On Thursday, we played pinata with the rumor that Brett Ratner was in talks to helm the $100 million R-rated Conan reboot. Well, Latino Review put the gossip in focus, reporting that Ratner merely took a meeting with Nu Image, and evidently so have a lot of other directors. We think a few of them would be ace for the job.
Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor (Crank, Crank 2, Crank 3/3D, Game, Jonah Hex)

At Slashfilm: In Crank We Trust (a lot). With their debut feature, the duo hit the ground running with so much batty confidence and aggression that we’ll support any genre fare they wish to assault with a bullet-time [...]

HBO has killed the planned television adaptation of Garth Ennis‘ popular Vertigo comic series Preacher. Mark Steven Johnson broke the news to ComicsContinuum, claiming that the project got to the budgeting stage before it was axed.
“The new head of HBO felt it was just too dark and too violent and too controversial. Which, of course, is kind of the point,” said Johnson. “It was a very faithful adaptation of the first few books, nearly word for word. They offered me the chance to redevelop it but I refused. I’ve learned my lesson on that front and I won’t do it again. So I’m afraid it’s dead at HBO.”
While this is [...]

Robert Rodriguez, Rose McGowan, and director Douglas Aarniokoski sat down to answer a bunch of questions from fans about Red Sonja at Comic Con today, and also took the liberty of showing off some of the teaser poster artwork they had come up with. Putting aside the bizarre coincidence that one of the teasers was the third poster this week to play up the hot-girl-licks-dripping-blood theme (complete with the contrast of the pale white skin against the harsh red hues), the artwork on display amounted to some damn fine looking imagery. I particularly like the shot of McGowan sitting on a mountain of skulls with her glowing red hair blowing [...]

Don’t worry, /Film isn’t dyeing its hair purple and designing a line of Hot Topic apparel. According to various gossip sites, Rose McGowan and Robert Rodriguez have split, thus throwing McGowan’s roles in Barbarella aka “my space ship is nearly finished, seriously,” the newly announced Red Sonja revamp, and Girls in Chains! into question. If true, this is like the end of an era in GeekLand, and we’re pretty happy about it.
Discuss: Who should play Barbarella? Some sites have tipped Jessica Alba. Erm.

Robert Rodriguez always has like five projects going at the same time. He’s been hard at work “developing” Barbarella (or trying to convince the studio to give him the money to make it with his future wife Rose McGowan in the lead) and just announced a TV show called Women In Chains (also starring Rose McGowan), which he’s pitching to various networks, but his next feature film to go into production will be… drumroll please…
Shorts is a family comedy adventure that follows an 11-year-old boy who is hit in the head with a rainbow-colored rock that grants wishes to anyone who holds it. Chaos erupts in this small suburb where [...]

We bring you this post live from the vacant, fully constructed sets of Robert Rodriguez’s Barbarella remake. It’s really damp and dark in here. Is that a thong? Anyhow, genre movie auteur Rodiguez and his fiancee, Rose McGowan, are pitching a new hands-on television series entitled Women in Chains! to various networks, among them NBC (?) and FX according to the Hollywood Reporter. As previously dished and heavily punctuated by AICN, the planned series is an ode to female prison exploitation fare (re: grindhousey) featuring “sadistic guards, cafeteria hosedowns, mud wrestling and violent vendettas.” Settle down everyone Joe Bob Briggs.
McGowan, the future Barbarella and leg-gunning Planet Terror muse, [...]

“You could have used a scantily pic.”

Actress Rose McGowan tells MTV that “I’ve got part of a spaceship built for me!” In other words, she’s the pale, titular character in Robert Rodriguez’s big budget remake of Barbarella and the doubters can eat cake. We’ve known about her attachment to the role made famous by a pin-up era Jane Fonda for eons now, but last year rumors persisted that Universal wasn’t copacetic with her casting. Not so, she says. The only obstacle blocking her kitschy spaceship from flight is the looming possibility of a SAG strike…
“Half of the sets have been built. The costumes are done,” McGowan confessed. …['Barbarella'] [...]

Update (04/01/08): JoBlo reports via a reader who attended the same event as Bloody Disgusting that Danny Trejo said that Robert Rodriguez may “start up again” on Machete as early as this month. More on this as/if it develops…
Gore hounds and knife show infomerical zombies, rejoice! In yet more machete-related news, Blood Disgusting ran into fanboy favorite Danny Trejo over the weekend and he gave the requisite Machete update. According to Mr. Trejo, not only is the first (and only?) Grindhouse spin-off movie still happening, but there’s been talk of a trilogy. Keeping in mind that the first pseudo-exploitation flick would go straight-to-DVD, three of them wouldn’t seem completely outside [...]

Numerous sites are reporting that the following poster is A.) new; B.) significant proof that Robert Rodriguez’s straight-to-DVD Machete movie is moving forward or completed; C.) proof that, in hindsight, Grindhouse was the scuzzy masterpiece promised to us; D.) wall-worthy.
Unlike the SAT, all of these bubble answers are wrong, even D.), which is wrong by default because you’d have to trek into the mall and into the store, the one where 12-year-olds “buy” Doc Martens and Sex Pistols piggy banks, to purchase the Machete poster to hang on your wall. Unless you waited outside of the mall for it to come to you, in which case, we’ll count D.) and [...]

In the story of big budget remake of Barbarella, Universal and Robert Rodriguez split over budget issues or his refusal to cast anyone other than his girlfriend Rose McGowan in the lead role (depending on what story you read). The director’s attempts to lower the budget from $80 million to $60 million have thus far been unsuccessful. And with a writers strike now in effect, the project is probably on hold indefinitely. So what is Rodriguez to do?
LatinoReview has heard that Warner Bros is interested in having the Sin City director tackle the Clash of the Titans remake. A while back it was reported that Raiders and Empire screenwriter Lawrence [...]

Nikki Finke has confirmed Robert Rodriguez’ story with her Universal sources, and it APPEARS that McGowan wasn’t the sore point in the Barbarella project after all. Apparently the Universal execs fell in love with Rose, who appeared in an early screen test back in July.
“a rather spectacular screen test of Rose playing the role of Barbarella that also demonstrated Robert’s vision and visual style for the movie. We all saw that it would work and signed on.”
“And all of us got our arms around the real movie Robert wanted to make. It had grown in its ambition. Robert’s visualization of a sci-fi universe flushed out in set pieces and sequences [...]

Last week The New York Observer broke the news that Universal Studios had backed out of Robert Rodriguez’s big screen big-budget remake of Barbarella because Robert was unable to budge on the casting choice of his new fiance, Rose McGowan. Of course, McGowan isn’t a big enough star to carry a “$100 million film.”
“It’s sort of embarrassing for everyone involved,” Observer’s source said. “No one thinks Rose can carry the movie, but Robert won’t listen.”
Our friends at IESB talked to Robert, who of course denies that the production trouble had anything to do with casting. Rodriguez claims that it had to do with the skyrocketing budget, which is currently around [...]

Many people have recommended the Preacher comic book series to me, but I’ve yet to pick it up. For several years, a film adaptation was in the works by Kevin Smith’s production company - View Askew Productions, with James Marsden attached to play the lead. In November 2006, it was announced that Mark Steven Johnson was producing the series as a one-hour HBO television series. Johnson is like the Uwe Boll of Comic Book movies (oka, may-be not THAT bad), having directed Daredevil and Ghost Rider. So when his name was mentioned, most fans were outraged. Pretty in Pink director Howard Deutch was named to helm the pilot episode, which [...]

Last we heard, Kate Beckinsale was in consideration to play the lead role in Robert Rodriguez’s remake of Barbarella. But to be honest, if Rodriguez’s name wasn’t attached to the project, we wouldn’t have even known that much.  And even then, I was kind of hoping that this was going to be one of those projects that fell into development hell.
Well, it gets even worse. JoBlo is reporting that Rodriguez’s girlfriend and Planet Terror star Rose McGowan is being used for FX test footage of the film. Could this mean McGowan is in? She wasn’t a big enough star to sell tickets for Grindhouse (which I still believe to be [...]

Ever since we first saw Kill Bill: Volume 1 and 2, we wondered what it would be like to see the whole movie together like Quentin Tarantino had originally intended. A special edition dvd release was promised, but never released. And in the wake of the Grindhouse failure, I only assumed that the studio would stay away from releasing a four hour plus movie, even on DVD.
Thankfully I was wrong. Amazon.com currently lists a November 6th 2007 street date for a 4-disc, 247-minute Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair DVD set.
Digital Bits also reports that “Grindhouse Presents Death Proof” is listed as a September 18th street date. No word on [...]