This is the first trailer for the Disney/Jerry Bruckheimer joint, Prince of Persia.  An early version of it leaked online last night and some movie bloggers were having a big fight over whether it’s morally acceptable to post bootleg trailers before the official release from the studio.  To which I say, hey, get over (y)ourselves.  It’s a commercial for a movie, not the polio vaccine.

As for the movie in question, holy God what the hell is this?  I see they’ve reimagined ancient Persia as a land of spray-tanned white people with English accents. Meanwhile, cameras swoop and spin through spatially ambiguous CGI landscapes while Gemma Arterton whispers expository dialog in your ear like she wants to do you.  At least in the 2012 trailer you could kind of tell what was going on (i.e., CALIFORNIA IS GOING DOWN!).  In this one, Jake Gyllenhaal is running from… uh… something… and he dives… sideways?  Up?  Down?  I don’t even know.  Oh, and he’ll be speaking in that British accent the entire movie.  A movie about a magic dagger that… uh… controls time*.  You’ve done it again, Bruckheimer, you amazingly talented genius, you.

[available in better quality over at IGN but I don't like their embeddable player]

*And that this is also the plot of the video game it’s based on doesn’t make it any less of a stupid idea. It makes it even more of a stupid idea.

(”You see, it’s all going exactly according to my five-year plan.”)

From TheHollywoodReporter:

Disney will celebrate “Opposite Day.”  The studio is developing a high-concept comedy with that title and has hired “Nancy Drew” scribe Tiffany Paulsen to write it.  “Opposite,” based on an original idea by studio production president Oren Aviv, centers on a corporate hatchet man who wakes up one morning and finds he must follow the exact opposite of his normal routine.

High concept… original… Opposite Day… You’ve got the ingredients, just go ahead and bake your own zinger.  Add spite to taste.

DISNEY EXEC 1: I JUST GREENLIT ‘OPPOSITE DAY.’

DISNEY EXEC 2: …We’re gonna need a bigger record scratch.

Man, I wish I was a corporate hatchet man.  I would take my job so literally.

(”Yarrr, whar be the buffet?”)

Disney is going full-speed ahead with Pirates of the Caribbean 4, now matter how much everyone agrees that the last one will be nearly impossible to outsuck.  But not to fear, they have a plot in mind that should maintain their spotless reputation for sucking.

When D23 and Johnny Depp announced that the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean installment would follow up its colon with On Stranger Tides, it didn’t take the Internet long to point out that there was already a pirate story carrying that title. It seemed an unlikely coincidence since Tim Powers’ book also starred a pirate named Jack, and centered on a quest for the Fountain of Youth. Powers confirmed to Hero Complex that Disney did indeed option his 1987 novel three years ago, and that he’s been eagerly sitting on the news for all that time. As the author is quick to point out, his Jack “Shandy” Chandagnac and Jack Sparrow have little in common, and he’s unsure as to how Disney will adapt his book to the Pirates of the Caribbean mold. “I’ve watched all the movies several times, of course, and I think the clear thing they would use is the trip to the Fountain of Youth.” [Cinematical]

Think back to the original Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland: it had a bunch of big, hairy drunk dudes chasing whores and torturing a guy in a cage.  It was kind of scary and awesome.  But now modern Disney can finally complete their de-coolification of the pirate phenomenon by having the big hairy drunks drink from a fountain that turns them into Zac Efron.  By the time I take my kids to Disneyland, the theme of the rides will just be two ponies spooning.

(”The f’ckin’ leads are weak???”)

That’s one of my favorite headlines I’ve ever had to write.  It’s true. Just to reiterate: Disney was paying David Mamet to write a movie about a girl who dies in the Holocaust and they rejected it because it was TOO DARK.

The writer who took on ethnic politics in the play “Race,” and sexual politics in works like “Oleanna,”  [not to mention the politics of Tim Allen learning Jiu-Jitsu in Redbelt. -Ed.] takes on modern anti-Semitism in “The Diary of Anne Frank.”

But the screenplay is not a retelling of the famous Holocaust drama taken from the diaries of Frank, but about a contemporary Jewish girl who goes to Israel and learns about the traumas of suicide bombing.  “It’s very intense, and dark and scary,” said the executive. “It’s not a film version of ‘The Diary of Anne Frank.’ The story evolved into something more intense.” [TheWrap]

That’s a shame, Disney, it really is.  You wanted a guy to write a movie about Nazis murdering a little girl, and here the guy gives you something intense and scary.  What’s wrong with people these days.  Anyway, I think the obvious solution is to make the Nazis a pack of wolves and the Franks a family of squirrels.  It’ll still be scary, but now the characters will be covered in soft fur.

(”Now which one a you dogs’d loike ta play swords wiv moy friend Orlando Bloom?”)

Dick Cook resigned (or was fired, but who really cares) as studio chief at Disney on Friday after 38 years with the company.  One of the consequences of which is that Johnny Depp now isn’t sounding so hot on doing Pirates of the Caribbean 4. Thank God.

The actor said it was because of Cook that he ended up working with Disney in the first place. Cook had been trying woo Depp for years with various projects including doing voice-overs for animated films and one day, in Cook’s office, the studio chief threw out an idea that Depp pounced on. He said, ‘We’re thinking about doing this ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ movie,’” Depp recalled. “I said I was in. This was before there was a script or anything.”  Depp said one of the reasons he committed to the movie was because he trusted Cook.
“When things went a little sideways on the first ‘Pirates’ movie and others at the studio were less than enthusiastic about my interpretation of the character, Dick was there from the first moment. He trusted me,” said Depp, referring to his controversial choices to fill his mouth with gold fillings and wear “things tied into my hair.”

As for the fourth planned “Pirates” movie, Depp said while he has a potential deal in place that will depend on how good the script is, his passion for the project at the moment has been severely dampened by the news that Cook will no longer be around.  “There’s a fissure, a crack in my enthusiasm at the moment,” Depp said. “It was all born in that office.”  [LATimes]

Three horrible movies and it’s only now that you’re considering quitting?  I guess it only figures that he’d notice a fissure after big Dick pulls out.  …Oh sure, act like you wouldn’t have made an anal sex joke there.  I REGRET NOTHING!  *jumps ship with knife between teeth*