After hitting the stage to conduct a live show version of his hitRECord website (dedicated to open collaboration production with his users) at last month’s Sundance Film Festival, it looks like Joseph Gordon-Levitt is finally adding a very expected title to his already long string of occupations. Gordon-Levitt will make his feature directing debut with a still-untitled comedy that he has also penned. Moreover, he will also star in the film alongside Scarlett Johansson. Deadline Brentwood reports that the film is “a sexy comedy about about a modern-day Don Juan, and his quest to become less of a ‘selfish dick.’” Gordon-Levitt is, of course, cast as that “selfish dick,” with Johansson grabbing one of two female lead roles. Gordon-Levitt also told the outlet that “his major motive for returning [to acting] was a burning desire to direct.” You don’t say! He went on to say, “I spent a year working with Chris Nolan, Rian Johnson, Steven Spielberg, and I did my best to pay attention. I’ve also been making short films for a long time now, I’ve directed a ton of them, and that is a huge part of why I feel comfortable and confident in this.” Well, he’s got a point there.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly movie collection of links, posters, videos, and other newsworthy mediums that mostly have to do with movies. Sometimes we mix in a bit of television. Other times we’re talking about something completely different. Call us unfocused if you must, but don’t you ever call us boring. Leading with a photo of Katy Perry, not my finest moment. Rest assured, though, as there is some actual movie news associated with the buxom pop singer picture above. Paramount Pictures — the studio that brought you the box office cow Justin Bieber: Never Say Never – is planning a Katy Perry 3D movie documentary concert film thing. Squee!

This week’s merchandise world has gone loopy for The Dark Knight Rises with two stellar announcements by two of the world’s biggest collectible players, in DC Direct and Hot Toys, and 2012 looks like it’s going to be a good year for anyone who collects Bat Merch. There’s also a couple of entries from Mattel, making this the most bumperest Merch Hunter column ever. It’s been a thrill-ride, and I’d like to thanks Jesus Christ and Chris Nolan for giving me the strength to achieve this monumental feat. So anyway, this week’s Merch Hunter is dedicated to Chris Nolan’s upcoming trilogy-ender, and the news that has got collectors’ tongues wagging and seats wet in the past week or so. So put away your wallets for now, because you won’t be able to buy what is listed here just yet – and in all honesty, saving up for them is probably going to be a pragmatic decision, given how much dough is likely to be needed to buy them.

Although the real question keeping Hollywood awake in 2012 is “Does Winston Wolf clean up dead hookers on Yom Kippur?”, the fine folks over at HitFix have put forth a handful of queries of varying importance which filmmakers, studios and fans might have on their minds this year. It’s their 15 Questions Keeping Hollywood Awake in 2012. With concerns from Lindsay Lohan’s possible last chance to Joss Whedon’s first real shot with The Avengers, it’s an intriguing list that might prove 2012 to be both an endlessly fascinating and completely irrelevant year in the stories behind the movies. Will Smith, Found Footage, Hunger Games, Dark Knight Rises and more. HitFix has questions, and here are the answers:

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly movie news column that won’t hesitate to deliver all the best content of the day. Seriously, don’t tempt it. It will do it. We begin tonight with a delightful piece of art from Megan Lara called Troy and Abed’s Dope Adventures. This Calvin and Hobbes esque homage to Community is most definitely cool. Cool, cool, cool.

What is Movie News After Dark? It is all about movie news, it happens nightly, and you should never, ever go to bed without it. Should you happen to do so, we’re most likely going to send someone out to teach you a lesson. And you don’t want to learn any hard lessons now, do you? We didn’t think so. We begin tonight with an image that is sweeping the internet. With a little lightening, this new image of Noomi Rapace in Prometheus reveals a pair of Space Jockeys in the background. It’s hard to tell from this angle, but they look rather large and intimidating. It goes along with a quote writer/producer Damon Lindelof gave to Hero Complex: “The movie is definitely epic in its scope. One of the filmmakers that we ended up talking about to a fair degree of redundancy was David Lean, who directed ‘Lawrence of Arabia.’ We wanted to make the movie feel big by having the characters be small in big spaces. That connected to the larger themes we were talking about — that we’re all just these little gnats crawling around on our little planet.”

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly hand-in-hand stroll down Newsworthy Lane, with a stop at the Noteworthy Café for a bite to eat. Then we’ll head back to my place and I’ll show you my signature move, the Well-Researched Scoop (I have two sources that will confirm its quality on the record). What do you say, baby? We begin this evening with part of a new midseason poster for The Walking Dead. Which brings to mind the question of the hour: Is anyone still exciting about this show? Sure, it has the occasional zombie and it was nice to see Glen “make a friend,” but beyond that, it’s become tired, has it not?

What is Movie News After Dark? … um, it’s about movies. And it takes place after the sun goes down. We begin this evening with another new image from The Dark Knight Rises, one of several that worked their way onto the web today thanks to Entertainment Weekly. Unlike all the previously interesting shots from the film, this one does not involve Bane. It’s Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) standing in front of the bat-suit. I love that bat-suit.

CORRECTION: Collider has spoken with WB, IMAX and Steve’s best friend’s sister’s boyfriend’s brother’s girlfriend who heard from this guy who knows this kid who’s going with a girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night, and they’ve issued a retraction stating that their original story was wrong. (Take that “friend of an IMAX projectionist.”) So depending on where you fell on the whole can/can’t understand Bane fiasco of 2011, rest assured that nothing has changed. He’s still talking through a goddamn mask. Original post: Remember that time that people complained about needing subtitles for Attack the Block Bane’s (Tom Hardy) dialogue in The Dark Knight Rises? I didn’t get it either, but according to a friend of a friend of an IMAX projectionist who wrote into Collider, Warners has sent out new sound reels for the prologue that’s playing before Ghotocol right now. Apparently the dialogue hasn’t been altered at all, as per Christopher Nolan‘s claim that he wouldn’t change it, but the ambient noise has been reduced so that Bane can be heard a bit more clearly. So, there you go. This whole situation seemed a bit ridiculous, but hopefully the compromise is something that Warners, Nolan and the fans can all appreciate. No word yet on whether Rooster Cogburn from the Coens’ True Grit and Bane will do a cross-over sequel.

It’s already the second day of 2012, which means we’ll all be sober within the next day or two. It also means that we can officially start looking (through blurry eyes) ahead to the future. A future of promise and potential. A future of hope. A future of tingling anticipation that the road stretched out in front of us that leads to the cinema will be paved with gold. Will there be piles of excrement along the way? Of course, but we don’t know how many or how badly they’ll tarnish our yellow-bricked roller coaster ride. All we can see from this far out is the shimmering wonder of movies to come – the vast unknown that looks wonderful (and might just live up to the hype). In past years (2008, 2009, 2010, 2011), we’ve gone with a fairly arbitrary count of 20-30 movies. This year, we decided to prove that there were 52 movies worth prematurely celebrating (even though what we found were many more). That’s one for every week (even if there are some weeks with a few and some weeks with none at all). Regardless of the number, Rob Hunter, Neil Miller, Kate Erbland, Allison Loring, Landon Palmer, Brian Salisbury and Cole Abaius have joined forces to remind us all that there are a lot of great movies to hope for this year. Go grab a calendar and pencil in everything that gets your blood pressure up toward unsafe levels. It’s going to be a busy, flick-filled [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]

They say it’s hard to judge a book by its cover, but when it comes to world of cinema and movie marketing (and the plethora of films that hit theaters each weekend), it’s hard not to use a film’s three-minute long trailer to judge whether or not it will be something you’ll be interested in seeing (and with movie prices on the up and up, it’s hard to go in blind these days). The illustrious Jack Giroux and Allison Loring rounded up the top 11 trailers released over the past year. They’re both for films that came out in 2011 and either lived up to or fell short of their promise and for films due to be released next year that have begun teasing us early. Plus a few honorable mentions because Jack and I aren’t super great at math (we’re writers, and I’m pretty sure you can only be good at one or the other). From horror to action to comedy (and much discussion about the merits of underwear – you’ll see), our picks spanned the genres proving that it does not matter what type of film you are promoting, just whether or not you are able to grab people’s attention. Listed in no particular order, let us know in the comments if you agree, disagree or if there was a trailer you loved that we missed on our list.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly thing that collects things about movies, television and other things. Lots of things in store for you tonight, including some more Dark Knight Rises things… We begin tonight with an image of Ben Affleck as a real life former CIA agent from the early 1980s in Argo. In a way that can only be from the 1980s, he also looks like a Die Hard villain. So much mulleted intensity.

Hedy Lamarr was a darkly beautiful, iconic star of the 30s and 40s, probably best known for her starring role in Cecil B. DeMille’s Samson and Delilah. She is also, apparently, a great inspiration for Anne Hathaway as she crafted her Catwoman/Selina Kyle character for Chris Nolan’s forthcoming The Dark Knight Rises. “I know this sounds odd, but her breathing is extraordinary,” Hathaway told the LA Times. “She takes these long, deep, languid breaths and exhales slowly. There’s a shot of her in Ecstasy exhaling a cigarette and I took probably five breaths during her one exhale. So I started working on my breathing a lot.” Apparently nothing about Lammarr shockingly going topless for the movie back in 1933 made its way into Catwoman. Hathaway talks more about breathing and delves a bit more into the challenges in the must-read piece from Geoff Boucher, but beware of a mild spoiler for one of the scenes. The most reassuring part of the talk? That the costume is more functional than fantasy. Once again, Nolan seems to be looking out for logic, even in a world that defies it. This is more great information about one of, if not the most, anticipated movies of 2012.

What is Movie News After Dark? This evening’s column, as evident in the above image and title, will be very Batman heavy. Because it’s impossible to live and work on the internet without running into a bunch of Bat-related stuff. So we might as well just get it out of the way. We’ll also mix in some Community. And Community/Batman crossover. We begin tonight with one of two brand new photos from The Dark Knight Rises. This one features Bane, as played by Tom Hardy, staring down Batman, as played by Christian Bale. Guess what happens next…

Despite the fact that the world collectively shat their pants at all of the cool included in the first trailer for Christopher Nolan’s third Batman joint, The Dark Knight Rises, there was also a rallying cry that begun to spring up after all the explosions and Batplanes had sunk in. It was the cry of, “Hey, what did Bane say? I couldn’t understand him at all!” Tom Hardy, behind the Bane mask, kind of sounds like the son of Michael Caine and Donald Trump gargling marbles, so everybody is now hoping that the line we got from him was just early footage, or a temporary sound mix, or something that isn’t at all indicative of what it’s really going to be like trying to understand the main villain for the entirety of the film. Unfortunately for those with hopes, THR claims to have sources saying that this is definitely what Bane is going to sound like through the whole movie, and that Christopher Nolan doesn’t have many plans to do anything about it. The first source they cite, who is just said to be “working on the film,” says that he is “scared to death” about “the Bane problem.” This could either be taken as evidence that Bane’s dialogue will be an issue, or evidence that somebody working as an extra wanted a little bit of spotlight from the trades and struck while an online controversy was hot to deliver a quote, I’ll let you decide. But further comments in [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]

Wow. Wow is all there is. With all eyes on Christopher Nolan to find a fitting ending for the massive phenomenon that he’s turned into an even more massive phenomenon, the director and everyone involved seems to have pointed beyond the bleachers and out into the parking lot with this full length trailer for The Dark Knight Rises. It’s got Christian Bale getting existential as Batman, Tom Hardy as Bane looking ominous with a bomb and Anne Hathaway representing the unwashed masses as a masked Selina Kyle. In fact, it’s got enough red meat to make any old fan happy – and to prove that Nolan and company are not shying away from the greatness of their challenge.

Dear reader, I come to you bearing the gravest of news. Hollywood is not making enough money. Tragic, I know, but there is something we can do. Something we must do. We must get out our checkbooks and donate to the big studios. We must shower them with money. For, hide the children, movie viewership is down to a 16 year low. For crying out loud, only 1.2 billion movie tickets were sold in America! How have we as a country let this happen? Where have we gone wrong? Reuters, The Daily Mail, they’re all reporting the lackluster year Hollywood has had. This is serious, people. This is big news. Studio executives everywhere are “battling” against a soft audience and struggling to match the numbers of previous years. Let me find my tiny violin, will you?

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a thing that chronicles the day in movie news. Or in many cases, a day’s worth of interesting articles that you should be reading. If you want a bunch of trade news reprinted with a lone, snarky comment, there are plenty of mediocre movie blogs out there who can deliver such things. We choose the higher road. Or the lower road, depending on our mood. We begin this evening with a mural painted by Australian street artist Anthony Lister in Los Angeles. He’s painted a mural in honor of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which just so happens to come out on DVD and Blu-ray this week. Go figure. The completely marketable timing aside, it’s quite cool. I’ve even included a time lapse video of Lister putting this work together just after the jump.

Lets be honest with ourselves: The Dark Knight Rises is going to be the movie of 2012, no matter what other studios put together or how many superheroes they throw into one movie. The conclusion of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy will be the most highly trafficked, marketed and anticipated film event of the year. There’s no two ways about it. And as it were, any time something new is released from The Dark Knight Rises, that will be the thing of the day. Which makes this big, gorgeous and revealing poster today’s thing. It stars Tom Hardy as Bane, walking away from the broken cowl of our hero. A sign of things to come…

A little birdie just dropped into my inbox, gravel-voiced a question about where the drugs were, and then told me that the prologue to The Dark Knight Rises will be in theaters 7 months before the rest of the movie. Those of you who want a taste of what Christopher Nolan and company are cooking up can get your six-minute fill on December 16th. Fans in the UK will have to wait a tick longer, but they’ll have their screens filled with Batman-y goodness on December 21st (which is the day the Magi spotted the Bane-shaped constellation in the sky and headed toward Gotham (true story)). Other international dates will be released soon. So will it be coming to a town near you, or will you have to pay for gas? Scope out the list of where it will be playing and see for yourself: