Whoa, Big Momma’s House 3 and Yogi Bear on the SAME DAY??  What God did I please!  But anyway, yeah, it’s a 3D Yogi Bear movie with Justin Timberlake and Dan Aykroyd (nice try disguising your voices there, guys, but you do realize we have Google).  The studios have got appealing to the 6-year-old brain down to a science at this point (anything else would require ambition), which means that this has all the standard elements of every lame children’s film: a fart joke, CGI characters dancing to pop music, and someone getting hit in the butt a bunch of times (all kid movie protagonists spend half the movie smiling at the camera and swinging their butts from side to side, has anyone else noticed this?).

Basically, it’s exactly what you’d expect.  My only question is, where are the semen-filled bears I was promised in the poster?  Don’t tell me I have to wait for Yogi Bare.

"I'm going to chug vodka from this skull and punch a girl," he seems to be saying.

If you read movie news at all, and God help you if you do, you probably saw yesterday’s story about Dan Aykroyd saying that writers Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg* (The Office, Year One) had done “a strong first draft” of Ghostbusters 3 that he was “excited about working on.”  A bunch of sites took that to mean Aykroyd was rewriting the script, which seemed strange, because A., if everyone was as happy with the script like he said, why would he need to rewrite it?  And B., because Dan Aykroyd seems a bit nutty these days.

Anyway, the reason there are a million Ghostbusters 3 stories going around is the same reason there are a billion Arrested Development movie stories going around — lots of people involved. For the project to go forward, all the original players have to agree: Aykroyd, Ivan Reitman, Harold Ramis, and Bill Murray.  In order to make it, the studio (Columbia/Sony) has to keep everyone feeling like they’re involved, which is why the story seems to change depending on who you talk to.  I asked a source close to the project who I trust about it, and this was the update I got:

Aykroyd is involved enough that the studio will listen to his input, but he’s NOT doing a rewrite of the script, which the director (Reitman) and studio (Columbia) are already happy with.

Stupnitskenberg are currently the only writers on the project and as of now the studio has no plans to replace them

Ramis, Reitman, and Aykroyd have all signed on, and the script is going out to Bill Murray now.

Without Murray, there’s no movie. (And he’s always seemed pretty wishy-washy on it, but that’s kind of his thing).

If he agrees, pre-production will start early next year for a late spring/early summer start date and a Thanksgiving or Christmas 2012 release.

I usually try to stay away from the he said/she said stories about projects that have a million people involved, because honestly, I don’t care enough about any movie to write 10 separate speculative stories and corrections.  Sometimes I think the world would be a better place if everyone was as lazy as me.  But other times I think, hey, I wonder what’s on TV. Hey, I should go jerk off and eat a sandwich.

*I heard they once spike stripped Kurtzman and Orci at the annual male screenwriter duo tandem bike race.  Meanwhile, both teams agreed Hawk and Ostby are total fruitcakes.

Here’s the new trailer for Yogi Bear, WB’s 3d-enizing of the Hannah-Barbera sort-of classic.  If you were in our how-long-will-they-go-before-the-characters-dance-to-hip-hop pool, the folks who had “zero seconds” were the big winners.  Congratulations, Steve in accounting.  Anyway, they paid Dan Aykroyd and Justin Timberlake a bunch of money to provide the voices, and they both do Yogi and Boo-Boo impressions that leave them nearly unrecognizable.  It seems to me kind of like paying Morgan Freeman to read an entire book on tape in a Daffy Duck voice, but at least they managed not to imply that the bears have gay sex this time, so there’s that.

He’s (*fart*)er than the ave-ver-age bear!

[via IGN]

I’m trying out a new segment here on FilmDrunk, “Who trailer’d it better?”  I plan to use it whenever I want to combine two trailers into one post.  Today, we’ve got Yogi Bear and Titanic 2.

Yogi Bear
Dan Aykroyd does the introduction and he seems reeeally happy to be here.  In any case, we see that they’ve given Yogi the live-action CG mix treatment, a la Alvin & the Chipmunks and Furry Vengeance.  Aykroyd’s Yogi voice is a little different than the one you’re used to, sort of a cross between Rodney Dangerfield and an old Rabbi, though the CGI bear seems to have all Rodney’s mannerisms. Is it wrong that I was hoping he’d punch a girl?  Based on Nic Cage’s performance in Wicker Man, I’d just assumed that’s what bears do.  Anyway, it took them almost 40 seconds to get to a CGI animal, hip-hop dance scene, compared to 38 seconds for Beverly Hills Chihuahua and 22 for Alvin and the Chipmunks 2.  I am never, ever going to get back the 15 minutes I spent calculating that.

Titanic 2
With a title like that, it has to be good!  From the studio that brought you Transmorphers and Snakes on a Train!

Read the rest of this entry »

(Werner Herzog: “Oont ven I look eento za eyes uff za Yogi Beah, I see nuzzink.  Only za cold eendeeference uff CGI.”)

Remember when I told you about the computer-animated Yogi Bear movie?  You probably repressed the memory like the time your Little League coach got you fitted for a jock strap, but in case you needed a reminder that it was still happening, today they released the official poster.  The film is directed by Journey to the Center of the Earth‘s Eric Brevig, starring Dan Aykroyd and Justin Timberlake as Yogi and Boo Boo, plus Anna Faris and Christine Taylor.  Somewhere, Brendan Fraser stared morosely at his silent phone, a single tear rolling down his cheek.

Also, I just noticed this: what’s up with the cylindrical hole in that pie?  Did they invite Jason Biggs to the pick a nick?

[via YahooMovies]