This kid will be addicted to heroin in five years, if he's not already. Count on it.

Wow.  I’ve hated the E*Trade baby ever since they replaced the original, expressive one with the awful new guy, who just gazes vacantly into the spiritual world like a miniature Paul Walker (which makes it all the more creepy to realize we’re watching a confused baby with a CGI mouth but I digress).  Anyway, now the studio that brought us Big Momma’s Houses, Meet Dave, and I Love You Beth Cooper is making a movie out of it. (*RECORD SCRATCH*):

20th Century Fox is developing a film based on the E*Trade talking babies. No. I am not making this up. Actress and writer Katie Dippold (“Parks and Recreation,” “MADtv”) is penning the script. And no. I’m not kidding. The film is a “mission movie,” about a group of talking babies trying to make their way across the playground. [via Pajiba]

Uh, what?  Where are there talking babies on the playground?  What’s on the other side of this playground that would make these talking babies want to cross it?  And why does this take up 90 minutes of screen time?  Moreover, WHO’S GOING TO GIVE ME STOCK TIPS NOW??  I give up, this is too stupid.  I just hope there’s one girl baby who’s always scooching her itchy vagina around on the grass like a dog, and that Lindsay Lohan is convinced it’s her.

(Tentatively starring Tom Hanks and Autofellatio Walrus)

I know this is meant to be a comedy site, but when I say that Warner Bros has bought a treatment for Leonardo Da Vinci and the Soldiers of Forever, I stress that I am not making this up.  Imagine the Da Vinci Code if Tom Hanks was actually Leonardo Da Vinci.

The project from producer Adrian Askarieh re-imagines Da Vinci as a member of a secret society who falls headlong into a supernatural adventure that pits the man against Biblical demons in a story involving secret codes, lost civilizations, hidden fortresses and fallen angels. Think “National Treasure” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark” by way of “Clash of the Titans.” [THR]

If they don’t reimagine this drawing as an eight-limbed, CGI monster in 3D I will eat my own sh*t.

Transformers and G.I. Joe made lots of money and were sort of based on kids’ toys, so now genius film and toy executives everywhere are falling all over themselves to greenlight movies about absolutely anything kids play with.  In fact, just yesterday I was putting the finishing touches on the script for My Boy Scout Leader’s Wiener 3D.  But while I wait for financing on that, Helix Films has announced a movie about erector sets.  IN GLORIOUS 3-D!

Helix is currently developing an original script for a 3D feature film with an eye towards creating a franchise based on the Erector brand that could also expand to other entertainment platforms including television and video games.
“The three partners of Helix Films all grew up playing with Erector Set toys but in different countries–Kevin Foo in Australia, Gaukhar Noortas in Kazakhstan and me and my brother Robert in the U.S.–so our partnership with Meccano is very personal, as well as exciting,” said Steven-Charles Jaffe (Ghost, Star Trek IV, Strange Days) of Santa Monica-based Helix Films. “We believe the iconic Erector brand offers generational appeal with global reach, providing a tremendous platform to create a thrilling film franchise that boys, girls and adults will all adore.” [via ComingSoon]

Steven-Charles?  You get one name, butthole, pick one.  Jaffe later went on to say:

JAFFE:  Multi-platform, vertically-integrated, synergy, web 2.0!  SOCIAL MEDIA, VIRAL MARKETING, GLOBAL POSITIONING, MMOS, LARPING, MESSAGE BOARDS, TOTAL IMMERSION, SPREADSHEETS, POWER POINT!  *appears to have breakdown, cackles wildly, smearing poop on own face*

INVESTOR 1: He seems to have a real passion for this project.

INVESTOR 2: Yeah, I’m sold. Cocaine?

INVESTOR 1:  Yes, please.

(How nice am I for using former gladiator Gina Carano for the banner pic instead of Titan? That guy is gayer than Liberace cornholing a Care Bear.)

American Gladiators was only ever successful in the highly competitive, Saturday-afternoon-between-football-games time slot.  NBC tried to run it at prime time in 2008 and it got canceled after 21 episodes.  But there’s still an American Gladiators movie in the works, because hey, people have heard of it, right?  There’s no surer sign of creative bankruptcy than reviving an idea that wasn’t that good 20 years ago.

Patriot Games/Varsity Blues scribe Peter Iliff will write a screenplay based on an idea by former Legendary Pictures chief marketing officer Scott Mednickis who is producing the feature. Iliff is probably best known for writing Point Break, and recently wrote the upcoming sequel Point Break Indo.

The film will be set inside the world created in the tv show and will present “a compelling story that launches a whole new set of characters” with the “Herculean characters as superheroes.” [/Film]

Did anyone honestly ever watch some roided-out freak with shaved pits knock a guy into a pool with a giant Q-tip and think, “Oh my gosh, they’ve created a whole new world!”  Because that’s what I like to call “Friday.”

Hollywood is making a movie about the origins of the environmental activist group Greenpeace, so naturally they hired Jon Turtletaub, the guy who directed 3 Ninjas.

Set primarily in the late 1970s and early 1980s, story will be told through the eyes of the controversial organization’s charismatic founding members, Bob Hunter and Rex Weyler. The duo led an eccentric group of pacifists, ecologists, musicians, teachers, sailors, and scientists as they attempted — often successfully — to disrupt American and French nuclear bomb tests, Japanese and Russian whaling ships and Norwegian infant harp seal hunters.

Holy sh-t, Norway lets their infants hunt harp seals?  Scandinavia is so metal.

Two books will shape the narrative: Weyler’s “Greenpeace: How a Group of Ecologists, Journalists, and Visionaries Changed the World” and Hunter’s “Warriors of the Rainbow: A Chronicle of the Greenpeace Movement.” [Editor's Note: Gayest. Title. Ever. Might as well call yourselves "Sparkleponies of Justice."] The producers are looking to hire a writer for the project and have had early discussions with Aaron Sorkin. [Variety]

It’s easy to make fun of them for hiring the director of 3 Ninjas to shoot a film about complex issues of environmental activism, but I realize it’s a little unfair.  After all, he also directed The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, National Treasure, The Kid, and Cool Runnings.  “Hooray, we turned back a whaling ship!”
(*Air guitar, record scratch, bike horn, bass riff from Seinfeld*)
Read the rest of this entry »