Battleship (BASED ON THE CRITICALLY-ACCLAIMED BOARD GAME!) has a new trailer out, and after watching it, I’ve come up with an awesome new slogan: Battleship — It’s not the SIZE of the ship, it’s the ‘splosions in the ocean! (The motion of the ‘splosion?) No, no, please, you can have that one, free of charge. Really, it’s my pleasure.

Which is to say, yeah, it’s still about alien battleships that jump. But it’s also got Admiral Rihanna (yes, Rihanna plays a naval officer. Yes, Rihanna the singer) dispensing folksy wisdom. “MAH DADDY DUN TOLE ME DA ALIEEN GONE COME BACK ONE DAY! HE SAY WE AIN’T ALONE!” Oh, Magic Negro. What would our action films be without you?

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I’m excited to report this story, because just the phrase “bloated tentpole” gets me all hot and bothered (mmm, yeah, baby, I want you in all four quadrants). So last we heard, Disney had cancelled Bruckheimer’s (bloated tentpole) The Lone Ranger, because it was going to cost $250 million. And it cost $250 million because, obviously, it had werewolves in it (or more specifically, according to ThePlaylist, “supernatural wolves” – “the 2009 draft we read by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio features supernatural wolves, a legion of coyotes and the Wendigo, a cannibalistic Native American spirit”).

Today, the Hollywood Reporter says that in the most recent script, the werewolves were gone. …And it was STILL going to cost $250 million. Why the what I don’t even…

According to sources who have read recent drafts, three massive action set pieces involving trains remain, including one described as the biggest train sequence in film history.

Was a it a train sequence EVEN BIGGER THAN A MISSILE THE SIZE OF THE CHRYSLER BUILDING??!? Anyway, you’ll be glad to learn that they’re still trying to get this film made, and the latest is that Jerry Bruckheimer and director Gore Verbinski have lowered their fees by $10 million (!!!) and trimmed the budget to around $242 million. But Disney still wants it at $220 million or less. And even at that price, they claim it would have to gross $800 million worldwide just to turn a profit. Holy. Sh*t.

Even at the cost Disney has targeted, the film would have to gross about $800 million worldwide to be profitable when marketing and rich backends to Depp, Verbinski and Bruckheimer are factored in.

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Samuel L. Jackson is widely (and deservedly) respected as an Oscar-nominated, multiple award-winning actor who can deliver the word “motherf*cker” better than anyone in the world. And yet, for all the fame and fortune and credibility he’s accumulated, he probably couldn’t name all the movies he made last month. He’s the only man in the world who could go to a strip club and make it rain paychecks. Proving that he’ll agree to star in literally anything, he stars in this latest trailer for Arena, alongside underwear spokesperson Kellan Lutz, a Twilight castmember so blandly repulsive the AP once confused him with Cam Gigandet. Normally you’d have to find a dog, shave its ass, and kick it backward into an open sewer for that.

David Lord finds himself forced into the savage world of a modern gladiatorial arena, where men fight to the death for the entertainment of the online masses.

A protagonist forced to take part in gladiatorial combat in a dystopian future? Possibly the least original action-movie premise outside of someone kidnapping a retired super-soldier’s wife/daughter. Of course, this only makes me like Samuel L. Jackson that much more. I get the feeling that for ten bucks, he’d come to my apartment and sing “Buttercup” until I fell asleep.

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Oscar-nominated director Jim Sheridan is known for movies like My Left Foot, In the Name of the Father, In America, and Get Rich or Die Tryin’ (one of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn’t belong).  He seems to be continuing his “lol wut” career trajectory with Dream House starring Daniel Craig, Naomi Watts, Rachel Weisz, and Elias Koteas, all of whom deserve better than this.  The film releases September 30th, one year after it was supposed to come out.  The delay was for reshoots (always a good sign), which had to be delayed a year because Daniel Craig had better sh-t to do.

Kind of sad that the guy who made My Left Foot is now making a horror movie reminiscent of cheesy ’70s gimmicks like haunted houses, secret dwarf hookers, “it was all a dream OMGZORS”, and “the killer was you the whole time”.  Let’s just plow through this depressing development and describe this awful, movie-spoiling trailer.

Daniel Craig quits his “high power job in Manhattan” to relocate his hot wife and two adorable, never-bratty kids to a “quaint New England town”.  This never happens in cinema.  Soon weird things go down and they find out a murder occurred before they moved in, which they weren’t informed of by the realtor because laws don’t exist in this movie universe.  The wife and two kids who used to live in the house were murdered and the only suspect was the husband, who was institutionalized because deinstitutionalization never happened in this universe either.  Craig goes to the mental institution to talk to the guy for some reason, and he finds out *record scratch/spoiler alert* he is that guy and his family was dead the whole time. WHAT A TOTALLY ORIGINAL CONCEPT, AND PERFECTLY BEFITTING INCLUSION IN THE TRAILER.  Gaaah, f–k you, Dream House trailer.  I hate you so much.

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When I heard Lorenzo Di Bonaventura was planning an adaptation of the Atari game Asteroids, I was super excited because 4-bit images of rocks are my favorite. Now it gets even better, as Vulture reports that Universal has offered the project to Roland Emmerich (2012, The Day After Tomorrow) a director who’s really good at blowing things up and nothing else.  The guy made a movie about Shakespeare and the trailer had cannon fights in it, so it’s a safe bet that this will also include fire.

Vulture hears that Asteroids has just been offered to Emmerich by Universal, which is developing the feature film with Transformers: Dark of the Moon producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura. The script comes from Matt Lopez, best known for writing Disney’s The Race to Witch Mountain.

But it’s not all bad, he also wrote Adam Sandler’s Bedtime Stories and Nic Cage’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

Now, wait. We already know what you’re thinking: Doesn’t even thinking about directing this violate Emmerich’s self-proclaimed ban on making any more movies showing the destruction of Earth? Ah, but hold! Our spies tell us that, technically, no, it does not, because Asteroids is actually set after the destruction of Earth!
We’re told it’s an ersatz sequel to world-ending Emmerich films like Independence Day and 2012, but one in which the aliens have won. The remnants of human civilization are now living on far-flung colonies within an asteroid belt alongside aliens. The survivors were led to believe that this alien civilization was benevolent, rescuing them from doom, but ultimately discover that the aliens have engineered Earth’s destruction, and soon will do the same for the rest of humankind. [Vulture]

Phew, for a second there I was really worried about Roland Emmerich violating his principles. Anyway, this should be great. Movies based on primitive videogames are always just the best.

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