According to The Hollywood Reporter, newcomer Matthew Lieberman has been signed to write the Short Circuit reboot going on over at Dimension Films. He’d previously written the not-at-all-liked Dr. Doolittle: Tail to the Chief which went straight to video on the coattails of the Eddie Murphy movies, but this project is an interesting way to get a foot in the door of the feature world. What’s more important is that Tim Hill is set to be the director. Hill’s recent work includes Alvin and the Chipmunks, Hop and Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties (apparently everyone involved loves “tail” puns). All of that sounds awful, but once upon a time, Hill also directed Muppets From Space. How someone got from weird and wonderful to boringly broad and homogenous is anyone’s guess. Forget it, fans. It’s Chinatown. That’s sad, but the most fascinating thing about bring back Johnny Five to life is that instead of appealing to a movie geek crowd, the production is attempting to take a character from a strange little 80s movie that’s been reduced to a catch phrase and make him a children’s entertainment icon. To do that, Hill and company will be able to sidestep the treacherous balance between old fans and new by completely disregarding old fans. Of course, the bigger question will be whether a robot movie like this will fly in a time where actual robots are running our lives for us. Will Johnny look like an Erector Set that talks or will [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 bad news for fans of horror just keeps piling up. Currently we’re dealing with an October that is painfully devoid of new horror releases in the theaters, and now a couple of movies that were supposed to be coming our way in the upcoming months are getting pushed back. Piranha 3DD was supposed to hit theaters on November 23rd and The Amityville Horror: The Lost Tapes was originally set to be released on January 27th, but they’re now both relegated to the vague release dates of  “sometime in 2012.” Both films are Dimension releases, so perhaps the reason for the pushback is some juggling on the corporate level, but I think we’ve all been following movies long enough to suss out what this probably means; it probably means they suck. The original Piranha 3D was great fun, but instead of bringing back the creative team from that film, Dimension instead got the hacks that collaborated on the terrible (in my opinion, argue if you disagree, I know there are some of you out there) Feast to handle this sequel. And the new Amityville movie, it’s supposed to be one of those found footage films. Anybody remember how boring Apollo 18 was? Yeah, I’m trying to forget too. I’d have to say that all signs are pointing to both of these movies turning out pretty bad. I mean, Amityville was already set to be put out in the film release wasteland of January, and now they’re not even comfortable putting [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]

Dimension Films’ secretive Apollo 18, which arrives in theaters this weekend as something of an under-hyped mystery, is another of those mockumentaries that employs the found-footage formula introduced by The Blair Witch Project and incorporated to popular effect in the Paranormal Activity franchise. The notion of said footage revealing a secret, disastrous moon mission is a promising one, full of potential. Unfortunately, director Gonzalo López-Gallego bungles that intriguing concept in astonishing form, turning it into a muddled, mind-numbing mess.

Dimension Films is announcing today that they’ve acquired French horror film Livid from directors Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo. The pair made their feature debut with the appropriately strange film Inside, but this new project looks to be a completely different beast altogether. According to the press release, Livid is a “horror fariytale set during Halloween night when three youths decide to burglarize an old lady’s desolate house, but what awaits them is no ordinary house…” It’s the ellipses that frighten me the most. Maury and Bustillo showed some genuine promise with their first film, and it even landed them a writing/directing gig for a remake of Hellraiser that never came to be. Here, they are working again with Inside star Béatrice Dalle, and the concept seems simple but effective. Hopefully the old lady has rigged paint cans on the staircase and broken Christmas tree ornaments on the living room floor. No word yet on how long the Weinsteins will keep this on the shelf before pushing back its release date.

I’ve read some excerpts from Max Brooks’ famous The Zombie Survival Guide, which is an informational text designed to help its reader survive a zombie apocalypse, but until now I never knew that there was also a guide that lets you know how to defeat your clone when he inevitably rises up and decides to overthrow you. Thankfully, Kyle Kurpinski and Terry D. Johnson’s book “How to Defeat Your Own Clone” is just that. Knowing how to survive zombies is nice, just in case; but knowing how to defeat your own clone is going to be essential. Cloning technology is developing at a fast clip, and I’m certain that any clone of mine would be a real asshole. Thankfully, Kurpinski and Johnson are no longer alone in their efforts, as Dimension Films has joined them in educating the public. Dimension has acquired the rights to the book and they’ve set Ed Ricourt to the task of adapting it into a screenplay. How do you turn a how-to manual into a narrative story? I’m not sure, but hopefully Ricourt knows. For what it’s worth, here’s how Dimension has described their vision for the film via press release…

Not content with three fake dimensions, Dimension Films (seriously) is going to release Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World with one more facet: the sense of smell. Smell-o-Vision was an abject failure as a movie fad – only appearing in the 1960 movie Scent of Mystery after its development by Hans Laube. The idea was that it could add to the film-watching experience by allowing an audience to smell what was happening on screen. Although there were competing technologies like AromaRama, the concept was one that never worked in a real theater setting (because scents don’t just go away instantly when you need them to, and the room ends up smelling like burnt roses buried in cigarettes and maple syrup). Learning from the overkill of Scent of Mystery‘s 30 smells, Sky Kids 4 will only have 8 points during the film where the audience can smell what’s happening on screen. Plus, instead of a puff of air, the movie’s “Aromascope” will achieve the effect by use of a rub-and-sniff card with corresponding numbers. That method was used with John Waters’s re-release of Polyester in 1982 (although he called it Odorama), and it worked well, but it’s all still a huge gimmick. And before you think it’s the studio that’s forcing it on the helpless artiste Robert Rodriguez, here’s his near-robotic statement included in the press release: “Families are going to love the interactivity of this new addition to the movie going experience. And best of all, you [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]

Like most films, The Home has had a rocky road to getting made, but it looks like the sailing through Cthulu-infested waters will be smoother now that Dimension Films has agreed to release the film. As reported before, the film puts Ed Asner, Cloris Leachman, Brian Cox, Fionnula Flanagan, Louise Fletcher and Louis Gossett, Jr (and whatever young leads are announced) into an old folks home and tortures them with KNB-designed practical monsters until their screams and uneaten no-sugar-added apple sauce cups are used for the building’s fuel. Calls to filmmaker Kristoffer Aaron Morgan went unanswered, which I’ll assume means, “we want to have the film done by Fantastic Fest.” Morgan most recently had his short, yet hilariously nutritious, take on zombies hit said fest as one of the infamous bumpers. You can watch it after the jump.

John Landis has sold remake rights for An American Werewolf In London to the Weinsteins. The worst decision he’s ever made (that didn’t involve helicopters).

We ignored covering this for a little bit hoping it was a mistake, but apparently the honchos over at Dimension Films have had a short circuit of their own and are going ahead with a remake of the endlessly entertaining and oft quotable Steve Guttenberg masterpiece that is Short Circuit.

Let’s see how many more genres we can spoof this year…