With Matthew Vaughn off directing Kick-Ass and his once-proposed $300 million Thor epic but a memory, DJ Caruso (Disturbia, Eagle Eye) is now expressing interest in bringing Marvel’s Son of Odin to the big screen. In an interview with IESB he said…
“…I would definitely tackle it and I sort of wrestled with it before and I was always a fan of Thor growing up as a kid. I know that they [Marvel] have a script, but there’s something, there’s a fear I have about Thor and depending on what Thor story you want to tell, whether you want to bring Thor into the modern world or if you want to [...]

Yesterday was a semi-significant day in movie blogger history, comparative to the invention of the “Who Farted?” t-shirt. When TDK actor and beloved old geezer, Michael Caine, told MTV that a Warner Bros. exec had mentioned Johnny Depp for The Riddler and Philip Seymour Hoffman for The Penguin in Batman 3 (the borderline fan-fic sequel, hence the title), enlightened movie bloggers posted, podcasted, Twittered, filmed and pissed in snow diatribes like: “Enough!” “We have standards!” “This is bullshit, don’t get me started on Big Willie for Capt!” “I’m not going to mention it, but I am mentioning it, clever, innit?” Fitting then that MTV  decided to ask Senor Hoffman what [...]

When is it playful homage and when it is copyright infringement? The basis of a new lawsuit alleges that Steven Spielberg and Dreamworks lifted the plot, characters and protagonist for the studio’s 2007 hit, Disturbia, from the 1954 Alfred Hitchcock classic Rear Window. Note that Spielberg personally did not work as a director or producer on this production. More specifically, the lawsuit claims that Dreamworks should have sought the rights to the short story, “Murder From a Fixed Viewpoint,” the source material from which the Hitchcock film was adapted.
“In the Disturbia film the defendants purposefully employed immaterial variations or transparent rephrasing to produce essentially the same story as the Rear [...]

UPDATE: So, Harry Knowles says there is no truth to the rumor. Ohlalala. I do think Luke’s quote is trivial, but we’ll see…
Not much to go on, but during an interview with MTV, actor Derek Luke (Miracle at St. Anna) said that “[Marvel] offered Will Smith Captain America” and added that “it just shows you how times have changed.” Other actors recently rumored for the Marvel character include Matthew McConaughey (thankfully, not happening) and Brad Pitt (who’s also been mentioned for Thor).
Entitled The First Avenger: Captain America and set for a May 6th, 2011 release—just weeks before The Avengers—Marvel Studios President of Production, Kevin Feige, confirmed over the summer that [...]

We’re pretty sure some type of “clarification” will be sent out shortly regarding the following statement from Michael Caine, but for now, it’s the first confirmation from someone involved in the Batman franchise about new villains and casting choices. And it’s HUGE. The ubiquitous rumors about Johnny Depp as The Riddler and Philip Seymour Hoffman as The Penguin will undoubtedly escalate after this. Here’s what Caine told MTV’s Splash Page…
“I was with [a Warner Bros.] executive and I said, ‘Are we going to make [a sequel to The Dark Knight]?’ They said yeah. I said, ‘How the hell are we going to top Heath? And he says ‘I’ll tell you [...]

When we reported Friday that Sam Raimi would return for Spider-Man 4 and possibly 5, there was speculation that his new Evil Dead film would once again be brushed aside. Not so. Well, sort of. According to Screen Daily, Raimi has given the okay for a 3D theatrical movie based on Evil Dead: The Musical, to be co-directed by the musical’s original director, Christopher Bond, and choreographer, Hinton Battle. Bond would like to begin filming next spring with members of the original cast, though the filmmakers will need to address “serious rights issues.”
In the past, Slashfilm readers who have attended the off-Broadway production, which began in 2004 in Toronto, seem [...]

Harold Ramis sent a casual email to the Chicago Tribune over the weekend per confirmation of Ghostbusters 3. He clarified that Bill Murray, who has expressed much hesitation about a second sequel in the past—even preferring to do voice work on a once proposed animated sequel—is game…
“yes, columbia is developing a script for GB3 with my year one writing partners, gene stupnitsky and lee eisenberg.  judd apatow is co-producing year one and has made several other films for sony, so of course the studio is hoping to tap into some of the same acting talent. aykroyd, ivan reitman and i are consulting at this point, and according to dan, bill [...]

A real genius has put together this formidable side-by-side photo collection of Christian Bale and Kermit the Frog. The uncanny resemblance has haunted us all weekend, so we now pass the monkey’s paw onto you, our dear readers. Here’s a sample. We’ve excluded any and all comparison shots from Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. If you are “so serious” about those films do not click the link.
via STIH

Discuss: Will Newsies ever be the same?

Street fight! Captured is a new NSFW documentary from directors, Ben Solomon and Dan Levin, that examines the historical work of Clayton Patterson, a man who captured New York’s Lower East Side fly-on-the-wall style for 30 years using photography and video. The NY Times once said of Patterson’s work:
He has amassed a huge day-by-day visual history of the area, told mainly through …its myriad and diverse faces: tenement kids and homeless people, poets and politicians, drug dealers and drag queens, rabbis and santeros, beat cops, graffiti taggers, hookers, junkies, punks, anarchists, mystics and crackpots.
And the trailer dutifully exemplifies this while segueing into vintage Oprah clips where Patterson [...]

Time to cap the day with a few beers, the robot, and a slightly promising tidbit: Warner Bros. has finally set a (final???) release date for Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are. You know, the family film based on the children’s book that has united geeks, author Maurice Sendak, hipsters and lil’ kids in a bitter internet warz against The Man and overprotective parents. Coming Soon reports that we can all meet up and celebrate our giant WIN….over a year from now, on October 16, 2009. Yah mon, this is the same release date that was announced back in February before the film was wiped off the slate. GlugGlug\o/Glug.

UPDATE: 09/10/08: IFC ultimately purchased the domestic rights to Che, not Magnolia Pictures. It will run for one week in December, and then be released in January via on-demand.
Word from the TIFF via the NY Post is that Steven Soderbergh’s $60 million 4-hour-plus Che Guevara biopic, Che, has finally been picked up by Mark Cuban’s Magnolia Pictures for a U.S. theatrical release. Take note: the company has chimed in and called the deal “premature,” though no denials have been issued. If so, we’ll update accordingly.
It’s speculated online by the NYP’s Lou Lemnick and others that Magnolia will release the film—re: not films?—this December to qualify for the Oscar race. [...]

Nikki Finke reports that Sony has locked in both Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire for Spider-Man 4. Kirsten Dunst’s Mary Jane character is said to be included in the sequel(s), so the actress is rumored to be returning as well. And in the execs’ best case scenario, Raimi and Maguire would shoot Spider-Man 5 back-to-back. This would confirm what we reported this May: Screenwriter James Vanderbilt (Zodiac, The Rundown) turned in a script for the third sequel that, much to Sony’s liking, segued smoothly into an arc for a fifth film. Specific details on what it took to bring back the original star and director are not yet available. Spider-Man [...]

Tom Cruise will produce and possibly star in an adaptation of Douglas Preston’s non-fiction bestseller, The Monster of Florence, for his studio United Artists. When Preston relocated his family to Italy in 2000, he soon became aware of a nearby murder committed years ago by the region’s serial killer, the Monster of Florence. Intrigued, he teamed up with a local obsessive investigative journalist to track him down. This culminated in the duo falling under the suspicion of authorities, with the journalist ultimately being thrown behind bars and pegged for a short time as the “Monster.”
You may recall seeing these highly engrossing events reported on Dateline NBC. Clearly, there are parallels [...]

Here we go. Days ago, rumors hit that Russell Crowe was set to play Watson to Robert Downey Jr.’s Sherlock Holmes. To which the Internet huffed, “He’s not roundy enough!” And the Internet was right, but not quite. Not a first. According to those Palin-loathing dudes at Latino Review, Crowe is in talks to play Moriarty, Holmes creepy-smart arch-nemesis. You’ll recall that director Guy Ritchie only pffft’d Crowe for the aforementioned sidekick role, which still hasn’t been cast. LR report that Gerard Butler was offered the part, but didn’t bite. Not roundy enough?
Coming Soon report that prolific British actor, Mark Strong (Body of Lies, Rocknrolla, Sunshine) has signed on, and [...]

The Hughes Brothers have been absent from the big screen for far too long. Their last feature, the so-so adaptation of Alan Moore’s From Hell with Johnny Depp, was released way back in 2001. Since then, they’ve dabbled in docs and TV work, so I’m pretty astounded by my acute anticipation for Hughes Bros movies. I mean, the wild-eyed energy and knack for cool they displayed with Menace II Society and Dead Presidents made a stir in the industry more than 10 years ago.
Denzel Washington will star in the directors’ Book of Eli for mega-producer Joel Silver. Described by screenwriter Gary Whitta (upcoming Akira movies) as a “kind of post-apocalyptic [...]