So says Variety…

“The Hobbit” has Guillermo Del Toro in talks to direct, and the picture will be unaffected by the ouster of Shaye and Lynne. Though the films won’t be scripted until a director is hired, and Jackson wraps “The Lovely Bones,” the expectation is that the films will be ready for release for Christmas 2011 and 2012. Harry Potter will have wound down at WB by then, and the corporation will surely welcome another fantasy franchise that has an eager global audience waiting. New Line will distribute domestically, while MGM has international rights.

LONG time to wait then until we can return to Middle-Earth.

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Slightly mis-leading headline post. Judd Apatow has not signed an exclusive deal with Universal. No no.

Instead, Variety report that he has setup a movie titled Five-Year Engagement at the studio, which will feature his Forgetting Sarah Marshall duo Peter Segel (as writer/star) and Nick Stoller (as writer/director).

Story, described as a bawdy, couples comedy, charts the five-year engagement of a man (Segel) and his fiancee, following the ups and downs of their relationship.

Apatow describes the movie as kind of an unofficial sequel to Forgetting Sarah Marshall, where if you imagine that Segel and Kristen Bell had stayed together this movie might have been the result.

I’m so-so on the trailer for Sarah Marshall. I liked it’s themes and ideas and it got a few laughs but I’m not sure if the acting talents of Bell, Segel or Russell Brand were all their as much as they needed to be. If this movie is going to be in the same vein as that one then let’s hope that when Sarah Marshall opens on April 18th (6th June U.K.), it actually turns out to be good.

The second and much longer Iron Man trailer premiered at WonderCon and played in it’s entirety during the commercial breaks of Lost last night and now it’s online in quality HD so we can all dissect and admire the work of Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr.

The movie looks so kick ass, this is exactly the kind of superhero movie we needed after seeing some of the other Marvel franchises begin to stutter out recently.

My only concern would be for the CGI battle scenes, something which absolutely plagued Spider-Man 3 to no end. They don’t look bad here but we only get glimpses of them.

HD VERSION HERE 

I give the trailer for IRON MAN a solid A -

The movie opens on May 2nd.

source - coming soon

According to Variety, attendees at this year’s Cannes Film Festival will be the first lucky people on the planet who will witness the long-awaited fourth installment of the Indiana Jones saga on Sunday May 18th, just a four short days before the movie opens worldwide.

This will be the first time a Spielberg movie has premiered at Cannes for over 25 years when E.T. had a similar release in 1982.

Ok, so I just watched the trailer for Michael Myers’ first live action movie in five years with The Love Guru and all I can bring myself to wonder is WHY?

WHY didn’t he just make Austin Powers 4 or a Dr. Evil movie?

This Love Guru character is the thinnest alteration of his most famous incarnation Austin Powers. I really don’t get what he is trying to do here. He’s even got Verne Troyer in there and they are re-doing lines and jokes that Mini-Me and Austin shared together!

Watch the trailer in HD Here.

Watch Myers reaction in the opening moments of his first appearance (Dr. Evil like tone of voice, and obligatory facial eyebrow movement).

The strange way he can move his legs round the back of his neck (Goldmember from Austin Powers 3).

“It’s my time to shine” Said in Austin Powers tone.

The weird physical humor.

“I didn’t catch your gnome, NAME!” does that remind you of the “mole” gags in the last Austin Powers movie?

Verne Troyer just like Minni-Me gets abused by being hit in the head!

Obligatory dance number.

and you can go on and on and on. I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised when you consider this is the directorial debut of Marco Schabnel, a guy who worked second unit on the last Powers movie and it’s co-written by Michael Myers. What a lazy effort this film really is.

Myers’ accent seems to change with each scene. Jessica Alba… yeah great she can smile. Why not show her doing something else in the trailer? OOOOH, that’s right she can’t act can she?

Justin Timerblake gives the most humourless porn star accent I’ve ever heard in my life.

UP THERE WITH THE PROMO’S FOR THE HOTTIE & THE NOTTIE, THIS IS ONE OF THE WORST TRAILERS I’VE SEEN IN RECENT MEMORY. AVOID THIS ONE ON JUNE 20TH (U.S.) or JULY 18th (U.K.)

source - coming soon

After 42 years of existence, New Line Cinema one of the top independent studios in the Hollywood movie industry are no more. They have been bought out by the big boys over at Warner Bros, and will in the future operate simply as a small subsidiary company (probably Indie genre specific) for WB, with Co-Chairmen and Co-CEO’s Bob Shaye and Michael Lynee no longer with the company.

Today’s news hardly comes a surprise and the Industry has expected this day to come for at least six weeks now, probably longer.

A disastrous 2007 saw a total mis-management of New Line’s “banker properties” leading to flop after flop with The Last Mimzy, Shoot ‘Em Up, Mr. Woodcock, Martian Child and Rendition all grossly under-performing (some with huge stars) but the real nail in the coffin would come when the festive fantasy movie The Golden Compass turned out into a financially disastrous venture. The fantasy movie was seen as the saving grace of the company, the movie that would keep it afloat and make 2007 simply a write off year but alas it wasn’t to be.

A $69 million domestic taking for a movie that cost AT LEAST $240 million to make and distribute was simply too much of a loss for them to survive. And before you say it, the $330 million worldwide taking don’t mean shit because they sold off the International rights as an initial part of funding the feature in the first place.

By the time the heavily promoted Eva Longoria flop Over Her Dead Body opened outside of the box office top ten on it’s debut weekend of release earlier this month, the writing was already well and truly on the wall. Another bad film pitch which turned into an awful feature film from what became a grossly mishandled company.

Nicknamed “The House that Freddy Built”, New Line Cinema operated as one of the big “second tier companies” behind the big boys Universal, Paramount, Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox after famously stumbling across a famous horror character that would make the studio a household name, and often keep it afloat when other projects didn’t quite go to plan. Freddy Krueger, and his A Nightmare on Elm Street series would turnover millions and millions of dollars for the company with little hassle or fuss - in a similar vain to what the Saw movies do now for Liongstate, they were always seen as the studio’s “safe bet”.

It’s no wonder the company had already made plans to restart the franchise in a hope to resurrect the studio from the financial pit it had fallen into. What happens to that reboot now is anyone’s guess. I guess it’s up to whatever Warner Bros. want to do with it.

Same goes with Austin Powers, Blade, Friday the 13th, Rush Hour, Final Destination, Mortal Kombat, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Mask franchises which are all now part of Warner Bros. ownership, with at least two of the above series in question having movies in the early stages of development.

Of course the question now turns to the state of The Hobbit and the future of Middle-Earth (as if the film didn’t have enough trouble already!). It will now be up to Warner Bros. and their funding resources as to whether they want to go ahead with the film or not and of course they will have full control over the crew and talent working on the picture, and the whole general scope of things will have to be to their liking. Or it will be changed, at worse scrapped.

So we are left to wonder how a company which just over four years ago produced the multi-billion dollar Lord of the Rings franchise has ended up dead in the water, and just another small subsidiary to Warner Bros. Boy, I bet they could turn back the clock and forget all those early meetings they had with The Golden Compass… and just did everything in their power to get The Hobbit made sooner. Though the company has been a sinking ship since Gollum fell down the Crack of Mount Doom in all fairness… The Golden Compass was seen as a desperate attempt to revive it.

I’m sure we haven’t heard the last of this one. The Hobbit movie really is cursed… or maybe this is the best thing that could have ever happened to it.

READ THE FULL NEW LINE CINEMA PRESS RELEASE AFTER THE JUMP…

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