by Ethan Anderton – FirstShowing.net    Source: MTV

If for some reason you’re looking to have your film gain cult classic status, it’s not a bad idea to work Bruce Campbell into the mix somehow. Director Don Coscarelli certainly scored one with his alternative take on musical icon Elvis Presley (Campbell) in the dark comedy Bubba Ho-Tep. Luckily Ron Perlman was eager to fill Campbell’s shoes when the actor decided not to return for the sequel Bubba Nosferatu, but it sounds like the project still has an uphill battle to get off the ground due to a lack of financing. Fortunately, co-star Paul Giamatti told MTV, “I’m going to f***ing break my spine in half if I have to to get that thing done.”

Paul Giamatti

Giamatti, who will be playing Elvis Presley’s manager “Colonel” Tom Parker in this sequel, is absolutely dedicated to making Bubba Nosferatu happen (Ron Perlman has also voiced his support in mentioning the project on a couple occasions), but apparently it’s been quite a challenge. Here’s what Giamatti had to say:

“We’ve been trying so hard and we’ve had so many near-misses,” he continued. “It’s almost come together like 15 freaking times and then it falls apart. At some point we’re going to get that done because it’s a great script. We’ll get it done at some point. I think it’s just the atmosphere of movies right now, smaller movies. Nobody has the balls to make a movie for under — it’s got to be a $40 million comedy or a $200 million ‘Avatar,’ and that’s it. Those are the only things anybody wants to make right now. Nobody wants to do anything else. Everybody’s terrified of doing anything else except that kind of thing. So that movie is deemed way too bizarre and outside the box right now. Which is stupid, because there’s an audience for that movie, totally.”

Read the rest of  Ethan Anderson’s great article HERE

Nikki Reed

By Mike Fleming – Deadline.com

The indie drama Catch .44 has added two actresses transitioning from sultry vampire roles. Twilight Saga’s Nikki Reed and True Blood’s Deborah Ann Woll have signed on opposite Bruce Willis, Malin Ackerman and Forest Whitaker in the Aaron Harvey-directed thriller about three gorgeous female assassins sent on a job that might be their last.

The film is set for a July 8 start in Louisiana, and Sierra Pictures is aboard to handle international sales. Harvey wrote the script and the pic is co-production between Emmett/Furls Films and Annapurna Productions, with Randall Emmett, Megan Ellison and Michael Benaroya producing and George Furla, Curtis Jackson and Ted Schipper exec producers.

Reed plays Rosalie Hale, part of the Cullen vampire clan in Twilight Saga: Eclipse, and Woll plays True Blood’s precocious newbie bloodsucker Jessica.

Deborah Ann Woll

Marley Shelton

Borys Kit – Hollywoodreporter.com

Adam Brody, Marley Shelton and Erik Knudsen have joined the cast of “Scream 4,” which reunites Wes Craven with Kevin Williamson, who kicked off a horror movie revival with his “Scream” script in 1996.

The film will bring back original cast members Neve Campbell, David Arquette and Courteney Cox, though the plan is to pass the baton to a new generation of slasher victims, namely Emma Roberts, Hayden Panettiere, Rory Culkin and Nico Tortorella.

Brody will play a cop recently graduated from college who was raised on the “CSI” TV series.

 Shelton will play a deputy who knew Campbell’s character in high school. Lake Bell had been in negotiations for the role.

Hayden Panettiere

Knudsen will have a role similar to the one  played by Jamie Kennedy in the first two installments, a character who is familiar with horror movie conventions and a provider of comic relief.

To preserve the identity of the killer, Craven and Williamson are operating under several layers of secrecy, including not sending the script to agencies. At a table read last week, the actors were told to stop reading at page 75 to prevent even those already cast in the film from knowing the climax. Shooting began this week in Michigan.

The UTA-repped Brody recently wrapped ensemble indie drama “The Oranges,” which also stars Hugh Laurie and Leighton Meester. He stars in “The Romantics,” an ensemble romantic comedy that also stars Katie Holmes, Anna Paquin and Elijah Wood which is slated to open this fall.

Shelton, repped by UTA and Untitled, starred in the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced CBS series “Eleventh Hour” and was most recently seen in director Sebastian Gutierrez’s ensemble comedy “Women in Trouble,” which premiered at the 2009 South by Southwest Film Festival. Other credits include “Planet Terror” and “Sin City.” 

Emma Roberts

Toronto-born Knudsen appears in August release “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” Edgar Wright’s adaptation of the Bryan Lee O’Malley graphic novel series, as well as “Beastly,” a CBS Films fantasy romance. The actor, repped by Gersh, Joannie Burstein and Fountain Head Talent, was seen in “Youth in Revolt” and was a regular on CBS’ “Jericho.”

By Melissa Molina – LatinoReview.com

Sylvester Stallone’s “The Expendables” is starting to dish out the heavy marketing, mainly because the release date is a lot closer now that it’s July. This is where the new 60 second spot comes in, once again showing off all this film’s cameo cards right away. If they’re going to spoil what is supposed to be a surprising few minutes in the movie like that right away, you immediately wonder if Lionsgate has faith in it.

Any who, “The Expendables” centers on a group of mercenaries who jump out of their supposed retirement to take down a dictator. The super explosion-filled action film stars Jason Statham, Jet Li, Terry Crews, Dolph Lundgren, Giselle Itié, Mickey Rourke, Eric Roberts, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis and Stallone just to name a few. The testosterone-filled production bursts into theaters this August 13th.

Giselle Itié

producer/director Scott Spiegel

Owen Williams – EmpireOnline

Gorehound Eli Roth won’t be directing, but he will act as producer on the now-confirmed Hostel III. ”There’s no negativity about it: I’m just not involved in any way,” he said last year. Balderdash, sir. 

Scott Spiegel (exec producer on the first two, friend of Tarantino and Raimi) will be behind the camera, shooting from a script by Michael Weiss (Journey to the Centre of the Earth). The focus this time is on a bachelor party gone Horribly Wrong, but if the thrust is the same, the setting is at least different: foregoing the, shall we say “controversial” portrayals of Eastern Europe in the first films, part 3 will carve up its cast in Las Vegas.

Paul Bettany stars in 'Priest'

By Robert Falconer – CinemaSpy.com

Paul Bettany and director Scott Stewart (Legion) have teamed up once again to bring the TokyoPop comic book Priest to the big screen, and the first official photo from the film has been released, which you can check above.

The film is set in a world ravaged by centuries of war between man and vampire and follows a warrior priest (Bettany) who turns against the church to track down a murderous band of vampires who have kidnapped his niece.

So how does this all play out? “In our world, priests are like Jedi Knights with special powers and training,” Stewart told EW. “Our vampires are more feral and disturbing than, say, the teen-angst vampires of ‘Twilight’ or the sexy vampires of ‘True Blood.’ Those vampires are metaphors. Ours aren’t.”

Official Plot of “Priest”:

Priest is set in a world ravaged by centuries of war between man and vampires. Paul Bettany is Priest, a legendary warrior priest during the last Vampire War, who now lives in obscurity among the other human inhabitants in walled-in dystopian cities controlled by the Church. But when his 18-year-old niece is abducted by a murderous pack of vampires in the desolate wastelands outside, Priest breaks his sacred vows and ventures out to find her and seek vengeance upon those responsible, especially their brutal leader (Karl Urban). Priest is joined on his crusade by his niece’s boyfriend, Hicks (Cam Gigandet), a local outpost sheriff, and Priestess (Maggie Q), a member of his former legion of vampire-killers who has otherworldly fighting skills.

Maggie Q

Priest is slated to arrive in theaters on May 13, 2011

Greg Nicotero

Source(s): AMCTV.com  and Shocktilyoudrop.com

AMCTV.com has a new interview with make-up FX specialist Greg Nicotero, talking about the work he did on Frank Darabont’s upcoming adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s zombie comic The Walking Dead. Nicotero is a legend in the industry, having worked on classic horror movies going back to the mid-’80s. He also worked extensively on Robert Rodriguez and Nimrod Antal’s upcoming Predators and Alexandre Aja’s Piranha 3-D.

Here’s a sample of the interview:

Q: You’ve been creating zombies for George Romero for years. What made you want to tackle The Walking Dead?

A: I’ve been best friends with Frank Darabont since before he directed The Shawshank Redemption, and we share a similar interest and nostalgic devotion to George Romero and Night of the Living Dead. We started talking about this project probably three or four years ago, when Frank was talking about wanting to do something different with zombies, and what we could do to make these guys look fresh and original. And from then on, it’s just been like, Hey man! We get to create zombies!

Q: How do these zombies differ from the ones you created for Romero?

A: We used the graphic novel certainly as inspiration. We’ve always tried to push the envelope, and because I’ve done so many other projects it’s always one of those things where you finish a movie and go, “Oh man next time I know how we can make it better. And after that I know how we can make it even better than that.” We’ve taken everything that we’ve learned on all these other projects, and applied them in terms of using new materials and new techniques – even something as simple as a zombie getting shot in the head: We really sat down and worked through the best way to make that look realistic and practical.

And you can read the rest over at AMCTV.com

Katie Holmes

Mike Fleming– Deadline.com

Disney has just set a January 21, 2011 release date for the Miramax thriller Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark. The Troy Nixey-directed film, written by Guillermo del Toro and Matthew Robbins, stars Katie Holmes and Guy Pearce.

The film is a remake of the 1973 ABC telepic. A young girl, sent to live with her father and his girlfriend, and she is stalked by a swarm of tiny, nasty monsters.

The filmmakers expected that the picture would be lost in a custody battle to whatever company won the Miramax library. Despite the fact that the film will be R-rated, there is enthusiasm that it is staying with Disney. I’m told the studio quite likes the film, and while they don’t do R-rated stuff, they can make an exception on the Miramax label.

Guy Pearce

Here is the Plot from the 1973 TV Movie version of Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark:

A neurotic housewife named Sally and her business exec husband move into Sally’s family house, a spooky two story Victorian mansion. When Sally starts the redecorating along with her pompous decorator she comes across a locked room in the house. After arguing with the handyman who insists she should leave the room locked, she finally gets the key. But once she opens her father’s old study and has the bricks from the fireplace removed, strange things begin to happen. Sally begins to see small creatures everywhere, but no one will believe her. Her husband dismisses her as neurotic and her friend thinks Sally may be loosing her mind. But things take a deadly serious turn when the decorator trips at the top of the stairs and falls to his death. Sally sees a rope lying across the place where he tripped, but when she picks it up to take it, a horrifying little creature pulls it from her grasp. Is she crazy? Or has Sally released demons in the house, demons her father summoned?

By Josh Winning – TotalFilm.com

Tim Burton has long been linked with a stop-motion version of The Addams Family, but nothing has ever been confirmed.

Today, though, word comes that the animated flick is still very much alive, and Tim Burton remains a dream choice for director for those involved.

Christopher Meledandri, the film’s producer, had a chat with Coming Soon during the Despicable Me junket, and confirmed that an animated version of Charles Addams’ comics is still in the works.

“It’s all very, very early, but we are developing with [Tim Burton directing] in mind,” Meledandri said, “We’re just now at the story phase. Stuff has been written as though we are doing it in black and white, but that’s not correct. It’s not incorrect, but it’s not correct. We haven’t gotten to that point.”

The producer added that the project will favour stop-motion over computer animation, while the storyline will be based on Addams’ New Yorker comic strips rather than the TV series or films that followed.

Source: [Coming Soon]

director Tim Burton

David Cronenberg

From ReelLoop.com

Accliamed director David Cronenberg is attached to helm an adaptation of the Jonathan Lethem novel As She Climbed Across the Table.

According to our pals at Pajiba (visit ‘em), the movie will mark Cronenberg’s first sci-fi picture since 1999’seXistenZ.

In the story, narrator Phillip Engstrand is a university professor who has made a career out of studying academic environments. Engstrand is in love with Alice Coombs, a particle physicist engaged in a bold attempt to replicate the origins of the universe. The result of the experiment is Lack, a very selective black hole that sucks some things into its void–a cat, a pair of socks, a strawberry–and rejects others, namely, a love-struck Alice.

As Alice’s unrequited obsession with Lack grows, Phillip becomes so desperate to save his beloved from this empty rival that he risks a journey down the metaphysical rabbit hole.

The film will be in the vein of Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.