· Paramount has released a teaser poster for Iron Man 2 featuring Mickey Rourke's Whiplash. Click for bigger.
· How nice of the NYDN to help negotiate Bravo's Real Housewives contracts with Nene Leakes and Kim Zolciak by reporting that the network is willing to replace both.
· Pee-Wee Herman says he wants Taylor Lautner to play him in the movie. Mayyyybe don't say that when you've already got this on your record.
· Angelina Jolie is taking President Obama to task for his record on Darfur.
· James Cameron already has sequels in mind for Avatar. I hear that Sam Worthington's neck-beard is signed for two more!
The Black List, the annual rankings of unproduced screenplays circulated by development execs, assistants, and shifty-eyed mailroom clerks, has been released, and striding atop in the #1 position is The Muppet Man, a Jim Henson biopic by Christopher Weekes that features appearance from your favorite Muppets. (Interesting side note: Last year's chart-topper was The Beaver -- also a story about a man and the puppet that takes over his life. It's being shot now by Jodie Foster with Mel Gibson in the lead. Lesson: Hand-puppets are hot, hot, hot.)
Also in the top ten are two films currently in production -- Aaron Sorkin's Facebook origin myth The Social Network, and Cedar Rapids, about a small town man who finds himself representing his company at a Cedars Rapids insurance convention, with Ed Helms playing the man. Of the other titles, Michael R. Perry's The Voices sounds interesting (about a schizophrenic who accidentally kills his co-worker, and gets advice from his talking cat and dog), Londongrad, based on the true story of the poisoned ex-Soviet spy, and The Days Before, a time-travel sci-fi thriller by Chad St. John.
The top 11 (there was a tie for tenth place) and their synopses, courtesy of EW.com, are after the jump.
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Now that Summit's flush with the New Moon cash it pulled in from women across the globe, how does the studio plan to spend it? Here's one way: by picking up Roman Polanski's barely completed The Ghost Writer (formerly just The Ghost) for distribution during the first half of 2010. Is this fair play for all the women who lusted after an underage Taylor Lautner? Here's are the salient points of the just-out press release:
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After two seasons, MTV has failed to create a worthy TRL successor in It's On With Alexa Chung, a live talk show hosted by the British personality and former model. MTV is pulling the series from the air after its second-season finale December 17. MTV programming chief Tony DiSanto explained that the network is still searching for the right live, talk show formula -- hopefully one without hybrid musical chairs-interview segments. [THR]
Perhaps Sigourney Weaver thought that since she was doing press overseas, she was allowed to drop some mega Ghostbusters 3 spoilers, but regardless of the reason, here they are. Oh, and spoiler alert! "I know that my little son Oscar -- who was kidnapped from me -- I think he has grown up to be a ghostbuster," Chatty McGee told UK outlet Channel 4. "I might be in it; I see nothing wrong with being in it, although I don't think I will have a big part. I think Bill Murray has a little more to do with it -- he's a ghost." Well, after Zombieland, he would kind of have to be. [Channel 4]
In a recent interview, A Single Man director Tom Ford "all but admitted" that Jon Hamm voiced the role of the cold-hearted caller who notifies Colin Firth of his partner's death. The in-joke was reportedly to throw a nod to the character's New York contemporary Don Draper, but Hamm's agent nixed his client's credit or even any attribution at all. "I was sitting next to this person at a dinner party," Ford said. "I know him and I said, 'I'm shooting something tomorrow and your voice is perfect--would you come in and do it?' And his agent ripped me apart like you can't imagine. [...] I don't know who that was on the phone." It's probably safe to assume this signifies the lowest Don Draper Fingerbang Threat Level ever. [Huffington Post via Hollywood Elsewhere]
· Natalie Portman has latched on to produce and star in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an adaptation of Seth Grahame-Smith's own horror-slanted adaptation of the classic Jane Austen novel. Portman will naturally play heroine Elizabeth Bennet, who must battle the undead throughout her troubled, turbulent courtship with the arrogant Mr. Darcy. Lionsgate is underwriting the whole thing, so expect some splattery genre edge. And why not? Brains were so much more dense and delicious in the early 18th century. [Variety]
James Cameron feels Fantastic, J.J. Abrams feels New York-y, and more Hollywood Ink after the jump.
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Welcome back to Movieline Attractions, your regular guide to everything new, noteworthy and Oscar-baiting this week at the movies. And has Hollywood ever got your Oscar bait: Death! Salvation! Soul-stirring! Race issues! And that's just the Disney movie opening today. Join me for a quick rundown of what's what after the jump.
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So Avatar finally premiered Thursday in London, followed by screenings in Los Angeles and in New York, where a stiff, cold wind in Times Square blew over a few hundred critics lightheaded with awe. And there was plenty of awe, mitigated by a few groans and all the random WTF-ery that comes with spending 163 minutes in James Cameron's staggering new world. A few first impressions of that world follow the jump, and many more to come Friday as Movieline attempts to get its collective head around the most expensive, ambitious film in cinema history. (Spoilerphobes be warned.)
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Is the current flood of nonfiction films and the critical buzz around them just too much for you to process anymore. Oprah Winfrey apparently feels your pain -- and is even set to relieve you when she unveils Oprah's documentary film club. The series will help launch OWN, the cable channel hitting televisions in 2011, and is expected to feature documentaries largely inspirational in nature. The imminent Oprah/Werner Herzog interview -- just his lyrical, lilting pronunciation of her name ("Let's show the gay penguin clip, Ohhhhhprehh") -- is reason enough to celebrate, don't you think? [THR via Yahoo!]
THR's Kirk Honeycutt has published his Avatar review, which stands in flagrant violation of the No James Cameron Knob-Polishing Treaty of 1814, and yet somehow I think Fox will let him get away with it this once. Why? Well, it starts like this, "Bottom Line: A titanic entertainment -- movie magic is back!" Then it goes, "A dozen years later, James Cameron has proven his point: He is king of the world." Throw in a smattering of "jaw-dropping," "wonder," "flies by," "repeat business? You bet," "breathless pace," and a final grace note of, "How will Cameron ever top this?" and Fox has enough pullquoteage to last them until the Holodisc Director's Cut re-release in 2048. [THR]
Fox made journalists given an advance view of Avatar sign a release form in which they swore they wouldn't publish a review or even express a professional opinion online about the film before Monday. So, naturally, the Guardian signed it and proceeded to publish a profession opinion online about the film before Monday: "By saying Avatar was really much, much better than expected, that it looked amazing and that the story was gripping - if cheesy in many places - the Guardian is in technical breach of the agreement. It is not a breach, however, to report that other journalists leaving the screening were also positive: the terrible film that some had been anticipating had not materialised. It was good." Movieline gets its first look at it tonight. You can be sure we won't so much as emit a blue fart before the embargo is up. [The Guardian]
· Rather notoriously, ABC won't be releasing any advance stills of Lost's upcoming final season, so you'll just have to content yourself with these newly released character photos. Here's a Lost mystery: Who dressed Miles in that dorky shirt?
· Barbara Walters may have found Adam Lambert's gay kiss fascinating, but the only same-sex smooch ABC actually showed last night was Lady Gaga's.
· Now that FlashForward's taking a lengthier hiatus than was expected, ABC's scheduled the legal drama The Deep End to replace it for six weeks.
· Finally, the perfect gift for every single one of your wives: Big Love's A Juniper Creek Christmas album!
· A porn parody of New Moon? At least the characters will finally get laid.
With the release of two posters for upcoming blockbusters appealing to entirely different audience quadrants -- one, the story of a brave warrior forced to fend off all manner of deadly, serpent-haired she-beasts, the other, Clash of the Titans -- the gears began to spin for some of the brightest minds at Movieline's Mashupgineering™ Laboratories. Certainly, the well has appeared to have run dry on the story of perpetually manless New York City sex columnist Carrie Bradshaw, as the central marketing image suggests producers have finally decided to kill off their heroine and have her strut down the Swarovski-crystal-paved streets of Manheaven in pursuit of a hunky angel who's willing to settle down. And then there's Clash, forced to introduce Medusa within the first five minutes, merely in an attempt at justifying Sam Worthington's stony acting. What if ... the thinking went ... there were some way of combining the best of both movies, into one unmissable cinematic event. The results are after the jump.
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It's one thing for networks to yank ads featuring the embattled Tiger Woods from their primetime schedules. It's another altogether for those networks that broadcast golf to accommodate the radical dynamic shift brought on by "transgressions" acknowledged by the game's biggest star and ambassador. But now they're doing just that -- and judging by the early reactions, it's not the best feeling in the world.
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