Alex Proyas might want to look into getting some budgeting software or something, because this “over budget” thing is becoming bizarrely familiar. Let’s rehash! Just this week, Proyas’ Paradise Lost adaptation was shut down by Legendary due to a wicked combo of too much funds and too little technology, and now another project that Proyas lost out on because of a bloated budget is back in the news – but for a very different reason. Universal Pictures is apparently bringing Dracula: Year Zero back from the dead, complete with a new director and likely a new cast. Don’t remember this one? Neither did I, so let’s dig back into the FSR Crypt! Back in 2008, Proyas was set to direct the flick, a supposed “medieval epic” that would serve as origin story for the toothy one. The project languished until 2010, when Sam Worthington of all people was set to star as Dracula himself (Vlad the Impaler, should we be sticking to history). And then the blood ran dry and the budget was too high, and as Deadline Kendal so amusingly puts it, Universal “close[d] the coffin.” But that coffin is now open again, and in a big (wide?) way.

Christophe Gans, who first turned heads in the U.S. by making Brotherhood of the Wolf and last gave us Silent Hill back in 2006, finally has another project on the horizon – and it’s a doozy. The French director, perhaps best known for his moody yet kinetic visual style, will be taking a crack at playing around with the classic Beauty and the Beast story, starting this October. Gans told THR, “Although I will keep to a form of storytelling of this timeless fairy tale that is in keeping with the same pace and characters as the original, I will surprise the audience by creating a completely new visual universe never experienced before and produce images of an unparalleled quality,” then added, “Every single one of my movies has presented me with a challenge but this one is, by far, the most exciting and rewarding.” Though I’ve yet to be rewarded by Gans’ new endeavor, I’m certainly already excited about it. But, honestly, it’s not necessarily because of Gans’ involvement, and it’s not even for any particular love of the Beauty and the Beast story. No, the reason my blood is pumping is the quality of the cast that is being assembled. First off, Gans has cast one of the true heavyweights of the acting world, Vincent Cassel, in the role of the beast. From his work in Gaspar Noé’s films, to his starring role in the Mesrine movies, to his role as the ballet instructor in Black Swan, Cassel [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Sold. No, really. I’m sold on this project already. Deadline Tucson reports Ridley Scott is now officially signed on to direct The Counselor, from Cormac McCarthy‘s latest spec script (a probable move we reported on last week). But as if the prospect of Scott (who recently seems bent on getting back to his former glory) directing a fresh McCarthy script wasn’t enough to get you excited, word is now out that Scott is looking at his Prometheus star, Michael Fassbender, to lead the film. Again – sold. The Counselor has been described, quite tantalizingly, as “No Country For Old Men on steroids.” The film is a modern tale that takes place in the American Southwest and will reportedly center on “a respected lawyer who thinks he can dip a toe in to the drug business without getting sucked down. It is a bad decision and he tries his best to survive it and get out of a desperate situation.” Hmm, dangerous business, bad choices that consume characters, seedy lifestyles? Sound a bit like Shame, meaning it’s something that Fassbender can do, and handily.

Let us take this time to bemoan Hollywood’s love affair with unnecessary remakes. DreamWorks and Working Title Films are reportedly set on remaking Alfred Hitchcock‘s Academy Award-winning Rebecca because, oh, who the hell knows why? Hitchcock’s 1940 film garnered him his sole Best Picture Oscar and remains one of his finest and most beloved films. The original starred no less than Laurence Olivier as the rich Maxim de Winter, who marries the innocent Joan Fontaine, and takes her back to his mansion, where she slowly discovers the weird hold the deceased Mrs. de Winter (that’s Rebecca to you) has over the entire household. That’s just the very tip of the iceberg of Rebecca, which is twisty and twisted and smart and evocative and really a story about love. Which is why the guy who wrote Eastern Promises (and a pair of other internationally-tinged thrillers) is going to pen a new version for the screen. Of course.

One of 2010′s most wicked independent horror films is getting an American remake, thanks to a pair of up-and-coming filmmakers. Director Jim Mickle and his screenwriter partner Nick Damici are now set to remake Jorge Michel Grau‘s We Are What We Are, the best little Mexican horror flick about a family of cannibals you’ve likely never seen. As our pal Peter S. Hall points out, with Mickle signed on for the remake, that means that a film from 2010′s Fantastic Fest is getting remade by a director who also had a film at that same FF. Synergy! Mickle and Damici’s Stake Land played at FF, as well as at Toronto as part of their Midnight Madness sidebar (where it won the People’s Choice Award). The film followed a set of survivors attempting to scrape by in a post-apocalyptic wasteland ruled by vampires. While I wasn’t the biggest fan of the film, Mickle and Damici infused their characters with believable and likable qualities, and then set them against an appropriately gritty and terrifying background. And Grau seems to agree, saying “I feel fortunate to have someone with the vision and talent Jim has to re-interpret my work. It is extraordinary to have a team of filmmakers so respectful of the spirit of a film and take such good care of its essence. I’m so proud to know We Are What We Are will be reworked under that kind of intelligent frame of mind. Very happy that Jim will construct a new [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

If you ask me, Brian De Palma has been really underperforming over the last decade or so. I think I remember seeing Femme Fatale and The Black Dahlia from him, and that’s about it. When was the last time I was truly excited to see a De Palma film? You’d have to go all the way back to when he worked with Nic Cage on Snake Eyes. Thankfully, the director has a new project in the works, and while it’s not quite as exciting as a re-pairing with Nic Cage, it does sound appropriately ridiculous. This time he’s working on a remake of a Burt Reynolds movie, with Jason Statham in the Burt Reynolds role. Probably not a lot of people remember 1986’s Heat, because by all accounts it was pretty bad. It’s the type of movie that goes through multiple directors over the course of its production, and then eventually forces the guy who has to take credit for directing to not even use his real name.

Director Todd Phillips has made three films for Warner Bros. so far: The Hangover, Due Date, and The Hangover Part II. Say what you will about their varying degrees of quality, but there’s no denying the fact that they were all huge financial successes for both Phillips and the studio, so Warner Bros. is obviously very committed to being in the Todd Phillips business. To that end they’ve signed him to a new first look deal that will keep him making movies for the studio until at least the end of 2013, and will give him first crack at quite a few potential projects. Deadline Dix Hills has a rundown of four different scripts that are all being put together as potential Phillips vehicles.

After hitting the stage to conduct a live show version of his hitRECord website (dedicated to open collaboration production with his users) at last month’s Sundance Film Festival, it looks like Joseph Gordon-Levitt is finally adding a very expected title to his already long string of occupations. Gordon-Levitt will make his feature directing debut with a still-untitled comedy that he has also penned. Moreover, he will also star in the film alongside Scarlett Johansson. Deadline Brentwood reports that the film is “a sexy comedy about about a modern-day Don Juan, and his quest to become less of a ‘selfish dick.’” Gordon-Levitt is, of course, cast as that “selfish dick,” with Johansson grabbing one of two female lead roles. Gordon-Levitt also told the outlet that “his major motive for returning [to acting] was a burning desire to direct.” You don’t say! He went on to say, “I spent a year working with Chris Nolan, Rian Johnson, Steven Spielberg, and I did my best to pay attention. I’ve also been making short films for a long time now, I’ve directed a ton of them, and that is a huge part of why I feel comfortable and confident in this.” Well, he’s got a point there.

Now that John le Carré’s spy novel “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” has been adapted into a highly acclaimed film of the same name that made a bunch of money on a worldwide level, we can probably expect to see a flood of his other works suddenly making their way to the big screen. And at the head of that pack is director Anton Corbijn, who plans to make an adaptation of Le Carré’s “A Most Wanted Man” the followup to his 2010 film The American. The screenplay has been adapted by Edge of Darkness writer Drew Bovell, and tells the story of a mysterious Russian immigrant in Germany. Or, as the book’s Amazon description puts it: “A half-starved young Russian man in a long black overcoat is smuggled into Hamburg at dead of night. He has an improbable amount of cash secreted in a purse round his neck. He is a devout Muslim. Or is he? He says his name is Issa. Annabel, an idealistic young German civil rights lawyer, determines to save Issa from deportation. Soon her client’s survival becomes more important to her than her own career. In pursuit of Issa’s mysterious past, she confronts the incongruous Tommy Brue, the sixty-year-old scion of Brue Freres, a failing British bank based in Hamburg. A triangle of impossible loves is born. Meanwhile, scenting a sure kill in the so-called War on Terror, the spies of three nations converge upon the innocents.” The big news about this film is that the [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Director Abel Ferrara is no stranger to making movies about creeps – he did direct the original Bad Lieutenant after all – so he’s probably as good a choice as any to make a dramatization of the recent scandal French politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn has been involved in. For those uninitiated, Strauss-Kahn (or DSK, as the French adorably refer to him) was the former director of the International Monetary Fund and had a pretty high profile campaign for the French presidency running before he was arrested in New York for allegedly sexually assaulting a hotel maid. A sexual encounter between the two was confirmed, but exactly how consensual it really got was never revealed, and eventually the case was dismissed; not before the incident garnered a tidal wave of media attention and derailed the man’s political career, however. Anyway, on to the movie news. Ferrara has told Le Monde that his next film will be a dramatization of the incident starring Gérard Depardieu as the politician and Isabelle Adjani as his very angry wife. It will be filmed in New York, Washington, and France, places that Ferrara describes as being “all spots of power.” In an interview on Ferrara’s site screenwriter Chris Zois said that the movie is, “really going to talk about the relationship between two people – two people who are larger than life, but in many ways very much like ordinary people under stress.”

As if it were 1982 all over again, Harrison Ford is in talks to star in Blade Runner. According to Twitch Film, Ford is in the early stages of discussing the possibility – meaning that it could be a reunion for the movie star of the modern blockbuster with Ridley Scott, the director who’s revisiting his modern blockbusters. That must mean that Ford and Scott have truly reconciled. Ford publicly stated he disliked the process of making Blade Runner, noting that he fought with Scott and absolutely hated having to go back and do the moronic voice over narration (and rightfully so). Scott on the other hand once responded to a question about the biggest asshat he’d ever worked with by calling up Ford’s name. Good to see them working together again. If the deal gets made. It’s still a long way until that happens and until the movie gets made. Scott has Prometheus coming out this year, and there is a slate and a half of possible movies and television shows for Scott to dig into next. With any hope, these two share some ink and take us into the near future in the near future.

Normally the blue birds that deliver the mail sing a song as they fly along, but today they seemed grim and despondent. Perhaps it’s because they had to drop the lump of coal that is the press release announcing a greenlit Atlas Shrugged: Part 2 into the old inbox. Or perhaps they’ve just been sick. Either way, a follow-up to the completely inept filmmaking of the first film will be standing awkwardly in front of cameras soon. Not only that, it will ambitiously seek to have the movie ready for theaters by October of this year at the zero hour of, what the release calls, “a fever pitched presidential election season.” It even comes with its own poster and a spooky teaser trailer where pundits can’t agree on how pronounce Ayn Rand‘s name:

Legendary Pictures CEO Thomas Tull has been trying to get his Here There Be Monsters project going for quite a while. It’s a story of his own creation that tells the tale of John Paul Jones’ life as a Revolutionary War-era Naval Captain, but with a twist. In this telling of Jones’ story, there are added giant sea monsters and the like. As if Jones’ exploits weren’t exciting enough already. In order to shepherd his dream to reality, Tull hired veteran screenwriter Brian Helgeland to get together a script, and he’s been searching around for a director as well. At one point it was looking like Robert Zemeckis might come on board, but that never came to fruition, and not much has been said about the film since. Hope is not lost for Tull and his dream of telling stories where historical figures grapple with giant squid, however, as someone close to the situation is telling Vulture that the project has new life.

Not content to just be a highly regarded, hugely successful author whose novels often get made into movies, Cormac McCarthy has decided that he wants to get into the Hollywood spec script writing business himself. Normally I would say that this is a bad plan for the future, but this is Cormac McCarthy…who’s going to pass on buying one of his scripts? The fruits of his screenwriting labors so far are a completed screenplay titled The Counselor, a story about a respected lawyer who tries his hand at working in the narcotics trade (to what can only be assumed are disastrous results). As can be imagined, as soon as there was word that there was a script written by Cormac McCarthy in existence, it was immediately bought up in a big money deal. And coincidentally enough, it was The Road producers Nick Weschler and Steve and Paula Mae Schwartz that scooped it up. When talking about the purchase, Steve Schwartz told Deadline South Shields that, “The spec falls smack in the middle of what everyone responds to with Cormac’s novels…Since McCarthy himself wrote the script, we get his own muscular prose directly, with its sexual obsessions. It’s a masculine world into which, unusually, two women intrude to play leading roles. McCarthy’s wit and humor in the dialogue make the nightmare even scarier. This may be one of McCarthy’s most disturbing and powerful works.” Given such high praise and pedigree it also shouldn’t come as a surprise that The Counselor already [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Yesterday I promised that if we just waited patiently, the remaining questions about Steven Soderbergh’s upcoming movie Side Effects would soon be answered, and a whole new set of questions would probably arise. Oh, how true that was. Before we get into all that, let’s do a brief rundown of the reporting that’s been done on this movie so far. First it was reported that a “psychopharmacology thriller” that Soderbergh was working on called Bitter Pill was getting its funding through a partnership between Annapurna Pictures and Open Road Films, but that the movie would be called Side Effects going forward. Then came news that Annapurna had pulled their funding, possibly based on concerns they had with Blake Lively being cast in the starring role. It was also theorized that the production was looking at a short list of new actresses to take Lively’s place and save the film some face. Finally, the casting rumors looked to be true, because it was announced that Rooney Mara had been chosen to take Lively’s place as the lead. We were then left only with the question of who would come on board to take Annapurna’s place as this movie’s sugar daddy.

Recently, it was reported that Universal Pictures ended their deal with Hasbro – meaning that movies adapted from Hasbro products that nobody wanted to see in the first place, like Ouija Board and Monopoly, now have very questionable futures. Or, at least, you would think that they would have very questionable futures. In actuality they all seem to be getting scooped up by other studios pretty quickly. First, Relativity Media acquired the rights to Stretch Armstrong, and now, in news that surely must be ushering in the end of the world, Sony and Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison are teaming up to make Candy Land, which Sandler himself intends on both co-writing and starring in. Kevin Lima (Enchanted) is attached to direct the project, with Robert Smigel and Sandler in talks to pen the screenplay. Why make a Candy Land movie? Columbia Pictures president Doug Belgrad says, ”Candy Land is more than just a game. It is a brand that children, parents and grandparents know and love. The world of Candy Land offers an extraordinary canvas upon which to create a fantastical, live-action family adventure film with a larger than life part for Adam. We are thrilled to partner with Hasbro and Happy Madison on this project.”

Bryan Bertino crafted a fantastic home invasion flick with The Strangers. It was environmental and terrifying, but it also seemed fresh while playing off of old standbys in the genre. Now, he’ll be joining the handful of directors attempting to breathe life into Found Fauxtage. According to Shock Till You Drop, the writer/director has sold his script for Mockingbird to Universal. The film will focus on a couple that receives a package containing instructions that, if not followed, will yield some bloody results. Also in the package? A camera. Because you can’t have Found Fauxtage without one. It’s an interesting, game-like premise that absolutely has potential, but it’s just great to Bertino getting another project off the ground after the hellish development of The Strangers 2, which will probably not be made at this point. Interestingly, this announcement comes right around the same time that Universal dropped its Stretch Armstrong remake with Taylor Lautner slated to star. In a craven world of giant tentpoles, a movie based off a toy with built-in awareness and a Twilight star just got axed while an original script with a curious premise got picked up. Maybe the tide is turning after all. At least at Universal.

Last summer’s X-Men: First Class breathed some necessary life back into the superhero franchise, thanks to a stylistically cool film, an up-and-coming cast, and some generally energetic direction from Matthew Vaughn. While I don’t think anyone was particularly worried about Vaughn coming back to helm the film’s inevitable sequel, Deadline Warsaw has gone ahead and confirmed that Vaughn is indeed on to direct, with Bryan Singer back to produce. Their post also confirms that Simon Kinberg is set to script the film (news we’ve known about since November), which will likely be the film’s greatest hurdle, as Kinberg has yet to impress me with films like Jumper and the first Sherlock Holmes. Next up, he’s got two projects coming out that I cannot even remotely gather interest in – This Means War and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. He also helped script X-Men: The Last Stand, which was decidedly not good, but at least he has familiarity with his characters. Paired with Singer and Vaughn, who both have great affection for the franchise, this next X-Men could shake out just fine.

Internationally loved cologne salesman, Charles Bronson, was already a massive star by the time he made Death Wish, but it’s his role as Paul Kersey that might be his most famous simply because he owns it completely. Sure he’s rugged and charismatic in The Dirty Dozen, he’s surprisingly vulnerable in The Great Escape, but in the Death Wish movies he’s in command and the streets bow down to him. So maybe a remake is in order? According to the LA Times, that’s the thinking of MGM and Paramount, and the partnership wants Joe Carnahan to clean up from fighting wolves for The Grey and come help them out with it. It must be tough coming out of bankruptcy, but MGM really has nothing except remake concepts going for them. That’s pretty damned sad. Of course, the big question with a remake like this (beyond the fact that remakes aren’t doing good business currently) is how to re-create something that tapped into a social feeling in the 1970s. The same heat just isn’t there, there is no grand panic in society of rising crime rates and a feeling of helplessness in the face of a bewildered law enforcement culture. In fact, police are so good at doing their jobs now, they even find time to pepper spray people in the face at random. So who becomes the villain here? And even better, who could possibly replace Charles Bronson as Paul Kersey? Jason Statham did the job recently for The Mechanic, but [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

The found fauxtage superhero flick Chronicle comes out next week, but Max Landis has already lined up his next project over at Disney. According to Variety, The Mouse has taken the bait on a space adventure from the writer. Not only is it untitled (or without a title they can release at least), there’s also essentially no information on it at all. It involves a brother and sister going through an emotional journey. And there’s space. From that, it’s easy to assume that it will be science fiction on a large scale. What’s interesting is that Disney seems to be putting healthy stock in the final frontier and science fiction – with John Carter trying to become a Spring fixture this year, the video game-inspired Wreck-It Ralph, and this new project in the works. It’ll be interesting to see if they stick with the sci-fi tilt and truly move ahead with more Tron movies. They’ve made confidence announcements, sure, but it remains to be seen whether sequels will survive the development process. That’s not to say that they aren’t placing their narrative bets on other genres. They have Frankenweenie and The Odd Life of Timothy Green coming out this year – a Gothic coming-of-age tale and the organic version of a test tube baby story respectively. Beyond that, they’re supplementing with 3D re-releases of Beauty and the Beast and Finding Nemo this year. Hopefully they can take the money made by converting and shipping reels to theaters and invest it [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]