What is Casting Couch? It’s the casting news column that’s returning after a small vacation. There’s lots of stuff to catch up with, involving many of the most exciting actors working today, so let’s get started. There’s just no time to waste. There’s some good news and some bad news regarding the casting of that movie about con artists Glenn Ficarra and John Requa have been putting together, called Focus. The good news is that they may have finally found a leading man to replace Ben Affleck, who dropped out of the film to focus on other things. Variety is reporting that, of all people, mega-celebrity Will Smith is currently in negotiations to star in the film. The bad news is, given his advanced age, Smith’s potential casting has led to Kristen Stewart seeing the writing on the wall and dropping out as the film’s female lead. When Will Smith becomes involved in a project, it tends to become the Will Smith Show, so we’ll have to wait and see what he has in mind as far as leading ladies goes.

New shots from Star Trek, a bit about Michael Bay’s ninja turtles and some fun facts about why Will Smith may or may not want to kill Leonardo DiCaprio. It’s all there in tonight’s edition of Movie News After Dark…

Today in “casting rumors that will surprise no one,” EW is reporting that nine-year-old Best Actress nominee Quvenzhané Wallis is “in consideration” to lead Sony’s new Annieremake. With long-attached star Willow Smith officially out and Easy A director Will Gluck officially in to helm the picture, we’ve been expecting casting buzz to start trickling out, and Wallis seems like a no-brainer of a potential star. Wallis is one of young Hollywood’s true rising stars, she’s got the positive buzz of her historic Oscar nomination, and she’s totally adorable. The outlet does stress that “Gluck and the producers at Will Smith’s Overbrook Entertainment banner and Jay-Z’s Marcy Media, which have been developing the project, have yet to make any casting decisions.” Well, we’ll just have to see about that.

At this point, Sony Pictures’ remake of the musical classic Annie is turning into the latest Mad Libs production to come out of Hollywood, with studio executives just randomly yelling out names of people who should be working on getting the long-in-development feature off the ground. The project certainly made sense at first as, back in January of 2011, it was announced that Will Smith would be producing the project as a potential vehicle for his daughter, Willow Smith (thank the success of The Karate Kid for that). A few weeks after that, we got wind that Jay-Z would also be producing alongside Smith, which continued sound like a solid way to make a fresh, new Annie, and then Emma Thompson came on board to write the script and any concept we might have had of the new film went right out the window. Thompson’s screenwriting work in the kiddie realm primarily consists of the Nanny McPhee films, which certainly are not the type of updated, contemporary work that this new Annie seemed to dictate. But that’s not all! Last summer, rom-com screenwriting queen Aline Brosh McKenna was brought on to rewrite Thompson’s work, making the film’s vision even more unclear. What was the writer of such films as Three to Tango, Laws of Attraction, The Devil Wears Prada, 27 Dresses, and Morning Glory going to bring to the table of a beloved family classic? Well, who knows, but now we can all keep up our head-scratching because Deadline Hollywood reports that

There’s nothing like a trailer made up almost entirely of pretty, action-heavy shots and hammy, overheated voiceover to really get movie-going audiences pumped for what could very well be another disappointing outing from M. Night Shyamalan. At least the filmmaker has lined up two bankable stars – Will Smith and his own son, Jaden Smith – to lead his After Earth, a sci-fi epic that hinges entirely on our interest in the father/son relationship between a real-life father and son. Okay… Set a thousand years in the future where the Earth has been damaged to the point that it’s no longer inhabitable (paging Oblivion?), Smith the elder plays “Legendary General Cypher Raige” (what?), a decorated and lauded military hero who hasn’t done the best job when it comes to raising his own family. Determined to get things right with his son (Smith the younger), the two (somehow?) find themselves on a spacecraft that gets felled by asteroids and crash lands on Earth (a place that, weirdly, young Kitai doesn’t seem to recognize). Cypher is injured and it’s up to young Kitai to set out on quest to save his father, and then we thought about Wall-E and fell asleep. Go back to (oh, my god, is that? it can’t be! what?) Earth with the Smith men in the first trailer for After Earth, after the break.

What is Casting Couch? It’s where Hollywood moms come every day to find out if their actor kids have gotten a job. Remember that movie about the day JFK got shot that Tom Hanks was putting together because these days he’s such a history loving, lame dad? It’s called Parkland, and it just put together an awesome cast. According to Collider, director Vincent Bugliosi has signed the terrific trio of Paul Giamatti, Jackie Weaver, and Billy Boy Thornton to headline the cast. There’s no word on what characters they’ll be playing, but my guess is Giamatti will be JFK, Thornton will be Jackie O, and Weaver will be Lee Harvey Oswald. Makes sense, no?

According to The Wrap, Sony is pushing ahead with the Will Smith-starring Redemption of Cain which sees the actor bringing to life the enduring Biblical tale of two brothers with a vampire twist. Because, as we all know, everything needs a good blood-sucking or it’s just boring. So the question is what the vampire angle will be. Considering the title, it might be a new look at a much-maligned character by making him a hero that vanquishes a vampire. Of course, if the 3rd person on the planet got turned into one, it sort of makes humanity look like idiots. Production will most likely begin next summer, just in time for the vampire fad to be near its end but the Bible fad to be roaring ahead smoothly.

Behind the slick video, this first look at After Earth from M. Night Shymalan shows off a sci-fi flick with a lot of old ideas. Hopefully there’s a lot more to it than what’s on the surface. And isn’t that strange? We’ve now entered an era where we’re not necessarily anticipating a twist from Shymalan. The movie focuses on a character named Cypher Raige played by Will Smith. Now that you’ve stopped laughing, it takes place a thousand years after mankind left the Earth behind as Cypher and his son Kital (Jaden Smith) crash on the surface of the planet that their species used to run. Understandably, a lot has changed. Using Facebook Timeline for some reason, this video shows us how an alien ship gave a lot of 20th century technology, but ultimately led to our downfall. Because we broke the environment or something.

Everyone knows how much the movie-making world relies on trends. If one studio has a superhero movie that hits, suddenly everyone has to have their own superhero movie. If one movie featuring a bow and arrow toting protagonist scores big at the box office, suddenly a flood of Hollywood’s top names find themselves having to take archery lessons. Savvy producers are the ones who are always on the lookout for what the next big trend is going to be. So, now that we’ve gotten through a whole summer of William Tell wannabes, what’s the next big trend that’s going to hit theaters? If Darren Aronofsky or Will Smith are able to bring in the bucks with either of their brewing projects, it might be adaptations of bible stories. The first bit of biblical news floating around today comes from a Tweet sent out directly by Aronofsky himself (via Vulture). Yesterday the Black Swan director took to his Twitter account and sent the following message out to his followers, “I dreamt about this since I was 13. And now it’s a reality. Genesis 6:14 #noah.” Of course, seeing as he’s currently at work making a Russell Crowe-starring adaptation of the story of Noah, it doesn’t take much detective work to figure out that the image of a gigantic wooden structure in mid-construction accompanying his words must be the Ark that’s being built for the film. Yeah, that’s right, CG be damned – Aronofsky is going practical with his giant wooden boat.

Will Smith is blessed with a natural charisma that can rescue even the most boring and hackneyed of cinematic material. Jaden Smith is his son, and well, it turns out that charisma isn’t genetic. While Smith the Younger kicked off his starring role work with a blunt force bash to Hollywood’s face (that would be thanks to his hit remake of The Karate Kid, which made nearly $360m in worldwide box office cash), his talent is still unproven (and, hey, the kid is still just thirteen-years-old, even I can recognize that), so the possibility of seeing Jaden acting alongside his dad in a big movie seemed like a good idea. Perhaps their natural chemistry would translate well to screen (after all, they were so cute together in The Pursuit of Happyness), and setting them up with a large scale sci-fi film seemed like a fine way to flex some talents and work on others. So it’s too damn bad that M. Night Shyamalan‘s After Earth is apparently going to be much more Jaden-centric than we might have originally suspected.

Just as the fears of global cataclysm at the end of the last century fueled films like Deep Impact and Armageddon, the ticking clock to December 21, 2012 has led to more end-of-the-world movies that rely on something larger than a zombie outbreak or a deadly contagion (although those have been recently popular as well). The latest entry into Hollywood’s obsession with the Earth’s last days is the apocalyptic rom-com Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, and if the Mayans were right, that might very well be the last one made. Film School Rejects responds to your concerns about the end of the world, as evidenced by the Apocalypse Soon feature currently running on this site. While you’re catching up on these films to see before the end of the world, we wondered who would be the best people to spend that time with. Steve Carell’s character gets to spend the end of the world with Keira Knightley, and here are some cinematic characters with whom we’d like to spend our last days.

What is Movie News After Dark DRINKING? It’s the end result of a long work day, a half dozen mini doughnuts, a glass of cheap Canadian whisky, Robert Fure, and a keyboard. Suck on it, suckers! This week’s movie news after Drinking is brought to you by Revel Stoke spiced whisky (We should not get paid for this because I’m not drinking this again. Or no we should still get paid, but I’m not drinking this again). But basically the deal is I get kind of drunk and then try to type up a whole bunch of movie news before my arms stop working. If you’re wondering why I’m typing all this nonsense, it’s because we need a certain amount of buffer before we move into the news to put a proper text break in here. But totally keep reading because Will Smith NO JOKE SLAPS A RUSSIAN IN THE FACE IN THE FIRST STORY. (OH LOOK AT ME I’M FRILMCRIT HULK BECAUSE THIS IS ALL CAPITALS)

Finally, readers, the summer movie season is upon us. So far this year has been solid, but sorely lacking in mega-blockbusters. John Carter did not deliver for the fifteen people who saw it and The Hunger Games, as successful and good as it was, wasn’t an epic actioner or packed with real spectacle. Yet there’s much promise in the action department for the summer of 2012, and it’s starting off just right, with something we’ve all been anticipating. Hopefully the rest of the summer will follow that film’s mighty lead…

In just a few weeks we will be getting our first Men in Black film in nearly ten years, and hopefully the Men in Black sequel we deserve. Director Barry Sonnenfeld‘s first installment was a real head-turner, a rare type of blockbuster that could be touted as being something like a modern day Ghostbusters, though it was its own original breed of film. The 2002 sequel, however, was not that, forgetting nearly everything that made the first film unique. Thankfully, Sonnenfeld is well aware of this. The Get Shorty and Addams Family director is hoping to bring the series back down to where it all began: character and plot-driven action, not another aimless gag after gag sequel. From his different 3D approach to having what he calls a real nasty villain again, Barry Sonnenfeld declares Men in Black III a return to where the series started off so well.

Hot off the announcement that Adam McKay and crew are finally going to make Anchorman 2 comes word that the director has another project in the works, this one a strange choice for a filmmaker mostly known for absurdist comedies starring Will Ferrell. Deadline Coconut Grove is reporting that, after McKay finishes up shooting on the next Anchorman film, he’s negotiating to begin work on a remake of the 1974 Sydney Poitier film Uptown Saturday Night. For those of us whose memories don’t go all the way back to 1974, Uptown Saturday Night was a comedy that Poitier starred in himself, alongside Bill Cosby, that saw the two of them playing in over-their-head everymen faced with the task of hunting down some shady criminal types. On a whim, the duo go to a seedy nightclub where their wallets are promptly robbed by some thug types. Problem is, one of the wallets contains a winning lottery ticket, so the freaked-out friends have to do whatever it takes to get their property back.

A funny thing happened when I watched this second trailer for Men in Black III – I realized that I couldn’t remember a damn thing about the second film, which is funny, because that film deals with Tommy Lee Jones‘ Agent K losing his memory (get it?). I remember Men in Black with nothing but affection, but MIB2? That’s a blank page in my memory book, so it’s good news all-around that this trailer made me chuckle and look forward to the third film (inevitably in 3D). Men in Black III goes back (back in time) after some funny space-time stuff goes down and Will Smith‘s Agent J gets hit with the news that Agent K is dead – and has been for forty years. Pitching himself back to the 1960s, J attempts to uncover what happened to kill his partner, fight off an alien invasion, and convince the younger K (Josh Brolin, terrifyingly well-cast) that he comes from the future. We got a look at the film’s first trailer way back in December, but I daresay, this one is a fair bit better:

AMC’s The Walking Dead and I have a strange relationship in that I watch it but don’t particularly care for it. I can’t really tell you why I tune in every week, but it has something to do with my great love for the comic books and a desire to see horror on television, mostly regardless of quality. The books by Robert Kirkman have always had a bit of melodrama about them, but the show has often taken that to obvious, soap opera levels. “The Walking Dead” comics feature a great cast of characters with complex motivations and relationships. Many of those characters made it to the television show – well, at least characters with the same names made it in. Things have changed so drastically from comic to screen that one has to ask – when does an adaptation stop being an adaptation?

So I was watching the film The Descendants, and I couldn’t help but to laugh my ass off when the grandfather points to Nick Krause’s dumb-ass character and says “I’m going to hit you.” – Then, without any room for discussion he proves to be a man of his word. It got me thinking about some of the other great comedic punches out there, and soon enough I was assigning my wonder into list form. Violence and comedy together at last!

The news that Warner Bros. has just made deals with Akiva Goldsman and Overbrook Entertainment to bring us an I Am Legend sequel is not surprising (as it’s been chattered about for years now), but it does somewhat confoundingly smack of an article from The Onion yesterday. That article, titled “Moviegoers Not Interested In Hearing What Is, Isn’t Possible, Demand Heath Ledger ‘Dark Knight Rises’ Appearance” might focus on the impossibility of bringing back the deceased Ledger for The Dark Knight Rises, but it does remind of the impossibility of bringing back the central character of I Am Legend: Will Smith‘s Robert Neville, who (spoiler alert?) crocked off at the end of the first film. But no matter in Hollywoodland! Though a second film has been talked about ever since the first film did big business at the box office (making $584m worldwide), it was long thought that the new film would be a prequel, but today’s report from Deadline Staten Island refutes that: “the film is not being called a prequel.” Well, alrighty! Maybe if they can bring back Neville, they can bring back his charming German Shepard, too. The new film is set to be penned by Arash Amel (the scribe behind the new Grace Kelly biopic, Grace of Monaco). Smith is reportedly waiting until the script is ready before he commits, and director Francis Lawrence has yet to weigh in on his potential involvement.

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?