What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly movie news column and link collector that is tired of explaining itself to you, quite frankly. Drew McWeeney at HitFix got the scoop this evening on a big story, in which Harry Potter director David Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves will be re-teaming to do a multi-film version of Stephen King’s epic The Stand. The hope here is that Yates can give it that Deathly Hallows scope, something the work of Stephen King has long deserved, but never really received. With The Dark Tower on the ropes, this could become a new fixation for King fans.

The entire setup for the Tower Heist trailer is solid and pretty damned timely. A staff at an incredibly schmancy apartment building are fleeced out of their pensions by the building’s wealthiest schmuck so they decide to rob him. But they’ll need help. Enter the moment the trailer stops dead in its tracks. You know you’re poison when a perfectly harmless action comedy (even one where Ben Stiller and Matthew Broderick try to keep straight faces while Alan Alda tries to be unlikable), becomes a laughingstock just by inserting your image into the trailer. Guess who, movie fans. It’s your favorite comedian turned least favorite comedian and he ruins everything here:

If the fictional character of Walter Mitty were to regale us with his exploits in Hollywood, he might tell us about the time he both starred in and directed a big feature film. Seeing as Walter Mitty is a liar, it would have been a bunch of bullpucky, but for multi-talented Renaissance man Ben Stiller, it’s a reality baby. Stiller is no stranger to the director’s chair. We’ve seen him step behind the camera before for films like the highly underrated The Cable Guy, and the much lauded Tropic Thunder, And now it looks like his next directorial gig will be for a film that we’ve already heard he was looking to star in, Fox’s long in development “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” adaptation.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly entertainment news column that doesn’t usually participate in such overt misogyny. However, in a week that has inundated us with more Michael Bayhem than the world was built to handle, it would like to take out its man card, flop it down on the table like a wet fish and display it to the world. Yes, this is about to get sexual. And no, it will not last long. That’s just how any good late-nite movie news linkdump rolls. It’s a slow news night. Allow me to illustrate right off the bat: Tonight’s lead story is about Brooklyn Decker, model-turned-actress and all-around attractive human being who has been cast in What to Expect When You’re Expecting alongside Cameron Diaz and Jennifer Lopez. Chris Rock will also star. The only thing about this story that I find interesting is the image above, which has less to do with a movie based on a pregnancy self-help book and more to do with reasons why anyone would want to make Brooklyn Decker pregnant in the first place. I think we all still win.

Way back in 2009 there was supposed to be a movie called Neighborhood Watch starring Will Ferrel and directed by Wedding Crashers’ David Dobkin, but talent clashed with studio to the point that it didn’t ever happen. Fox isn’t a studio to just lie down and die however. I guess somebody in charge must really like the project, because a whole new wave of talent has been tossed at the script. Things didn’t work out with Ferrell and Dobkin creatively, but recently Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg have written a new draft of the script. You might have heard of them, they did stuff like Superbad and Pineapple Express. Oh yeah, and Rogen has acted in so many movies over the last five years that you’re probably sick of him. But don’t worry, Rogen isn’t the new guy rumored to star. Now that there’s a spiffy new version of the script written by top talent comedy mega-star Ben Stiller is being courted to star in the film. Oh. His character would be a city boy who ends up moving to the suburbs and joining the neighborhood watch. What might seem like a pretty boring gig proves to be nothing of the sort when he finds himself right in the middle of some sort of extraterrestrial cover-up. Sounds goofy, so it’s probably going to need a goofy guy to direct.

Submarine is the coming-of-age tale of a cold, calculated, and pretentious teen by the name of Oliver Tate. Oliver, like Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate, could easily come off as a downright off-putting and self-absorbed kid. He starts off as an arrogant and creepy kid dealing with what seems to be the weight of the world on his shoulders. Oliver’s romance that comes out of seeking pure lovemaking turns into something genuine. His parents’ love is dying, and he can’t fix it. Through nearly all of this, Oliver stays near-emotionless and blank. His transformation and revelations are shown through writer-director Richard Ayoade‘s unique visual eye, which also never sugarcoats Oliver’s oddness. Ayoade has crafted a young protagonist that while many will love many others will question his sanity… a rare type of lead these days. Here’s what Richard Ayoade had to say about not writing too much style, the moral ambiguity of the film’s characters and, of course, Oliver Tate.

The last time I reported on Noah Baumbach’s next project, While We’re Young, it was with the unfortunate news that James Franco and Cate Blanchett had been forced to drop out of the film. At the time I held out hopes that Baumbach might be able to easily replace the actors with Jesse Eisenberg and Greta Gerwig, and it’s looking like at least half of my hopes and dreams are probably going to come true. While We’re Young is about a couple in their forties who are feeling alienated by their normal set of friends because they haven’t had any children, so they befriend a younger couple who kind of teaches them to rekindle their youth. Now that I know more about the plot of the film, having Gerwig replace Blanchett’s character wouldn’t make much sense age wise, but they seem to have found a different, equally awesome choice to fill her role that does work.

There is a new script for The Secret Life of Walter Mitty floating around Hollywood, and Ben Stiller wants to make it his next film. Or maybe that’s just a heroic daydream. A lot of people have been trying to get an adaptation of the James Thurber short story made in recent years, but mostly it’s just been tossed back and forth through development hell. Most of the biggest stars in Hollywood have had looks at this role, including Mike Myers, Jim Carrey, and Will Ferrell. Huge names in the directing world have also almost made this movie before. Steven Spielberg, Gore Verbinski, and Ron Howard have all given it a look. But this time is different. This time Walter Mitty has two big reasons why it’s more likely to actually get made than it did during all those other go-arounds. Firstly, the reason why nobody has been confident enough to really push this thing through before is reportedly that there were problems with the script. This time the script they’re looking at is completely different from all those other drafts. Steve Conrad, writer of The Weather Man and The Pursuit of Happyness, has reportedly started from scratch and written a treatment of the story that works a whole lot better than anything that’s been out there before. Secondly, while all of those other actors that have been involved with the project are big names, Ben Stiller is maybe the hardest working comedic actor in Hollywood. He produces things, he

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr dresses up in a big red suit and sneaks into people’s houses. The only difference is that he sneaks into the houses of all the naughty girls. But before he can manage that undertaking, he sets his sights on the last wash of movies hitting the multiplexes this season. He travels with Jack Black to the Bermuda Triangle in Gulliver’s Travels then heads out west to catch a killer with True Grit. Finally, he brings his Christmas movie watching to a close by stabbing himself in the face with Little Fockers. Ho ho ho, the humanity!

Here we are back again in Focker-dom, that wonderful place of crushing comic awkwardness, painful slapstick and the no less excruciating specter of great actors slumming for paychecks. Surely, the world did not need Little Fockers, this second sequel to the somewhat overrated Meet the Parents, but like an obligatory stocking-stuffer it has arrived – to cash in for Christmas – and must be dealt with.

Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro are at it again. They are once again at odds in the world of family politics polluted by oft poorly timed puns about the name of a male nurse named Greg. And this time, there are Little Fockers involved in the shenanigans. And Harvey Keitel. It’s hard to say what Keitel is doing in that equation, but it’s beyond me to question this franchise. Twice now this franchise has spewed forth films that don’t exactly look right upon first glance, and twice now it’s delivered the funny. I give up trying to fight it.

The recent cinema of Wes Anderson and his occasional creative collaborator Noah Baumbach have encountered an interesting play with the ever-blurry line that retains an audience’s empathy for an unlikeable protagonist. This week, the Culture Warrior puts those protagonists in focus.

This week, chubby man about town Kevin Carr takes a look at How to Train Your Dragon, Hot Tub Time Machine (which sounds right up his alley) and Greenberg. You may want to wear a helmet.

‘Greenberg,’ Noah Baumbach’s latest, is a mixed bag, with an enormously likable character battling a deeply reprehensible one for screen time.

A few weeks back, I reviewed Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian as part of This Week in Blu-ray. Since then, I’ve taken a second look at the film and found quite a few references to pop culture and other films. Could this movie be smarter than I initially thought possible? Perhaps…

Focus Features has released the first trailer for director Noah Baumbach’s upcoming film Greenberg, which stars Ben Stiller as a jobless guy who doesn’t really want to do anything with himself.

The actress has just signed on for the third installment of the Meet the Parents franchise, and she’ll have a few things to teach her co-stars.

Kevin Carr reviews this week’s new movies: Terminator: Salvation, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian and Dance Flick.

Neil and Kevin wage war on the machines… and McG with some scathing analysis of Terminator: Salvation. Then they move onto the movies that Neil hasn’t seen.

Since I know that your life is not complete if you don’t get your morning news, I am happy to be back with you on this fine Monday morning for this week’s first Early Edition.