What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a hunter of the best stories of the day. Most days. Pretty much every week. It works 24/7 to give you one article per night. Because sleep is for the week. And whatnot. We begin this evening with a new image from Breaking Bad and its upcoming season five premiere, a shot of a particular character who is likely to be the most interesting story. At least, early on in the season. How will everyone’s favorite henchman Mike (Jonathan Banks) react to the events that concluded season four? This new image gives us a bit of a preview.

Let’s be honest – at this point, the next entry in the Jack Ryan franchise is strictly hypothetical. Despite having a star (Chris Pine), a new re-write from David Koepp (on a script that has passed from Adam Cozen to Anthony Peckham then back to Cozen then to Steve Zaillian, who then dropped it, leaving it to Koepp), and a possible new director, this project has been talked about (with Pine attached) since 2009. Combine that with reported financial cutbacks and an apparent disconnect between what everyone wanted from the script, it’s a miracle we’re even still talking about this film. But perhaps Kenneth Branagh is a miracle man. Vulture reports that Paramount is looking to Branagh to helm the feature, just a week after Jack Bender (who had been attached to direct the film for many months) kicked the bucket on the project and dropped out. While the official position was that he had to do it because of scheduling conflicts with a SyFy project, we can put two and two together – if a SyFy project looks better than the rebirth of a former blockbuster franchise, yeah, your franchise probably has some serious issues. Vulture backs that up, saying that they “hear that Bender had tired of the endless development born of creative loggerheads over the direction of the film. Pine wanted to make a character-driven espionage movie. The producer, Lorenzo di Bonaventura, wanted to make Jack Ryan into an action movie. Paramount executives wanted to make it

Remember going to parties as a teenager and playing games of Spin the Bottle, Truth Or Dare, and 7 Minutes In Heaven? I don’t. I was too busy getting laid, and the only game I was playing was Russian Roulette with my sperm. But hey, to each their own. JJ Abrams and Lost director Jack Bender apparently do remember playing 7 Minutes In Heaven though (most likely not together), and are betting that the audience will too. They’re joining forces to bring the game to the big screen, but as is the Abrams mandate they’re doing so with a high concept twist. Per Heat Vision, Bender will direct the upcoming movie from an original idea of his that centers on “two teens who go into a closet as part of the titular game and find all their friends dead when they come back out.” Kudos to Heat Vision for sneaking a ‘tit’ into their post about a game that centers on teenage boys fumbling for that very prize. Bender will most likely direct, but Abrams’ production shingle, Bad Robot, is still looking for a writer so it won’t be anytime soon. It’s obviously incredibly early to discuss possible plot-lines but where do you think the story will go? The slasher route doesn’t quite seem like something that would interest Abrams even as producer, and Bender has a lot of experience with twisted and odd story lines thanks to Lost so the tale probably won’t be that simple. Thoughts? Any other

If you’re anything like me, you probably watched the series finale of Lost in real-time on Sunday evening. It was an event not unlike the Superbowl for me. Luckily, there were also a few cool commercials.