with our best look to date at the film’s plot and tone. It’s looking awesome. See for yourself:
 

(MySpace’s Trailer Park has it in HD, or if the embedded video has emotional problems.) 

Coming Soon has the exclusive on the trailer for opera director Chen Shi-Zheng’s movie debut, Dark Matter, the story of a Physics grad student who turns into a college shooter. Delayed after the Virginia Tech shootings, the film is now set for an April 11 limited release.

ShockTillYouDrop has a new teaser trailer for Pathology, which is kind of odd, because a much longer trailer was released last September (linked to at STYD).

The new, full trailer for Get Smart, shows a lot more promise than the teaser did. The film will be released on June 20.

Mike Myers’s The Love Guru looks as funny as the first two Austin Powers movies (I didn’t see the third one). Take that however you like. The film will be released on June 20. Uh oh… Steve Carrell vs. Mike Myers! There can be only one!

The reunion of Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly (also known as Step Brothers) is a lot funnier the a second time. Hopefully the movie won’t be the same way. The film is due on July 25.

Related posts: Trailer Watch: Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Taken, Iron Man Super Bowl spot, Defiance

Variety brought us the latest on the recent 3D cinema boom: Step Up 3D is in development, with John Chu (Step Up 2 the Streets) attached. Despite the typical fanboy outrage the very thought of a dance movie generates (God forbid a thinly plotted movie with no characters show two people dance rather than fight), I think this is actually an ingenious use of the 3D "gimmick"; I would actually go to see this, unlike the previous two. 3D heightens your experience of movement in a film, and dance flicks are all about movement: the dancers’ as well as the camera’s.

First-time writer-director Gavin O’Connor makes the very unwise career move of publicly blaming New Line chief Bob Shaye for the delay of his film, Pride & Glory, starring Ed Norton and Colin Farrell. The film was to have released on March 14 and has had trailers screened before Atonement, No Country for Old Men, and American Gangster for months. Having seen the trailer, it looks like We Own the Night 2, so I didn’t have much hope for it. Colin Farrell disagrees that the film is "a mess," saying that it’s New Line’s sorry financial state (post-Golden Compass) that’s preventing them from marketing anything. Whatever the case, I get the impression that Shaye had bigger things to worry about in the past few months:

The biggest news of the day is New Line’s absorption into Warner Brothers, ending a 40 year history as one of the biggest independent film studios in Hollywood in order to save a few bucks. The studio’s 600 person staff is expected to be slashed considerably. Time Warner’s new CEO Jeffrey Bewkes commented that "New Line and Warner Bros. will now have more complementary release slates, with New Line focusing on genres that have been its strength."

So, um… probably no Golden Compass sequel.

The Hollywood Reporter, um, reports that Paul Dano (Little Miss Sunshine, There Will Be Blood) and Zooey Deschanel (Elf) have signed onto the "indie romantic comedy" Gigantic (named after the Pixies song?). The article seems to be focused on Dano, but I can’t find anything earlier about Deschanel being attached, so I’m not sure why they’re glossing that part over.

Deschanel has long been attached to the dormant Janis Joplic biopic, The Gospel According to Janis, but will next appear on screen in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening, opposite Mark Wahlberg.

Dano’s next appearance on screen is up in the air; he’s one of the voices in Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are, and is set to re-unite with his L.I.E. co-star Brian Cox in The Good Heart.

UPDATED (3/3/08): More details about this project have emerged with the latest casting announcement; according to The Hollywood Reporter, John Goodman, Ed Asner and Jane Alexander have joined Dano and Deschanel:

Dano will play Brian, a depressed mattress salesman whose quest to adopt a Chinese baby is sidetracked when he falls for Happy (Deschanel).



Asner will play Brian’s pot-smoking, gangsta rap-loving father, and Alexander is set as his long-suffering mother. Goodman will play Happy’s brilliant, domineering dad.

I’m starting to have some doubts about this project.…

Related Post: Trailer Watch: Vexille, Redbelt, The Happening (updated)

Even as some news sites were just posting the speculation that Justice League was pulling out of Australia, Variety broke that the film was going on all cylinders, aiming for a not-very-specific 2009 release. (The source of the "news" was the Sydney Morning Herald, which was also under the presumption that the title of the movie was Justice League Mortal. It sounds more like a conflation of the real title and the film’s Blue Harvest/Rory’s First Kiss-style shooting title than a real title, but AICN seems to be running with it. They also break the exclusive news that some guy I don’t remember from Mad Max is playing Martian Manhunter.)

The Variety piece editorialized that Warner Brothers needed another major release to prop up their 2009 year; their only tentpole releases are Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins for May 22; the rumor-mill whipping post Where the Wild Things Are for Oct. 16; and Watchmen, on track for March 6.

Now that the strike is over, Kieran and Michele Mulroney are working on polishing their script. The (verified) cast I’m already bored of reading fanboys bitch about consists, so far, of Adam Brody as the Flash; Common as Green Lantern; Armie Hammer Jr. as Batman; and Megan Gale as Wonder Woman. George Miller (Mad Max, Happy Feet) is directing.

Related Post: Quick Cuts: I Want to ____ Your Sister, The Boys, Where the Wild Things Are

Apple brings us the trailer for Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me follow-up, Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? It looks like masturbatory crap. I didn’t seriously expect the man behind 30 Days to make a real effort to find Bin Laden, but this looks like a puff piece about how Americans and Arabs have so much in common. I half expected him to say "Can we all just get along?" at some point.

Coming Soon gives us the heads-up on the trailer for Shelter, a coming-of-age/gay love story due out in limited release on March 21. The subject matter seems a bit familiar, but the trailer is well shot and the film looks to contain some strong performances.

Finally, the international trailer for Let the Right One In hits YouTube. Based on the novel by Swedish author John Lindqvist, this story centers around the friendship between a 12 year old boy and a young vampire. The trailer reveals a film that is super-creepy, dark, and definitely not one for the kids. I’m not one for vampires, usually, but this one could be great. Magnolia Pictures has just picked up the film; no domestic release date has been set yet.

Sony buys distribution rights to the McG-helmed Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins (a.k.a. Terminator 4 to people who think the official title is a mouthful) and schedules its release for May 9, 2009, reports Variety.

Variety confirms that Transporter 3 is (still) moving ahead with Olivier Megaton at the helm, since the series’ original director (Louis Leterrier) is busy on The Incredible Hulk. Megaton was the second-unit director for Hitman, for which he shot the subway fight — one of that crap film’s few bright spots. This news isn’t really new information, but it’s confirmed now; I think the addition of Robert Knepper (Prison Break) to the cast was the main reason for today’s reminder. Statham also has Crank 2 in development, somehow, and stars in The Bank Job, opening March 7th.

UPDATE: I knew I was forgetting to mention something earlier. It looks like Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass have gotten past their initial hesitation to do The Bourne Continuation (kidding: not the real title); Variety reports they’ve been "landed" by the producer for a fourth. (An E! Online article covers the whole "will they or won’t they?" saga of Bourne 4 to date.)

Related posts: Sam Worthington to star in Terminator 4