What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a thing about movies that happens every week night, just before you go to bed. It brings you dangerous ideas, fascinating movie news and all that in between copious helpings of shenanigans. We begin tonight with one of three beautiful new images from Pixar’s upcoming film Brave. As with all Pixar projects, Brave looks absolutely gorgeous and in a point of interest to many, stars their first leading lady hero, Merida, voiced by Kelly MacDonald. Personally, I’m looking forward to it. Then again, I’ve been pot committed to Pixar for a while. In a terribly sad bit of news, NBC has pulled Community from its midseason schedule. This doesn’t mean that it’s been cancelled, but it’s definitely not a good thing for Community fans (also known as “anyone has ever watched Community“). We should have known that it was too good to last.

After successfully bulking up enough to trade blows and dialogue with Tom Hardy in the recent fight film Warrior, Australian actor Joel Edgerton has proven that he can pretty much do anything. And after starring in another recent, high profile Hollywood film, the remake of The Thing, he has shown that he’s an actor whose star power is on the rise. So it makes sense to me that Warner Bros. and director Noam Murro would be looking at him to fill Gerard Butler’s shoes as the star of a 300 movie. According to Vulture, Edgerton is in talks to join Murro’s 300 sequel/prequel Battle of Artemisia as the lead badass Themistocles. Themistocles was an Athenian general and politician who is mostly remembered for leading the Athenian Navy in a successful campaign to beat back a Persian invasion. After his military exploits, he stuck around Athens as a bigwig politician, but eventually rubbed a lot of people the wrong way because of his arrogance. Also, he rubbed the Spartans the wrong way because of his insistence that Athens be refortified. Once he was eventually ostracized from Athens, he had nowhere else to go in Greece – he had pissed pretty much everyone off. What choice did that leave him? It meant that, in a stunning bit of irony, he had to flee to Persia and work in service of their king.

It’s been quite a while since it was announced that saucy young actress Juno Temple would be appearing in Christopher Nolan’s upcoming and omnipresent The Dark Knight Rises. But other than the fact that she would be playing a “street smart Gotham girl”, nobody has been able to dig up the specifics of exactly who her character is, and if she would be somebody who has already appeared in the Batman mythos. Of course, when absolutely anything about a highly anticipated comic book movie is left unclear, speculation often runs rampant. Would she be the “The Dark Knight Returns” version of Robin, Carrie Kelly? Would she be playing the youthful psychologist turned clown-faced wacko, Harley Quinn? It turns out, no. Total Film seems to think they have a scoop on the role Temple is filling, and it’s that of sometime Catwoman sidekick Holly Robinson.

We’ve known for a while that since Zack Snyder is directing Man of Steel, somebody else will have to come on board to direct the sequel to 300 and that it probably won’t end up being called Xerxes, like Frank Miller’s graphic novel sequel was. Things seem to be progressing on both those fronts. We now have word of what that new title is going to be and that the suits have narrowed the candidates to direct down to two choices.

Even though he had shown some visual chops with his Dawn of the Dead remake, it was 300 that put director Zack Snyder on the big map. The intensely stylistic, bloody affair propelled both Snyder and star Gerard Butler to Hollywood’s A-List, where both have enjoyed some juicy projects since. Three years later, Snyder and his producing partner/wife Deborah are in the midst of two releases: next year’s girl-power shoot out Sucker Punch and this fall’s heroic animated owl adventure Legend of the Guardians. But Zack seems to be most excited about something new — another collaboration with co-writer Kurt Johnstad and comic legend Frank Miller on Xerxes.

When we’ll see Frank Miller’s Ronin finally come to the big screen is still a question that’s unanswered. Thankfully, this weekend may give us some insight into the answer of that burning question. Director Sylvain White has been attached to Ronin for quite sometime now and if his (very fun) new film The Losers opens as good as it should this weekend, perhaps we wont have to wait too much longer for his take on Miller’s samurai epic.

300 made money and lots of it and now Warner Bros. is thinking of reopening that mine and going for some 3D gold. Snyder was shown a ten minute clip that had been converted to 3D by the studio.

Robert Rodriguez is talking again.. And through several hundred lines of interview, we still can’t figure out what movies this guy is actually going to make.

So it looks like the rights to Sin City 2 are on the market after all. Unless they’re not.

As many of you may know, we are not big fans of beating dead horses around here. Then again, this little ad that TotalFilm worked up for The Spirit is less of a beat and more of a poke — a poke at one of the most awful films of 2008.

Kevin and Neil bring on the fruitcake with their big, fat Christmas special. They question the correlation between Nazis and Christmas with the release of Valkyrie and The Spirit.

FSR’s resident chubby film critic Kevin Carr runs down the reviews on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Valkyrie, The Spirit, Marley & Me and Bedtime Stories.

When you think of Christmas, what comes to mind? Is it visions of sugar plums dancing in your head? Is it the thought of your favorite holiday movie being aired 57 times on television? Apparently for Hollywood, Nazis come to mind when they think of Christmas.

Frank Miller’s latest directorial effort goes all-out for the camp and ends up in the toilet.

We may have to wait longer for Sin City 2 if Miller focuses on Buck Rogers.

Over the course of the past few months we’ve been very critical of Frank Miller’s The Spirit. Beginning with the first teaser trailer and continuing well into our Comic-Con coverage, we’ve been less than excited about the footage that has been shown. And by less excited, I am referring to the way we’ve ripped it apart.

In a Nostradamus-like move, Frank Miller is using the press tour for The Spirit to talk a little bit about that Sin City follow-up, telling the gents at IGN UK that it is ready to roll.

While I still cannot in good conscience recommend that you be very excited about Frank Miller’s upcoming adaptation of Will Eisner’s The Spirit, a featurette that debuted this weekend over at MTV does give us a few titillating reasons to pay attention.

“This movie is not a tribute to Will Eisner, its a tribute to The Spirit.” So says Frank Miller of his upcoming film adaptation, which oddly enough is called The Spirit.

If there is one complaint that I have been hearing over and over from folks about Frank Miller’s upcoming film The Spirit, it is that it feels like a knock-off of Sin City. And it appears that with the release of a new poster, the folks at Lionsgate are taking note…