Madea’s Witness Protection. Oh yeah, that’s happening. Boom, you just read that.

Lionsgate has today announced plans to re-team with Tyler Perry for Madea’s Witness Protection, the 14th collaboration between the talent and the studio in seven years.

14 movies in seven years?  My gosh, makes the fact that he’s able to achieve such unbelievable depth and originality all the more impressive, doesn’t it?

Eugene Levy (American Pie, Best in Show) will star as George, a high level CFO at the center of a Ponzi scheme in New York City who is enrolled in the Witness Protection program along with his family in the one place that absolutely no one will think to look for them: Madea’s house down South.

Dorky Jewish guy plus sassy black sista, a classic comedy combo! It’s like Sinbad’s Houseguest meets Queen Latifah’s Bringing Down the House meets Big Momma’s House. Oh, and did I mention the press release includes an “official statement” from Madea herself? Because oh hell to the yeah it does. HALLELUJER! GOOD AFTERNOONT!

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Getting the logistics together to make a new America Pie movie was no easy task for Universal, and I’m sure will one day be the subject of an Entertainment Weekly cover story about how those heroes managed to milk blood from a rightfully dead franchise when all the h8erzz said it would never work. Long story short, to get it under budget, they had to cut a few corners. And apparently, one of those corners was named “Tara Reid’s salary.”

From The Hollywood Reporter:

How the studio met those challenges is a study in prolonging a franchise on a sensible budget. Production on the $50 million film, which wrapped this summer in advance of an April 6 release, was moved to Georgia to take advantage of a generous tax credit.
Then the studio played hardball with the actors, who have experienced mixed levels of success outside of the franchise.
According to sources, Universal is paying Jason Biggs and Seann William Scott a robust $5 million each, plus a small slice of first-dollar gross, to reprise their roles.
Alyson Hannigan, star of CBS’ How I Met Your Mother, is getting about $3 million. And veteran Eugene Levy, who starred in four profitable direct-to-DVD Pie films that helped make the property a billion-dollar franchise, is said to have received a payday also in the $3 million range.
The rest of the cast — which includes Chris Klein, Eddie Kaye Thomas, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Natasha Lyonne, Jennifer Coolidge [Stifler's mom], Mena Suvari and Shannon Elizabeth — is being paid far less, say sources, most in the $500,000 to $750,000 range (though bonuses for some could kick in if the film is a hit, as expected).
Rounding out the list is Tara Reid, who is said to have joined Reunion for close to the $250,000 that Universal initially offered. A studio rep calls the figures “inaccurate” but declines further comment.

Now, there are two ways to look at it this. On the one hand, getting paid a third of Shannon Elizabeth, who was barely in the first one and doesn’t even show her boobs anymore, is pretty insulting. On the other, Tara Reid getting paid a quarter mil to stand around eating free food and occasionally mumble out lines she probably thinks are for Big Lebowski 2 is not only a miraculous stroke of sheer luck for Tara Reid, but an insult to anyone with a real job (obviously I don’t include myself in that statement). That’s probably what her agent* was thinking when he took the first offer. And that’s why there are so few moral agents.

*A talking duck

American Pie has already spawned two theatrical sequels, four direct-to-DVD sequels, and countless uncredited attempts to capitalize on its success.  Meaning that there’s a huge built-in audience for the American Pie brand. And if you agreed with that idiotic statement, congratulations, you could be a Universal exec.

The studio is poised to bring on “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle” writers Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg to script a new take on the franchise, which is being described in the development community as “American Pie 4.” [Hence a sequel to the last theatrical sequel rather than a complete reboot] The movie would come on the heels of the third theatrical movie in the franchise, “American Wedding,” which came out in 2003, and a slew of lucrative DVD titles that followed.  At least some of the original cast is interested in coming back for the new picture, though sources emphasized that development is early and there are no actor deals in place.  [LA Times]

The only way I’d be interested in this is if Chris Klein plays his “This guy walks through the raindrops” character from Street Fighter.  But of course the original cast is interested.  Tara Reid and Natasha Lyonne need coke money, and Thomas Ian Nicholas will probably want to build a Scientology center or something if his music career doesn’t pan out.   And Eugene Levy (see the top row of the below graph), he’s just happy to help out.  Sh-t, he’ll sing at your Bat Mitzvah if you ask nice.

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Tara Reid is set to return to the American Pie series in American Pie: Book of Love.  That’s the seventh movie of the series and the fourth to go direct-to-DVD, for those of you keeping score at home.  This will be Reid’s first appearance since American Pie 2.  Eugene Levy, the only actor from the original movie to appear in all five of the sequels, will be back for this one as well, presumably because he has a gambling and/or cocaine problem.  Wikipedia even provides this helpful chart for determining which actors appear in which movies.

I gotta think the only thing keeping this franchise afloat at this point are foreigners trying to learn English.  I can’t see anyone else flocking to the “Not-Good-Enough-to-Get-a-Release” section at Blockbuster.  In related news, I sat in that section at high school pep rallies. /blue balls.

When I praised Adventureland the other day in part because it reminded me of the kind of 80s movies no one makes anymore, I was thinking of Ferris Bueller or One Crazy Summer.  Gooby here is the flip-side of that coin, evoking a genre that rightfully died out 20 years ago.  It’s about a kid who befriends a teddy-bear like monster and they go on adventures – like a seriously ill-advised mashup of Mac & Me and Harry and the Hendersons.  The conflict of course is that he has to keep his monster a secret, because in the 80s it was always bad news when people found out you had a robot, alien, monster, or doll come-to-life for a friend, or when your wife the witch wouldn’t stop using her magical powers.  It’s creepy both because of the bizarreness of the plot, and because it just doesn’t seem like a good idea for your kids to watch movies about a special best friend who you can’t tell your parents about because he’s weird.

Believe it or not, this is a real movie, it’s playing at Cannes, it cost $6.5 million to make, and the director’s name is the impossible-to-make-up “Wilson Coneybeare.”  I need a drink.
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