It’s official. In a stunning turn of events that almost certainly mean it’s Opposite Day, Robert Rodriguez will make a movie he promised he’d make. Jokes aside, Deadline Michoacan is reporting that Rodriguez has secured the financing for Machete Kills, the sequel to the absurdly ballsy action flick starring Danny Trejo. Talks are under way to bring Trejo back on in the hopes of an April production start, and Rodriguez is pointing to the bleachers, claiming a bigger, badder movie. As proof, the second film in a planned trilogy will feature Machete as a hired gun for the government, heading into Mexico to take on a drug cartel and a vicious bad guy who plans to build a space weapon. Yes, it’s getting even deeper into spoof territory with an Austin Powers twist. This character sure has come a long way since Spy Kids, right?

Normally I’m not a very big fan of the way rich people spend their money, but Megan Ellison got in my good graces the minute I heard about her existing by starting up Annapurna Pictures and lending funding to interesting sounding projects like John Hillcoat’s Wettest County and Paul Thomas Anderson’s upcoming Scientology movie. Her star dimmed a bit in my eyes, however, when she picked up the rights to the Terminator franchise with the intentions of making another Terminator feature. Why did this new angel in my life who appeared out of nowhere and started funding artsy films just stab me in the back by continuing a once-beloved franchise that has already been run into the ground? I thought for sure our love affair was over.

Despite opening to generally poor reviews due to its been there, done that approach to joke crafting and storytelling, The Hangover Part II still got a ton of people out to the theaters and pulled in record amounts of money. You know what that means: The Hangover Part III is now as inevitable as death and taxes. And, sure enough, THR has a report that the principal cast are negotiating as a team to get a deal for a third film in the books. Because of Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, and Bradley Cooper’s all-for-one attitude when it comes to negotiating, getting this deal together has taken longer than usual. Their united front is allowing them to demand quite a bit of money to get a third Hangover movie made, and of course the studio has been doing whatever they can to drive that number down. They’re not really in any position of power, however, as a third Hangover is pretty much guaranteed to bring in truckloads of greenbacks, so the actors’ demands that each of them bank $15m a piece to come back and get drunk again are looking like they’re going to be met. Comparatively, each only made $1m for doing the modest budgeted original film.

It’s been four years now since director Peter Berg and star Will Smith teamed up on Hancock, a superhero movie that did quite well at the box office. But it’s been quite a while since we’ve heard anything about a possible sequel. People love money, so how could this be? Comic Book Movie scored a quote from Berg that explains. On the possibilities of a second go-around at drunken superheroics, he said, “We’ve been talking about the sequel between us, Will Smith, [producers] Michael Mann and Akiva Goldman and myself. We’re all interested, but we literally just have trouble getting into the same room at the same time. We did have a series of meetings last year and started to hash out an idea for sequel — and Will Smith actually had the idea — so I think it will happen, it’s just a question of timing.” History has proven that Will Smith usually gets whatever he wants, so hearing that the concept for a sequel is coming straight from his brain makes it seem like it’s still very likely. On the other hand, it’s been four years and we still haven’t even gotten to the point of having a script on the table? At this rate Smith is going to be too old to step back into the role and they’re going to have to cast Jayden instead. Or maybe that’s the idea? Is it time for Hancock to teach his sassy kid how to use superpowers?

The last couple weeks have been full of chatter about a sequel to Kristen Wiig’s hugely successful starring vehicle Bridesmaids. It all started when Wiig herself (who also co-wrote the film) said that she wasn’t working on a sequel, and instead was moving on to writing something new. That got us all speculating. Just because she’s not doing the sequel now doesn’t mean she never will, we told ourselves. Then there was the reality that needed to be faced that the studio could try to put together a sequel even if Wiig wasn’t involved. As long as they got breakout star Melissa McCarthy back, fans would probably be more than happy to file back into the theaters for some Wiigless fun, wouldn’t they? But now, after some additional comments Wiig has made on the subject, it’s looking like all the speculation was for naught. McCarthy has gone on record as saying that she would never participate in a sequel that didn’t involve Wiig, so that possibility is out. The only hopes for a sequel then lie in the notion that perhaps Wiig will want to come back to the property after she does something else. But no, that’s not the case. Wiig flat-out told E! at the Golden Globes, “We’re not planning on doing one.”

Pretty much from the first moment that the Hunger Games movie became official, Lionsgate has been confident that it’s going to be a huge hit. The entire production of the film has been the subject of a media blitz too large to recap here. So it comes as no surprise that even before the first film has been released, work has begun on getting its sequel together. For those not in the know, Suzanne Collins’ “The Hunger Games” was the first part of a trilogy of novels whose subsequent books are titled “Catching Fire” and “Mockingjay.” So what’s the news on development for Catching Fire? The Wrap is reporting that not only has Lionsgate secured Hunger Games director Gary Ross to come back and do the sequel, but they’ve also hired screenwriter Simon Beaufoy to come on and adapt the book into a screenplay. Beaufoy has an impressive resume that includes films like Slumdog Millionaire and 127 Hours, so I don’t really think his hiring can be seen as a disappointment, even though it might point to the notion that Collins and Ross might not be as hands-on with the writing process on this one as they were the first.

When it was first reported that David Katzenberg and Seth Grahame-Smith were going to begin their producing partnership by working on a sequel to the Tim Burton film Beetlejuice, it didn’t really sound like a good idea to me. At first glance it seems like Beetlejuice is a very specifically Tim Burton movie, and the idea of somebody else working in that universe feels strange and off-putting. Why would you even want to make another Beetlejuice unless you were Tim Burton?  That would be like somebody who wasn’t Quentin Tarantino saying they were going to make a sequel to Pulp Fiction. But when Grahame-Smith said that he would only do the movie if he got Burton’s blessing and if Michael Keaton came back to star as the titular ghost with the most, the idea started to sound less crazy. I mean, seeing somebody else working in this world that is so visually Burton’s vision would still be a little weird, but who wouldn’t be interested at the possibility of Keaton slipping back into one of his most outlandish and iconic roles? I’ve found my skepticism about a Beetlejuice sequel waning over time. And that continues now that there’s some confirmation that Burton is, in fact, going to be involved with this movie in some way. While talking to the people at MTV about his current projects Dark Shadows and Frankenweenie, Burton took a minute to address his own feelings about the developing sequel. On doing another Beetlejuice he said, “I [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]

Last week the news broke that Bridesmaids co-writer/star Kristen Wiig doesn’t intend on making a sequel to the film, and is instead focusing on other projects. This is a potential problem, because Bridesmaids made a lot of money, which is going to make it pretty tempting for Universal to go ahead and cobble together some sort of shoddy sequel regardless. It was my opinion that the only way this could work is if they got a great script and shifted Melissa McCarthy’s character to the lead role…but now it’s looking like that strategy probably won’t work out either. Recently, E! confronted McCarthy about the potential sequel at the Palm Springs International Film Festival and got some pretty choice comments. At one point she tried to go the Judd Apatow route and be diplomatic by saying, “I don’t know anything about it. But I know that nobody wants to do it unless it’s great. If it is, I will show up wherever those ladies are.” That might sound like a willingness on McCarthy’s part to pick up the franchise and run with it, but I think it was more just a brush off answer meant to not limit any possibilities.

Last year’s lady-centric comedy Bridesmaids cost Universal $32 million to produce and ended up banking over $288m at the box office. Plus it made viable, hit anchoring stars out of both Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy. So, would you imagine that the studio wants to make a sequel? The answer is yes, yes they do, very much, but unfortunately they have a huge stumbling block in front of them. According to a report from THR, the original film’s co-writer and star, Kristen Wiig ,isn’t interested in doing another one. When asked about the potential sequel, that should definitely be once again written by Wiig and her collaborator Annie Mumolo and directed by Paul Feig, Wiig replied, “We aren’t working on that. Annie and I aren’t planning a sequel. We are writing something else.” Oh. Ouch. That sucks for Universal. THR’s speculation over why Wiig refuses to play ball centers on the minuscule $100 thousand bonuses the cast got on the first one, after it became a runaway financial success, but Wiig refused to comment on whether her reluctance to work on another Bridesmaids is financially motivated or not. She also might not want to start doing comedy sequels because she’s trying to move her career in a more dramatic direction. She’s got upcoming dramatic roles opposite people like Annette Bening in Imogene and Robert De Niro in The Comedian. That sounds like a potential springboard into Oscar territory to me. Doing something as lame as a “getting the band back [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]

The holidays are over now, so it’s back to business as usual in the movie blogging world. You know what that means: freaking out about prequels and remakes. Thankfully for us, some new reasons for worry have come down the pike via a chat The Playlist had with Alcon Entertainment producer Andrew Kosove. After talking a bit about the progress he’s having bringing the Black List script Prisoners to the big screen, he also had some stuff to say about Ridley Scott’s new Blade Runner project and the proposed Point Break remake that has been floating around. Is it looking like they’re really going to happen? About Scott’s enthusiasm for the new Blade Runner, Kosove said, “Here’s the thing about Ridley. Ridley is a special guy. He’s a force of nature. He’s got a lot of stuff that he’s working on. I believe it’s an extremely high priority for Ridley, that’s what he’s said to me. This project is moving forward aggressively in development.” Look at those words he’s using, high priority, aggressive, sounds like this thing is developing pretty fast. Or is it? The next few words out of his mouth don’t sound so confident. He went on to say, “Sometime in the first two months of the new year we’ll announce who the screenwriter will be and whether or not it’s a prequel or sequel. And then we’ll be off to the races.” They don’t even have a screenwriter or know if it’s going to be a sequel [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]

When the news recently broke that the Piranha 3D sequel Piranha 3DD was going straight to video in the UK, I speculated whether this meant that the movie wouldn’t get put into theaters anywhere at all. After all, it had already gone from an original November 2011 release date to a release of “sometime in 2012.” Doesn’t sound promising, right? Well according to Piranha 3DD co-writer Patrick Melton, it’s not yet time to panic. When talking to Daily Dead Melton said of the movie’s postponement, “To clarify, the Thanksgiving release was always overly optimistic. Marcus and I started writing the script around Thanksgiving a year prior. Making the film within that time period is plausible (we’ve done it on Saw, obviously), but it became clear very early on that our goals were not realistic because we needed sun, water slides, and bikini-clad coeds…three things not very prevalent in the United States during the months of January and February. We initially scouted Louisiana and realized that we wouldn’t be able to shoot until late March because of the cold weather. Now, with the additional FX worked needed to create/enhance the piranhas, the Thanksgiving release was out the window.” That’s certainly a reasonable excuse for why a movie would get pushed back. But what of that dreaded “sometime in 2012” release? Doesn’t that sound like a movie that is doomed to purgatory? Melton has some info on that as well.

Recently, Paramount sent around one of those pat-yourself-on-the-back sorts of press releases announcing that they made more money worldwide than any other studio last year. Of course, not one to dwell too long in the past, they also managed to slip in a little paragraph bragging about how good their upcoming 2012 looks as well: “In 2012, Paramount’s release slate highlights include World War Z, a zombie thriller starring Brad Pitt and directed by Marc Forster, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, the next installment in the global franchise starring Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and Channing Tatum, a new chapter in the Paranormal Activity franchise, and The Dictator, starring Sacha Baron Cohen and directed by Larry Charles, the team behind Borat.” The interesting part of this paragraph is that, in addition to mentioning a bunch of high profile projects that we already knew about, the studio is also claiming that they have another Paranormal Activity movie in the works, which is news. All of these other movies are in various stages of post-production, but Paranormal Activity 4 is naught but a glimmer in some profit-minded executive’s eye.

When we at Junkfood Cinema heard that we had somehow again avoided outright cancellation, clearly an oversight on the part of hectically busy and woefully unobservant management, we decided to celebrate with another installment of the Junkfood Cinema Awards, affectionately known (read “irresponsibly abbreviated”) as The Junkies. Since this was our sophomore effort, we really wanted to flaunt our year-long incompetence with plenty of pomp and circumstance. We therefore hired a big time Hollywood director, one who had similarly proven his commitment to terrible films, to produce a garish, way-too-expensive, online awards ceremony. But then we had to fire him over some incredibly unsavory comments he made; something about rehearsals being for fatties. So instead, we’re just going to do the exact same crap we did last year. Enjoy.

Anybody who has either read Stieg Larsson’s Millenium Series or seen the original film adaptations directed by Niels Arden Oplev and Daniel Alfredson knows that David Fincher’s upcoming film The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is going to have two potential sequels after its release. The question is, will he pass the torch to another director to make the English language versions of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest and The Girl Who Played With Fire like Oplev did, or will he take them on himself? Ace Showbiz reports that Fincher spoke on this very issue during a recent press release, and though he doesn’t sound all that thrilled with having to make Dragon Tattoo sequels, he’s probably going to do it anyway. He plans on making them the same way you pull off a bandage though, in one quick motion so that he can be done with it.

It’s been understood for a while now that there was already a sequel to Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin in the works, one in which Spielberg was meant to trade producing and directing duties with Peter Jackson; and that’s all still a go. Before the original had opened anywhere, work was already being done on the sequel, and now that it’s become a financial success in several overseas markets, a second Tintin adventure is all but guaranteed. What has changed, however, is Spielberg and Jackson’s original plans of where the story for the sequel will actually go. We reported a while back that the sequel was tentatively titled The Adventures of Tintin: Prisoners of the Sun, and that the story they were planning to tell would be an amalgamation of two classic Tintin stories “Prisoners of the Sun” and “The Seven Crystal Balls.” Well, that’s no longer the case, because while doing an interview with The Playlist, producer Kathleen Kennedy has confirmed that they have a different plan. “‘Prisoners of the Sun’ was a very, very early discussion, and it isn’t under discussion anymore,” she said. “We’ve still got Anthony Horowitz working on the second movie, and we don’t know what we’re doing with the third movie yet.” Despite no current plans for the third, there does seem to be an idea of where Horowitz is currently going with the second. Kennedy said of the first film, “We knew that we needed to introduce Tintin, we needed to introduce [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]

Talks of a sequel to Top Gun have been happening for at least over a year now. It’s clear that at some level, someone from Paramount is trying to make this happen. Details on the project have been pretty lacking, though. What would this sequel be about? Would Tom Cruise star? Would he even appear? Who would be directing? Well, MTV recently sat Cruise down and threw some of these very important questions his way, and his responses we’re actually kind of helpful. When asked about the possibility of this sequel actually coming to fruition Cruise responded, “We’re working on it.” Past that he doesn’t seem to have too many details about what stage the process is in, however. He commented on an old rumor that Christopher McQuarrie was writing the script by saying, “I don’t think Chris [McQuarrie] is going to write it. Chris is directing One Shot right now, which I’m acting in. We’ve got to go back in January and finish it.” Everyone already knew this though, because it’s been widely reported that X-Men: First Class scribes Ashley Miller and Zack Stentz are currently working on the script for the Top Gun sequel. I suppose his input on how far along this project is should be taken with a grain of salt. What this new interview does confirm, however, is that Cruise is the guy firmly in mind to star in this movie, and Tony Scott is definitely the guy who intends to come back to direct. [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]

Recently, we’ve been reporting on rumors that strange but awesome actor Benicio Del Toro was being pursued by J.J. Abrams to play the villain in the upcoming sequel to his Star Trek reboot. Those rumors were coming from multiple sources and seemed to be completely legit. Alongside that, we’ve also been completely irresponsibly speculating that the villain Del Toro was being asked to play was Khan, the genetically engineered tyrant who served as the crew’s nemesis in the previous film, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. This was based on nothing other than Del Toro’s general swarthiness and how great he would be at stepping into the scantily clad shoes of Ricardo Montalban, and wasn’t meant to be taken seriously. Today, however, there is news on both of these fronts. Vulture is reporting that the deal with Del Toro is dead. Reportedly, as of last Wednesday, both sides decided that they couldn’t agree on money and parted ways. So, given that shooting for the film is scheduled to start in January, that gives Abrams a window of only a few weeks to find someone else to step into the role. A role that there is new news about. In the same Vulture article, they are claiming that they have heard from “highly placed sources” that despite Abrams’s comments to the contrary, the villain for this new Trek is indeed going to be Khan Noonien Singh. Speculation is that when Abrams told Hitfix that it was “not true” that Del [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]

There’s some action going on over at J.J. Abrams’ super secret lair where he makes all of his super secret movies, and Variety has the scoop. Apparently his upcoming Star Trek sequel calls for even more attractive young actors than his original go around with the franchise did, because he’s been testing actresses like Theresa Palmer, Hayley Atwell, and Alice Eve to play a character new to Star Trek canon. And after all the tests were tested and the deliberations were deliberated, it’s looking like Eve is the first choice of Abrams and crew to become the newest member of the Star Trek universe. She hasn’t officially signed yet, but sources expect it to happen soon. Eve is kind of a wild card casting in my eyes. Mostly she’s done a bunch of TV series and the Sex and the City sequel, so I don’t have much of a basis to form an opinion on her as an actress. I did see her starring turn in She’s Out of My League though, and I remember that not only was I presently surprised by how palatable that film was as a whole, but I kind of walked out of the theater having a crush on Eve as well. She’s pretty and charming, so high five Star Trek 2!

The sequel to J.J. Abrams’ slick and successful Star Trek reboot was originally supposed to come out on June 29, 2012. That date didn’t really take into consideration that Abrams was a busy guy doing a lot of other things though. Because of his directorial and promotional duties on Super 8, there was no way he was going to hit that date and make it good. Thankfully, instead of forcing Abrams to rush the project out, or flat out firing Abrams and then hiring Brett Ratner to rush the project out, Paramount had the good sense to pull back on their expectations, give Abrams a reprieve, and actually try to make a good movie.

It was kind of a head-scratcher when it was first announced that Universal would be making another Jason Bourne movie that didn’t have Matt Damon in it. How do you make a movie about Jason Bourne without Jason Bourne? The plan seems to be to keep the action happening in the same universe that it previously in Damon’s three movies, but to introduce another operative as our protagonist. That’s a dumb idea. Why not just make a different movie called something else? Stupid ideas aside, The Bourne Legacy managed to get a great actor in Jeremy Renner to play the new operative, so maybe it won’t be all that bad. It still leaves a lot of question up in the air, though. Who is Renner’s new character going to be? Is this movie going to look like the original Bourne movies, all gritty and handheld? Well, when recently talking with Empire, Renner managed to cough up some details about the new movie, and while revealing, it all sounds like pretty typical sequel speak. When asked about the tone of the new film, he confirmed that, “Yeah, it’s that same deal, it’s just a new set of agents with a different leash. It’s the same tempo and pace but more expansive and bigger. The differences are pretty vast but you’ll know it’s a Bourne movie.” I think there’s some sort of clause that gets put in your contract when you sign on for a sequel that you have to talk about [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]