While we were not in any way, shape, or form stressing over the apparent legal battles between Human Centipede director Tom Six and star Dieter Laser (still the greatest name in Hollywood), it looks like anyone who did give a toss about that kerfuffle can now breathe easy. The new year is really shaping up to be great, isn’t it? EW reports that the pair have settled their battles (in brief, Six had been threatening to sue Laser for breach of contract after the actor reportedly requested “unacceptable script changes” for the third entry in the icky franchise), and Laser is now set to appear in the third film. Oh, thank goodness. There really is joy to be found in this cruel world. Laser will reportedly take a lead role in the film, but he will not be reprising his character from the first entry. Instead, he and Human Centipede 2 “star Laurence R. Harvey are set to play a new, villainous duo ‘with a storyline no one will expect’ that will involve a centipede of “more than 500 people.” Well, it sounds like that storyline involves the two of them stitching people together for their own sick pleasure, so yeah, I think most people will expect just that. Six really has painted himself into a corner with this franchise, hasn’t he?

You probably won’t find too many people willing to argue that the first two Human Centipede movies are any good. The first one felt like an idea that could have made for a chilling short stretched for time, and the second ramped up the gore factor to keep from being so boring, but still didn’t tell any sort of worthwhile story. And yet, despite their obvious badness, everyone still watched them, and everyone talked about them afterward. When a project like this is so clearly desperate for attention it seems that it’s pretty hard to not take a peek for yourself and see what all the noise is about, and consequently there’s still enough gas in the Human Centipede tank for the planned trilogy to be completed. The Human Centipede III (Final Sequence) is set to begin filming this May and June in the southern United States.

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr hands out grades to Shrek: The Final Chapter 3D, MacGruber and Human Centipede.