If you would have told me a couple years ago, when I still had the bad taste of Cloverfield in my mouth, that J.J. Abrams’ production company Bad Robot had a new action film in the works, my ears probably wouldn’t have perked up much. But right now I’m still riding off the high of Super 8 and Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, so questions of what Bad Robot is up to next are very much on my mind. Talk about a good 2011. Now, this company is famously secretive, so of course not much is know about their new project, but Variety is reporting that Abrams and his partner Bryan Burk, along with Let Me In director Matt Reeves, are set to produce a new action movie that will be directed by Brad Parker, coming from a script by Michael Gilio. Parker has one feature under his belt, The Diary of Lawson Oxford, and he did work with Reeves as a second unit director on Let Me In, but he seems to be a filmmaker that comes from the school of David Fincher. He cut his teeth doing a lot of commercial work and work for MTV, and then he stepped into the film world by doing digital effects for Fight Club back in the late 90s. It sounds to me like he’s learned at the feet of all the right people, so I’m interested to see what he has to offer as the man in charge.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly entertainment news column that collects all the best links of the day, then adds commentary. It is also glad to be back from its Christmas break and hopes you got everything you wanted. It got almost everything on its list. We begin this evening with a fun new image from Tim Burton’s upcoming stop-motion 3D animated film Frankenweenie. It comes to us via the folks at The Playlist, who are quick to remind us that said film is coming out in the fall of 2012. Perhaps this will be the Tim Burton film that allows us to forget the mistakes the director has made with 3D in recent years?

A lot of movie-goers liked J.J. Abrams’ reboot of the Star Trek franchise because it introduced a modern aesthetic to the property, injecting it with exciting action sequences, while also making it feel less like a bunch of people standing around spewing jargon in a space ship (something for nerds only), and more like a big budget adventure that everyone could enjoy. I just liked it because it was Abrams finally paired up with some material that he couldn’t treat like a great big mystery. It was Star Trek, we know what Star Trek is, so sorry, Mr. Abrams, no super secret viral ad campaign there. Of course, once he got a chance to start marketing the “what’s in the train” aspect of his next film, Super 8, he was back up to his old tricks. And now Deadline New Suffolk reports that Abrams has yet another top secret project in the pipeline, which has just been picked up by Paramount. This one pairs him with red hot screenwriter Billy Ray, a guy who not only is scripting a Peter Pan movie called Pan for Joe Roth, but also a Tom Hanks-starring vehicle directed by Paul Greengrass called A Captain’s Duty, the long-awaited 24 movie for Fox, and a remake of The Secret in Their Eyes, which he will also direct. Busy guy. The film that Abrams and Ray are working on is said to come from an idea that they brainstormed together, and it’s going to be a mystery adventure of [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]

David Katzenberg and Seth Grahame-Smith, now together known as Katzsmith Productions, have signed a new feature producing deal with Warner Bros. Who are these guys? Katzenberg wrote and directed a short film about a teenage nerd with a big unit that he later developed into the MTV series The Hard Times of R.J. Berger, and Garahame-Smith is the guy who wrote Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. The two have been working together for a while, and Warners likes what they see; so much so that they’re expected to be handed the reigns of a sequel to the 1988 horror-comedy Beetlejuice as their first project. Warner Bros. production president Greg Silverman explains the new deal, “We first got to know Seth through his fantastic work on Dark Shadows, and it immediately became a priority to expand our relationship with him. Seth introduced us to David, who greatly impressed us with the vision for KatzSmith from the very first meeting. We firmly believe in their talents and are extremely excited to welcome them to the Warners family.”

If we never see the fine folks from Pajiba again, we now know why. They are reporting today on a film project so secretive, it threatens their very lives to even whisper its name.

Producer, director, eye glass wearing super entertainment machine J.J. Abrams decided this week to extend the deal the keeps his production company, Bad Robot, and Paramount Pictures in bed together making movies. And that is important.

Oh, wait. No. That’s just my wishful thought process getting ahead of the actual story. J.J. Abrams (and Bad Robot) will produce Jay Dyers’ script Hot for Teacher, recently purchased by Paramount Pictures.

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