Here we are, once again, talking about Steven Soderbergh’s upcoming thriller about depression and medication, Side Effects. The last time we left our players in this ongoing drama Annapurna Pictures had pulled their funding from the film, reportedly over a kerfuffle about casting. You see, rumor had it that there was some uneasy feelings about Blake Lively playing the lead role in this film, that of a depressed woman who battles addiction and is in the middle of a love triangle involving both her husband and her doctor. Further rumors indicated that there were a whole short-list of actresses that Soderbergh and his people were looking at to replace Lively, and hopefully restore faith in the project. Well, it looks like at least most of those rumors were true. Deadline Bedford is reporting that Lively has been shuffled off the film and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo star Rooney Mara will now be taking her place as the lead. Seeing as Mara just turned a lot of heads playing a dark, troubled woman and Lively hasn’t ever turned too many heads doing anything, this is probably good news for the movie overall.

Following Steven Soderbergh’s career has been a winding road full of ups and downs as of late. First he was going to make The Man From U.N.C.L.E., then there was a long period of juggling actors on that film as he tried to nail down a cast, then that movie got cancelled completely. There has been talk of retirement, talk of pushing off retirement to do more things, and generally just a lot of confusion. Things seemed to have reached a moment of stability a week ago, though, when it was announced that he was going forward with his next film, a thriller called Side Effects, and that it had funding stemming from a partnership between Annapurna Pictures and Open Road Films. That’s all up in the air now though, and apparently it comes down to the all too familiar casting woes. Variety is now reporting that Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures has pulled out of the deal, leaving Soderbergh and Open Road to find additional funding on their own. Variety gave no reason as to why the deal fell through, but The Playlist is claiming to have sources close to the situation that say Ellison and her people don’t like the casting of Blake Lively in the lead role. She apparently is set to play a drug addict in the middle of a love triangle between her husband (Channing Tatum) and her doctor (Jude Law).

The production of the upcoming adaptation of Seth Grahame-Smith’s “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” has been a bit of a roller coaster ride. There have been questions about the budget, the schedule, who would end up directing, and perhaps most prominently, who would play the female lead Elizabeth. Pretty much every Hollywood “It” girl you can name has been up for the role, and for whatever reason all of them have ended up turning it down. The production has been through Emma Stone, Mia Wasikowska, Scarlett Johansson, and even Natalie Portman, who has a producer’s credit on the thing but won’t star in it. So, take this news with a grain of salt, but Twitch is reporting that another spin around the casting merry-go-round has landed director Craig Gillespie another candidate for Elizabeth. They say that Gossip Girl star Blake Lively is the new choice, and that an offer has been sent her way.

As a woman, there are certain things I am expected to always want – chocolate, shoes, bad boys, and more Sex and the City. As a human being with eyes, ears, a heart, and passable taste, there is one thing I will never want – more Sex and the City. The seminal HBO series, based on Candace Bushnell’s book of the same name, ran for six years and ninety-four episodes. It is single-handedly responsible for the unearned fame of a bad cupcake place in the Village, the use of the term “Post-It breakup” in pop culture vernacular, and the predilection of some women to get drunk on pink vodka-based beverages and scream that they are “a Carrie!” or “a Charlotte!” or “a Samantha, hahaha, because I am a skank!” It was a movement, people, its own cultural zeitgeist. It spawned two feature films, the second of which was so poorly received critically that it essentially stopped any and all plans for a third film (if we are lucky enough).

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly movie news and link collection column that is running late, but it’s not sorry about it. Tonight it went to see Cowboys & Aliens, which was a lot of fun. So deal with it. As you know, it is always worth the wait, baby. We begin tonight with the first look at Blake Lively and Chloe Moretz in Hick, which was released as part of the Toronto International Film Festival laying down its Gala and Special Presentation line-up. Lively is a drifter, Moretz is a runaway and in this scene, they’re moving quickly away from something. Perhaps its Lively’s cinematic career thus far. Someone should tell her there’s no escaping that wooden performance in Green Lantern.

We live in a movie-making world where performance doesn’t matter nearly as much as it used to. The audience as judge and jury is an outdated concept, and if you’re movie doesn’t earn its money back, that doesn’t mean the funeral pyre needs to be erected. Green Lantern wasn’t exactly dead as a doornail when it hit the box office – it just didn’t shoot up through the stratosphere the way Warners undoubtedly hoped it would. Now, The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that the studio wants to move forward with the franchise even while admitting their disappointment.

So much potential and so much promise… and yet so much blandness. I had been trying to stay as hopeful as one could when it came to Green Lantern. Even after Neil – who I usually think is spot on when it comes to his criticisms – posted his review, I still held on to what little optimism I could maintain. “Perhaps Green Lantern would be this summer’s G.I. Joe, a film that is so cartoonish that you just can’t help but to laugh with it,” I thought. But, boy, was I wrong. Green Lantern is no laughing matter. Green Lantern + The guy who reinvented Bond twice + Reynolds’ mojo + Great Sarsgaard + Potential for Space Battles + Mark Strong as Sinestro = what should’ve been a real event film. Wha happened?

As Kermit the Frog once famously said, it ain’t easy being green. The same could be said for modern superhero films and comic book adaptations. It seems a daunting task when you really think about it, the notion that you’re entering into one of cinema’s most expensive endeavors, yearning to please its most incredulous audience while trying to carry the mainstreamers along as well. In some instances, as is the case with Green Lantern, you’re task is to bring a wide audience up to speed on a complex, rich and intensely alien mythology. It ain’t easy. So as an audience, when we see a film like Green Lantern, one that does so much of the most difficult stuff right, but gets almost all the easy stuff wrong, it can be the most entertainingly frustrating experiences of our summer. The whole thing smacks of 2006, when a passionate superhero auteur named Bryan Singer gave the world a lavish, modern version of the Man of Steel in Superman Returns. The things he got right in his pursuit of faith and glossy nostalgia were dazzling. The visual effects were seamless, the world’s hardest working alien was truly spectacular in flight and feat. But when it came down to the most basic elements of storytelling, the parts where we get to human emotions like love and longing, all the personality of a once dynamic character appears to have been sucked out by a cosmic force. Left in its wake was emptiness. Green Lantern suffers, [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]

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr dresses up in green and black spandex and parades around town telling people that he is a superhero who can create anything out of sheer will. Of course, it seems that the only thing he’s able to create is an ever-growing arrest report. Later, Kevin takes a trip to his local zoo where he sneaks into the penguin habitat in order to forge a bond with these flightless birds. Unfortunately, the penguins don’t take too well to him and peck him to near death, leaving Kevin to skulk away to the local movie theater in order to catch a double feature of Green Lantern and Mr. Popper’s Penguins.

This week, on a very special episode of Reject Radio, Movies.com‘s John Gholson offers a primer before we all go see Green Lantern, and lead creature designer for the film (and Super 8, Avatar, and many others…) Neville Page talks about creating aliens. Plus, our very own Matt Patches faces off against UGO‘s movies editor Jordan Hoffman in a Movie News Pop Quiz that’ll be one for the books. We follow it up with a Green Lantern review, so stick around. Listen Here: Download This Episode

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a movie news round-up column that comes to you from deep space. It comes as a protector of all that is good and interesting in the movie news world. It also totally swoons over Michael Fassbender. Seriously, have you seen this guy act? He’s the man… man. As my good friend Rusty Gordon pointed out to me this evening, “this summer is already better than last summer,” and it’s just now June. With two-thirds of its movie releasing to go, Summer 2011 is already coming along great. With that, there’s plenty to still be excited about. Like Green Lantern, which continues to look cool as WB dumps a giant batch of photos on the web. So much detail, so much cool.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly thing about movie stuff. Tonight’s edition features mini-ninjas, talk about naked pictures of Blake Lively, Sly Stallone set to music, an explanation of who Jane Lynch is, a joke about Michael Bay, an even less funny joke about Blake Lively and a profile of Richard Ayoade. That and more, we assure you. Above you will see something I never thought we’d lead with in a Movie News After Dark entry: someone’s grave stone. But there it is, the resting place of actor Leslie Nielsen. Modest, simple and complete with one last fart joke for the road. Nielsen may not have lasted forever, but his penchant for the fart joke will forever stay in our hearts.

It was a month ago that I first heard about Oliver Stone directing an adaptation of the Don Winslow Novel “Savages.” A couple of the key male roles had been cast, but Jennifer Lawrence was out as the female protagonist, O, due to her involvement in The Hunger Games. Now Stone and company seem to have found their new choice to play O, and they’ve filled out a couple of the other key roles as well. The three main characters of the film are Chon, Ben, and O, two dudes and a chick who start a successful grow operation and find themselves running afoul of a dangerous Mexican drug cartel. When we last saw Savages it had already cast Taylor Kitsch as the ex Navy SEAL Chon, Aaron Johnson as the botany expert Ben, and Salma Hayek as the head of the cartel Elena. This time Deadline Laguna reports that not only has Gossip Girl star Blake Lively been chosen to play O, but also a few big names have been approached to join the cast as well.

What is Movie News After Dark? It is a nightly movie news column dedicated to featuring painfully overtread characters from the part of the Marvel universe owned (cinematically, at least) by the 20th Century Fox corporation. It might as well be called X-Men After Dark. Hmm… maybe Fox will buy some sponsorship rights. They need all the help they can get after X-Men Origins: Wolverine. “A good Wolverine film could be an amazing thing.” Duncan Jones said this mere days before he confirmed that he will take a meeting with 20th Century Fox about the possibility of directing The Wolverine, taking a director’s chair left empty by the departure of Darren Aronofsky. As geek cred goes, Jones has perhaps as much as anyone working right now following Moon and Source Code, and he’s smart enough to pull it off. Here’s hoping the project is a good fit and that Fox makes the right call.

What is Movie News After Dark? This is a question that I am almost never asked, but I will answer it for you anyway. Movie News After Dark is FSR’s newest late-night secretion, a column dedicated to all of the news stories that slip past our daytime editorial staff and make it into my curiously chubby RSS ‘flagged’ box. It will (but is not guaranteed to) include relevant movie news, links to insightful commentary and other film-related shenanigans. I may also throw in a link to something TV-related here or there. It will also serve as my place of record for being both charming and sharp-witted, but most likely I will be neither of the two. I write this stuff late at night, what do you expect?

What is Movie News After Dark? This is a question that I am almost never asked, but I will answer it for you anyway. Movie News After Dark is FSR’s newest late-night secretion, a column dedicated to all of the news stories that slip past our daytime editorial staff and make it into my curiously chubby RSS ‘flagged’ box. It will (but is not guaranteed to) include relevant movie news, links to insightful commentary and other film-related shenanigans. I may also throw in a link to something TV-related here or there. It will also serve as my place of record for being both charming and sharp-witted, but most likely I will be neither of the two. I write this stuff late at night, what do you expect?

Martin Campbell’s Green Lantern is DC’s big hope at finally being invited to the adult’s table alongside Marvel, so a lot is riding on this particular green superhero. Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds) is a test pilot who fantasizes about The Last Starfighter and wishes a colored alien would come to take him away. His prayers are answered… kind of… and he finds himself in possession of a very special secret decoder ring and a destiny to help defend the universe. Along for the ride are his highly unbelievable pilot buddy Carol Ferris (Blake Lively), his slightly more believable bespectacled friend Thomas (Taika Waititi), and evil scientist Hector Hammond (Peter Sarsgaard). Can Jordan become the hero the universe needs?

On Tuesday, Warner Bros. will unleash upon the web a first teaser trailer for next year’s superhero gamble, Green Lantern. I say gamble not because it’s bound to make or break the future of superheroes at Warners — they do still have one more Batman flick coming from Christopher Nolan — but because it’s the first non-Batman superhero flick of a new era. It’s an era that follows restructuring, retooling and the rethinking of how they will use the heroes in the DC Comics catalog. Like Jon Favreau’s Iron Man for Marvel, Lantern will set the tone for what is to come. Whether that means a slow build toward a big team-up movie or not is yet to be determined. But projects like The Flash and a long-gestating stab at Wonder Woman may hang in the balance. So the start of WB’s return to making big superhero movies starts here, with a preview of a trailer from Entertainment Tonight… What makes it most interesting is that while it’s got some silliness, there is certainly a bit of a spark in there. See what I mean after the jump.

As the only literate Reject, it’s my duty to find the latest, the greatest and the untouched classics that would make great source material for film adaptations. I read so you don’t have to. This week, Print to Projector presents the story of a young man joining an ad agency in the early 1960s, but instead of drinking scotch, chain smoking, and wearing nice suits all day, he stumbles upon the Milgram Experiment, a mysterious suicide of a close friend and is haunted by his true murderous nature.

In August, I was fortunate enough to trade the heat of Arizona for the heat and humidity of Louisiana in order to visit the set of The Green Lantern starring Ryan Reynolds, a ring that makes him powerful, Mark Strong, Blake Lively and Peter Sarsgaard. I can’t say much about the visit yet (because of the court order), and I wasn’t the only one there (which is why they added “conspiracy” to the charges), but the set visit did yield a ton of really cool information about the film, and FSR will be delivering it straight to your brain like no other site can. While you wait on pins and needles awaiting all that comic book goodness, check out these two pieces of concept art that you’ll only see here (and several other websites). They both feature the design of Oa – the planet where the Green Lantern Corps makes its headquarters – and they’re both worthy of hanging up on your wall next to your poster for The Last Starfighter: The Musical. Don’t let evil or these concept pieces escape your sight, and remember to click to make the images much, much bigger: