He flip you

Back in 2008, Universal replaced director Mark Romanek with Joe Johnston just a few months before Wolf Man (starring Benicio Del Toro) was set to begin shooting. The film turned out to be what some analysts call “a beeg fawken piece of sheet”, and ended up earning $139 million worldwide on an estimated $150 million budget. (Johnston collected his check and moved onto Captain America, which also wasn’t very good, but I’m sure he’ll go on to direct even more mediocre movies, because Hollywood is apparently a lot like Wall Street). Then in June, we heard Universal was planning to reboot the movie they made barely a year before and call it “Werewolf,” because wolves are so hot right now thanks to that twink-ish alpaca, Taylor Lautner.

The good news is that that reboot/remake/sequel/reimagining/whatever you want to call it is now going straight to DVD. From the press release:

There’s no safe place to hide as the all-new supernatural Untitled Werewolf Thriller begins principal photography in and around Bucharest, Romania. Universal celebrates its storied history of creatures and horror with an exhilarating original adventure that embraces the popular cultural resurgence of the age-old werewolf myth. Breathtaking action and nail-biting suspense collide as an army of bounty hunters descend on a tiny hamlet in search of the most terrifying monster they have ever fought. The latest entry in the hugely successful DVD Originals™ line from Universal 1440 Entertainment, a production entity of Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Untitled Werewolf Thriller will be released on Blu-ray™, DVD, Digital Download and On Demand in time for Halloween 2012. |Slashfilm|

It will be directed by Louis Morneau, whose credits include such blockbusters as Joy Ride 2: Dead Ahead; The Hitcher II: I’ve Been Waiting; and Bats, and it’s set to star even more people you’ve never heard of. To make a long story short, it’s a positive setback for the current Hollywood push towards reboots and remakes that’s been going on for the last few years. Though I do enjoy that they were able to write that entire press release, complete with full cast, synopsis, and release date, before they even bothered to give it a title.

“Try our new artisan hot pockets! Developed by Hormel and celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck to be spicy enough for a man, pH-balanced for a woman. We call it ‘Untitled Beef Tube.’ Coming to gas stations and convenience stores this spring.”

In light of a Wyatt Earp story followed by a Mortal Kombat story, I thought this video was relevant.

That’s right, Mortal Kombat, which first came to theaters in 1995 with Paul WS Anderson directing (he of the floating zeppelin pirate ships), is coming back, and it’s all Michael Jai White’s fault. That’s because the buff ball of ass-kicking and charisma starred as Jax in an eight-minute internet short called Mortal Kombat: Rebirth (embedded below). It was director Kevin Tancharoen (who also directed the Glee 3D Concert Movie, strangely)’s attempt to prove that he could direct a new version of the movie. Warner Premiere ordered 10 episodes for a web series, and now New Line has hired Tancharoen and his writer, Oren Uziel, to make a movie, so it looks like it worked.

Tancharoen’s effort created enough of a demand when it leaked online that the studio’s digital division, Warner Premiere, made a deal with him to generate a 10-episode Web series. Those episodes began airing on YouTube in April 2011. New Line then went to Tancharoen and Uziel and put together the movie.The studio is keeping the plot under wraps. Uziel wrote The Kitchen Sink, a mashup of vampires, zombies and aliens that made the Black List and sold to Sony Pictures and producer Matt Tolmach. [Deadline]

You can watch the original short after the jump. The fight scenes are decent, but other than that it’s pretty dumb and kind of gross. But it has lots of slow motion, which makes it seem important.

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There’ve been rumblings about George Miller making a Mad Max sequel /prequel/whatever going back almost three years, when it was originally conceived as a 3D animated feature. Since then, there have been so many rumors, counter-rumors, and delays, that I just started ignoring it, figuring it would be like one of those movies that everyone talks about that never happen, like Arrested Development or Justice League. But as recently as last month, Tom Hardy was telling Collider that he’s still attached to star (as the new Mad Max) alongside Charlize Theron, and that filming was set to begin in April.

Then a few days ago, someone uploaded these new pictures — one of what looks like an old Mercedes body on top of a semi-truck chassis, the other of a dune buggy-looking thing — to a Mad Max message board, writing:

On the 19th Sept 2011, I pulled into the Little Topar Road House which is between Wilcannia and Broken Hill to partaking in some refreshments.
There were 2 semies with vehicles on board, one of the tarps was torn.
I thought it was a Monster Truck of some sought
I asked the truckie what they were for and he said
Vehcles for the Mad Max 4 Movie, they were transporting them back to Sydney. They were apparently going to be taken to South Africa for filming as the area around Broken Hill was to green.
So I grabed the camara and some pics before they took off
Enjoy

Excuse the spelling and grammar, but the photographer appears to have been some Australian borderline illiterate a lá Chopper. “Yeh, Oy call a truck drivah a ‘truckie,’ a fella in a taxi a ‘cabo,’ and a bloke on foot a ‘thongwobblah.’ Whoy, what language didja think Oy was speakin’, mate?”

Anyway, I’m torn. A George Miller-directed Mad Max reboot sounds pretty horrible, but Tom Hardy is an inarguable badass. Get Peter Dinklage on board as some kind of side kick and it would have to be amazing.

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Early last year, Universal pulled a Royal Tenenbaum and decided that the original cast of American Pie, after squandering their once-promising careers and flaming out in varying degrees of drug abuse and irrelevancy, would be best served back under one roof to pick up the pieces. An idea for a new film, American Reunion, was hatched (in which Jim becomes a YouTube sensation), and a release date was set for April 2012.

Now it has a teaser poster (above), and I don’t mind telling you that it’s confusing as all hell. So the poster for the original had a pie with a d*ck hole in it where Jason Biggs had tried to hump it because someone told him it felt like vagina. Now we have what looks like a new take on the old pie, but the nice, round d*ck hole is gone, in favor of a giant, messy gash. Would could’ve caused this? I suppose that’s the big question. Maybe Jason Biggs is in his mid-thirties now and trapped in a loveless marriage, and wanted to feel what it’d be like to have his balls licked like he used to? That could be a scrotum hole, I suppose. Or maybe Natasha Lyonne got hammered and passed out into a pie, and it was some kind of metaphor for dabbling in lesbianism? I don’t know. I have no idea. And then there’s that tagline. “Save the best piece for last.” And this presumably describes this torn-up pie that some dude probably just dipped his old balls in. Like, maybe it’s saying that the last “piece” you ever get will be this nasty old ball-bruised piece of pie that not even a hobo would want to eat? And why is it last? Is someone getting married? Or maybe the piece will be his last because he commits suicide afterwards? I don’t pretend to know these things, but either way it sounds pretty dark.

[DigitalSpy]

Wherefore art thou, Ally Sheedy?

If I want to see a modern take on 1986′s Short Circuit, I’ll just watch Wall E again (the definitive “cute robot” story). But where we see progress, Hollywood sees remake potential, which is why they’ve been working on a Short Circuit “reboot” (THAT’S NOT A REAL THING! STOP ACTING LIKE IT’S A REAL THING!) since 2008. The latest news is that the director of Hop and Alvin and the Chipmunks is in negotiations to direct, which should be great, because the first Alvin teaser opened with a chipmunk putting a turd in its mouth (seriously, it did). Can robots fart? Well they can now.

Dimension Films is making a deal with Tim Hill to direct its reboot of Short Circuit, the 1986 film about an experimental robot manufactured to be a weapon until a lightning strike fills it with intelligence. It runs away and befriends a fractured family, the military in hot pursuit. Hill directed the Illumination pic Hop and Fox’s Alvin and the Chipmunks. Dimension optioned the remake rights in 2009, originally signing Paul Blart: Mall Cop helmer Steve Carr and screenwriter Dan Milano. The project has languished and Hill is being brought in to supervise a new script and get the iconic robot Johnny 5 moving. [Deadline]

The guy from Paul Blart is out, so they got the guy from Alvin and the Chipmunks. Jeez, was Leni Riefenstahl busy? Los Locos kick your ass! Los Locos kick your face! Los Locos put on sunglasses and dance to hip hop. Los Locos start loading gypsies into train cars.
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