Late yesterday, commenter Larry emailed me saying he’d just seen the trailer for Neighborhood Watch play before a screening he was at, writing “Maybe it’s me, but I think they’re well f*cked if they don’t redo the marketing in light of Trayvon Martin. This thing is a hoodie and Skittles away from being a hate crime.” Watching Jonah Hill shoot an imaginary pistol at a terrified black mailman, it was hard not to agree. It turns out Fox may have been getting some of the same emails, because not 10 minutes later, word hit that they’d pulled the promo from theaters in Florida.

The studio tells The Hollywood Reporter it has done so out of deference to the growing controversy. There are no plans to change the film’s July 27 release date, however.
“We are very sensitive to the Trayvon Martin case, but our film is a broad alien-invasion comedy and bears absolutely no relation to the tragic events in Florida,” a Fox spokesperson tells THR. “The movie, which is not scheduled for release for several months, was made and these initial marketing materials were released before this incident ever came to light. The teaser materials were part of an early phase of our marketing and were never planned for long-term use. Above all else, our thoughts go out to the families touched by this terrible event.”
The Neighborhood Watch teaser poster for features the silhouette of an alien on a neighborhood watch street sign that’s riddled with bullet holes, in reference to the movie’s storyline about a group of men who try to stop an alien invasion. Directed by Akiva Schaffer, Neighborhood Watch opens July 27 and stars Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill and Richard Ayoade. [THR]

To me it doesn’t seem similar enough to warrant action, though I’m sure newly-skinny Jonah Hill probably would kill for some Skittles these days (“HEEEY, try the waiters, tip your veal, whackety schmackety too soon.”). Anyway, it’s funny that it’s a Ben Stiller movie (though directed by Akiva Shaffer), considering the Stiller-directed Zoolander opened just two weeks after 9/11, which many people blame for its poor box office performance (despite being inarguably awesome). In some places, the announcement that the towers were falling even interrupted Zoolander commercials. And no one even saw his 2011 film, Nuclear Tsunami Party. The man’s cursed. The Uproxx editorial staff will be wearing Jew fro wigs (or going natural in my case) all week to show our support.

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"DAWWWWWWWW!"

UPDATE: Now with higher-quality embed. Scroll down.

The trailer for Prometheus, Ridley Scott’s prequel/sequel/sorta-related story to Alien is finally online. The movie stars Idris Elba, Michael F. Assbender, Guy Pearce, Noomi Rapace, and Charlize Theron, and of itself, the trailer would be pretty cool. It doesn’t tell us much beyond the fact that the sets are really big, but who doesn’t love a big set (*points to ‘TITS OR GTFO’ shirt*)?  But after Fox released no fewer than THREE teasers for the trailer (yes, trailers for a trailer, basically), I guess I expected more than a 60-second trailer where none of the shots last more than a few seconds. If Prometheus himself had made this big a deal about the gift of fire, I think humanity would’ve been like, “Jeez, asshole, we get it already, get over yourself.”

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YOU ARE A MONKEY, DEREK!

I think most of us could already predict this was coming based on how furiously everyone was jacking each other off over motion-capture when Rise of the Planet of the Apes came out over the summer. Now it’s official: Fox is pushing hard for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Andy Serkis’s performance as Caesar the ape. I’m all for it, but only if he has to give his acceptance speech using the talking sign language glove from Congo.

Fox will push to create momentum for a possible best supporting actor Oscar nomination for Andy Serkis for his performance as ape Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Fox Filmed Entertainment co-chairman and CEO Tom Rothman said here Monday night.
“I think we may be at the place where we will see a first-ever in Hollywood this year, which is to see Andy Serkis get nominated for a best supporting actor for Planet of the Apes, even though his face never actually appears,” he told The Hollywood Reporter at the Gotham Independent Film Awards at Cipriani Wall Street when asked about Fox’s contenders for awards season. “But his performance appears, so we are going to push that hard.”
Further discussing Serkis’ work Rothman said: “The emotionality – what you see and what you feel – he did it. I saw him. I watched him. Then they digitally overlaid – you can think of it as a costume – the skin and the hair of an ape.”

“He BECAME Caesar the ape. It was incredible to watch. He refused to break character for the entire shoot. I saw him hurl his own feces at a PA who messed up his Starbucks order once. What an incredible artist.”

“…But I tell you the thing that people felt – and a lot of people where moved when they saw the movie – is because of his performance.” [THR]

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"Suprise, pendejo. Odelay, señor first ése, escort these putos off my bridge."

I had a chance to see Tony Scott’s most recent movie, Unstoppable on cable a few weeks ago, and if you haven’t seen it, allow me to summarize: there’s a train, and its brakes are out. Are you still with me? Denzel Washington and his young white mentor RISK THEIR JOBS to stop the train (against their boss’s wishes! because he’s a greedy business man! he doesn’t care about orphanages, only trains!), which they eventually manage to do by USING THE SAME THING THEY TRIED IN THE FIRST TEN MINUTES OF THE MOVIE. I guess what I’m saying is, I realize Tony Scott has made a few decent movies in the past (True Romance, Man on Fire, The Last Boy Scout), but those had to have been freak accidents.

Anyway, now that Tony Scott has made two train movies in a row, he’s getting back to his Crimson Tide roots with another submarine movie, the hilariously titled “Narco Sub.” Presumably it will one day make a fine addition to his BIG THINGS THAT GO VROOM ouevre.

Twentieth Century Fox acquired the action thriller spec Narco Sub from David Guggenheim with Tony Scott attached to direct. Guggenheim developed the script with Simon Kinberg and it has become a priority at Fox. Described as reminiscent of Scott’s Crimson Tide and Man on Fire…

Now, this is an amazing description, because Man on Fire was about Latin American drug gangs and Crimson Tide was set on a submarine, both directed by Tony Scott. So saying Tony Scott’s “Narco Sub” is “Like Crimson Tide meets Man on Fire” is actually less descriptive than the actual two-word title. THE PLOT THINS! DUNT DUNT DUNNNN….

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When they’re not riding around town on a bicycle built for two, pulling each other in little red wagons, or drinking milkshakes with two straws, writer/producers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci are printing money on projects like Eagle Eye, The Proposal, Fringe, Transformers, Cowboys and Aliens, Etc.. Most recently, they sold a pitch to Fox for a film about Wyatt Earp, a subject Hollywood hasn’t touched in nearly six weeks.

Written by The Shield alum John Hlavin, the project is described as a Western that tells the origins of Wyatt Earp, chronicling both the well-known incidents in his life such as the Gunfight at the OK Corral and lesser-known details of Earp and his brothers bringing order to a lawless frontier. [Deadline]

So… would that be “lesser-known” to people who haven’t seen Wyatt Earp, or people who haven’t seen Tombstone? Of course, this isn’t the only Wyatt Earp project in town. Back in March, I told you about The First Ride of Wyatt Earp, in which Val Kilmer plays the lead. Then in April, I told you about a spec script Warner Bros bought called Wild Guns. What was that one about again?

Described as having shades of Tombstone and Sherlock Holmes, the story is  set shortly after the Civil War and follows legendary gunslingers Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. The duo team-up to rescue the daughter of Sitting Bull, who has been kidnapped by a powerful Shaman with mysterious powers who is terrorizing the Western plains. [THR]

So look out Kurtzman and Orci, all I’m saying is that you’ve got competition. I just hope you know a good velociraptor guy.