Movie Make-out

Iron Man 2 has been making a lot of headlines late, with IESB reporting that two sources both say that Marvel Studios’ David Maisel is unwilling to up Jon Favreau’s salary on the sequel, with one source saying Maisel “believes Iron Man 2 will be a success regardless of Favreau’s involvement and feels the studio does not need to pay Jon a higher fee for his services.” Which is probably true, frankly.

On top of that, Iron Man 2 is still scheduled for an April 30, 2010 release, which Favreau has recently blogged about, saying that both he and star Robert Downey, Jr., (who is not signed yet either!) are “concerned about how realistic the date is in light of the fact that we have no script, story or even writers hired yet.”

But, to say the least, the fanboys (among whom I am including myself here) don’t want to hear anything about it; we loved Iron Man (to the tune of $535 billion worldwide to date), and we’ve had studio suits’ interference forcing creative team changes, storylines, and/or release dates resulting in shit sequels to great movies before. Iron Man was awesome — one of the best reviewed and most successful super-hero films ever made — and not giving Favreau a second at-bat just seems very, very short-sighted. One film does not a studio make.

Apparently there’s been a little movement in the wake of all this bad publicity, but nothing concrete yet…

Related post: As if Iron Man wasn’t awesome enough (updated)

Variety reports that Eric Bana, Jason Schwartzman and Jonah Hill have signed up for Judd Apatow’s next film as writer and director, Funny People, which centers on a stand-up comic who has a near-death experience. They join the previously announced Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, and Leslie Mann. (Bana’s involvement was first talked about by CHUD a little while ago, but the Variety article apparently solidifies this.)

Hollywood Reporter has broken that Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner’s 3-issue mini-series Red will be adapted for the big screen by Summit Entertainment. Red was about “a former black-ops CIA agent now living a quiet life in retirement until the day a high-tech assassin shows up intent on killing him. With his secret identity compromised and his love interest in danger, the man must reassemble his old team to figure out who is out to get them.”

I don’t recall the comic (which was fantastic, by the way) involving an “old team,” so this may have something to do with screenwriting brothers Erich and Jon Hoeber’s rejiggering. (Last week, Hollywood Reporter also learned that Ellis’s Ocean would be adapted for Warner Bros. by Ryan Condal, but I snoozed on that news.)

RoboCop is coming back… maybe. Until we hear more about screenwriters and directors, I would put this in the same boat as the recent news about Adam Beach starring in Turok. Although Beach recently did the Turok (direct-to-DVD) animated movie for the same studio, the project has no script, director, or — most importantly — financing, let a lone a greenlight.

Jay and Seth vs. the Apocalypse debuted on the interwebs as a trailer (above) for a short film by Superbad writers Rogen and Evan Goldberg, based on a story by Goldberg and Jason Stone, and starring Knocked Up and Undeclared co-stars Jay Baruchel and Seth Rogen. Now, according to Variety, the tale, which predictably about two guys vs. the apocalpyse, is headed for the big screen under the purview of Mandate Pictures’ Nathan Kahane, targeting a 2009 shoot.

I haven’t seen the short, but the trailer is amusing enough; I would expect that a feature-length version has them actually leave the room, though. For some reason, all I can think of is that it’s basically Seth Rogen and Jay Baruchel starring in a remake of The Mist.

The full theatrical trailer for Vin Diesel’s upcoming sci-fi actioner, Babylon AD, is up courtesy IGN Movies. In the film, which was based on the Maurice Dantec novel Babylon Babies, Diesel stars as a mercenery who “agrees to escort a woman from Russia to Germany, not realizing that she’s the host for an organism that a cult wants to harvest into a genetically-modified Messiah.”

Despite the waaaay overused temp soundtrack music (“Lux Aeterna,” originally from Clint Mansell’s Requiem for a Dream soundtrack) and a whole lot of generic sci-fi gobbledygook, the trailer’s “money shot” is pretty damn sweet. This one could be fun, if they’ve got a lot more up their sleeve than just a few cool special effects.

Gérard Depardieu, Michelle Yeoh, Charlotte Rampling, Mark Strong, Radek Bruna, Melanie Thierry and Lambert Wilson co-star; Mathie Kassovitz (Gothika) directs. Babylon AD arrives in the US on August 29.

A trailer for The Women is online, right here. This one looks like it’s aimed squarely at the Sex and the City crowd, so it’s not my cup of tea, but the “Who’s Who” cast of Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Eva Mendes, Debra Messing, Jada Pinkett Smith, Carrie Fisher, Cloris Leachman, Debi Mazar, Bette Midler, and Candace Bergen, will undoubtedly attract a shit-ton of estrogen. The Women will run rampant in theaters September 12.