Mmm, get a load of that sweet, sweet Ally Sheedy camel toe

If a film has a direct-to-DVD sequel that no one has heard of, do we still have to call a remake of the original a “reboot?” Isn’t that still a remake? I refuse to help Variety slanguage infect everyday life. Anyway, MGM is remaking 1983′s War Games with Seth Gordon, and recently hired a writer. I don’t know about you, but I’m so excited I can barely zzzzzzzzzzzzzz….

Noah Oppenheim, a former producer of TV news shows that include Hardball and Today Show, put himself on the map by scripting Jackie, a film about Jackie O that was set up with Black Swan helmer Darren Aronofsky attached to direct. Oppenheim also scripted Maze Runner for Fox and Houdini for Summit Entertainment.

MGM made a deal with Gordon in June to direct the film. It’s one of several major remake projects for the reconstituted MGM, which also has Jose Padilha to direct Robocop [YAY! -Ed.] and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa to script Carrie — but the John Badham-directed War Games is one that seems particularly reboot-able. The original starred Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy as computer prodigies who finds a back door into a military computer program. They think they are playing games with the computer only to find they could trigger WWIII if the computer launches nuclear missiles at the Russians. [Deadline]

“Hey there, screenwriter. I really liked that thing you wrote, and we’re probably not going to make it, but we think you’re perfect to re-write some irrelevant sh*t from 30 years ago that I liked as a child.” -Hollywood.

A guy named Oppenheim writing a movie about nuclear war… would that be considered irony?

Casting America’s most blue-eyed WASP Bradley Cooper as the mixed-race goth icon in The Crow remake is one of the dumber ideas to come out of Hollywood, a town built on terrible ideas. Now Cooper is out, supposedly because of scheduling (though I prefer to think that he finally came to his handsome senses thanks to one of those Limitless pills). Now the actors being named as possible replacements are… Channing Tatum and Mark Wahlberg (who was basically C-Tates before C-Tates was C-Tates). Yes, I’m sure fans of The Crow will be delighted either way…

Bradley Cooper was to have played the title character but sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that he has now exited due to scheduling conflicts. Cooper has David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook shooting this fall and then dives straight into Legendary’s Paradise Lost, which shoots first quarter next year…the exact time Relativity plans on making the high-priority Crow.
But akin to the project’s rock musician who is killed and resurrected [editor's note: no, not really like that at all...], two new names have surfaced as possible replacements: Channing Tatum and Mark Wahlberg. [THR]

They don’t say why those names are being mentioned or by whom, but if true, it sounds like this project has gone from WASP to whigger! And I think I speak for everyone here when I say that “From WASP to Whigger” would make an awesome reality show on VH-1 in which Channing Tatum takes a Northeastern blue blood and turns him into the white Flava-Flav of a Florida strip mall (with special guest Chet Haze!). Holy crap, thank God I’m already writing this down.

As Comic Con is nothing more than a distant memory of plain girls becoming exponentially hotter for dressing like comic book characters, there are always some straggler interviews around the interwebs that offer some hidden gems. While it’s not nearly as legit and proper as Vinnie hollering at your boy, C-Tates, Frosty from Collider spent a solid 22 minutes chatting with Len Wiseman, who is the director of the upcoming Total Recall remake with Colin Farrell, but more importantly he’s the dude that makes babies with Kate Beckinsale.

Around the 5:37 mark he gets into the Total Recall stuff, after he discusses his hot wife in Underworld, and he hints at what we’ve all been wondering – Are we gonna see some tri-boobs?

Frosty: “Are there any Easter eggs for the original movie as a nod?”
Len Wiseman: “For sure. And what I did was, after I read the script, I wrote a list out of the things I remembered from Total Recall when I was 15, before I went and watched Total Recall again to see what actually stuck with me.”

Of course he means the three-breasted hooker, because any guy that doesn’t list that as the one thing he remembers from the original classic – that’s right, I’m calling Total Recall a classic – isn’t really a man. But there’s a problem with this great news – Wiseman’s Recall is PG-13. What the hell kind of tri-boob are we going to see in a PG-13 joint?

Don’t worry your precious hearts. Later in the interview, around the 19-minute mark, Wiseman recognizes that there are “different versions of the three-breasted woman” in regard to the eventual director’s cut DVD and Blu-Ray. Thank goodness. I just don’t want to live in an alternate future without bare-breasted mutants.

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I tried to find a good image of David Tennant, but I liked this screen grab too much.

Over the weekend, the cast and crew of Fright Night, the remake of the classic 1985 horror film of the same name, hosted a panel at Comic Con, which I’m starting to think is a pretty important event. I wish they advertised it better. Either way, fans were treated to an exclusive extended clip, and to multiply the geek factor immensely, David Tennant set the clip up. Tennant plays supposed vampire expert and TV host Peter Vincent in the new film, but he’s better known as The Doctor from BBC’s Doctor Who series.

In the clip, Vincent is confronted by Punky Charley Brewster (Anton Yelchin) for the first time, as he needs help in stopping his vampire neighbor, played by Colin Farrell. At least he thinks he’s a vampire. He could just be a lawyer. Ahhh, that’s some good legal humor right there.

Clip after the jump, and there’s plenty of David Tennant in tight leather pants for all you female Doctor Who fans. All two of you.

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"OI, QUAID! Start da fookin' reactor, ya styoopid coont!"

Len Wiseman’s Total Recall remake starring Colin Farrell is set for August of next year, and in their latest issue, EW just published the first photo. So I guess now we know what a single frame of that might look like (*dusts off hands, folds hands behind head, leans back in chair, waits for profits to roll in*).  Last we heard about this project, the plot, based on Phillip K. Dick’s “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale”, was now about a conflict between the “nation-states” of Euroamerica and New Shanghai, and may not involve Mars or space at all. No word on that in the latest piece, but they do say it will be less “jokey.” Phew, thank God. Hey, could you tone down some of the action while you’re at it? The original seemed awful rambunctious.

In the magazine, Farrell says “the tone will be much less jokey” than Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s 1990′s sci-fi hit. He says, “there’s not as much tongue-in-cheek” and that he wouldn’t feel comfortable delivering lines like ‘Consider dat a divorce!’” [TheFilmStage]

Really? Yet he had no qualms about karate chopping a midget in the neck and saying, “Back off, sharty!”? This seems like a strange thing to mention. I’m just saying, if I was doing a remake of Total Recall, that was no longer set in space, with a director who’d done two Underworld movies and a Die Hard sequel, “Wait, but will Colin Farrell be able to match Arnold Schwarzenegger’s natural flair for comedy?” probably wouldn’t even make the top 10 on my list of concerns.