On this first night of April, we look back at all the wildly appropriate pranks that were actually pranks and not just a bunch of lies about who is going to star in the upcoming Star Wars movies (we’re looking at you, George Takei. For shame.) This includes Variety getting duped bad, Monsters University getting taken over by a rival, an Iron Man suit you can buy and the best possible Taken sequel idea we’ve ever seen. That and more in Movie News After Dark: April Foolpocalypse!

What is Casting Couch? It’s your daily dose of casting news. Today we find out what Helena Bonham Carter is up to with McNulty. It’s that time of the month again. What time? When Nic Cage takes another job, of course. You’ve got to feed the monkey. This time around he’s agreed to star in an upcoming thriller from Spanish director Paco Cabezas called Tokarev. According to Deadline, it’s about a former criminal whose daughter gets kidnapped, which forces him to go looking for her kidnappers, and threatens to make him slip back into his devilish old ways. None of the particulars really matter as long as Cage is going to have some sort of ridiculous hairdo and act all weird and intense and stuff though. All we needed to know was new Nic Cage movie. High five!

Cameron Crowe is one of those directors who people just love. He’s made some stinkers along with with his good movies though, so when people talk to you about how much they love Cameron Crowe, generally what they mean is that they loved Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous. Or maybe even Say Anything, if they’re old school. Generally speaking, however, Jerry Maguire is Crowe’s big hit. This Tom Cruise-starring tale of a sports agent who experiences a moral epiphany got great reviews, became part of the pop culture lexicon of the late ’90s, and made about five times as much as Crowe’s next best loved film…give or take a bunch of millions or so. To call it a success would be putting things lightly. Gore Verbinski is another director who’s amassed a pretty loyal following, despite having made a couple of stinkers. When people say that they like his movies, generally they mean that they’re into the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie or Rango, or maybe they might even mean Mouse Hunt, if they’re the hip sort who likes to go back to the deep cuts. Certainly they very rarely mean that they like his strange followup to his runaway Pirates success, 2005’s Nicolas Cage-starring The Weather Man. It got mixed-to-scathing reviews, didn’t make a blip on the pop culture radar, and brought in pretty much zero money. Which is weird because—oh, my God—it’s basically the best movie ever.

While many would like to think that snark was something born of the Internet age, the fact that the Razzie Awards for Worst Achievements in Film are now in their thirty-third year pretty demonstrably proves that to be untrue.  There’s an uncomfortable truth at the center of all this, which is, to snark, to pass judgment, to make fun of things that fail publicly and spectacularly—it’s all kind of fun, at least in a sick way. If it wasn’t, something like The Razzies wouldn’t be able to stick around this long. In recent years, however, the film industry’s laser focus on building franchises and sticking to the same formulas has taken a little bit of the fun out of seeing who gets picked on for being the worst of the year. A crop of usual suspects has developed, making the announcement that the latest Twilight movie and the latest Adam Sandler comedy have earned the lion’s share of the nominations something of a tedious formality. So, here we are, having yet again sat through another Twilight movie and another Adam Sandler comedy, and, sure enough, it seems that they’ve once again gotten the bulk of the nominations. If there’s any new narrative going on, it’s that Madea’s Witness Protection seems to have annoyed the people who vote for the Golden Raspberries more than usual. Perhaps that’s due to Jack & Jill making men in drag a more contemptible offense after last year, or perhaps it’s because they’re trying to set

This contest is now closed. Thank you for entering! This week is a banner one for Sir Nicolas Cage (what? he hasn’t been knighted yet? who cares!), as today marks Cage’s birthday and the day before the home video release of his Stolen on DVD and Blu-ray. And you thought your last birthday was special! To mark the release of Stolen (which, in case you didn’t know, re-teams Cage with his Con Air director Simon West for another action thriller that involves Cage having to be badass and clear his name in a plot that also involves fast-moving vehicles), we’re giving away a very special prize pack of Cage-starring Blu-rays. But you’re going to have to work for them. Our Super Special Happy Birthday to You, Nicolas Cage / Stolen Is Out on DVD and Blu-ray Tomorrow Prize Pack includes Blu-rays of the follow titles: Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, Con Air, Face/Off, Kick-Ass, Moonstruck, and National Treasure. If you’re looking to fill out your Nicolas Cage collection, these are all essential titles. Hell, if you’re looking to fill out your movie collection, these are all essential titles. In order to win this stunning arrangement of some of Cage’s finest works, all you need to do is follow us on Twitter at the Official Film School Rejects Twitter Account (https://twitter.com/rejectnation), take a picture of yourself making your very best Nic Cage face (bees optional, but encouraged – but not really encouraged because, you know, lawsuits), and tweet at us “Hey,

As if the casting situation regarding the lead role for James Gunn’s upcoming Marvel movie, Guardians of the Galaxy, needed to get even more heated, today brings news that yet another candidate has been reading for the lead role of Peter Quill: AKA the half-human, half-alien intergalactic cop called Star-Lord. Michael Rosenbaum, who’s no stranger to the comic book world given his many years playing Lex Luthor on TV’s Smallville, recently took to his Twitter account to inform his followers that, “Read for my pal @JamesGunn GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY for PETER QUILL. What a treat! Thanks Jimmy. @Marvel.” If you can’t read Twitterspeak, that means Rosenbaum now joins Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zachary Levi, and Jim Sturgess in the stable of actors we’ve heard are up for the role.

What is Casting Couch? It’s the movie news column that’s easing into Christmas with a cup of coffee and some casting reports. Let’s take this one step at a time. Marvel Studios is on such a roll now that any movie they make that ties directly into their upcoming Avengers 2 is going to be a big deal—even if it’s based off of a comic book that nobody’s ever heard of like Guardians of the Galaxy. So, the competition among young actors to get cast as the Guardians’ leader, Star-Lord, is pretty fierce. According to Variety, that competition has been narrowed down to two guys. The trade reports that Jim Sturgess is the sole survivor of the original crop of five actors the studio screen tested for the role, and Zachary Levi impressed so much playing the smaller role of Fandral in Thor 2, that Marvel is looking to give him a larger role in their universe by maybe making him the half-human, half-alien leader of this ragtag crew. Who would you find more believable commanding a gun-toting space-raccoon?

What is Casting Couch? It’s a daily casting column that isn’t stalking Maria Bello. It swears. Sean Penn has been one of Hollywood’s top actors for decades now, but he’s never really been the sort of performer who stars in big budget blockbusters. Doesn’t he deserve to have his own action franchise already? Well, if his latest project takes off at the box office, he might get it. THR reports that Penn has signed on to star in an adaptation of one of French crime novelist Jean-Patrick Manchette’s books, “The Prone Gunman,” where he will play a badass spy type who gets betrayed by his organization and ends up getting chased all across Europe in a deadly game of cat and mouse. Think of it as being like Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire, only starring an actor.

What is Casting Couch? Today it’s a casting column that’s debunking a couple of rumors that will probably come true anyway. Absolutely Anything is a project that’s long been on comedy nerds’ radars, not only because it’s being directed by Monty Python member Terry Jones, but also because the film will see Jones re-teaming with the other members of his legendary comedy troupe to do voiceover work. According to The Wrap, filming is looking to get underway on this one soon, Gemma Arterton has joined the cast, and Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock) is currently negotiating to come on board, as well. The story is about a bumbling but magical school teacher, something that Cumberbatch would likely knock out of the park; which is one more positive that will help you forget Robin Williams is also going to be doing his voiceover thing here.

What is Casting Couch? It’s your Monday look at all of the great work casting agents and PR people did over the weekend to keep those Hollywood gears turning. UPDATED: We dreamed too soon, kids. It seems like Sylvester Stallone is fully committed to his experiment of figuring out how many big name celebrities have to be packed into an Expendables movie before one of them actually becomes interesting. The latest news regarding his quest (found on Stallone’s Facebook page by JoBlo) is that Nicolas Cage has been confirmed for a role in The Expendables 3, and that Harrison Ford, Wesley Snipes, and Mickey Rourke are the names he intends on recruiting next. You keep on trucking there, Mr. Stallone. With the addition of just five or ten more celebrities, The Expendables 3 is bound to be the one that finally gets out of first gear and actually becomes a decent action movie. We have faith!

Just how bad is Nicolas Cage‘s IRS bill? It’s no secret that Cage started taking any offer a few years back in an effort to stave off the tax man, and the result has been a series of films that not even he can tell apart. Seriously, can you spot the difference between Seeking Justice, Trespass, and Stolen? He’s managed to mix in a few accidental gems along the way, but it’s still a sad state of affairs for an Academy Award-winning actor with both talent and personality to spare. But that was just the beginning of his fall though. Per Variety, Cage is negotiating to star in a theatrical reboot of the Left Behind series. Holy shit indeed.

Richard Kelly’s first feature film, Donnie Darko, was pretty off the wall, and a little bit of a mess, but generally it was well-liked by most people who saw it. His next couple of films, Southland Tales and The Box, however, saw Kelly take his ambitions even further, and resulted in films so strange and confusing that not many people could get behind them. Then you have Nicolas Cage, who’s pretty much the king of being so strange and confusing that people can’t get behind him. Seeing as he’s an ambitious artist much like Kelly, people have called Cage’s performances ill-conceived, awkward, or just plain awful, but nobody has ever accused him of being boring. And every once in a while you get that one that he knocks completely out of the park. Kelly and Cage are two combustible creative elements, so, even if the results turn out awful, it should still be great fun to see what they produce when they get together. In what may be the most terrifying actor/director combination since Cage teamed up with Werner Herzog, Variety is reporting that Cage and Kelly are all set to collaborate on a crime thriller called Amicus.

File this one under “things we never knew wanted to happen, but thank God they are,” as THR reports that David Gordon Green will direct Nicolas Cage in Gary Hawkins‘ adaptation of Larry Brown‘s novel, Joe. Cage will star as the eponymous Joe, “an ex-con who becomes the unlikeliest of role models to 15-year-old Gary Jones, the oldest child of a homeless family ruled by a drunk, worthless father. Together they try to find a path to redemption and the hope for a better life in the rugged, dirty world of small town Mississippi.” The “gritty” Southern tale sounds like a return to form for the director, who started his career with such similiarly gritty films like George Washington and Undertow before making the move to more mainstream comedic fare like Pineapple Express, Your Highness, and The Sitter. If this signals a sea change or a happy medium for the filmmaker, we’ll gladly take it (we couldn’t take another Sitter, to be honest).

A general rule of thumb to follow when dealing with modern Nic Cage movies is that the more ridiculous his hair looks in the trailer, the more awesomely bad the movie is going to end up being. Given that criteria, it doesn’t seem like his latest film, Stolen, is really going to be anything to write home about. Just look at that relatively short, slicked back, graciously-accepting-the-receding-nature-of-the-hairline do that he’s sporting here—it’s almost typical for a man his age. Given the apparent lack of lunacy, is Stolen even going to be worth watching? Maybe. It’s important to keep in mind that this project is re-teaming the actor with his Con Air director, Simon West, and Con-Air is one of the seminal, balls-crazy Nic Cage action films. He plays a character named Cameron Poe in that one, for heaven’s sake. There’s bound to be at least some residual craziness seeping into this one, even if Cage has people hair and is playing a character named Will Montgomery. We do know that there’s at least one scene where Cage awkwardly holds a teddy bear in public. And Josh Lucas does seem to be pretty creepy playing some sort of cab-driving villain who looks like one of the bank robber surfers from Point Break if they got into meth. Plus, making a movie about a kidnapped daughter called Stolen after Liam Neeson had so much success getting his daughter kidnapped in Taken lends the whole thing a B-grade, ripoff charm. It looks like

Seeing as The Expendables 2 has yet to hit theaters, it’s hard to imagine that there’s anything concrete yet nailed down for The Expendables 3. That doesn’t mean Sylvester Stallone and his crew don’t have some ideas about what tricks they want to pull out of their sleeves for the eventual trilogy capper though. And, in a chat with Total Film, Expendables producer Avi Lerner found himself spilling the beans about which big name actors that haven’t yet been involved in the franchise they want to sign up for part 3. According to Lerner, “We’ve approached Clint Eastwood to be one of the guys, we’ve got a character in mind for him. We’re talking to Harrison Ford. [And we want] Wesley Snipes when he comes back from prison. I’ll give you one more name, we’ve got Nicolas Cage to play [one of the characters].” Of course, wanting and approaching doesn’t exactly equal having, so these names should be taken with a huge grain of salt. Two of these guys don’t really do much acting anymore, and one is still in prison, so Lerner could be pinning his hopes on long shots.

There’s a number of weird things about Deadline Kodiak‘s post from this morning that touts an “exclusive” “first look” at some stills from Scott Walker‘s Frozen Ground – the least of which that their pictures are, in no way, shape, or form an exclusive (Collider posted them back in May, when they got them from the film’s production company, Voltage Pictures), but that’s perhaps a bit inside baseball for most of your tastes. What is weird in a way that you, dear reader, might care about, is that the outlet folded their pictures into one really boring header that includes stars John Cusack and Nicolas Cage looking not nearly as unhinged as they should for a movie about a serial killer stalking and murdering women in Alaska by way of an airplane. It’s co-star Vanessa Hudgens (as the victim who escape real life killer Robert Hansen, who Cusack plays in the film) who looks most insane in these pictures, and she doesn’t even really look that put out. What a waste! After the break, take a look at the pictures (thanks, Collider!) from the film, which we neglected to run back in May for some horrible, ridiculous reason (again, it’s a movie about an airplane-utilizing serial killer in Alaska that stars Nicolas Cage as the good guy), along with the film’s official synopsis.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly column that’s picking up the pieces as Hollywood takes off for an extended mid-week holiday weekend. Sure, the streets of Burbank are empty at the moment (quick, someone sneak onto the Paramount Lot and steal a rough cut of Star Trek 2!), but there’s plenty of news and notes to go around. We’re just that good, friends. We begin this evening with a shot of Charlie Hunnam (Sons of Anarchy) and Rinko Kikuchi (The Brothers Bloom) in Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim wearing futuristic robot driving suits. Not only did Shock Till You Drop pull these from the pages of Entertainment Weekly, they also scored a pretty in-depth synopsis.

This contest is now closed. Thank you for entering! Is there anything better than Nicolas Cage playing an unhinged dude who will stop at nothing to achieve personal justice? In Roger Donaldson‘s Seeking Justice, Cage does just that after his wife (January Jones) is brutally attacked and he’s offered support by Guy Pearce, a mysterious stranger with his own aims and secrets. As you can likely expect, they’re not selfless aims and they’re not fluffy secrets. With Seeking Justice hitting DVD and Blu-ray next week, we’re excited to offer a very special Blu-ray prize pack filled with films that all tap right into the themes of the Cage-starrer. Dirty cops. Dirty deeds. All on your own television. This prize pack includes Blu-rays of The Son of No One, Brooklyn’s Finest, Texas Killing Fields, Righteous Kill, and Seeking Justice. That’s quite a bit of crooked law enforcement to deal with all at once. To win the prize pack, all you have to do is jump down into the comments section and let us know what your favorite film is that centers on dirty cops and crooked deeds (no worries, it doesn’t have to be one in this prize pack). Please also provide your email address in your comment so we can contact you if you win. This contest is only open to U.S. residents. The contest will close Wednesday, June 20th at 10AM EST/1PM PST. The winner will be chosen at random to receive one (1) Blu-ray prize pack as described

So I was watching the film The Descendants, and I couldn’t help but to laugh my ass off when the grandfather points to Nick Krause’s dumb-ass character and says “I’m going to hit you.” – Then, without any room for discussion he proves to be a man of his word. It got me thinking about some of the other great comedic punches out there, and soon enough I was assigning my wonder into list form. Violence and comedy together at last!

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr takes the week off because the studios didn’t screen the new releases anywhere near him. In fact, he was specifically told not to come to one particular screening. And that can’t be a good sign, can it? What else can you expect for the movies in the weeks leading up to the Oscars, ‘cause the new ones in the theaters don’t stand a chance of winning anything next year. To take away the pain of not seeing movies this week, Kevin makes a deal with the devil, selling his soul for the ability to set his skull on fire whenever he sees a bad movie. Unfortunately, the light from said flaming skull got him kicked out of the theater because someone thought he was using his cell phone to pirate the film.