· Coming Soon has got the teaser poster for The Sorcerer's Apprentice, featuring a pre-blond Nicolas Cage. Head there for the bigger version.
· Eclipse may be going in for reshoots, but director David Slade will stay in the director's chair, despite rumors to the contrary.
· Eva Longoria Parker will star in the supernatural horror film The Tenement, directed by Franc. Reyes (yes, that's how he punctuates his name).
· Vera Farmiga has booked another project;, this one a revenge western called A Thousand Guns.
· Is George Stephanopolous a shady Scrabble player? Only when he's trying to take down a couple of kids on national television.
In an era when money is harder than ever to come by, Hollywood privately knows exactly what will save it. No, not 3-D. Not flop insurance either. I'm talking about product placement, that unabating scourge turning your favorite movies and TV shows into the equivalents of extended commercial breaks. Few films embrace this reality as warmly as The Joneses, whose poster revealed an ugly truth made only uglier by new technology allowing you to literally buy the items onscreen while you watch. Welcome to hell!
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Some people raised their eyebrows when Marvel hired Joss Whedon to write and direct its superhero mashup The Avengers, but Marvel head Kevin Feige obviously has a lot of confidence in the Buffy creator. According to Pajiba, Whedon's even been drafted to do a rewrite of the fast-approaching Captain America, to be directed by Joe Johnston. Fox executives must be so mad that they can't cancel this right now! [Pajiba]
The Hills are alive with sexual harassment charges today, and the accuser, Heidi Montag, is planning a lawsuit against Hills creator Adam DiVello, who allegedly put "one hand directly on her butt cheek" during a photo shoot in March. The harassment allegedly continued on set with the executive producer asking Heidi to "strip down to a bikini for scenes," and according to one insider, DiVello "wasn't on set much for six seasons until Heidi got her new boobs." An MTV spokesperson has denied the charges, while Lauren Conrad and Lo Bosworth have also come to DiVello's defense. [Daily News]
Pop quiz, hot shot: Say you're Marvel Entertainment, and you've got the sequel to $585 million worldwide-grossing Iron Man lined up with the original star and director, plus a recent Oscar nominee and Scarlett Johansson. Do you do everything you can to make sure that movie is the The Dark Knight to the original's Batman Begins, or do you concentrate your efforts on connecting it to other properties that no one but Comic Book Guy even knows exist, like Thor? If you guessed option two, then send your resume to Marvel, because it seems that's exactly what's happening.
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Wall Street's proposal to launch a futures exchange based on box-office receipts may have haters in Hollywood, but regulators in Washington are said to support the idea and may even green-light it in time for gamblers investors to wager on Iron Man 2. Buried in Wednesday's report is this winning quote from Lionsgate boss (and Hollywood Stock Exchange co-founder) Michael Burns: "If the studios have a chance to have an equity position in the actual exchange, if Cantor offers that, I think that's a giant win-win. I think it will ultimately become a terrific hedging vehicle for the studios. You can buy corn futures, orange juice futures, it makes no sense you can't buy movie futures." In other words: Flop insurance, here we come! [Bloomberg]
By now everybody's seen Nicolas's Cage's blond 'do, which he debuted a few weeks ago. "You know, I'm always changing the hair color, and right now I'm doing a movie called Drive Angry and I'm trying to tap into my Celtic roots, so I dyed it blond," the actor told media gathered at WonderCon. But a new hue took over at this week's Kick-Ass premiere, and it's... interesting.
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Happy April 15, dear reader! Time to join Movieline on another breezy expedition through the historical arcana and milestones that helped shaped the pop culture you know and love today. We've got a Hollywood-changing tragedy to commemorate and some celebrated young stars to wish happy birthdays, so let's get to it. Your taxes can wait!
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· Two years ago, Zac Efron was a family-friendly tween idol starring in High School Musical 3. Today, in a bid to banish that smiley, Noxzema'd mug forever, Efron has signed on to play a drug runner moving cocaine in a remake of the amazingly titled Swedish film Snabba Cash, which was the subject of a fierce bidding war won by Warner Bros. These are the things you can do once Taylor Lautner's taken some of the heat off you. [THR]
Viola Davis gets a little Help, Pirates of the Caribbean channels Splash, and more Hollywood Ink after the jump.
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In 2008, mercurial actor Vincent Gallo signed on to star in The Funeral Director, an independent film written and directed by Pete Red Sky. Now, in 2010, Gallo is touting his own Promises Written in Water, the first film he's written and directed since The Brown Bunny.
There's just one thing: they're the same movie. How did this happen?
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· Tracy Morgan and Chris Rock sat down for a session of Moviefone's "Unscripted" series to promote their new movie Death at a Funeral. Shocking claims: Eddie Murphy's Delirious is better than Thriller, Jay-Z "wouldn't have been around" in 1988, and J-Lo and Tracy Morgan have a secret love child. [Moviefone]
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Our new cousin Nellie Andreeva at Deadline reports that pyrotechnically-inclined auteur Michael Bay is shopping around a reality series entitled One Way Out, a lawless game in the mold of Survivor, The Mole and The Amazing Race that "pits ordinary people from all walks of life against each other." Just what surprises will the Transformers director have up his short sleeve for this one? We're not sure, so we've taken the liberty of suggesting 5 challenges that would perfectly suit a Bay-branded show. (We even wrote him some hosting patter!)
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Good grief, Hollywood -- enough already with the celebrity bust-ups. Right around the same time today Larry King was croaking "Go ahead, caller" to his divorce attorney, word tumbled over the transom confirming the sad news that Mel Gibson and his Russian vocalist girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva have also called it quits after a year of dating and procreating. But it was fun while it lasted! Or at least it was fun for lovers of faintly adequate pop-music songs with videos over-directed by Oscar-winning anti-Semites. Because these two were the gold standard. Click through and reflect on the good times.
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The official line-up for next month's Cannes Film Festival won't be announced until tomorrow, but already plan on seeing the latest films from Mike Leigh (Another Year), Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (the Javier Bardem-led Biutiful) and maybe even Doug Liman (Fair Game, with Sean Penn and Naomi Watts as Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame). And while cineastes and residents of the French Riviera were probably hoping for a peek at Terrence Malick's latest project, Tree of Life, don't hold your breath. It was supposed to premiere at Cannes -- just like it was supposed to premiere last December for an Oscar run -- but it looks like that might be on hold. Too bad, though, especially since star Brad Pitt has confirmed that the new film is as bananas as you would have hoped.
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Though Captain America producers looked only at homegrown talent for the title role, the part of the Captain's love interest Peggy Carter has gone to British actress Hayley Atwell. The 28-year-old actress is best known for playing the homoeroticism spoiler in the recent remake of Brideshead Revisited, a talent that will no doubt come in handy once studio execs realize that Captain America pretty-boys Chris Evans and Sebastian Stan have been sharing far too many two-shots together. [Coming Soon]
