While writing F6st and the Furious, director Justin Lin, screenwriter Chris Morgan and star/producer Vin Diesel just couldn’t jam in all the story and character development they needed. Nay, that the story itself demanded. According to Diesel (via THR), they’ve decided to add a seventh movie into the franchise. “We have to pay off this story, we have to service all of these character relationships, and when we started mapping all that out it just went beyond 110 pages,” said Diesel. “The studio said, ‘You can’t fit all that story in one damn movie!’” Well, what were they expecting? The movies in this franchise have always been primarily about character arcs, emotional evolution, and providing audiences with a keyhole look into the soul of humanity. Plus, it’s helpful that Fast Five has made $626m worldwide so far. It seems crazy, but it’s wonderful to see such a dialogue-based, mature story being such a smash blockbuster commercially. Let’s all raise a glass to the intellectually nuanced F7st 7nd F7r777s! That is, if you can hear yourself thinking over the crunching of popcorn and revving engines.

We don’t often report on casting rumors so far in advance of production, but seeing as the very fun Fast Five hit DVD and Blu-ray today it seem fitting that we pass along this item about its inevitable follow-up. Well, two items actually. According to the fine folks at Twitch, Universal is hoping to move forward next year on filming two back-to-back installments of the Fast & Furious series to take place throughout Europe. It only makes sense as Fast Five was both the highest grossing and most entertaining of the bunch. The plan is for Justin Lin to return for part six and for Peter Jackson to take over directing duties on part seven. That’s not strictly true, but Jackson seems pretty comfortable being attached to one half of simultaneously filmed epics so I figured I’d suggest it now. It won’t happen, but how curious are you now to see a Jackson directed muscle car movie? The second piece of info uncovered by Twitch is that the franchise producers are hoping to lure Jason Statham into their fold for one or both of the films. Adding him to the mix seems like a no-brainer especially as the series heads to Europe. Statham is British after all, but more relevant to the matter at hand is his status as a follicle-challenged ass kicker who knows his way around a car. Can you even imagine the sweat and testosterone overload sure to occur when Statham, Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson go [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]

Back in August, Justin Lin vacated the director’s chair for the latest in Hollywood’s seemingly endless string of remakes – jumping off Highlander to spend more time making Vin Diesel and Paul Walker jump off moving trains on to moving cars (or similar) with his next entry into his wildly successful spin on The Fast and the Furious franchise. Summit Entertainment has now announced that Juan Carlos Fresnadillo will take on directorial duties for their Highlander reboot/magination/whatever, so let’s all pause to yell “there can only be one!” and move on with the news. Fresnadillo will direct from Melissa Rosenberg’s script, with the film poised to start filming in the spring of 2012. Summit’s official press release gives a quick plotline for the new film – “In HIGHLANDER, after centuries of dueling to survive against others like him, Connor MacLeod, an immortal Scottish swordsman must confront the last of his kind, a murderously brutal barbarian, who lusts for the Prize” – so, yes, rest easy, this is definitely a Highlander film.

Considering this week’s news that Justin Lin was vrooming down the director’s highway and careening right from Fast Five to the next installment of the Fast and the Furious franchise (forgive the terrible puns), it’s no surprise that the director is kicking some other projects out of his metaphorical trunk (glove compartment? backseat? whatever?) to make way for more mayhem with Vin Diesel and Paul Walker. The first causality of that fast track? The Highlander reboot Lin has been attached to direct since 2009.

Word went around over the weekend that Fox is moving forward with Die Hard 5. The proposed project would be about Bruce Willis’s iconic character John McClane and his now adult son getting into some terrorist related hijinx over in Russia, and reportedly Max Payne director John Moore had an offer to direct on the table if he wanted it. Well, it turns out that’s half true. According to Deadline Vershina the movie is definitely going forward, it will most assuredly be set in Russia, but Moore is far from a lock to direct. As a matter of fact, they say he’s one name on a short list that contains far more interesting choices. Joining Moore on Deadline’s short list is Attack the Block director Joe Cornish, Bronson director Nicolas Winding Refn, and Fast Five director Justin Lin. Despite the fact that I didn’t seem to be as taken with Lin’s revival of the Fast and the Furious franchise as everyone else, I would have to say that every one of these names is more interesting to me than John Moore. Refn showed that he can handle darker, action oriented material with Bronson, and he’s riding a lot of momentum right now due to positive buzz on this year’s Drive, but he might already have too much on his plate to step into the Die Hard franchise. He already has two more films planned in Only God Forgives and a possible remake of Logan’s Run, both set to star Ryan [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]

Variety has gotten its hands on the director shortlist for The Wolverine, and it, mostly, consists of fairly safe and obvious choices. But, like many of these lists, a great and head scratching question is posed: Does Hugh Jackman and company actually know what type of movie they want to make? When a list of favored directors features the likes of Mark Romanek and the director of Tokyo Drift, it boggles the mind. Here’s the apparent list of favored options that, per usual, you should take with a slight grain of salt:

In news that makes my inner twelve-year-old pout and throw a temper tantrum, it looks like we aren’t going to be seeing any new Arnold Schwarzenegger films any time soon after all. Due to the much-publicized (from sites that cover that sort of thing) scandal surrounding Schwarzenegger’s separation with longtime wife Maria Shriver, he’s taking a step back from the glitz and glamour of Hollywood to get his house in order. I long for the days when it took Fatty Arbuckle killing someone to put a halt on a film’s production. This love child leading to cancelled movies thing is some real pussyfooting around. A statement from Arnie’s people laid things out like this: “Governor Schwarzenegger is focusing on personal matters and is not willing to commit to any production schedules or timelines. This includes Cry Macho, The Terminator franchise and other projects under consideration. We will resume discussions when Governor Schwarzenegger decides.”

Likes Miles Bennett Dyson before her, Megan Ellison is single mindedly marching forward with plans that will lead to the creation of Terminators. There have been rumors going around that a new Terminator movie is in the works with Justin Lin directing and Arnold Schwarzenegger attached to do at least something in the acting department. Well turns out that those rumors are very much true, as the rights to the film have been auctioned off and Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Films has come up the winner. Up until zero hour it was reportedly looking very much like Lionsgate would come out on top of the bidding war, but the fact that Ellison has a bunch of money seems to have been the difference maker. This grab at a big budget franchise marks a bit of a turn in the strategy Ellison has employed so far in her budding film producing career. Up to this point she had seemed to be sticking to funding beleaguered projects that respected but financially underappreciated directors had in the works. She is involved in Kathryn Bigelow’s upcoming Bin Laden film, John Hillcoat’s bootlegging adventure The Wettest County in the World, and even several projects that Paul Thomas Anderson has on the table, including a religious drama starring Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Now she’s very pointedly going after an established franchise with one of the biggest names in the world attached.

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr gets in his car and hits the road with a can of NOS energy drink and his shaved head. Too bad his car is a 2006 Dodge minivan with collapsible seats and a back-seat DVD player for the kids to use. He didn’t stand a chance in the street racing against Vin Diesel and Paul Walker. After recovering from the cold, hard truth that The Rock stole his look for Fast Five, Kevin goes stag to Prom and suffers through the direct-to-DVD theatrical release of Hoodwinked Too!: Hood vs. Evil.

Let’s cut to the chase here shall we? Fast Five is a stupid, overly long, and poorly written movie with moronic dialogue, plot contrivances big enough to fit both of the bald giants above through, and a complete disregard for right, wrong, and the sanctity of human life. More on all of that in a minute, but the other half of this equation is that it also features some kick-ass, high energy, destructive-as-hell action scenes that rattle the walls of the theater and happily remind you that there are still filmmakers capable of crafting spectacular cinematic mayhem without relying on CGI to do all the heavy lifting. So you can see my dilemma…

According to Deadline Crystal Peak, Arnold Schwarzenegger has teamed up with Fast Five director Justin Lin to try to sell a new Terminator film with Schwarzenegger starring. The problems here are obvious. Why would the machines create a T-851 that looks like it’s made out of Metamucil and beaten down by years of steroid use? Can Arnold still carry an action film, and if so, how much airbrushing will it take? My guess is that the story will revolve around the machines sending a new T-model (Model T? I just got that) to a retirement community where John Connor’s great-grandmother (who gives him the piece of advice that, years later, gives him the courage and wisdom to lead the resistance) plays canasta every Wednesday. The cyborg is about to easily dispatch the old woman, but she wins him over by offering him a Werther’s Original. The staff mistakes him for a resident, and he begins puttering around the community, making friends and learning valuable life lessons. Sadly, he’s destroyed when the old folks realize he’s a machine, and they irrevocably damage him while trying to open an email attachment. I’d go see it. Thanks, Schwarzenegger and Lin! But seriously, isn’t Jeremy Renner available?

What is Movie News After Dark? This is a question that I am almost never asked, but I will answer it for you anyway. Movie News After Dark is FSR’s newest late-night secretion, a column dedicated to all of the news stories that slip past our daytime editorial staff and make it into my curiously chubby RSS ‘flagged’ box. It will (but is not guaranteed to) include relevant movie news, links to insightful commentary and other film-related shenanigans. I may also throw in a link to something TV-related here or there. It will also serve as my place of record for being both charming and sharp-witted, but most likely I will be neither of the two. I write this stuff late at night, what do you expect?

I would love nothing more than to simply print the title above and allow you all to giggle like little school girls who just saw a kid pee his pants in 3rd period English, but there’s more to the story.

With Neil at Sundance, I decide to take my own personal trip by remembering a Sundance film from a few years back that deserves more recognition.

We keep an eye on remakes in development so you don’t have to, and there are a lot of them. You might be a major fan of this latest victim of the re-creation machine, but try not to lose your head over it.

The folks at Universal Pictures have released two new featurettes for their newly release actioner Fast & Furious — and get this, they are faced pace rollercoaster rides of emotion.

Kevin Carr reviews this week’s new movies: Fast & Furious, Adventureland and Gigantic.

The first trailer for the upcoming fourth film in the Fast and Furious franchise has hit the web. Our first reaction: Not bad. Check it out for yourself inside.

It has become clear that Hollywood did not, in fact, resolve over this past New Year to seek out more projects that were not sequels or remakes.