SXSW is just under two months away which means many of us and many of you are eagerly awaiting the announcements as to what films will be playing the festival. Well the wait is over! At least partially… Austin’s second coolest film festival has just revealed a few of the films that will be appearing this year, and while the bulk of the movies remain a delicious mystery today’s announcement does include the highly anticipated Opening Night feature. Cabin In the Woods, the Drew Goddard-directed and Joss Whedon-cowritten horror film that floored attendees at the last BNAT, will be opening SXSW on Friday, March 9th. The film is about a group of young adults who head to a remote cabin for some rest, relaxation and probable fornication. Their festivities are interrupted though when they start falling victim to an undisclosed evil. Or something. If the movie is even half as good as the script it’s guaranteed to be one of the favorites at this year’s festival. A few other titles were revealed as well including Jonas Åkerlund’s Small Apartments, Ciarán Foy’s Citadel, and Kevin Macdonald’s look at the life and times of Bob Marley. FSR will be on the ground and in the rafters covering these and as many other movies as we can cram into our eyeballs from March 9th through the 17th. Be sure to follow along as the lovely Kate Erbland, the somewhat less lovely Jack Giroux, the impeccably dressed Neil Miller, and yours truly review the [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]

Welcome back to Commentary Commentary, your weekly dish of directorial insight and/or, as indicated by last week’s column, shenanigans. This week we’re looking inside the mystery box with director Matt Reeves and uncovering what he has to say about our favorite recent monster movie, Cloverfield. Reeves did this commentary all by his lonesome, but something tells me J.J. Abrams was standing over him with a loaded gun lest Reeves divulge too much information. I’ll be listening intently for any Morse Code warnings or cries for help. Since this commentary track was laid down years ago, and since Matt Reeves has since directed Let Me In – more Morse Code messages. Hmmm – I have a feeling everything turned out okay. So here, in all of its Slusho wonder, is what I learned on the Matt Reeves commentary for Cloverfield. I wonder if there are going to be any Lost secrets. I hope there are Lost secrets. Or Star Trek 2. Okay, wishful thinking is over. Shutting up now.

Buffy creator Joss Whedon’s horror film The Cabin in the Woods has a long, annoying history. Whedon and director Drew Goddard cast, shot, and completed this film some time ago, but it’s been sitting on the shelf unwatched because of various, behind the scenes, businessy issues. Originally MGM was the group set to put this one out, but right before it could be released, that company went through a rather inconvenient bankruptcy problem. Since then, this and several of the studio’s other properties have just been out there, floating in the breeze, waiting for somebody to come along and scoop up the distribution rights and do something with them. The last time we heard something about The Cabin in the Woods finally getting a release, it was that Lionsgate was close to inking a deal to get it in theaters. Happily, that deal seems to have finally been made as Lionsgate has officially announced this week that they have not only acquired the film, but they intend to put it out in theaters on April 13, 2012.

Want to hear something stupid? There’s a Joss Whedon horror film sitting somewhere, finished, with nobody watching it. If I had to crown someone the king of genre storytelling over the last 15 years, it’s probably Whedon’s head that I would place the crown on. The guy is beloved, is always working on things that appeal to nerd sensibilities, and is a great storyteller. He created Buffy, for the love of Mike. And here we have a horror film coming straight from his brain that’s been sitting around for a couple year’s now with nobody watching it. Or, more accurately, it came from the brains of Whedon and Drew Goddard, Whedon’s long-time collaborator who co-wrote and directed The Cabin in the Woods. But most of you probably know all of this already. It’s old news at this point. Fans have been clamoring to see this movie for a long time. The new news is that it finally looks like a distribution company will pick up The Cabin in the Woods and release it in theaters. Lionsgate has come to the rescue and is in the process of inking a deal to acquire the film. Originally it was going to be put out by MGM, but then it’s release got pushed back so that it could go through 3D conversion, and then MGM’s bankruptcy problems put an indefinite halt to its release. But it’s got Whedon’s soon to be Avengers related name on it, and it’s got Thor’s Chris Hemsworth in [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]

We are going to see it. We just don’t know when. This was the message Matt Reeves had for fans during a conversation with Total Film in which he continued the refrain from the past year set to the tune of a monster destroying the city. He, J.J. Abrams, and writer Drew Goddard are all busy right now, but they’re also dedicated to making Cloverfield 2 a reality. The last we heard about the project was a line about them doing it if they had a good idea, so either they’ve resolved to do it (while resolving to figure that good idea out) or they’ve already hit upon something they want to shoot for. Either way, mark your calendars (somewhere) for Cloverfield 2.

We live in cynical times, so it (at least seems) like a rare thing when a sequel doesn’t immediately follow a box office-ly successful movie. It’s even enough to cause a single tear when a filmmaker or producer says essentially what fans would say when it comes to the money grab. Cloverfield was a hit – the highest grossing movie of any January release when it came out. It propelled director Matt Reeves and J.J. Abrams into the world of movies, so it seemed obvious that a sequel would start rolling immediately. It didn’t. And it may not ever. Matt Reeves can explain why, and it’s a statement that deserves applause.

From the title alone, it seems like a brilliant idea. Or at least an idea that will see some large-scale destruction at the cold, metal hands of old-people’s-medicine fueled machines. After Tin Tin and Warhorse hit screens a little over a year from now, Steven Spielberg will dive in to production on Robopocalypse, based on the forthcoming novel from Daniel H. Wilson. Spielberg was excited about the project from before the book was even finished – watching as the author turned in pages to his editor and to screenwriter Drew Goddard for screenwrite-ification. That begs the question: how is this robot movie different than any other? Like, say, Terminator or A.I. for example. [Deadline Mansfield]

When we first heard about it, we were told that the Joss Whedon co-written horror film The Cabin in the Woods is going to be scary. Now we’re being told that it’s going to be another year…