Movie Make-out

Though it was seemingly inevitable — despite many, many hurdles — Variety has announced that Guillermo del Toro has officially signed on to direct the New Line-MGM feature The Hobbit, as well as its sequel. The films will be produced by Lord of the Rings producers Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh back-to-back over the next four years in New Zealand, much like the aforementioned trilogy. The sequel will cover the 60 year period between The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Del Toro’s most recent project is the upcoming Hellboy II, which, might I add, looks completely awesome.

Javier Rodriguez’s spec script, The Heretic, has been picked up by Phoenix Pictures, according to Variety, and is on the fast-track to theaters. The film centers on “a fallen priest-turned-hitman sent by a rogue archbishop to assassinate Martin Luther, only to discover that not everyone is telling the truth.”

Also over at Variety, we find out that Elliot Tiber’s memoir, Taking Woodstock: A True Story of a Riot, a Concert, and a Life is making its way to the silver screen, courtesy of another filmmaking team, James Schamus and Ang Lee, and Focus Features. The film, more succinctly titled Taking Woodstock, “follows an Everyman working at his parents’ motel in the Catskills who inadvertently sets in motion what would become the generation-defining concert.” The budget is set at $5 to $10 million and will not focus on the concert itself. Questions still remain about the possible use of period music, though the ridiculously high sales of soundtracks that simply reissue baby boomer favorites for the billionth time would seem to make it a no-brainer.

Related posts: Guillermo del Toro still not directing The Hobbit…

A Japanese teaser trailer for the upcoming adaptation of Naoki Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys is up at YouTube (and higher-res over at the official site). There’s not much to it, but the one, brief real visual we get is pretty neat.

The film — the first of a planned trilogy — revolves around a store manager (Toshiaki Karasawa) who predicted the end of the world as a teenager and learns that he may have been right. The film comes out in Japan on August 30th; no US release is set at this time.

Related post: Karasawa is a 20th Century Boy (updated)

A trailer for the Martin Gero’s acclaimed sex comedy/drama Young People Fucking has hit the interwebs, thanks to YouTube. The film involves five separate, interrelated but not intertwined sexual encounters (four couples and a threesome), yet the trailer and the reviews I’ve seen all indicate a smarter, more intelligent, and more mature film than the title or the premise might lead you to assume. YPF shoots its load all over Canada on June 13th; there is no US release date yet.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall’s $17.7 million take this past weekend may not have bested the pairing of Jet Li and Jackie Chan at the box office, but it was enough to keep director Nick Stoller under producer Judd Apatow’s employ. Variety tells us that Stoller has just signed to write and direct Get Him to the Greek for Apatow, with Jonah Hill starring as “a fresh-out-of-college insurance adjuster who is hired to accompany an out-of-control rock star (Forgetting Sarah Marshall’s Russell Brand) from London to a gig at L.A.’s Greek Theater.” Stoller describes the film as “a very dirty take on Almost Famous.”

It’s a little odd that Brand is playing a rocker again, after playing Sarah Marshall’s new boyfriend Aldous Snow, but he was terrific in Marshall and it’s great to see him being adopted into the Apatow stable. Hopefully the rock-star repeat will be used as an excuse to show Brand performing a new batch of hilariously wrong-headed songs; his musical bits in Sarah Marshall, at least one of which was co-written by Brand, were hilarious.

For his part, Jonah Hill starred in the Apatow’s Superbad and had a minor role in Sarah Marshall, as a not-very-vaguely lovestruck fan of Snow.

Nick Stoller, who honed his writing chops on Apatow’s short-lived TV series, Undeclared, is set to co-write and direct two other projects with Jason Segel, Five Year Engagement (for Apatow) and the next Muppet movie, and wrote December’s Jim Carrey starrer, Yes Man.

Related posts: Quick Cuts: Brad Bird’s 1906, Segel and Stoller take on the Muppets, Fame; Trailer Watch: Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Taken, Iron Man Super Bowl spot, Defiance

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Moon Bloodgood (of the underrated Journeyman) is going to play the female lead in McG’s upcoming Terminator sequel, previously known as Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins. (Contrary to the HR report, the film is currently without a title.) She will star alongside Christian Bale in the film as a “no-nonsense and battle-hardened member of the resistance.” The film is set for release on May 22, 2009, with principal photography beginning May 5. Bloodgood also stars in the upcoming Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li.

Matrix and V for Vendetta producer Joel Silver gave Collider the scoop on his upcoming collaborations with the Wachowski brothers, Ninja Assassin and Speed Racer: the Wachowskis apparently have sequel ideas for both movies lined up (and Ninja Assassin hasn’t even begun shooting yet!). Ninja Assassin will feature Rain (Speed Racer) and Naome Harris (Street Kings), and will be directed by James McTeigue (V for Vendetta).

It was originally slated to be directed by David Fincher and star Nicolas Cage (like just about every other comic book movie). It’s been called “one of the most violent comic books ever created.” And it’s not a remake of the 1992 John Woo movie. Frank Miller’s three-issue miniseries Hard Boiled may be hitting the big screen, under the auspices of Deborah Del Prete (The Spirit) and directed by Miller himself. The comic “follows Carl Seitz, an insurance investigator who unexpectedly discovers that he’s actually a cyborg named Nixon, a psychotic assassin/tax collector who’s also heralded as the future savior of the robot race.” “I’ve got a really unusual way I want to do it,” Millers told MTV. Let’s hope that “original way” isn’t just making it look like Sin City, like he seems to have done with The Spirit.

Related posts: Trailer Watch: The Spirit teaser