You know how you went downstairs this morning, and there wasn’t quite as much cereal left in the box as you thought there should be? We did that. We have operatives everywhere. We can see and hear everything you taste and smell. Which is why this week — on an episode that won’t self-destruct no matter how much you want it to — we offer some of our favorite conspiracy narratives (including a new take on The Usual Suspects) after talking with Aaron Eckhart about his latest CIA thriller, Erased, and the physical reaction he gets when reading a great script . Plus, we’ve got a review of Iron Man 3 done interrogation style. For more from us on a daily basis, follow the show (@brokenprojector), Geoff (@drgmlatulippe) and Scott (@scottmbeggs) on the Twitter. And, as always, we welcome your feedback. Download Episode #17 Directly Or subscribe Through iTunes

Unlike a lot of actors, Aaron Eckhart maintains a great balance of starring in indies and blockbusters – muse to Neil LaBute, he appeared in his films In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors as well as starring as Harvey “Two Face” Dent in Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster The Dark Knight. He also has a chin dimple that rivals Cary Grant’s, which can never be a bad thing. For his latest film, Olympus Has Fallen (directed by Antoine Fuqua), Eckhart gets back into blockbuster mode as the recently widowed President Asher, who is held hostage in the White House by a terrorist group. While his former Secret Service Agent/boxing buddy Mike (Gerard Butler) infiltrates the White House in hopes of saving the day, the President never backs down, even while being held hostage. Eckhart talked with us about his everyman approach to playing the President, the fallout of his character in The Dark Knight, potential upcoming collaborations with LaBute, and a possible name for his autobiography.

What if I told you that the new Gerard Butler film is like ‘Die Hard in the White House’ in more than just a generic ‘Die Hard in/on/at a…’ kind of way? Or that it features the highest, bloodiest, most ridiculous onscreen body count in an action film since Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo? Or that it’s the most purely entertaining film of Butler’s career? Or that the damn thing is a ton of fun? It’s all true… but none of it means there aren’t some incredibly unfortunate elements in Olympus Has Fallen too. Mike Banning (Butler) is head of the president’s (Aaron Eckhart) secret service protection detail, but an accident resulting in lost lives sees him reassigned to a desk job down the street at the U.S. Treasury building. When dozens of well-armed and highly organized North Korean terrorists attack the White House 18 months later the formerly disgraced agent becomes the president’s, and America’s, greatest hope. (Good thing they don’t know he’s actually Scottish.)

A composer known for his otherworldly scores for films such as Immortals and period scores for television programs such as The Borgias, The Tudors, and The Pillars of the Earth may seem like an odd choice for a film about a very real place (the White House) falling victim to a fictional (albeit extreme) situation. However with a title like Olympus Has Fallen, composer Trevor Morris‘ past pedigree seems to make him the perfect fit to tell a story that is in fact as grand, and moving, as his past work. A fan of action movies himself, Morris worked closely with Olympus‘ director Antoine Fuqua to not only bring the story of the White House being taken over to life, but do so by getting audiences’ adrenaline and emotions racing.

Playwright, screenwriter, and filmmaker Neil LaBute‘s stories aren’t for the faint of heart. They can be grueling in their dark humor, awkwardness and characters who will go as far as they have to for their own gain. Some Girl(s), which LaBute scripted from his own stage play, recently made its premiere at SXSW and sits comfortably in the gut-punching world his fans have come to love. The lead of the film, the Man (Adam Brody), is a selfish, narcissistic writer who isn’t afraid of embarrassing others with his stories. According to LaBute, he himself isn’t that kind of man, and none of his personal life sneaks into his work. The writer and director of In the Company of Men, The Shape of Things, and others creates from his imagination, choosing not to pirate from his own life or others. When we see the protagonist of Some Girl(s) doing so, it makes for an annoyingly oblivious character, but as LaBute tells us, he never sets out to annoy the audience with his conniving. The writer of Some Girl(s) was kind enough to speak with us at great length about those uncomfortable stories he’s famous for, how The Wickerman isn’t based on his life, and more about his process:

It’s quite serious. That’s the one thing that FilmDistrict seems to want you to know based on these new images from Olympus Has Fallen, released exclusively to Film School Rejects this morning. It’s true, there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic about this one. Among them: Antoine Fuqua is a director who has dealt in more quality than anything else, as evidence by his gritty turns with Brooklyn’s Finest, Shooter, Training Day and Tears of the Sun; Aaron Eckhart‘s jaw structure, as seen in The Dark Knight, was clearly made to exist about a foot and a half above the Presidential podium; Gerard Butler plays a good redemption story, always delivers with a gun in his hands; and it’s got Morgan Freeman. On top of all that, it’s a movie about a siege of the White House, in which one man is the key to saving POTUS from some Asian-based threat. It’s also quite bloody and full of what the kids might call “mean mugging,” also known as serious people looking very serious.

Although Olympus Has Fallen foolishly begins with Aaron Eckhart playing the president, it eventually rights this wrong by replacing him with Morgan Freeman, the true ruler of this great nation. All it takes is a terrorist takeover of the White House. Luckily, we have Gerard Butler on the inside and presidential succession on the outside to ensure that the bad guys won’t win. This one from Antoine Fuqua is the first of two “White House being taken over while a secret service agent is the only hope” movies we’ll see this year. It hits in March, and Roland Emmerich’s version, White House Down, hits in June. Hopefully we’ll get a trailer for that soon so we can compare, but check out the aggressively average look at Olympus for now:

On one side, we have Roland Emmerich, Channing Tatum, and Jamie Foxx. On the other, we have Antoine Fuqua, Gerard Butler, and Aaron Eckhart. In the middle? Similarly themed and plotted films that have (apparently) both been deemed “Die Hard in the White House.” Choose a side now or…choose one later when the films are actually made? Variety reports that Eckhart has now joined the cast of Fuqua’s film, Olympus Has Fallen in the role of President of the United States (that’s the Jamie Foxx role, for those of you still trying to keep track). Eckhart’s good locks and lantern jaw seem pretty classically presidential, which is fair enough, because Emmerich’s White House Down is obviously going for awesome, ass-kicking points with Foxx.

Fear not Harry Potter fans, it looks like we’ve finally found a promising project for Rupert Grint. Over the past year or so we’ve been living in a post-Potter world, and Grint’s co-stars Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson have been flourishing. It seems like rarely a week goes by without one or the other poking their head into a new project. Grint has had a bit tougher of a time landing significant work so far, and things were starting to look a bit worrisome. But holy heck does this new film The Drummer sound like it could be a great chance for the young actor to show what he’s got apart from being Ron Weasley. Despite the fact that this one is from a writer/director duo that haven’t done much I’ve found noteworthy (Randall Miller and Jody Savin), The Drummer could be a winner just based on subject matter alone. It’s a look at the last few years of the life of Beach Boys’ drummer Dennis Wilson, when he was working on his solo album “Pacific Ocean Blue.” With the legions of Beach Boys fans still out there in the world, undoubtedly this is a project that will be getting a lot of attention, especially when you consider the cast that Grint will be joining.

Yesterday, our own Cole Abaius reported on the possibility of Bill Nighy joining Stuart Beattie‘s I, Frankenstein as a demon, but before we get official word of Nighy going evil, Deadline Manchester reports that Yvonne Strahovski has signed on to play the female lead and principal love interest in the film. Best known for her work on television series Chuck, the role will continue Strahovski’s steady slip into more feature work (she recently co-starred in Killer Elite). Beattie wrote the script for the modern take on the Frankenstein’s monster tale, working off a graphic novel by Kevin Grevioux. Aaron Eckhart is on board to play the monster (which any nerd worth their salt knows is not actually named Frankenstein, that name comes from the monster’s creator Dr. Victor Frankenstein, so I am at a bit of a loss when it comes to the name of this project), who wavers between his more hideous needs and a burning desire to be truly human. As if that wasn’t enough to make a monster go positively batty, he’s also being “pursued by demons wanting to gain the secret of his reanimated corpse.” Also? Those demons want to create an army of the undead. And I thought Mary Shelley’s novel had enough issues to keep the staggering one busy.

According to Variety, Bill Nighy is in talks to play another immortal-yet-aged being for I, Frankenstein. The movie is being written and directed by Stuart Beattie, the screenwriter behind the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, which Nighy was a part of. This will be Beattie’s second feature as director after Tomorrow, When the War Began. A modernized version of Shelley’s story which sees Aaron Eckhart playing a centuries-old Frankenstein’s Monster is an abstract idea, but it should push Beattie more into the minds of American audiences as a director. So far, it’s also the furthest along in a slew of Frankenstein projects that have yet to be struck by lightning. As for Nighy, there’s nothing ever wrong with casting him, whether it be for a villainous demon or an aging rock star trying to mess up the lyrics to a Troggs song. Hopefully here, he plays both. I feel it in my fingers. I feel it in my toes.

The Rum Diary marks Johnny Depp’s return to Hunter S. Thompson territory, following his cult favorite work in Terry Gilliam’s delirious adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Yet audiences expecting more of the same drug-fueled mania will be disappointed. While it’s filled with offbeat characters and the occasional stylistic quirk, Bruce Robinson’s film offers a straightforward, earnest narrative about a young marble-mouthed author finding his writing voice while fighting capitalist corruption. Set in a volatile Puerto Rico, circa 1960, Thompson’s semi-autobiographical story follows struggling journalist/alter ego Paul Kemp (Depp) as he joins the staff at a local rag run by domineering editor-in-chief Lotterman (Richard Jenkins). It’s a day-to-day portrait of Kemp’s hard living in paradise, set against a backdrop of conflict between the natives hoping to protect their land and the capitalistic cronies interested in transforming the archipelago nation into an overdeveloped tourist spot.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly celebration of what’s happening in the world of entertainment. It also usually manages to get in a few zingers. We begin tonight with an image of Wei Tang, an actress you may recognize as the gal who had a lot of sex with Tony Leung in that Ang Lee movie, Lust, Caution. She’s also a talented actress. Which is why she’s on the shortlist of actresses who could play the Asian Bond girl role in Bond 23, which is now rumored to be partially shooting in China.

Kevin Grevioux is best known for creating the Underworld franchise, which tells the story of a centuries-old war between the vampires and the werewolves. He doesn’t just limit himself to writing about ancient vampires and werewolves though, it turns out he also has a penchant for writing about an immortal version of the Frankenstein monster. His graphic novel, I, Frankenstein is about a character named Adam, who is basically Dr. Frankenstein’s creation (who has survived to present day because of some genetic quirk inherent in his creation), going about his journeys and finding himself coming upon a stylized Gothic metropolis. After he arrives in said city, he finds himself caught between two immortal clans who have been warring for centuries. See? Kevin Grevioux writes about all sorts of things. The big news about I, Frankenstein is that it’s being adapted into a feature film. It has been adapted for the screen and will be directed by veteran genre screenwriter Stuart Beattie and, according to a press release sent out by Lionsgate, it will be starring Aaron Eckhart as the Adam character. Beattie says of the story, “Mary Shelley’s story is about the creation of the first human being. This is the story about that being becoming human.” Sounds like some pretty heady stuff. Luckily Lionsgate is confident that they’ve found the right actor to bring the character to life.

Getting The Rum Diary to both page and screen has been a real trip. Hunter S. Thompson wrote the book back in the 1960s, chronicling his adventures writin’ and boozin’ and livin’ down in Puerto Rico (as told through the eyes of his alter-ego “Paul Kemp”), but it was not published until 1998. A film adaptation has been kicked around since 2000, with the film ultimately lensing in 2009, though the film won’t be released until later this year. Johnny Depp plays Kemp in the film, marking Depp’s second attempt at playing Thompson (or, more accurately, a Thompson-based character from the author’s own work), after turning in one of his best performances as the gonzo journalist in Terry Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas back in 1998. Depp again takes on his Thompson twang for another dip into the life of the icon. This time, drugs have been swapped for rum, the deserts of Vegas for the oceans of Puerto Rico. The Thompson follies will likely not abate, however. The film also stars Amber Heard, Aaron Eckhart, Richard Jenkins, Giovanni Ribisi, and Amaury Nolasco. Kick back, take a sip, and check out the trailer after the break.

As we all already knew, Peter Pan is a monster who swoops down, breaks into bedroom windows, and takes children deep into the night to never, never return. Now, filmmakers are catching up to that fact and developing a story that reflects the grisly, real-world terror of Pan. According to Dark Horizons, Aaron Eckhart has signed on to play Captain Hook – a former police detective haunted by the ghosts of his past, hunting down a kidnapper (who probably wears green tights). AnnaSophia Robb will play Wendy, a victim who survived and has joined in the manhunt. Plus, Sean Bean is on board to play Smee – the only person on the police force helping Hook. All of these things are good things. The propensity to go darker for our children’s stories is a trend I can fully get behind, because it means revealing a much more human side to tales usually filled with glitter and fairy dust. On that note, there’s no word yet as to whether Tinkerbell will be a much-needed prostitute with valuable information. Animation director Ben Hibon will make his directorial debut here from a script written by newcomer Benjamin Magid. It’s good to see some new blood pumping through the system aided by some solid acting talents and a strange premise. Of course, this isn’t the first dim project for the boy who wouldn’t grow up (not to mention the four or five hundred Snow White and Red Riding Hood and Hansel & Gretel projects

Battle: Los Angeles is an unusual movie. It’s an action film with Aaron Eckhart in the lead, it’s pro-military, and it doesn’t feel compelled to answer every question put forth by its premise. There are elements within it of several other films, but it still manages to play out like a somewhat fresh mix of military action and alien invasion. It’s Roland Emmerich without the cheese and laughable understanding of science. It’s Michael Bay without the stupidity and excessive use of ground level POV slow-mos. And most unusual of all, it’s a solidly entertaining action movie releasing in the middle of March.

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr finds himself behind enemy lines in Los Angeles. At first, he thought he was the victim of an alien invasion, but then he realized he was just in South Central wearing the wrong colors. Fortunately, Aaron Eckhart came to his rescue. This gave him a chance to put on a red cloak and skip through the woods, searching for Amanda Seyfried. He then capped off the week sneaking on a NASA flight to Mars wearing only boxer shorts, a T-shirt and a space helmet. He plans to return soon because that kind of makeshift space suit worked for the folks in Mars Needs Moms. Don’t wait up, though.

Of many preferred professions, I find chefs to be on the right end of the hotness scale. Their passion for food translates into multiple areas of life and it’s hard not to get swept away into a blissful utopia where calories don’t count but your opinion of that chocolate mousse does. As you may have guessed, I have been suckered into this world once or twice, and unlike the obsessions of mine that turned sour, my chef love remains. I had high expectations for the Catherine Zeta-Jones and Aaron Eckhart led kitchen romance No Reservations. Two hot-tempered executive chefs forced together to run one kitchen sounded almost as steamy as angry sex in the Grey’s Anatomy on-call room. The potential for secret glances over chopping boards and mutual arousal from yelling at their sous chef seemed inevitable. However, the movie wasn’t about the sexy times of these two hot chefs. Rather it was more about Zeta-Jones’ Kate and Eckhart’s Nick learning to put aside their ambition and realize what’s important in life. Sex and cooking go hand-in-hand, so thankfully the couple does partake in a few tingly make-out moments and fade-to-black sex scenes. But most of the movie’s heavy petting is left for the dough in the prep oven. Tough lady chefs like Zeta-Jones’ Kate are modeled after real chefs, but that doesn’t mean Hollywood has been quick to allow women to be tough and sexy on screen. On the contrary, many movies featuring female cooks have been just that—cooks.

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr enters the grid (which is what he likes to call his local IMAX theater) to try and find an old and hairy Jeff Bridges amidst a bunch of young-looking sexy-time people in tight body suits. Afterwards, he has a pic-i-nic at Jellystone Park and faces a bear attack. It’s a good thing he had his hunting rifle with him… but he still wonders why that grizzly he shot was wearing a hat and tie. Finally, he hands out some grades on two limited release award flicks that really don’t jazz him as much as a big, dumb IMAX 3D movie.