I never imagined Adrien Brody playing a role that Arnold Schwarzenegger played before. But I guess I have been disabused of that idea.  Now, I can see Brody playing the heroic mercenary who battles alien hunters in Predators. This is clearly a reinvention of the Predator franchise that is being spearheaded by Robert Rodriguez.

Brody joins a long list of actors: Alice Braga, Danny Trejo, Walton Goggins, Oleg Taktarov, Mahershalalhashbaz Ali and Louiz Ozawa. A much larger cast compared to Schwarzenegger’s original Predator where it was pretty much a cat and mouse game with Schwarzenegger as the mouse and the Predator as the cat.

Brody plays a mercenary who tries to keep his team alive when its members are hunted by the aliens. There are high hopes to spring a new franchise, and Brody has signed options to return for future installments.

Nimrod Antal is directing the film, production is about to get under way on location in Hawaii with a release date set for July 9, 2010.

Obviously this is Brody’s first action hero turn, though he is best known for his Oscar-winning turn in the Roman Polanski-directed The Pianist.

Josh Brolin must be in a good mood.  His career explode in the last two years in a flurry of great press, with his praised performances for W, Milk, and Oscar-winning flick No Country for Old Men. And if you thought his future was busy enough, with Brolin set to appear in Wall Street 2, Woody Allen’s latest film, and the lead role in eagerly awaited comic book adaptation Jonah Hex, he’s managed to top that with another addition to his 2010 schedule: Brolin will be replacing Sean Penn who recently dropped out of Cartel.

Cartel is a loose remake of the Italian film La Scorta, in which a judge attempts to bring Sicilian mob bosses to justice. The remake will involve Brolin playing a man who is trying to protect his son after his wife is murdered by a Mexican drugs organisation. Brolin has proved himself to be a great actor, especially in roles that involve a tough exterior riddled with cracks. He seems like a fitting replacement for Penn.

Cartel will be an interesting flick, a seemingly suspenseful thriller on paper, but directed by the man behind Haitian documentary Ghosts of Cité Soleil. Filming starts in January so don’t expect this flick to hit our screens until 2011.

If you’re not as freaked out as I am by the thought of Robert Pattinson playing Paul Atreides in the upcoming remake of Dune, then you’re a much, much stronger man–or woman–than I am.

Why am I freaking out?  Simple.  There’s not even the proverbial snowball’s chance  that some putz whose biggest roles were a sparkly vampire and Cedric Freaking Diggory can handle the lead in a major sci-fi franchise film like Dune.

Dune is an institution.  A really WEIRD institution, granted, but Dune is like the Hellraiser of science fiction.  There have been so many versions–mostly books, granted–of this movie that it qualifies for franchise status.  And to put the sparkly vampire emo boi in charge is downright insulting.

I just can’t see him tackling a big role in a genre he has no experience in.  And besides–his big draw is to teenage girls.  What teenage girl is going to want to sit through DUNE?

I’m not very pleased with this development at all.  But maybe I’m overreacting.

On the off chance you couldn’t get enough Yu-Gi-Oh, you’re in for a serious treat; there will be another feature film edition in time for 2010.  And this one will be a continuity buster the likes of which may not have been seen since…well…since Rob Zombie tried to do Halloween.

Bringing together Jaden from that duel academy version of Yu-Gi-Oh, Yusei from the 5D’s installment of Yu-Gi-Oh, and the original spiky haired schizophrenic with the pyramid around his neck from the original Yu-Gi-Oh, the three of them will wind up taking on a never before seen enemy called Paradox.  Double bonus irony points here because that’s almost exactly what we’re dealing with, leaching from all these different continuities like this.

I have to admit I’m looking forward to this massive train wreck of an anime if for no other reason than to figure out how the hell they’re going to pull this OFF.  The concept could only be more ridiculous if, say, it were written by the guys at Newgrounds. Getting actual logic to figure into this will be a nightmare from the blackest pits of hell itself.

People have gone insane trying to do less.

But we’ll have to wait until next year to see how this one goes down.

Night of the Living Dead: Origins.  That’s a thought that should both astonish and horrify all at the same time.  While there was already one remake, and as far as I’m concerned it’s the gold standard of remakes, I’m not too sure about a new “remake“…especially one that’s billing itself as, get this–an American-style anime.

Like I said, it’s called Night of the Living Dead: Origins, and they’re meaning to have it explore some of the characters’ backstories.  On the one hand, that’s kind of an interesting idea–I like the thought of figuring out everybody’s backstories myself.  Sure, we know the Coopers got to the farmhouse, but do we really know how?  And which version of Cooper will they follow: the jackass from the remake or the helpful one from the original?  I don’t know, and that’s what this movie should help explain.  What about Tommy and Judy Rose?  And what happened to Ben in Evans City?  How did he KNOW it was a “war zone”?  There are some good questions here that a remake could help explore, but I find myself skeptical of Hollywood’s ability to handle the remake.  Especially since they’re handing the remake over to a couple guys that don’t have much of a filmography that I’ve even heard of.  But seeing as how Night of the Living Dead is now public domain, if I remember correctly, it’s not like there’s anything stopping anyone else from doing the job right.

No word on release dates just yet, but hopefully we’ll be hearing more about this in short order.

That’s right folks. The A-Team feature film remake of the classic 80′s series has crammed internet forums with wish-lists of who should play who. And with many wishing Jim Carrey could take the role of madman Murdoch, it was announced yesterday that Sharlto Copley will play the role. Most of us will only know Copley as the lead role in sci-fi hit District 9. And to be honest, it’s not a half-bad choice. Copley played the goof well in Distirct 9, only to display a bit more depth as the film progressed.

Filming for the film has commenced, with The Hangover‘s Bradley Cooper as Face, Liam Neeson as Hannibal, and UFC fighter Quinton Jackson as BA. The film is being directed by Joe Carnahan, which is probably the weakest link in this line-up, having made indistinct action flicks and thrillers such as Narc and Smokin Aces, which all notably lack wit, which was a main ingredient of the original series.

If you saw Inglourious Basterds, then you understand why everyone in Hollywood is raving about Christoph Waltz performance as the Nazi colonel, which he won the best actor award at Cannes.

So it’s no surprise that Waltz is set to play the villain in Columbia Pictures’ action-comedy The Green Hornet.   The Austrian actor is stepping in where Nicolas Cage stepped out last week when a contract didn’t materialize as need to maintain the original casting choice.

Still, Waltz is an excellent choice for this role because he’ll add a refreshing touch to the superhero story.  He will play Chudnofsky, a Los Angeles crime boss who tries to bring together the city’s various gangs in order to form a supermafia.

(Source)

Jeff Bridges is in discussions with Paramount to star in Joel and Ethan Coen’s remake of True Grit. Bridgeswould play the role that won John Wayne an Oscar for the 1969 original. I think it will be tough for Bridges (or any actor) to follow Wayne’s Rooster Cogburn. I cherish Wayne’s performance and the movie.  There will be constant comparisons from critics and public at large. Yet, I do believe Bridges is the right actor to take this challenge and deliver a fine performance.

Bridges last worked with the brothers when he turned in a tour de force performance as Jeffrey “the Dude” Lebowski in the 1998.

The script has been redrafted by the brothers to be more faithful to the Charles Portis novel in which the original film was based.

The story is about a 14-year-old girl who follows an aging U.S. marshal, Rooster Cogburn, and another lawman to track the outlaw who killed her father. The new version will come from the girls’ point of view, whereas the original was told from Cogburn’s point of view.

(Source)

Normally when I say “Rose McGowan was in a big hit”, you think maybe it was  a movie or TV show.  You might be thinking Charmed.  But as it turns out, it took on a whole new meaning on the set of Red Sonja–a literal one.

“I had wrist and elbow surgery and they took part of my elbow out. I had really bad nerve damage from doing stunts – I do a lot of my own stunts,” McGowan recently told Tarts. “I could no longer use my arm, but now I can hold a fork and drive so we’re working our way up. It’ll probably be another six months of rehab, but It’s the price you pay for being really limber and being able to do back flips!”

I just READ about that and it’s enough to make my arm hurt.  I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like for her.  It’s especially strange, though, that technically shooting for Red Sonja isn’t slated to begin for a while yet, so how’d she get the injuries on set?  Pre-filming training?

We don’t know, but we’ll keep an eye out and let you know when the Red Sonja filming gets back in play.

Sarcasm is dripping off that title like drool from a fanboy’s mouth when you start talking about the next Guillermo Del Toro movie.

But it’s no less true for the scathing sarcasm–Michael Bay really IS planning yet another remake for his Platinum Dunes studio, and this time, he’s going after…The Tenant.

Yeah, I know, I’m kind of freaked out too.  Frankly, I hadn’t even HEARD of this relic of a bygone era, and had to investigate it.  Amazon didn’t even have it, and only the IMDB could save me here.

It was an old Roman Polanski film, for crying out loud.  It involved a man taking an apartment in which a man had committed suicide, and was apparently the inspiration for David Croenenburg, which proves that it’s going to be about three hundred pounds of weird in a half-pound sack.  Roman Polanski by himself is a catastrophic study in screwed-up but when you consider that this helped MAKE CROENENBURG, well, then there’s nothing to do but just lock up the acid and keep your sponsor on speed dial because your world is about to get horrendously messed up.

So the thought of Michael Bay trying to remake this steaming pile of lunacy just puzzles me.  I actually admit I’m looking forward to it.  What will a complete lack of talent do to a movie that’s such an incredible mindbomb that it made Croenenburg?

I’m so freaked out it’s not even funny.