Director Todd Phillips has made three films for Warner Bros. so far: The Hangover, Due Date, and The Hangover Part II. Say what you will about their varying degrees of quality, but there’s no denying the fact that they were all huge financial successes for both Phillips and the studio, so Warner Bros. is obviously very committed to being in the Todd Phillips business. To that end they’ve signed him to a new first look deal that will keep him making movies for the studio until at least the end of 2013, and will give him first crack at quite a few potential projects. Deadline Dix Hills has a rundown of four different scripts that are all being put together as potential Phillips vehicles.

Have you noticed that songs about getting completely, vomitously, blacked out drunk are getting popular now? From Taio Cruz talking about his hangover and drinking until he throws up, to Katy Perry’s “Last Friday Night” and Far East Movement and whatever Ke$ha is, it’s a sobering trend. The generation that’s in high school and college right now is trying to get on dialysis as fast as possible. It’s a noble goal, but it’s still no excuse for buying Natty Light. Meanwhile, at least one film is celebrating the act of celebrating. Project X‘s first trailer was manic and hurried, but this second trailer (via Coming Soon) effectively gives as much backstory as the movie can muster: three high school kids want to make an impact after floating through unknown by their classmates. A party ensues, and then the party goes viral. Check out the party for yourself:

In our wondrous world of too much information, Todd Phillips has said zero words about Project X (except for a few that sounded like he was mocking people for being so hungry for news). Now, the trailer is out and so is the word. The story Phillips has produced with first-time feature director Nima Nourizadeh focuses on three high school boys who throw a house party in order to turn their reputations around, and as word of the party spreads, it grows to impossible proportions. So, yes, Phillips has kept word from spreading about a movie that’s plot is based on word spreading. The trailer is a fun, disastrous sizzle reel that looks like a rave promoter’s favorite footage, but there’s no hint to what the meat of the movie will be. There’s no personality here. On the other hand, there are a ton of bikini-clad ladies-who-are-far-too-attractive-to-actually-be-in-high-school and enough explosions to insinuate that the party gets attacked by the Cloverfield monster at some point.

Seeing as comedian/actor Zach Galifianakis is pretty much the closest modern equivalent we have to a mythical trickster, the things that he says should probably be taken with a grain of salt. Especially things he says in interviews, which he seems to hate doing. So, grain of salt firmly in place, in a cover story for Rolling Stone magazine Galifianakis has said that the plot of Hangover Part III would be about his character, Alan, getting locked up in a mental institution and the rest of the crew having to come together and break him out. Personally, I think that this sounds like a whole lot of nonsense that Galifianakis is pulling out of nowhere, but there is one quote in the article that rings very true. When initially talking about the possibility of a third Hangover, Galifianakis said, “They want to do a Hangover III. I’m getting fricking phone calls already.” The film already has a plot, and one of the leads is leaking it before the second one is even out of theaters? That’s not so believable. Execs are champing at the bit to get all of the main actors signed on to do a third film already? That’s something I very much believe. Despite the fact that The Hangover Part II debuted to a lukewarm critical reception, fans of the first film still came out in droves to get some more drunken obscenity. There is no way that the people in charge of writing and cashing the [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]

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr follows Jamie Chung to Thailand, hoping to get married. Unfortunately, someone slips him roofies, which made him black out and spend a drunken night in Bangkok. Once he got out of that city, he headed over to China to become the new pot-bellied dragon warrior. After all, if a cartoon panda can do it, why can’t he? That didn’t stop him from spending another night in the hospital, and maybe a little time in a Bangkok jail. And then the real horror happened… Kevin saw The Tree of Life.

What do you do when you’ve made the highest-grossing R-rated comedy ever? Well, you make a sequel and hope you strike gold one more time. And thus we have The Hangover Part II. Todd Phillips reunites the Wolfpack once again for yet another pre-wedding day disaster, this time set in the seedy underbelly of Bangkok. Stu (Ed Helms) prepares to marry anew, and much to the dismay of Phil (Bradley Cooper), intends to avoid any and all possibility of a repeat of his last bachelor party by, well, not having one. With a last minute, half-hearted wedding invite to Alan (Zach Galifianakis), the entire gang is on their way to Thailand. Following an uncomfortable dinner with the family of Stu’s soon-to-be wife Lauren (Jamie Chung) at the resort they are to wed, Stu is convinced to allow Lauren’s younger brother Teddy (Mason Lee) to accompany the boys to a simple beach bonfire with only a six pack to split between them. …and then The Hangover happens, or at least a pretty pale shadow of it.

This week, on a very special episode of Reject Radio, we talk with The Hangover Part II screenwriter Craig Mazin and continue the screenwriting/sequel theme with Kung Fu Panda 2 writers Jon Aibel and Glenn Berger. Plus, Katey Rich from Cinema Blend battles Jordan Raup of The Film Stage in the Movie News Pop Quiz Arena of Death. The result? You’ll have to listen to find out, but we end up talking about the bad week that 3D has been having. Reject Radio brings it on home this week, so kick off you shoes and stay awhile. Listen Here: Download This Episode

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly movie news round-up written (at least this evening) by an exhausted, cranky bastard. He is in need of a vacation, which means one of two weeks: he either needs to convince Todd Phillips to let him join The Wolf Pack or he needs to find an appropriately film-themed resort somewhere in the Middle East. As it turns out… The image above image is a concept for a $1 billion dollar Star Trek resort in Jordan to be fashioned by Rubicon Group Holding and themed with the stylings of Gene Roddenberry’s 23rd century, as seen through the lens of J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek. I mention Abrams because the original story references it. It almost feels like developers are ignoring a few years of Star Trek lore there… Alas, it will be extravagant and if it’s got a Captain’s Chair in my suite, I’ll go there. When I can afford to travel to Jordan. I’ve got until 2014 to make it happen.

It looks like everyone is throwing their hats into the ring. When the studios announced a plan to release movies in home theaters just 30 days after the theaters located outside the home (with a price tag of $30 per rental), the National Association of Theater Owners balked. Apparently their threat to boycott big blockbusters was a fake, but they haven’t kept secret their disgust for the new model that would limit their ability to make money showing movies (since studios take the 50%-100% lion’s share of the ticket split in the first weeks). Now, 23 directors and producers are speaking out against it. That list includes James Cameron, Michael Bay, Kathryn Bigelow, Guillermo del Toro, Roland Emmerich, Antoine Fuqua, Todd Garner, Lawrence Gordon, Stephen Gyllenhaal, Gale Anne Hurd, Peter Jackson, Karyn Kusama, Jon Landau, Shawn Levy, Michael Mann, Bill Mechanic, Jamie Patricof, Todd Phillips, Brett Ratner, Robert Rodriguez, Adam Shankman, Gore Verbinski, and Robert Zemeckis. The full, un-edited open letter is below:

If it ain’t broke, take it to Thailand. The first full trailer for The Hangover Part II mimics the first one fairly closely. The guys have their celebration, they wake up, and the hits keep coming. Instead of Mike Tyson, it’s a bunch of ass-kicking monks. Instead of a tiger in the bathroom, it’s a monkey on your shoulder. Instead of a missing tooth, it’s Mike Tyson on your face. Check it out for yourself:

It’ll take a smarter person in a better pay grade than mine to figure out whether studios releasing Unrated DVDs is really against the Director’s Guild rules, but it seems natural to assume Hangover director Todd Phillips might have a case. After all, the studio is often going in after the fact, without director input, and changing the movie while keeping the director’s name wholesale on it. In a recent SXSW panel, Phillips had this to say, “Warner Bros., they’ll make your movie; your movie does well, and they want to create an unrated version, which is entirely against DGA rules because it’s not your cut. And they can’t call it the ‘Director’s Cut’ — they’ll call it ‘Unrated’ or some ridiculous term. Really all it is, is about seven minutes of footage that you cut out of the movie for a reason.” People with law degrees will most likely hash that out, but you don’t have to pass the bar to know that Unrated releases are insulting and ghoulish toward fans. The added scenes are never all that shocking, they usually make the movie drag, and there’s no real attempt to cover up the fact that it’s a craven marketing tool to make more money on a movie the studio already made people like. So hopefully there will be some sort of consequence here through the DGA. Studios might have to stop adding a scene of people eating cereal that the MPAA hasn’t seen, and selling it like it’s [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 first trailer for the sequel to The Hangover has hit the web and it has absolutely everything that a teaser trailer for a sequel to a highly successful film should. First we get a bunch of reminders about how much everyone like the first film. Then we get assurances that the main characters we loved from the first film are all going to be back. Then we see a brief glimpse, though not too much is given away, that new hijinx will be had involving a monkey. And finally, the characters make meta, self-referential comments to each other about how weird it is that they’re all back together and having the same things happen to them. You see, you want to let a potential viewer know that there is going to be new stuff, but not too much new stuff. This will be very much in the same wheelhouse as the first film. There’s nothing that you aren’t comfortable with here. As a matter of fact, squint and you might think you’re watching the first film all over again. And didn’t we all have so much fun with that? So anyways, The Hangover Part II is on the way, and I hope it makes me laugh my ass off. I imagine it will. Get teased yourself after the jump.

Who wouldn’t want to take a road trip with Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis? Probably no one… unless they’re acting like their characters in the film Due Date. Then you’ll want to run screaming from them, protecting your coffee cans. You’re likely to do the same thing if you were offered a road trip with one of the Rejects, ‘cause we cannot all guarantee we don’t follow the same nightly ritual as Galifianakis’ character at an occasional rest area. Even if you won’t be taking any road trips with us or them in the near future, you can pretend to do so by drinking alone and watching Due Date, which is due out on DVD and Blu-ray this week.

When asked by Hitfix about the images for The Hangover Part II that director Todd Phillips released to the public, actor Ed Helms seems to have come off a bit nonplussed. The only bit of information he seemed to be able to offer up about this much anticipated sequel is that, “…this one’s nothing like the first one.” This doesn’t seem like a very good way to hype up an upcoming project to me, seeing as people tended to really like the first one. But perhaps the lack of big hype could have stemmed from the fact that the release date for the film is still several months away and Helms didn’t feel prepared to talk about it. There was one bit of stammering in the article that caught my eye, however. The four month long film shoot in Thailand gets describes as “basically the comedy version of Apocalypse Now, always on the edge of total chaos, shooting in places Helms said felt genuinely ‘unsafe’”. He goes on to sputter out the sentence fragment, “…once we’re overseas, once we’re in Thailand, it’s just…” Did Ed Helms go crazy on the set of The Hangover Part II? Are there any reports of heart attacks and obscene drug use happening on the set? Not that I wish anything ill on the cast and crew of the film, but a bit of chaos may have been just what this one needs. Much of the appeal of the first movie was the “what’s going [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]

At first glance, Due Date might seem a lot like Roadtrip for Schmucks. There’s an uptight, business-savvy prick who has an important goal to achieve, and there’s a moronic man-child that continues to ruin things for him. The difference between the two movies is related to the casting and the mind of director Todd Phillips. What would happen if Dinner for Schmucks was filmed on the road, and instead of giving Zach Galifianakis a side role, they made him the co-lead against someone not nearly as huggably soft as Paul Rudd? The result is exactly what you might expect. Two leads that aren’t particularly likable, but who spend the entire road trip across the country earning, losing, and re-earning each other’s trust or (at least) toleration.

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr hits the road with Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis to see if the new Todd Phillips comedy will be as funny as The Hangover. He also faces off with Will Ferrell and Brad Pitt in a very mega way. It’s the first official weekend of the holiday movie season, so Kevin will hand out the mid-term grades and let you know if these films are worth checking out.

Word on the street (read: internet) is that Hangover director Todd Phillips (who went to NYU film school and still manages to have a sense of humor) has acquired the rights for a John Belushi biopic and will be setting it up with tested biopic screenwriter Steven Conrad at Warners. This is fantastic because 1) a Belushi biopic is exactly what the world needs and b) Warners has given Phillips a lot of creative freedom in the past – going so far as to give him a budget he can’t exceed and telling him they’ll see him at the premiere. The challenge of all challenges is who to hire to play Belushi. Whoever it is comes at an automatic deficit. Especially if it’s a comedian. It would be like hiring a musician to play Kurt Cobain – the comparison will be constant, immediate, and lived-in. Plus, no names come to mind immediately. Getting an overweight comedian is not the answer even if it’s the easiest. Hill, Galifianakis, Rogen (with some brave weight gain), Black, Lang? No, thank you. Even if the drug abuse is there, it doesn’t come with the subtle genius of Belushi. Phillips would do well to look outside the comedy world for his Belushi. [Risky Business]

The combination of Todd Phillips and Zach Galifianakis worked once with The Hangover. Why can’t it work again? I don’t see why it wouldn’t, especially considering the fact that their next film Due Date includes the charismatic and very talented Robert Downey Jr. Together, Iron Man and bearded guy play two schmucks who are trying to get back to their home city before one of them (Downey) becomes a father. For whatever reason, they are stuck together. And despite a few jokes that land flat in this first trailer, most of it hits — at least it gave me a case of the sillies. I guess you’ll have to watch it for yourself, then decide. The full synopsis and trailer await you after the jump.

In this exclusive interview, Cole takes Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi back to their middle school required reading list and gets the skinny on Clash.

Can Zach Galifianakis successfully change his image from a crazy slacker to a crazy slacker who is in a mental institution? And, more importantly, will Nurse Ratchet be there?