The Motion Picture Association of America must die. It’s a monopolistic behemoth that poisons creativity and commerce while hiding behind the failed task of educating parents about film content, and the time has come to call for its dissolution. The above logo is what we, as movie fans, are most familiar with when it comes to the MPAA because we see it on trailers and home video, but that symbol is really a trick of PR. The goal of the MPAA is not to rate movies, even if that’s the product we know and loathe best. The MPAA’s founding, fundamental aim is to maintain the corporate dominance of its members – the six largest studios. It does not serve fans. It does not serve families. It does not serve filmmakers.

According to Deadline Arish, Steven Spielberg is close to signing on to make a film where a brave man helps save a lot of Jewish people from incredible persecution. Sadly, it’s the Schindler’s List: Electric Boogalo sequel we’d all hoped for. Unsadly, it’s Spielberg making a biblical epic on a massive scale with Warners. If the deal goes through, the goal is a shooting date in early 2013. Gods and Kings has been likened by their insider to Braveheart, and it tells the story of Moses from his birth down the river on down to Revelation probably. We’d previously reported that Spielberg was interested, but this news story almost assures that he’ll be taking this project on. And why not? It’s absolutely in his wheelhouse both in subject matter and scope. The question is whether this kind of story can still be a blockbuster moneymaker and a prestige film at the same time. It’s not the 1990s anymore. The other question is whether you want to see what essentially sounds like The Ten Commandments re-done by Spielberg.    

Remember that time when Jack the Giant Killer was scheduled to hit theaters in the summer of 2012? It was a simpler, happier time when the internet wasn’t imploding, you could go out dancing safely with your best girl, and strangers offering bizarre beans on the side of the road were foodie hipsters wanting people to try organic lentils. Not anymore. Now chaos reigns as Warners has pushed Bryan Singer’s forthcoming flick from a coveted in mid-June all the way to March 22, 2013. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Rock of Ages has been shifted forward to fill the slot. In its original position, its only competition was the Adam Sandler/Andy Samberg movie Donny’s Kid. In its new slot, it faces the DreamWorks animated comedy The Croods, the Tom Hanks-starring Somali pirate movie Captain Phillips, and whatever else studios decide to toss there in the coming months. So what happened? Either confidence wasn’t high in the film in its current, crappy CGI form. Or, it’s a sideline casualty of the decision to pump the breaks on the David Dobkin project Arthur & Lancelot which was scheduled for March 15, 2013. Dobkin is also a producer on Jack. Removing it from the schedule left Warners with no movie to release in March at all. At any rate, it’s probably good that the film gets some more time to simmer because the trailer looked atrocious. Plus, if you don’t want to wait, you can always watch the original Jack the Giant Killer [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]

On January 11, 1991, the then-head of Disney studios, Jeffrey Katzenberg, circulated an incredibly important memo about the state of the movie industry and the products they were making. It was called, “The World is Changing: Some Thoughts on Our Business,” and it had a simple purpose: to locate the root of a growing problem and to take steps to avoid falling victim to it. Katzenberg began the memo by stating: “As we begin the new year, I strongly believe we are entering a period of great danger and even greater uncertainty. Events are unfolding within and without the movie industry that are extremely threatening to our studio.” As we begin a new year two decades after this memo was written, it’s critical to look back at the points Katzenberg made to see that his period of great danger is now our period of great danger, to note that the same events unfolding within and without the industry still threaten the entire studio system in 2012, and to predict our future based on the past.

Like all Harry Potter alumnae, audiences have questioned what David Yates will make his first film coming out of Hogwart’s. His name has been attached (no matter how loosely) to The Stand, to the Al Capone biopic Cicero, to an adaptation of the Vertigo comic Fables, to a movie about Alan Turing, to a war picture called St. Nazaire, and to the divisive new Doctor Who movie from BBC. Now, according to Variety, there’s a new project to add to the list. Yates is reportedly on board to direct Your Voice in My Head- an adaptation of the Emma Forrest memoir of the same name which chronicles her experience with bipolar disorder and the death of the psychiatrist who was helping her cope. Here’s the money quote from the Guardian review of the book:

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.

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:

After Gary Oldman reportedly passed on the role, Ken Watanabe (an actual Japanese person!) has been offered the part of The Colonel in the remake of Akira. The fine folks at Twitch dropped the news, and they also point out that Watanabe’s work in the United States has all been through Warner Bros. so the partnership makes a lot of sense. What doesn’t exactly make sense is why they didn’t go to him first. His profile is fairly high after so many years in the spotlight, especially after coming through strong in Inception. What also still doesn’t make sense is why all the characters are keeping their Japanese names while being completely white bread. If everyone signs on the dotted line and Watanabe ends up calling Garrett Hedlund and Kristen Stewart by the names from the Manga (while they simply call him The Colonel), it’s going to sound more than a little bizarre. Hooray for Americanized remakes!

One thing is for sure – Matt Damon is going to make his directorial debut soon. He was hunting down Father Daughter Time: A Tale of Armed Robbery and another project called Eskimo Kisses, and according to The Hollywood Reporter, he’s attaching himself to direct and star in a legal drama of the Erin Brockovich style. Personally, I’d like to see him as the lead in a Grisham adaptation. His co-writer and co-star is John Krasinski, who apparently worked through the story idea (about a salesman arriving in a town, only to have his life dramatically change) with novelist Dave Eggers. This project would certainly remove a bit of the Office/Harmless Romantic Comedy vibe that Krasinski has been forced to emit for the past few years. The untitled drama could potentially start filming Spring 2012, and if it does, it will become Damon’s directorial debut. It has a lot of other movies to contend with, but the list simply ensures that we’ll see “Directed By Matt Damon” by next year. If not, if all of this stuff falls apart, it must mean someone is really fucking Matt Damon.  

This week, on a very special episode of Reject Radio, we talk with director Jake Kasdan about the horror of getting Cameron Diaz all wet for Bad Teacher. Plus, The Innkeepers and House of the Devil director Ti West offers up his favorite scary movie, and we chat with a man who got a movie deal by posting on Reddit. Download This Episode

Matt Reeves has been tapped by Warners to direct their stab at The Twilight Zone which should start shooting next summer. The script comes from Jason Rothenberg – who has one television movie under his belt and a handful of flicks in development. According to Deadline Willoughby, this was a highly sought-after project, courted by many directors they don’t name by name. However, it also sounds like another in-name-only project where Rod Serling‘s series acts as name recognition while the movie is its own sci-fi beast with a similar tone. Of course, there’s already been Twilight Zone: The Movie, but isn’t really a remake. Furthermore, Reeves’s hiring brings up the question of when he’ll work on his other projects, and which will actually get done. Within the past 8 months, his name has been attached to a sequel to Cloverfield, a remake of They Live and a Frankenstein project. No one will admit it, but it seems only reasonable that renewed interest in the program stems directly from our exploration of all the episodes of The Twilight Zone. That’s the only explanation that makes sense.

There was a moment when Julie and Julia came out that made everyone pause and consider the possibilities of replicating the success story. After all, it was a blog that became a book that became a movie. That’s still a rarity, but the hull had been breached, and for a day or two it seemed entirely possible that anyone’s dumb musings could become a feature film. Apparently that was only the first step in the internet revolution invading film. In the span of less than two months, a poster named The_Quiet_Earth posted a hypothetical question to Reddit, James Erwin answered it with a sci-fi short story, and now that story has been picked up by Warner Bros. for a feature film. Our friends over at Screen Rant had the foresight to interview Erwin back when he was developing the script with Madhouse Entertainment, and now Variety is reporting that Madhouse’s Adam Kolbrenner brought the project to Warners and set up the deal. The short story imagines that a group of Marines headed to Afghanistan is sent inexplicably into Pre-Common Era Rome and must do battle with the Roman Legion and figure out how to get back to their own time. It’s high-concept, and the story gained a serious following on Reddit (which caught Kolbrenner’s attention), resulting in fan-made posters and trailers. You can read the story for yourself, and watch the mash-up style trailer below:

There are at least a hundred million little green reasons not to make Green Lantern 2, but Warners is ignoring all of them. That’s as true now as it was after the film’s release. “We had a decent opening so we learned there is an audience,” Warners President Jeff Robinov told the LA Times. “To go forward we need to make it a little edgier and darker with more emphasis on action…. And we have to find a way to balance the time the movie spends in space versus on Earth.” Forget edgy and dark. Just make a good movie. Let Reynolds have fun, stop being so mopey, and make us care about what happens to him. What they really need is a script that doesn’t have the same lack of energy or second act problems. On the one hand, it’s a dangerous financial move that doesn’t earn much fan credit because the movie was so bland. On the other, as I’ve argued before, this is another chance to get it right. Warners already has a script from Green Lantern writers Greg Berlanti, Michael Green and Marc Guggenheim, although they may make significant changes to it or scrap it altogether. Regardless of what they choose, the lesson they have to learn is the same one that freshman college students taking their first class in screenwriting are about to learn this fall: how to tell a story. With any luck, the box office beating that the first film took will be [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]

I spent at least half an hour yesterday in my kitchen trying to explain the smaller details of the Harry Potter movie universe to my wife, and I found myself forgetting a lot. Names, dates, why things happened the way they did, how to cure a case of the Mudbloods. Fortunately, Warners has put out this video. Will it fill in all the details? No. But it will provide a decent enough refresher by showing moments from the previous films. It’s effectively a long-form trailer for all the movies, delivered in a brisk 5 minutes, but it will probably have you slapping your forehead a few times when you remember one of the millions of details you temporarily forgot. Or, it might just be a great bit of instant nostalgia. Either way, it’s a pretty sweet video.

We live in a movie-making world where performance doesn’t matter nearly as much as it used to. The audience as judge and jury is an outdated concept, and if you’re movie doesn’t earn its money back, that doesn’t mean the funeral pyre needs to be erected. Green Lantern wasn’t exactly dead as a doornail when it hit the box office – it just didn’t shoot up through the stratosphere the way Warners undoubtedly hoped it would. Now, The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that the studio wants to move forward with the franchise even while admitting their disappointment.

The middle class in China is a juggernaut that has been growing steadily for at least the past decade. It was only a matter of time before a foreign-sales-obsessed studio world moved in to deliver the content that the hungry giant has an appetite for. Warner Bros. is officially the first to break into the People’s Republic of China to offer their films On Demand through television. According to a press release, Warner Bros. will be partnering with You On Demand (complete with its creepy, winky-face logo) to provide Pay-Per-View movies to an estimated potential 200 million households. The films become available this summer, and by the end of the season, You On Demand anticipates their service will be in 3 million households – the equivalent of some of the top cable providers here in the US. This is a large opportunity for the studio financially, of course, but what’s more fascinating is the door it leaves open for a US-based studio to start producing movies specifically for a foreign market. Hollywood is already highly aware of the global market and have catered more and more to foreign markets by making tentpole films more generic (and thus easy to digest in any culture or language), but with a direct line into the homes of the Chinese people, Warner Bros. might see an incentive to bypass American audiences altogether and start making a few movies every year specifically aimed at China. That’s just speculation, but it doesn’t seem too far fetched. [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]

It seemed only natural that John Carter of Mars would become John Carter – since most Americans hate things from Mars and need to be tricked into seeing movies – but there’s nothing natural about the teaser poster for the film. It’s a red letter attempt at building buzz, but it’s unclear exactly how it will achieve it with only the bare chest of Taylor Kitsch and enough photoshopping to turn him into Michael Shannon. A brand new property is emerging, and another is seeing its final curtain. On the other end of the poster spectrum is this bold new look at the children from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. All grown up and ready to battle. Click on the posters to make them far, far larger:

This week, on a very special episode of Reject Radio, Movies.com‘s John Gholson offers a primer before we all go see Green Lantern, and lead creature designer for the film (and Super 8, Avatar, and many others…) Neville Page talks about creating aliens. Plus, our very own Matt Patches faces off against UGO‘s movies editor Jordan Hoffman in a Movie News Pop Quiz that’ll be one for the books. We follow it up with a Green Lantern review, so stick around. Listen Here: Download This Episode

Charles Foster Kane’s mustache was getting a little gray. Or a little sepia. It’s hard to tell. The immortal film of the fictional man’s life (based on a non-fictional man) will be coming to Blu-ray this September (alongside iTunes, On Demand, VUDU and Amazon Instant Video) as a 70th anniversary edition, and according to The Hollywood Reporter, a ton of work has been done to give it a digital facelift. The money quote comes from Warners Imaging Colorist Janet Wilson: “The work to re-create the original look of the film and to clean up the effects of aging was a painstaking, frame-by-frame process. The source for most of the picture was a 4K scan from a 1941 composite fine grain positive master.” It will no doubt look pristine and no doubt look nothing like the movie we know (which is what happened with Beauty and the Beast recently). Still, it will be fascinating to see Citizen Kane done in such a different way, and any excuse to watch it again is a good one. Also, any excuse to grow a mustache is a good one. Are you looking forward to seeing Kane on Blu-ray and/or growing a sweet ‘stache for the occasion?

Were you aware that a new Sam Worthington movie came out this week? It’s true. It’s from 2005, looks terrible, and can give us all insight into what casting directors were seeing in the guy that came from nowhere and landed in every large movie ever. Continuing the campaign to convince us that he’s a big star, Warners is settling a deal right now on a science fiction concept from Aaron Guzikowski that has Worthington attached. There are no details about it other than it involves 1) war and 2) space. So, it could be Avatar or The Last Starfighter. Or both. Guzikowski is a newcomer to the writing world, but he must have impressed with his work on the forthcoming Mark Wahlberg thriller Contraband (and with this pitch of course). Worthington will see screens again soon when The Debt opens, but getting excited about his casting is difficult considering how unenergectic an actor he is. There’s no denying that he looks like a leading man, but his constant bored look makes him seem like the girl I took to the junior prom. Yet, studios are going to continue assuring us that he’s the next Christian Bale, casting him in all sorts of large budget projects. Not bad for an actor who once played Macbeth for the guy who directed Cherry Falls. [Deadline Perth]