According to a Hollywood Reporter story, “Twentieth Century Fox is taking aggressive steps to keep its movie and TV scripts off of the Internet.”  The complaint in question is a suit against Patricia McIlvaine, a Long Island woman who posted approximately 100 scripts online.  You’d think living in Long Island would be punishment enough, but Fox wants $15 million.  The only new script named in the suit was for Deadpool, the upcoming Ryan Reynolds movie.  Hey, guys?  Just say they’re suing her over Deadpool. Who cares if scripts for old movies are online?  Who reads a script for a movie they can just watch?  What is this, reverse college?

Cliff’s Notes me while I hit this beer bong, Yahoo:

On her personal website, McIlvaine describes herself as a “struggling screenwriter who sells flowers over the phone by day and writes scripts by night.” [I smell Katherine Heigl vehicle! -Ed] She says she collected scripts that were already posted on the web and made a free online library of scripts in order to assist other screenwriters. She’s already soliciting donations for a legal defense fund.

Fox’s lawsuit mentions various scripts including “Aliens,” “Edward Scissorhands,” “Wall Street,” and “Glee.”

Ooh, Glee scripts.  Yes, God forbid the Gleeks have access to spoilers like, “Gwyneth Paltrow ruins popular song.”  (Serious, this clip is worse than cancer).  I guess what the paranoid old farts are worried about is someone reading a script, telling everyone it sucks, and people staying home (even though, in this case, reactions were pretty positive).  But as we’ve learned, the cardinal rule of Hollywood is that No One Ever Reads Anything. Fox is shooting themselves in the foot by not letting the eager do their jobs for them.  After all, what could’ve prevented a line like, “I know it sounds like Star Wars love, but you could do it, you could be Captain America,” better than someone actually reading the script?

Probably the biggest news today in the world of movies is that Robert Rodriguez and Fox are reportedly in negotiations for Rodriguez to direct Deadpool.  Which leads me to my next point, today is a really sucky news day.  Not that Robert Rodriguez directing Deadpool wouldn’t be news, it’s just that if that story were sex, today’s news would be rubbing your boner on a lady’s jacket on the subway.

Reports last month that Rodriguez had been offered the director’s chair on “Deadpool” met with a swirl of speculation and/or denials from the filmmaker’s camp as well as studio Fox. (The most anyone would agree to is that Rodriguez had been sent Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick**’s script.) [**The Zombieland guys]
But we’re hearing that after a few weeks of dancing, Rodriguez and studio Fox are negotiating. There’s no deal yet, and the sides need to agree on a number of key points, but it’s moved beyond the casual discussion stage and into the more substantive realm of deal points.
Rodriguez is making “Spy Kids 4,” which itself comes after he finished the exploitation action picture “Machete,” but would be looking for a big movie and one that can be marketed into a hit. [LATimes]

Robert Rodriguez seems like a pretty righteous Mexican and all, but this is still Fox we’re talking here.  I’ll give them a little credit for Predators (which Rodriguez produced), which was pretty good, if not exactly memorable.  But it’s going to be hard to make us forget what they did to Wolverine (whose story Deadpool will ignore, by the way):

It’s hard to imagine how crappy at your job you’d have to be to take the Wolverine of the comics and make that poster out of him.  It’s not quite as bad as this*, but it’s pretty damn close.   *not technically NSFW, but definitely disturbing.

Variety recently confirmed an earlier CHUD story that Zombieland writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick will write the script for Fox’s Deadpool movie, with Ryan Reynolds reprising his role from Wolverine.

Reynolds has been bulking up to play the DC Comics’ hero “Green Lantern,” which starts lensing next month. This means he would already be in superhero shape if the script for “Deadpool” is ready by summer.
The tone of “Deadpool,” which features an antihero as opposed to the more traditional heroic comic book protagonist, is very similar in tone to “Zombieland.” [Variety]

This sounds okay.  I liked pretty much everything about Zombieland except the idea to make it in the first place.  It’s just too bad Fox is overseeing this.  No matter what they write, Fox’ll probably force them to squeeze Kevin James or someone in there as the wacky sidekick — the subplot is that his pants keep falling down!  Which really complicates the mission to save Sandra Bullock’s Blackberry from an eagle. *Scratches record, kicks Robin Williams in the nuts*

(Wolverine gets super pissed when you suggest wearing sleeves. It’s already a sore subject for his posse.)

Unlike most of the other Marvel properties, Fox still owns the rights to X-Men.  And, as I often say of your mother, that’s a cow dey gon’ milk.  Empire recently caught up with producer Lauren Shuler Donner to get a status update on all the planned X-Men spinoffs, including Wolverine 2, Deadpool, X-Men First Class, Magneto, and xXx-Men: Marvel goes Diesel.  Just kidding about that last one, but this is Fox we’re talking, don’t be surprised.

On Wolverine 2:
“That’s the furthest along of all the X-Men projects on the boil. It’s actually the story we wanted to use for the first Wolverine film, but [Fox head honcho] Tom Rothman preferred to set the character up with an origin story first.  This movie will really focus on the relationship between Wolverine and Mariko, the daughter of a Japanese crime lord, and what happens to him in Japan.
And we wanted an A+ writer, so we want to Chris McQuarrie (Valkyrie, The Usual Suspects). He came in and has tightened the story and got really immersed in the whole thing – he’s in Japan in his head!

Donner added, “He keeps rubbing up against women on the subway, and the other day he tried to buy my daughter’s panties.  Someone’s gonna have to talk to the guy.”

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Variety today reports that Fox is planning a Deadpool movie, a spinoff of Wolverine starring Ryan Reynolds’ character, making semi-official the speculation based on the ending of Wolverine.  What the hell does that mean?  See the spoiler-y explanation after the jump (though keep in mind this is Wolverine we’re talking about here, it’s kind of hard to spoil a movie about a guy with claws).

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