UPDATE, 3:20 pm ET: Now, according to Hollywood Reporter, Snyder’s reps are denying the report.

Snyder’s spokesperson says: “While he is super flattered because he is a huge fan, Zack is not involved in any way with the new Star Wars. He is currently in post on his two films, Man of Steel and 300: Battle of Artemisia.”

So no Star Wars for Snyder, let alone a Seven Samurai Star Wars. That’s good to hear, though I want that five minutes of my life back. But hey, here’s a corgi puppy playing with a stuffed monkey.

Phew, for a second there, I felt like I had gone five minutes without hearing about Star Wars or Kurosawa. I TOUCHED THE VOID, MAN! IT WAS LIKE A CRUSHED VELVET PLATYPUS VAGINA! Thank goodness Vulture was there to break this story about a Zack Snyder Star Wars movie based on Seven Samurai and put things right again. That was close.

He is in fact developing a Star Wars project for Lucasfilm that is set within the series’ galaxy, though parallel to the next trilogy. It will be an as-yet-untitled Jedi epic loosely based on Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 classic Seven Samurai, with the ronin and katana being replaced by the Force-wielding knights and their iconic lightsabers.

It’s not clear just where Snyder’s untitled Jedi film would fall within the Star Wars chronology, but one insider expects it will not be considered part of the “numbered” episodes, but rather a stand-alone film set sometime post–Episode VI events, meaning the next phase of the franchise development is much broader than previously thought. For those unfamiliar, Kurosawa’s influential Seven Samurai (The Magnificent Seven was the American remake) tells the tale of a small agrarian town in sixteenth-century Japan that’s routinely pillaged by bandits. Fed up with the annual shakedown, its farmers retain the services of seven masterless samurai to defend their harvest. One of the film’s stars, Toshiro Mifune, was initially offered the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi (as Kotaku recounts here). [Vulture]

Combining Star Wars and Seven Samurai is taking the two cultural products that have been digested and sh*t back out into the cultural zeitgeist more often than almost anything else into one giant, digested-sh*t snowball and then throwing it at us (btw, have you ever put a dog turd inside a snowball? A+ prank). As ToplessRobot points out, someone even already did a Star Wars take on Seven Samurai back in 1980, called Battle Beyond the Stars:

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People like to badmouth the choice of Zack Snyder to direct Warner’s Superman reboot, Man of Steel, but if you throw out Sucker Punch, which was indeed terrible, he did a decent job with The Watchmen, and if you can handle Dr. Manhattan, it seems to follow that you should be able to handle Superman, who’s just Dr. Manhattan with underpants. Anyway, here’s the latest trailer for Man of Steel, screenplay by David S. Goyer and Christpher Nolan, starring Henry Cavill as Superman, Dianne Lane as Martha Kent (way too attractive to be named “Martha”), and cameos from Kevin Costner as Pa Kent, Russell Crowe as Jor-El, Michael Shannon as General Zod, and Amy Adams as Lois Lane. There don’t seem to be any Justice League hints, thank God, but neither does Zod flog himself or drown any Jews a la Boardwalk Empire. Call it a wash.

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Forget the Justice League and DC Comics movie rumors for now, because we’re ready to just focus on the movies that have actually been made and will definitely be on large screens for us to view with our own eyes. Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel hits theaters on July 14, 2013, and the film is already being served with the lofty task of making us believe that Superman Returns never happened.

Seriously, I’m not just being a cynical jerkface, because that’s actually sort of the intention of Man of Steel. According to the film’s producer, Christopher Nolan, in a recent interview, he wants us to close our eyes, clear our minds and pretend like there has never been a Superman movie before. I have no problem doing this.

“We tried to approach this as though there’s never been a Superman movie before, but at the same time respecting the canon and mythology. There are the pillars that you have to respect, and I’m not about to break them. But it is fun for me to bend them and mess with them.”

Adding how important is for him to plunge into Clark Kent’s origins and depicting on screen in a very realistic way.

“Traditional Superman fans know what it’s all about, and they will hopefully love and associate with the character anyway. But the people who aren’t die-hard Superman fans still need to associate with the character, and that needs to have some realism in today’s world, certainly, in sense of a science as opposed to mythology attached to it as well.” (Via Shockya)

That might explain why in the newest Man of Steel poster released today, Superman is wearing handcuffs. Sure, you could argue that unless those handcuffs are made of kryptonite, they wouldn’t be able to hold Superman, but it’s because they want us to relate to Superman, the same way we relate to our meth addict cousin, G-Flavor, who keeps getting sent to prison. Oh well, I’ve got dibs on his egg nog this year.

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Boardwalk Empire‘s self-flagellating Jew drowner Michael Shannon is set to play General Zod in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel Superman movie, which is a great choice because Michael Shannon is terrifying and looks like he’d give himself a hernia if he ever tried to smile. But, as he told shiny-haired Vh-1 correspondent Carrie Keagan in a recent interview on Big Morning Buzz, don’t expect him to deliver the iconic “kneel before Zod” line.

“I guess I shouldn’t say, but… Well, I don’t say that in the movie.”

It’s always tricky to remake a film people have attachments to (all the more reason to do something new, but I digress). It’s hard to give the fans what they want while still leaving yourself room to surprise them. I thought Dredd did a great job with “I am the law!”, including it, but giving it context and making it feel like a real line and not an apropos-of-nothing shout out to the original (“high five for remembering, audience!”). It sounds like Zack Snyder went a different direction. Based on this news, here are some other changes from the original I anticipate:

1. He doesn’t fly.

2. He won’t be wearing that f*cking suit.

3. He fights a giant spider in the third act.

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After the jump, I’ve got the first two teasers from Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel, starring handsome Brit Henry Cavill, with Russell Crowe, and Amy Adams. All our superheroes are played by British and Australian guys now, because young American actors can’t reach adulthood without the Disney Channel turning them into lesbians anymore. Anyway, the teaser is mostly b-roll-type footage, where Superman, sporting a mountain man beard, starts out working on a crab boat. At some point he’ll have to master his own destiny and shave off his beard and become the hero we know he can be, because Jesus Christ, that happens in every action movie. Just once I’d like to see a hero whose destiny involved a sick Fu Manchu. Anyway, it’s hard to tell whether it will be a good movie just yet, but it already looks like an awesome jeans commercial.

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