What is Casting Couch? Casting news. Today we’ve got updates on new roles for people like Michelle Williams, Laurence Fishburne, and—what the heck—let’s stick in a rumor about who might play the Scarlet Witch in Avengers 2 as well. It looks like Owen Wilson might be taking a trip back to the ’70s. The Wrap reports that he’s the latest name in negotiations to join Paul Thomas Anderson’s next film, his adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice. Never ones to let a good PTA rumor go uncommented on, Cigarettes & Red Vines then took this story and ran with it, contacting their own sources and discovering that the role Wilson is in talks for is that of Coy Harlingen, who’s described as being a surf-saxophone player and a heroin addict, and who may be the most Owen Wilson-y role ever written.

The boring problem with almost every superhero is that if they existed in real life they would just win all the time. This is why we have super villains, of course, and this is why those super villains tend to get the upper hand at some point in the film. After all, what’s a good third act without some kind of obstacle to overcome? If your character can shoot fire from his or her nipples then the baddies better have some kind of ray gun that shoots ice pasties. Point is, we need a point where the hero gets their ass handed to them – something that some movies handle better than others. Here are eight of the darker moments where the hero hits rock bottom (usually in a pool of their own blood).

Tonight’s edition of Movie News After Dark keeps it simple as we bring you back from your weekend. Hopefully you got a little sun, as we’re about to jettison you into space to talk a little Star Trek, but not before we check in with the progress of this week’s big star, Iron Man.

Fans can have very different ideas of what the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are supposed to look like, depending on how old they are. Old fogies may have first come across the team in the pages of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s gritty, twisted comic book, and like them that way. Slightly more spry gray hairs could remember them from the wisecracking, late ’80s cartoon series. If your memory doesn’t quite go back to the ’80s, maybe your first introduction to the Turtles was from their 1990 live action film, that split the difference in tone and presented the team as actors in foam rubber costumes. And then there are whole groups of young kids who may have been introduced to them in their 2007 computer animated feature, TMNT, or babies who know them from the almost claymation-looking TV series that started airing on Nickelodeon last year. The point is, though there are slight variations in how the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have been presented down through the years, they’re well-known characters at this point, and there are several generations of fans out there who could potentially be horrified by the upcoming Michael Bay-led reboot of the film franchise. And seeing as the Turtles in this movie are not going to be played by stuntmen in cumbersome costumes, but are instead going to be brought to life through motion capturing actors in a method that we keep getting reminded will look quite a bit like what James Cameron did to

What is Casting Couch? It’s a roundup of all the day’s most important casting news. Today we have a bunch of legit reports, and one of those dreaded short-lists. It’s a short-list concerning that much talked about Natalie Portman movie, Jane Got a Gun though, so it’s kind of a pressing matter. It looks like Captain America may be trading in his sidekick Bucky in order to team up with The Sundance Kid. Deadline is reporting that Robert Redford, the patron saint of independent cinema, is making a surprise move and negotiating to join the cast of Marvel’s very commercial superhero sequel, Captain America: The Winter Soldier. If he officially signs, he’ll reportedly be playing a high-ranking member of SHIELD, that government agency run by Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury in all of the Marvel movies. I wonder if he gets his own flying aircraft carrier? If he does, that could be the thing that seals the deal.

What is Casting Couch? It’s your handy one stop destination for news about what all of your favorite and least favorite actors are up to next. Today we’ve got news about Anne Hathaway’s latest excuse to sing and what Adam Sandler’s next excuse to get paid to go on vacation with a beautiful actress will be. When James Marsden first caught international attention, it was as the stone-faced and charisma-free Cyclops in Bryan Singer’s first X-Men movie. People didn’t have much love for him back then. But since then he’s shown in things like Enchanted and Death at a Funeral that he’s not so bad when he’s letting his figurative hair down and getting a little goofy. That’s a good thing, because now we don’t have to meet Deadline’s report that he’s just become the latest name to join the Anchorman 2 cast with annoyed groans. Apparently Marsden will be playing Ron Burgundy’s rival news anchor, which sounds like quite a bit of fun, because Marsden can do smug pretty well.

Mmmm. Grab a snack and get ready for some hot viscid action because we’ll be talking about movie sludge today! We’re talking creeping and colorful gunk – the thicker and scarier the better. Why? You ask? Because behind every adult – every respectable member of working society – is a little kid, morbidly fascinated with the creepy and slimy. This is why Reality TV thrives like it does.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, we’ve got like 610,000 words in this article, without actually typing any words! Ain’t the internet the greatest? Take a peek at what we thought was the coolest stuff around on Thursday and then dive into our expanded gallery! Above: Some characters from Hotel Transylvania. We found these two weirdos wandering around the floor and had to say hi. The Mummy is looking pretty righteous!

Who doesn’t love watching teenagers fight? These days it’s just nice to see them doing something that gets them outside and moving around – not to mention the wonders it does for team building skills and self esteem issues. Compared to them sitting in a moist den somewhere playing Skyrim and housing six servings of Zesty Salsa Combos, youth violence isn’t the worst fate for our nation’s children. Anyhoo – Here are some of the better films that celebrate the time-honored tradition of kids punching each other to pass the time.

Remember that reboot of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise that Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes was making? The one that was just called Ninja Turtles and that spawned a bunch of fan debate when it was said it would re-write the turtles’ origins to make them aliens? Well, if you came down in the camp of those who were dreading a possible bastardization of your beloved childhood icons, the latest developments surrounding the film’s production might have you breathing a sigh of relief. Despite the fact that the film has already done quite a bit of pre-production for its planned shoot in Vancouver, THR is reporting that work has stopped on set and the film’s release date has been moved from December 2013 to May 2014. How long has work on the project been delayed? Some sources are saying ten weeks, but some are saying that they’ve heard the production’s hiatus will be “indefinite.”

Well, kind of. According to The Province (via ComingSoon), the Jonathan Liebesman-directed, Josh Appelbaum- and Andre Nemec-penned, and Michael Bay-produced Ninja Turtles might start filming later this summer in Vancouver. Well, Canadians are by and large a very welcoming people. The outlet reports that word is out in “casting and pre-production circles around town” that the turtles are coming to the fair city to film a new version of the heroes in a half shell and their adventures in being both totally awesome and completely weird. As with most reboots/remakes/relaunches, this new film will be more “grounded” and “gritty” and, as producer Brad Fuller told us earlier this year, the film will likely use Rise of the Planet of the Apes-inspired motion-capture performance to tell its story.

When we heard that Platinum Dunes and the director of Battle: Los Angeles were planning on rebooting Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, it was pretty easy to jump to conclusions about what type of film they would be making: gritty, lots of shaky-cam, and like most modern action filmmaking, trying to ground ridiculousness as much as possible. But Platinum Dunes producer Brad Fuller tells us that we should definitely expect a grounded, but not “gritty” take on a movie with alien turtles coming to Earth. Fuller also shared that a part of this “grounded” version may come courtesy of motion-capture. Based on Fuller’s tone and his love for Rise of the Planet of the Apes, it would be a shock if the filmmaking team behind the project do not go with mo-cap Turtles. Here’s what Brad Fuller had to say about Ninja Turtles:

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s the calm, both before and after the storm. It’s the thing that keeps you warm just before you slip into a night’s slumber. It’s the movie news, editorial links, audio-visual stimuli that you yearn for all day long. It’s the alpha and the omega of what’s happening in the world of entertainment news. It’s also quite playful. We begin tonight with a new shot of Bruce Willis in G.I. Joe: Retaliation, in which he plays Joe Colton, the original G.I. Joe. It’s hard to argue with the facts: that man knows how to look cool holding a gun, even if the gun in the hands of Adrianne Palicki (seen behind him) is far more badass.

Of all the critiques lobbed at the John Carter‘s marketing problems, one of the more devastating was that the name was boring and meaningless. Where do you go after that? How do you build advertising when your name is terrible (or worse: dull)? So, it’s in that spirit that, according to Bleeding Cool, the new Michael Bay-produced “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” movie will simple be called Ninja Turtles. Way to steal The Asylum’s rip-off title right out from under them.

When talking about the upcoming live action version of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie his Platinum Dunes production company is helming, fan favorite and media whipping boy Michael Bay wandered into a non-controversy that is apparently still news. Fans of TMNT and Bay-haters alike got all up in a tizzy after the Transformers director made a statement about the film and casually dropped the info that the turtles will actually be aliens, not mutants. I’m surprised you didn’t feel the earthquake that happened shortly thereafter, because the world is ending.

“When you see this movie, kids will believe one day that these turtles do exist, when we’re done with this movie. These turtles are from an alien race, and they are going to be tough, edgy, funny and completely loveable.” That’s Michael Bay talking at the Nickelodeon Upfront about the forthcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. First of all, they wouldn’t actually change the name (and risk losing all that sweet built-in recognition). Second of all, it seems clear that Bay’s primary concern with the movie is making children believe that turtles are a real thing. Did killing their class pet “Slow-y” last year not hammer it home enough for them? Of course, the eyebrow-raising note here is that the turtles of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird‘s warped minds aren’t aliens. They’re turtles. From here on Earth. Where turtles live. Maybe it’s a simple matter of misspeaking, but if Bay and company are really planning to make Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo and Raphael beings from another planet, this is a serious and pointless change to the core of the characters. This could be seen as impotent fan ranting, and it might be if their origin weren’t so central to the story here. It just seems like a needless change (and one that makes no zoological or rational sense to boot). What we really need to know: are their also rats on this alien planet?

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly collection of movie news and links that is quickly finding out that even though SXSW isn’t over, there is such a thing as an early SXSW hangover. A pre-hangover hangover, perhaps? We begin this evening with the coolest image of the day. Easily the coolest image of the day, from The Happytime Murders, a noir murder mystery set in a world where puppets are second class citizens. Henson Studios is putting the thing together, and there’s no end to my own personal excitement.

Back when it was first announced that Platinum Dunes had plans to put together a new live action Ninja Turtles movie, Neil Miller found himself pondering what sort of picture they intended to make. Platinum Dunes is known mostly for relaunching popular but tarnished horror franchises, so did that mean that they intended on giving us a gritty, adult take on the Turtles, kind of like the original Eastman and Laird comics? Or would they still be taking a more kid friendly approach, like the cartoon and live action film series of the 90s, which raked in bajillions of dollars by appealing to a younger audience? Now that there are some names attached to the creative end of this one, what it’s going to look like is becoming more clear. According to a new report from Variety, Michael Bay and company have hired Jonathan Liebesman to direct. At first glance, that might lead you to believe that this could be a seriously dark film, as Liebesman was the guy who did The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning for New Line back in 2006, and that was a pretty dark, R-rated remake. But if you look at the work he’s been doing lately, he’s been hovering much more in the PG-13 range, and he’s been doing the sort of films that are generally too epic in scope to limit your audience by putting in questionable content. His last film was Battle: Los Angeles, and he’s got Wrath of the Titans coming

What is Movie News After Dark? God only knows, but I’m pretty sure we’re going to need a bigger boat… We begin by shining our big ass MNAD spotlight on short filmmaking. Director BenDavid Grabinski‘s short film Cost of Living premiered at this year’s Fantastic Fest, where I unfortunately missed it. Luckily for me and anyone else who hasn’t seen it yet, the short is premiering online tonight around 9PM PST. Cost of Living stars Bret Harrison and Brandon Routh as a couple of security guards who work for a strange corporation. The enchanting Mary Elizabeth Winstead lends her voice to the proceedings as well. Check it out for yourself at www.foindustries.com anytime after 9PM PST. Looks like Sony is following in many other studios footsteps by sending out some sweet swag for it’s upcoming tentpole to top film bloggers. Peter Sciretta over at /Film was one of the lucky ones to receive a replica of Peter Parker’s bookbag from this summer’s franchise reboot The Amazing Spider-Man. Head on over to /Film to read the full story and see plenty of pics!

Being a professional obsessive might make me a social pariah, but it does offer me the opportunity to trawl the internet looking for my worldly fix with relative impunity – “what! This is work!” And even more importantly, it introduces me to some extremely cool stuff. Stuff that I will invariably buy on my own recommendation, or at least leave major hints to loved ones that I need them for Christmas of my birthday. Both of which are coming up, just in case you’re reading this, Mum… Anyway, a wise man once said that the important things in life aren’t things, but I would put it to him that he obviously hadn’t seen Disney’s Villain Vinylmations, or Sideshow Toys’ Batman busts, or Derek Deal’s posters, the big idiot. Luckily, no one here shares his false philosophies, so here are all of those lovely things below…