Never let it be said that director Alex Proyas didn’t have a tremendous vision for his big screen adaptation of John Milton’s epic poem of the same name, but that same ambition appears to be what has sunk Paradise Lost for good. Reports are now coming in from various outlets that the project, with a huge budget that already exceeded $120m and a vision that included technology that, as Variety’s Jeff Sneider puts it, “wasn’t there,” has been killed by Legendary Pictures. Proyas was hired for the gig back in September of 2010 and, since then, had gathered an impressive and up-and-coming cast for the epic tale of angelic battles, including Bradley Cooper, Benjamin Walker, Casey Affleck, Djimon Hounsou, Diego González Boneta, and Camilla Belle. The film’s shooting schedule was already moved from January to early this summer, but that’s all moot now that the film has been scrapped entirely.

Writing is a difficult task whether you must do it for school, work, or simply because you have words in you that you must get out. But even if you are a writer, those words don’t always come easily and staring at a blank Word document or page is always intimidating. Rory Jenson (Bradley Cooper) is a struggling writer who has penned his first novel – a work that is good, but not good enough to get published. Slightly disheartened and with a new bride Dora (Zoe Saldana) to support, Rory takes a job in the mailroom of a publishing house, hoping to make some contacts and advance his career. While on their honeymoon in Paris, Dora drags Rory into yet another antique shop and Rory ends up finding an old leather briefcase that is classy and sophisticated – a symbol of a true writer and a gift Dora quickly buys for her new husband. As he later starts filling it with his own work, Rory comes to find a weathered manuscript he neglected to notice when he first purchased the briefcase. Upon reading the first page (typed on the back of a handwritten letter), Rory cannot put the manuscript down and reads it from beginning to end.

Despite opening to generally poor reviews due to its been there, done that approach to joke crafting and storytelling, The Hangover Part II still got a ton of people out to the theaters and pulled in record amounts of money. You know what that means: The Hangover Part III is now as inevitable as death and taxes. And, sure enough, THR has a report that the principal cast are negotiating as a team to get a deal for a third film in the books. Because of Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, and Bradley Cooper’s all-for-one attitude when it comes to negotiating, getting this deal together has taken longer than usual. Their united front is allowing them to demand quite a bit of money to get a third Hangover movie made, and of course the studio has been doing whatever they can to drive that number down. They’re not really in any position of power, however, as a third Hangover is pretty much guaranteed to bring in truckloads of greenbacks, so the actors’ demands that each of them bank $15m a piece to come back and get drunk again are looking like they’re going to be met. Comparatively, each only made $1m for doing the modest budgeted original film.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly movie news column born exactly one year ago today. And it’s very happy to still be around and well on its way to taking over the planet. It is convinced that it will have a very productive 2012 in that area, especially once humanity’s reign of terror ends later this year. In the mean time, it would like to thank you all for reading. Now enough of that mushy stuff, lets do the news. We begin this evening with an image of biker Jemaine Clement in Men in Black III. He’s playing an alien biker who turns out to be the villain in this time-traveling storyline…. And we wonder why that movie has had so many production problems? Either way, I’ll watch Jemaine Clement eat soap if I have to, as that guy is quite funny.

One of the biggest hits of 2011 was The Hangover: Part II, raking in tons of money this summer and giving fans a chance to watch the same shenanigans from the first movie played out again. With recent news that The Hangover: Part III will start shooting next year, this trend doesn’t look like it will stop. Whether you liked the first movie, the second movie or both – or if you hated them – this choice for a drinking game is a no-brainer. Toast the Wolf Pack and get started on your own hangover.

Back when he was getting his start torturing celebrities on the Ashton Kutcher produced MTV prank show Punk’d it would have been hard to predict that comedian Dax Shepard would get to where he is today. He’s gone from wearing silly fake mustaches and telling Justin Bieber that his dad died to starring in big Hollywood movies, getting engaged to the criminally hot Kristen Bell, and now even making features of his own. Deadline Milford is reporting that Outrun, a movie that Shepard wrote and directed himself, has been acquired for domestic release by Open Road Pictures. This isn’t just a little project that Shepard made in his backyard either, this is a big comedy with an ensemble cast. Shepard himself stars as an ex-getaway driver who must break out of jail to drive his girlfriend to L.A. so that she can get the job of her dreams, Kristen Bell is playing the girlfriend, Tom Arnold is playing a federal agent on their tail, Bradley Cooper is playing the leader of the gang Shepard used to be a part of, and somehow names like Beau Bridges, Kristin Chenoweth and David Koechner are all involved as well.

Considering that the casting process for Warner Bros. and Steven Soderbergh’s The Man From U.N.C.L.E. adaptation has given me, a completely uninvolved outsider, nothing but headaches, it’s not shocking that The Playlist is reporting that the filmmaker has dropped out of the project for that very same reason. The outlet reports that Soderbergh and the studio were unable to reach agreements regarding both casting and budget, and that the helmer has since left the project, which he has been developing with scribe Scott Z. Burns for nearly two years. The film was originally set to star George Clooney, who dropped out due to an injury, which only paved the way for WB to jump on younger casting options, the last two of which included Bradley Cooper (last month) and Channing Tatum (just this week). Other rumored names included Michael Fassbender, Matt Damon, Joel Edgerton, Ryan Gosling, and even Johnny Depp. Of course, none of these names have signed on for the film (with most of them never even getting an official offer), and most of them have moved on to other projects. Adding to those woes? The studio also reportedly offered up a $60m budget for the film, one that will need to have an A-list star, a slick sixties setting, and a globe-trotting sensibility. Ouch.

Steven Soderbergh’s upcoming spy movie The Man From U.N.C.L.E., which is an adaptation of a popular television series from the 60s, has had some trouble finding a leading man. The movie will tell the tale of the teaming of two spies under the banner of the United Network Command for Law Enforcement. If Soderbergh’s vision of the material stays true to the TV show’s, then those men will be American secret agent Napoleon Solo and his Russian counterpart Illya Kuryakin. Originally, like in most of Soderbergh’s movies, George Clooney was just going to play the lead role. He had to drop out of the production due to the always looming scheduling conflicts or whatever though, so Soderbergh has been on a mad rush to fill Clooney’s shoes. Since all of the man’s movies that don’t star George Clooney usually star Matt Damon instead, he was the next guy to get a look for the role, but he ended up passing. Then things got desperate, Soderbergh went way out of his wheelhouse and tried to get Johnny Depp to play the part, but he passed as well. That’s a lot of Hollywood’s biggest leading men telling you that they can’t be in your movie. What is a director to do? What Soderbergh seems to be doing is moving on to the next big thing. According to Variety he is in intense negotiations with Bradley Cooper to step in and be his guy. Cooper has been in a good number of films [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 last time there was news about David O. Russell’s upcoming film The Silver Linings Playbook I lamented the fact that we hadn’t been giving it enough coverage. No more! The drama about a former mental patient trying to rebuild his life keeps adding intriguing names to its cast, so I’m going to keep blathering on about it. Russell and company started off strong by getting Bradley Cooper to star as our hero mental case. That’s enough to catch my interest right there. Cooper’s career is on fire right now and he hasn’t even really had the chance to work with great directors yet. Seeing him and Russell do something together sounds like a great time. But the movie didn’t stop there, it followed the Cooper casting up by getting a couple of Oscar Nominees in Jennifer Lawrence and Jackie Weaver to play his new love interest and mother respectively. If there were two actresses that left a huge impression on me by the end of 2010, it was Lawrence and Weaver, so I can’t wait to see what they bring here.

It has come to my attention that we here at FSR have left David O. Russell’s upcoming film The Silver Linings Playbook criminally uncovered. We’ve got one little mention of it being announced in a Movie News After Dark and that’s it. Probably it’s time to remedy that, because Russell is a director who always makes interesting stuff, even when it ends up being kind of a mess. And this time around he’s assembled a pretty intriguing cast to yell at and be mean to during filming.

The big screen adapation of John Milton’s epic poem “Paradise Lost” appears to be rounding out its cast in a big (and fast) way. Alex Proyas‘s film already has Bradley Cooper and Ben Walker (soon to be seen as Honest Abe in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) set to square off as the archangels Lucifer and Michael, with Djimon Hounsou on board as Abdiel (the angel of death, for those of you unfamiliar with your angels). Now Variety reports that the film may have also locked in its Gabriel, Adam, and Eve. The outlet reports that Casey Affleck is in negotiations for the role of Gabriel. The archangel is traditionally the one who communicates with humans and is sent from God to do so. He’s also the one who blows the trumpet that kicks off the end of time and the Last Judgment. He’s a fun dude! Jeff Sneider and Justin Kroll of Variety have also revealed that Diego González Boneta (a relative unknown who will next star in Rock of Ages) and Camilla Belle may join the cast as Adam and Eve. The first report says that Belle has been officially offered her role and that Boneta is the “front-runner” for his possible job.

There was more than a little confusion when Bradley Cooper was all but signed on to appear as the dark hero of The Crow. For one, the weariness of the remake onslaught is enough to make any recycled narrative raise eyebrows. For two, this was like hiring the high school quarterback to play Puck in the school’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It was either staunchly experimental or profoundly bad casting. Either way, none of that matters now because The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that Cooper is not going to be involved in the project due to a scheduling conflict with Silver Linings Playbook and Paradise Lost. So now Relativity Media has a clean slate to work with, so of course the two names hovering over the carrion are Mark Wahlberg and Channing Tatum. Because when you think The Crow, that’s…who…you think…of. Apparently. Hopefully those names are part of the “Anytime We Make a Movie And Need a Male Lead Wish List” because if the counter-instinctual casting continues beyond Cooper, it’ll prove that someone involved in the production has a deep, deep misunderstanding of the character. Sadly, that might be the case because the role was once Wahlberg’s to turn down. It’s unbelievable to think it, but if those are really the frontrunners for the job, it’s a shame Bradley Cooper’s not still on board.

I’ve been praising the moves Derek Cianfrance has been making with The Place Beyond the Pines ever since I first learned of the project. First there’s the plot of the film; a professional motorcycle rider turns to bank robbery in order to support his newborn son and a rookie cop vows to start his career off right by taking the robber down. Just hearing those words arranged in that order makes my inner five-year-old squeal. Then there are the actors Cianfrance cast in the leads. He got the quirky, charismatic Ryan Gosling to step in as the bank robber and the newly crowned, proven leading man Bradley Cooper to sign up as the cop. Those guys are both good, and watching them play off each other should be fun. Finally, Cianfrance wrapped the package up in a nice little bow by picking a couple of actresses I enjoy to play the love interests. He got Eva Mendes, who is crazy-gorgeous and seems to have real potential as an actress, to be Gosling’s baby mama, and he got one of my favorite young actresses working today, Greta Gerwig, to play Cooper’s character’s wife. Things were great, I was all ready to sit back and wait for this one to come to theaters. But now we’ve hit a stumbling block.

When it was first announced that Dark City director Alex Proyas was doing an adaptation of the epic John Milton poem “Paradise Lost”, it was rumored that he would be turning the work into an action movie. That seemed a little ridiculous, as “Paradise Lost” is mostly known as a dry, academic tome that students dread slogging through, and while he’s made movies with strong action elements before like The Crow, Proyas usually sticks to headier conceits than big battle sequences. Surely it can’t be true that Proyas is involving himself with something being described as 300 meets Lord of the Rings, is he? After talking to Deadline Hebron, the director has made the nature of this project a bit more clear. “It’s not just armies battling in an epic war,” says Proyas. “This is an adventure about the origins of good and evil after Lucifer‘s rebellion gets him cast out of Heaven and leads to a struggle with his brother archangel over the soul of mankind, starting with Adam and Eve. That is the scope of the narrative here, and we’ve tried to say as faithful as possible to Milton’s text, particularly its focus on Lucifer’s evolution and the birth of evil.” He goes on to say that, “It’s a family saga, about a group of brothers, two in particular, who are on divergent paths, and Lucifer’s feelings of betrayal by his father and family that forge his descent into evil.” If that’s the case, then it seems that [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]

Much has been made of the fact that this month’s Comic-Con in San Diego is looking to be a fairly empty one when it comes to upcoming blockbusters from the studios. Sure Tv shows like Game Of Thrones, True Blood, and The Vampire Diaries will be there, but Marvel, Pixar, and Warner Bros. are sitting it out this year and saving themselves a boatload of cash. This means fans won’t get a glimpse at hotly anticipated titles like Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, Joss Whedon’s The Avengers, or Andrew Stanton’s John Carter. But not everyone’s upset that the heavy hitters are absent this year… because now some of the lower profile films have a chance to make some noise and get noticed. Per Collider (and the press release they received) Legendary Pictures is leaping on the opportunity and has announced a panel featuring four of their upcoming films. Granted, none of the movies are due out until 2012/2013, but everyone loves seeing celebrities talk about future projects! The highlight is Guillermo del Toro who’ll be on-hand for his giant monster movie, Pacific Rim, and will be bringing his recently announced cast with him including Idris Elba, Charlie Hunnam, Charlie Day, and the lovely Rinko Kikuchi. Also along for the Comic-Con bump will be Alex Proyas and Bradley Cooper discussing their adaptation of Paradise Lost (and how Cooper dodged a bullet with Green Lantern), Jeff Bridges and friends to talk up their supernatural thriller Seventh Son, and Mass Effect creator [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]

Talk about non-traditional casting. According to Variety, Ray Liotta is going to play a corrupt cop in A Place Beyond the Pines. Can you even imagine it? Can you even wrap your mind tightly enough around the concept of Liotta being, not only a police officer, but one that’s not totally above board in order to envision how it might play out? Neither can I. Sarcasm aside, even if it is the most obvious kind of typecasting, Derek Cianfrance has got a ton of skill and a lot of talent lined up for his movie that sees Ryan Gosling as a motor cycle racer/bank robber being chased down by Bradley Cooper with a badge. Who better than Liotta to bring a sense of gravitas to a very necessary and particular role? At any rate, it proves the old saying about the corrupt cop character: If you build it, he will come.

Alex Tse cut his teeth and made a name for himself scripting Watchmen, taking the labyrinthine plot structure and bending it to something that made sense for the screen (and for the time restraints of the typical modern movie). It’s that skill paired with his experience working with darker material that makes him a strong choice for his next job. According to a press release, Tse will be writing The Crow reboot that sees Bradley Cooper stepping out of his wheelhouse to wear a little guy-liner and get broody. This project gets added to the pile which Tse is working through currently (or at least, reportedly working through). Since Watchmen, he’s been connected to scripts for The Phantom Tollboth and The Illustrated Man at Warners, Ninja Scroll for Appaian Way, and a handful of others. With a star ready to roll, The Crow seems like it will take off before those others depending on his time table for finishing the script. So this is happening. I still can’t get over the mental image of Bradley Cooper dressed and made-up to look like WCW-era Sting.

David Wain might have missed the 9:00 appointment ten years from when all the campers of Wet Hot American Summer got together, but he may still have a chance to see who they’ve all blossomed into. If you’re not getting the references here, go watch the movie. Don’t tell anyone you haven’t seen it. Just calmly, quietly watch it (instantly). According to an interview Wain did for The Q&A With Jeff Goldsmith, the writer/director has been thinking about doing a “sequel, prequel, something or other” to get the gang back together. That gang includes Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks, Bradley Cooper, Amy Poehler, Michael Ian Black, Michael Showalter and many, many, many other comedians wearing shorts that are too small for them. If Wain goes with his prequel idea, it would see actors in their late 30s and early 40s playing 20-year-old camp counselors, and there’s not one thing wrong with that.

There’s some more casting news about Derek Cianfrance’s upcoming crime drama The Place Beyond the Pines. We already knew that the Blue Valentine director’s latest would pit a pro motorcycle rider who decides to start robbing banks (Ryan Gosling) against a cop who needs to take him down (Bradley Cooper), and now there’s word that they’ve cast some pretty ladies to play opposite these two fellas as well. Eva Mendes is on board to play the Gosling character’s baby-mama, whose pregnancy is the impetus of his decision to start acquiring gobs of money illegally. And Greta Gerwig is set to play Bradley Cooper’s character’s wife, because motorcycle-riding jerks have illegitimate children and police officers have nice marriages. You probably know Gerwig as being the girl who started off being in every Mumblecore movie ever, but then moved up to more mainstream affairs like Greenberg and No Strings Attached. And probably you know Eva Mendes as that really attractive person on the covers of magazines and whatnot. I give this casting news my personal stamp of approval as Gerwig is one of my favorite young actresses working today, and Mendes impressed me with her comedic chops in the otherwise bland The Other Guys. I’m interested to see what else she has up her sleeve, especially when working with a director like Cianfrance. [Deadline Highland]

Last year, director Derek Cianfrance got a lot of acclaim for his relationship on the rocks drama Blue Valentine, which starred Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams as a married couple whose union was in the process of dissolving. It makes sense then that he is re-teaming with Gosling for his next project, The Place Behind the Pines. And now Variety is reporting that Bradley Cooper, fresh off of generating $143 million worldwide in a starring role in Limitless and quite a bit more than that for reprising his role as Phil in The Hangover Part II, is joining the cast as well. That’s not a bad deal, one actor that you have a proven track record with and another who is the newly crowned King of Hollywood. The Place Behind the Pines is about a professional motorcycle rider who turns to bank robbery when he needs to begin supporting a newborn son, and the rookie cop who his newfound career choice sees him running afoul of. Cooper will play the cop and Gosling the robber respectively. When talking to Speakeasy late last year Cianfrance said of the project, “We should be shooting in the summer. We just have to flesh out the rest of our financing and finish casting it, but a lot of that movie was inspired by Jack London books and this idea of ancestry – and again, it’s all in Blue Valentine – what gets passed on down through the generations?” He then went further comparing and [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]