Werner Herzog is one our favorite characters around these parts, so it only follows that someone would want to put that character in a movie. Paramount has announced that Herzog will play the villain in One Shot, written and directed by Chris McQuarrie (Usual Suspects, Valkyrie), based on the book series by Lee Child. I hope he’s only doing this to finance a documentary about blind pygmies of the Serengeti, who create beautiful poetry and then fight to the death with yak bones.

The book series by Lee Child follows Jack Reacher, a former military policeman turned drifter. In “One Shot,” Reacher investigates the case of a sniper accused of murdering five people before being captured.
Herzog will play The Zec, an ex-prisoner of war who arranges and stages the killing and is the head of the conspiracy. “One Shot” is the first major acting role for the German auteur, aside from cameos and an occasional voice-over work on “The Simpsons.”

Said Herzog on why he was interested in working with Tom Cruise, “I haff been eenterested een za giggling dwarf ever seence I shoot ‘Even Dwarf Started Schmall’ een 1970, about za laughing dwarf oo takeower za zoo oont crucify za monkey. I see za parallel seetoation viss Tom Cruise, ollyvood, oont Scientologist. Oont ven I look eento za eyes uff za scientologeest, I see nuzzink. Zee abyss. Za cold eendifference uff nature. Vair some people see za human soul, I see styleests, publiceests, oont Schtarbucks fockeeng coffeez. Behind za eyes ist nuzzinkness, oont it is poetry. Eez beautiful.”

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Did you enjoy X-Men:First Class?  Ha! Fox tricked you! Their fluke enjoyable movie was all just a ruse to make another unwanted sequel to a rightfully forgotten franchise! Ever since Darren Aronofsky pretended to want to direct it for a few months and then went out for a pack of cigs and never came back, Wolverine 2 has been looking for a new daddy.  Now it seems they’ve found it in the form of James Mangold, whose filmography includes some solid flicks like 3:10 to Yuma and Copland, some overrated mehs like Girl Interrupted and Walk the Line, and some stinkers like Kate & Leopold and (*gulp*) Knight and Day. Deadline reports that Mangold is the first choice of both Hugh Jackman** (who apparently holds no grudges about Kate & Leopold) and 20th Century Fox.  So I guess you could say Hugh Jackman is digging for Man Gold.

Negotiations are about to get underway, but I’m told that Mangold will take the helming job on the sequel to the X-Men spinoff film, a post that became vacant when Darren Aronofsky dropped out of the film in March. I’d heard that Mangold was on a very short list coming into this week, along with Warrior director Gavin O’Connor and Brooklyn’s Finest helmer Antoine Fuqua. I’ve heard that Fox will look to start principal photography in the fall. Scripted by Christopher McQuarrie, The Wolverine takes place mostly in Japan. [Deadline]

With James Mangold directing Christopher McQuarrie, there’s a chance we could get Usual Suspects meets 3:10 to Yuma, but also a chance we get The Tourist meets Knight and Day.  Too early to tell, really.  But I’ll say this, I’m already off to a great start on my X-Men-themed gay porn parody, MAN GOLD: JackMan vs. Assbender.

**Does six-foot Hugh Jackman playing a superhero who’s supposed to be short cancel out elfin Tom Cruise playing a guy who’s supposed to be 6’5″?  Discuss.

Just to save you some time, the best quote in this story is “Cruise has always been interested in the Reacher series.”  Well sure, long as there aren’t any gays in there.  Anyway, the story is that Tom Cruise is in negotiations to play “former military policeman-turned drifter” Jack Reacher in One Shot, from writer-director Chris McQuarrie, based on the book series by Lee Child.  This may prove difficult, one because Tom Cruise isn’t a very good actor (exceptions: Magnolia, Collateral), and two because he’s only three apples tall in high heels.

Fans of the Reacher book will have to absorb this development, because Cruise is very different physically from the bruising tough guy who has created mayhem over 15 bestselling novels that have sold 40 million copies. In the books, Reacher is 6’5,” about 250 pounds, and when you are on the business end of his clenched fists, you are most likely going to be spitting out teeth and getting fitted for a cast or two.

Wait, do fists have a non business end?  Oh, Mike Fleming, don’t ever change.

So what if he’s not as tall and beefy as Reacher? I’m told that the author himself is excited about Cruise playing the role, that Cruise personifies the qualities Reacher displays in the books. “Reacher’s size in the books is a metaphor for an unstoppable force, which Cruise portrays in his own way,” Child said when he threw his support behind the move.

Headline it, NY Post: “Child behind Cruise as beefy jack reacher.”  See also: “Child’s beefy jack reacher gets cruisey in new movie.”

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There’ve been so many GD Darren Aronofsky stories over the last couple weeks that I could a separate site called What Will Darren Aronofsky Do.com.  But now at least it seems like there’s actual news to report, so I’m just going to rush through it as fast as I can.  Long story short, it looks like he’s going to direct Wolverine 2 after all:

One of Hollywood’s biggest directing gigs looks done. Darren Aronofsky’s deal to direct 20th Century Fox’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine 2  is close enough that discussion has turned to shooting the sound stage portions of the film in New York so the filmmaker and Hugh Jackman don’t have to inconvenience their families. A March start date is being eyed so that Aronofsky has time to open Black Swan and be available for the inevitable awards season obligations. When the New York scenes are completed, they’ll head to Japan to shoot the bulk of the Christopher McQuarrie-scripted movie. [Deadline]

Notice they said “biggest”, not “best.” How the hell did they get the director of The Wrestler and the writer of Usual Suspects to take Fox’s sloppy seconds?  I guess it’s better than getting Brett Ratner, but am I really supposed to be happy about this news?  It’s like hiring an Iron Chef to dress my nachos at the Am/Pm.  Will these nachos taste better?  Yeah, probably, but I think I’d rather just go to his restaurant.

With 1000 douchey frat guys dressing like Maverick and Ice Man every Halloween for the past 10 years (many of them good friends of mine), it was only a matter of time before one of them would go to work for a studio and bring back Top Gun.  Which is exactly what Vulture is reporting, saying Paramount has put out offers to Jerry Bruckheimer and Tony Scott, and hoping Chris McQuarrie (Usual Suspects, Valkyrie, The Tourist) will write the script, with a smaller role for Tom Cruise. It would have to be a different kind of script if set in the present, since the old Top Gun School in Miramar, outside San Diego, on which the original was based, has moved to Fallon, Nevada, which will really deflate a guy’s beach volleyball.

YOU CAN RIDE MY TAIL ANY TIME, VULTURE:

At a junket for Disney’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Bruckheimer let slip  that he had been “recently approached again to start talking about [a sequel]” but noted that “the aviation community has completely changed since we made the movie a long time ago.” Since 1986, the TOPGUN syllabus has been changed so the focus is far less on the spectacular and dramatic air-to-air dogfights that defined Top Gun and far more about teaching U.S. pilots to drop very large bombs on very small ground targets.

But we’re told by a source close to the project that McQuarrie — who is friendly with Cruise — has found a way to incorporate Maverick, and what’s more, we hear that Cruise has agreed to take a smaller role in the film, provided it’s not too “obvious” a part.

We’re told that a big part of the reason [for a sequel] is the influence of David Ellison, the 27-year-old son of Oracle Corp. founder — and world’s sixth-richest man — Larry Ellison. Despite being only 3 years old when Top Gun first strafed theaters, Ellison clearly became a big fan of the film on VHS, and went on to become both an aerobatic pilot and instrument-rated commercial pilot before attending USC’s film school and then launching his own production company, Skydance. His first production was the 2006 World War I drama Flyboys, in which he also starred.

It would be an interesting move for Bruckheimer, who’s been doing nothing but horrendous piles of farts for like 15 years now.  If it’s hard to reconcile today’s Bruckheimer with the guy listed as a producer on Top Gun, Crimson Tide, Days of Thunder, and The Rock, that’s because 99% of the movies Jerry Bruckheimer produced that weren’t terrible were with his old partner, Don Simpson, who died of a drug overdose in 1996.  Vulture wonders if this possible Paramount project is Bruckheimer’s way of testing the waters away from Disney, where he’s produced most of his terrible movies since 2000.

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