Joss Whedon to Rewrite Captain America and The Avengers?

According to this article, Joss Whedon's involvement in bringing Marvel's grand vision of the Avengers to life doesn't just extend to being in the director's chair for the multi-franchise crossover. Joss Whedon is apparently also going to be given the task of rewriting the scripts for both The Avengers (written by Zak Penn) AND The First Avenger: Captain America (written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely).

I know some fans are hesitant Whedon writing the scripts is a good idea given the immature nature of the Buffy series and his tendency to use a lot of pop culture references, but I think Whedon getting involved in these 2 productions is a very good thing. Whedon may not have much experience directing major films, but he has plenty of experience in the writing department. He was the head writer of several successful television shows, he was one of the writers on Toy Story, and he was the writer on The Astonishing X-Men for years. Whedon has clearly shown he has passion for the material, he's experience with Marvel properties, and most of his writing has been able to juggle multiple plot lines and spreading out character depth in ways that utilize characters to their potential. This will also give Whedon more creative control on Avengers, which can be debated as a good or bad thing depending on your opinion of Whedon. Regardless, Marvel is not handcuffing Whedon and this shows me they have confidence in him. His involvement in Captain America particularly intrigues me because Captain America has essentially 2 origins that are connected to each other, so I have always felt Captain America's movie will directly impact The Avengers more so than either Thor's or Iron Man's will. The fact they are involving Whedon in the Captain America production shows me they want to maintain consistency between the two films, and my guess that these two films are directly connected might have some merit. This will also give Whedon some experience with the likely number 1 emphasized character in Captain America before he likely tells the second half of his origin story.

Like it or not, Marvel has gone all in with Joss Whedon, and are not holding back any chips from the pot. Whether this ends up working for Marvel remains to be seen, but I don't think Marvel would give Joss Whedon this kind of control without feeling like he will deliver us something amazing when all the fruits of Marvel's labors come to fruition on the opening day of their flagship film, The Avengers.

The Last Airbender Also Going 3D

According to Variety, Paramount has been working for over a year testing the 3D conversion process with Stereo D, who also worked on Avatar, and three months again, they showed Shyamalan some converted footage and he agreed to convert the full movie to 3D.

Also comingsoon recently talked to the movie's Visual FX Supervisor Pablo Hellman he had the following to say about Airbender being converted to 3D:

"You can probably spend as much time as you have," he told us. "How good it looks is proportionate to how much time that you spend either if you decide to shoot it in 3D or you decide to do it in post. I think the one thing that you have to remember is to design things (for 3D). If you have not designed it in 3D, you have to have a specific esthetic to it, and having seen 'Clash of the Titans,' this movie is different in the sense that Night's takes are really, really long. The average shot is about 500 frames, which is really long, and the camera movement, even in action scenes, there's a lot of stuff we shot at 96 frames a second just so we can speed it up or slow it down. The camera moves really slowly around the characters. That kind of design lends itself well to 3D dimensionalizing more than an action sequence that's all cuts; you just can't focus on things. A lot of it has to do with design and what you do with it, too. It's what we do with the tool that makes it either interesting or jarring and not telling the story."

It's to the point that reporting a movie will be in 3D isn't even news worth covering anymore, it's like telling you it will be in color and also have sound. The "fad" seems to be here to stay, love it or hate it. 3D isn't going anywhere any time soon.

Green Hornet Delayed for 3D

Variety reports Sony Pictures has decided to move the Michel Gondry directed 'Green Hornet', starring Seth Rogen, back nearly a month to January 14, 2011, Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, in order to give the filmmakers more time to convert the movie into 3D.

Wow, great idea? I think not.

The only good thing that could come out of this, would be moving it out of December where it would be competing with Tron Legacy, Little Fockers and the third Narnia installment. 

IESB was the first to report last Tuesday, that Sony executives are displeased with the results. The tone is too campy, they're not happy with the work from director Michel Gondry and Seth Rogen does not look the part. At all. In fact, the feeling at Sony is the movie is a disaster.

The studio is denying that the move was due to any other reasons than the decision to convert to 3D.

Update: Escape From New York Remake

Heat Vision  reports Breck Eisner the director behind the recent not so great 'Crazies' remake, is in negotiations to bring Snake Plissken back to the silver screen. Yeah, it looks like that Escape From New York remake is really happening.

Vulture reported back in February that the studio reportedly flipped over Allan Loeb's rewrite. And then there was that contractual obligation that Snake has to keep his name, eye-patch and overall bad-assery.

The biggest question for everyone right now has to be, Who will replace Kurt Russell as the new Snake Plissken?

I'm with Jamie over at IESB on this one, "Hopefully, no executive gets the bright idea to bring back Gerald Butler".

Helen Mirren Joins "Arthur" Remake

As much as it pains me to even type the words "Arthur" and "remake" in the same sentence, since I think the original 1981 film starring Dudley Moore is still one of the funniest movies of all time and needs a remake starring Russell Brand about as much as we need another Duece Bigelow film, this is actually some inspired casting:  Entertainment Weekly is reporting that Oscar-winner Helen Mirren is in talks to star in the butler role that Sir John Gielgud won an Oscar for in the original film.

Arthur is the story of a drunken billionaire playboy who is danger of being disinherited from his family's fortune if he doesn't dump the waitress he's dating and marries a socialite he doesn't love.  Gielgud played Hobson, Arthur's lifelong butler and the tough-love father figure he never had.  Should Mirren join the cast, her role will be as Arthur's lifelong nanny, instead of a butler.

This sounds like a good choice for the role...but will they be able to pull off classic scenes like this?  It's hard to tell, I'm still not totally sold on having this movie remade at all.

Kristen Stewart Offered 'Wanted 2'?

Star of the twilight franchise kristen Stewart is being offered a prior role of Angelina Jolie's for the second time now.

E! Online reports she's been approached to star in a property associated with Jolie – 'Wanted 2'. As per their source(s), she would play another bullet-curving assassin in the Fraternity. She even reportedly met with director Timur Bekmambetov on at least one occasion regarding the role.

Back in February, IESB reported the Twilight actress was offered the chance to headline Tomb raider in Warner Brothers' planned reboot. She passed.

It's not likely she'll accept this offer either, and the last anyone heard about the Wanted seqeul it wasn't happening due to Angelina Jolie dropping out of the project.

Who knows, maybe she'll sign on and it will eventually get made, but I wouldn't hold your breath for that to happen.

Jack Nicholson Starring in 'Last Vegas'?

Vulture reports CBS Films want Jack to headline 'Last Vegas', a comedy described as "Grumpy Old Men meets The Hangover."

VEGAS (coming from the pen of Dan Fogelman) concerns four childhood pals reuniting to celebrate the forthcoming wedding of lifelong skirt-chaser Billy – the part speculated to be offered to Nicholson.

People generally love Nicholson, myself included, so I don't think it matters what he does, we're all going to see it. As Jamie over at IESB points out he's notoriously picky about choosing his projects. But all it takes is the trailer where he shows the Jack charm and, of course, that smile and people just fucking melt like butter.

Do audiences want to see old people getting wasted and talking dirty, sure who cares, if it's funny and it works, I say bring it on. Especially whenever Jack Nicholson is said to be involved, it's sure to be classic.

Box Office Predictions April 23-25

The following are my predictions for this coming weekends box office. As part of a weekly segment every Thursday TMT is now predicting the box office on Thursdays, then posting the estimates and actual numbers the following Sunday/Monday.

1. The Back-up Plan (CBS Films) - $15.2 million

2. How to Train Your Dragon (DreamWorks Animation/Paramount) - $14 million

3. The Losers (Warner Bros.) - $11.2 million

4. Date Night (20th Century Fox) - $10.6 million

5. Kick-Ass (Lionsgate) - $10 million

6. Death at a Funeral (Sony/Screen Gems) - $9.2 million

7. Clash of the Titans (Warner Bros.) - $8.7 million

8. Oceans (Disney) - $5.6 million

9. The Last Song (Disney) - $3.8 million

10. Alice in Wonderland (Disney) - $2.4 million

Check back to TMT on Sunday for the weekend estimates.

You can check out our reviews for most of the top 10 by going HERE.

Marvel Developing "Smaller Movies"

Marvel Studios, the ones kicking the shit out of DC right now, well with the exception of 'The Dark Knight', has plans to start releasing smaller super hero films. This doesn't mean that we won't still get Iron Man 3 or Captain America sequels etc. The plans will likely take place after the release of 'The Avengers' due out in 2012. CHUD has the exclusive story, and here's and excerpt from what they had to say:

Marvel Studios is currently taking meetings with writers and directors to work on small scale movies based on some of their third tier characters. The movies would cost in the range of 20 to 40 million dollars (very small when we're talking studio films) and would allow them to take risks with less obvious characters and with interesting talent.

Filmmakers are being offered their pick of characters whose names are only familiar to comic fans. Properties like Dr. Strange, Ka-Zar, Luke Cage, Dazzler and Power Pack are among the many that are being tossed around right now. And the attitude seems to be that Marvel is open to bringing any of their characters to the screen at the right price point.

For the full story go HERE.

Dwayne Johnson to Star in 'Protection'

Dwayne Johnson is replacing Clive Owen in action-thriller 'Protection', according to The Wrap. Director Patrick Alessandrin has reportedly also left the project.

The film is about a twenty-one-year-old daughter of a Mexican judge who's targeted by mob types (after she sees them kill her father and other family members), and must stay on the run through dodgy places on both sides of the border, while an agent (Johnson) tries to protect her and the bad guy is hot on her trail.

Brandon Noonan wrote the script. No word yet on who is taking over the director's chair.

This is more great news for fans of Dwayne Johnson, no more pink tights! At least not for a while that is he's co-starring in the action comedy "The Other Guys" this summer and in the Action thriller "Faster" due out in November of this year.