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?

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:

Despite not coming with a cool rap video, the new teaser trailer for Men in Black III does everything right. It opens with the familiar faces of Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith doing what they did in the previous movies, then quickly shifts to the high concept problem (and solution) of a missing K (and a trip through time that randomly involves a Hollywood-style stunt to work. Then again, jumping off buildings is all the rage these days. As a bonus, both Smith and new co-star Josh Brolin get to deliver a bright ray of sunshine known as the Tommy Lee Jones Signature Smile. Check it out for yourself:

I’ve seen reports calling M. Night Shyamalan’s upcoming post-apocalyptic, sci-fi adventure by conflicting names. There are those referring to it as 1000 A.E. like the Heat Vision article I’ve sourced for this news, and there are those who have been referring to it simply as After Earth, which seems to come from a tweet the director made referring to the movie as such. Whatever it’s going to end up being officially called, the new Shyamalan joint will star Will and Jaden Smith as a futuristic father/son duo who live in a time when man is no longer inhabiting the Earth, probably because it’s been completely overtaken by massive electric car junkyards. Will’s character is seen as a great hero, but Jaden’s is viewed as a disappointment because he’s not a great warrior. This is an unfortunate set-up, because when the duo crash lands on Earth it suddenly becomes the job of the son to save the father. And then, you know, joke about what the twist is going to be…yadda yadda.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly movie news column that would like to be the first to welcome you to Earf… We begin tonight with news that will make all 4 of you die hard Roland Emmerich fans out there: Fox is looking to make two Independence Day sequels, with or without Will Smith. It feels like an outlandish rumor, but it wouldn’t surprise anyone if it really came to fruition. Either way, we’ll all probably watch them, right?

Back in 1996, a little movie about Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum saving the world from aliens was a gigantic success. It was called Independence Day, it showed the White House getting blown up, and it raked in about $800m in worldwide sales. I don’t have any numbers in front of me to prove this next statement, but let me shuffle some papers around on my desk to pretend like I have them somewhere and then just say it: Independence Day is one of the biggest box office successes of the last 20 years to not get a sequel. In a society where everyone is always asking for more, it’s crazy that we’ve only seen Smith punch an alien once. And that’s not just me talking, Fox thinks it’s crazy too. That’s why, since back in 2009, they’ve been doing everything they can to get back-to-back Independence Day sequels off the ground. The holdup has been money issues. First, director Roland Emmerich wanted an undisclosed, but very hefty sum of money to come back and blow up some more famous landmarks. And then star Will Smith was reportedly asking for $50mto come on board the lengthy shoot. Spending that much money just to get two men attached to a project would be pretty asinine, so things had stalled out on the Independence Day sequels front, until very recently. Vulture is reporting that an inside source has let them know that the finishing touches are being put on the scripts for [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]

Look, Shawn Levy directed Night at the Museum. He’s a busy guy and he doesn’t have time to be jerked around. That’s why two movie news stories that have come out recently have it looking like he could be done with the long gestating but still not accomplished Fantastic Voyage remake that James Cameron’s company is producing along with Fox. THR recently reported that there is a sticking point between Levy and the producers, where he believes that the film needs an A-list actor to star and he doesn’t want to go forward without getting one signed. For their part, the producers seem less concerned and just want to make the material. Apparently Levy has had recent meetings with Will Smith and if Smith bites the hook and agrees to make the movie it could still be on, but if not, Levy is likely to leave for other projects. Enter a report from Deadline Andermatt that Fox also has a Frankenstein project brewing, with a script written by John Landis’s son Max, that they want to rush into production. Why do they want to rush it into production? Because pretty much everybody has a project in the works about Frankenstein coming to life and beating people to death with his big cold meat paws, so they want to be at the front of the pack when they start hitting theaters. Apparently they want Levy to helm the thing, so if Cameron and crew don’t want to lose him to a [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 may shock some of you dear readers, but this year I decided to skip the Breaking Dawn panel and instead went with the Rick Baker retrospective panel. Getting to hear Baker talk at great length aside, it was a fun surprise getting to see his work for Men in Black III because of how exciting the glimpses were. The retro aliens that Baker designed looked fantastic. Whether the movie works or not, his contributions will be more memorable entries in his speaks-for-itself body of work. We all know the current buzz and rumors regarding MIB: III, but as Baker says below, its production is simply the way you make movies now. What’s going on with that film isn’t drastically different from most tent-pole releases, even the good ones. Before the retrospective panel, I got a few minutes to chat with the make-up effects guru on the matter. Here’s what Rick Baker had to say about copying the greats as a kid, acting like a schoolboy with David Byrne, and the difficulty of working on modern blockbusters:

Remember that remake of Park Chan-Wook’s Oldboy that nobody wanted whether it was a remake of the movie, or an adaptation of the original source material, or whatever? It was supposed to be dead, but Rob Hunter knew that the evil would come back in another form. Despite the fact that nobody in the world thinks a Hollywood production of any version of Oldboy whatsoever is a good idea, it is a dream that won’t die. Sure, it will no longer have Will Smith and Steven Spielberg bringing it to life, but it may have found a new director to champion its cause. Twitch is reporting that Spike Lee has entered negotiations to direct the long gestating project, with Mark Protosevich of Thor and I Am Legend set to write the screenplay. I think the idea of Spike Lee tackling the gore splattered revenge roots of this property is a heck of a lot less scary than Spielberg and Smith trying it on, but does Lee’s name make this a project that anybody is now looking forward to happening? I’m no Spike Lee fan, so I probably have no room to speak on the matter. I hate this idea. But there are a lot of fans of Lee’s work out there. Do any of you overlap into being fans of Oldboy as well? Will there be a group of fans willing to stand up and champion this project against the wave of negative reaction it’s gotten so far? Choose a [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]

Welcome back to Junkfood Cinema; we will not go quietly into the night. You are about to read one of the worst internet columns in the history of mankind. No longer consumed by our petty need for legitimately good films, we here at Junkfood Cinema are united by our common interest in the utterly schlocky. First we will examine how the chosen film has earned its freedom from the tyranny of nuance and the oppression of critical measures of quality. We will then triumphantly raise our voices to proclaim what it is about the film that allows it to survive total annihilation and win not only the day, but our hearts as well. Finally, we will pair the film with an appropriately themed snack food item in order to prove that our waistlines will not vanish without a fight. Today we celebrate Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day!

Like sappy movies? Well then, have I got some news for you. Imagine a movie produced by Will Smith, written and directed by The Blind Side’s John Lee Hancock, and starring the one and only Denzel Washington. Can you comprehend the sheer force of drama that would be created from the perfect storm colliding of all these inspirational storytellers? You might not have to, because it might be happening; and in a film that suddenly makes my stupid storm metaphor seem to be in bad taste. Oh well, let’s venture on.

Will Smith may have passed on Django Unchained, but he’s making a return to movie work nonetheless after a hiatus to build the careers of his children. This is, of course, the first step to the creation of the Smith Dynasty that will dominate filmmaking of the future – a goal that will make the “Ha ha!” etched into Will Smith’s tombstone have two meanings. His next goal is to let his daughter Willow whip her hair as Annie in a remake of the little, curly-haired adventure through poverty and extreme wealth. Now, Vulture is reporting that they want Emma Thompson to write the script for the reboot. Thompsons is a solid choice because of her experience as a writer, her emotional intelligence as an actor that shines through on the page, and her ability to create fun, energetic children’s films. Vulture even, smartly, points out that there’s a drunken mess of a role in the show for Thompson (played by the genius Carol Burnett in the 1982 film). The film will be updated of course, and it’ll most likely feature music from Jay-Z (who is also producing). There’s also something to be said about a character that’s been extremely Caucasian for decades being acted by a black actress in what will most likely be a movie aimed at a large, mainstream audience, but it’s for people smarter than I am who have real opinions about it. It seems culturally significant, but I have no idea why. Regardless, Thompson would [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]

A lot of speculation has gone into figuring out who will play the lead role of the slave turned bounty hunter Django in Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming spaghetti western homage Django Unchained. Many people were pretty certain that Tarantino was dealing with Sony because he was trying to get Sony poster boy Will Smith to sign on to star. Then there was some rumbling that The Wire star Stringer Bell Idris Elba would be stepping into the role due to some comments that he twittered on his twitterer. There has been so much talk about who is playing the lead role in this film that speculation about the other characters has become something of an afterthought. Until now, because one man just heated things up in the race to fill out the rest of Tarantino’s cast, and that man’s name is Leonardo DiCaprio. According to Deadline Carbondale, DiCaprio is being courted to play the villainous role of Calvin Candie, and negotiations with him are reportedly going much better than those with the once supposed near-lock Smith. Candie is the owner of an establishment where female slaves are used as prostitutes and males as gladiators to battle to the death. The story of the film deals mostly with the ex-slave Django hooking up with a German Bounty hunter in order to learn to be a badass and then free his wife from the clutches of the evil Candie. With DiCaprio being looked at as a likely candidate to fill the Candie role, [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]

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly round-up of all things interesting and wonderful happening in the world of movies. At least, that’s what it was born as. Lately it’s been feeling as if it might be more of a Rachel Weisz News After Dark kind of column. A Rachel Weiszsexual, if you will. And yes, that’s the technical term. It’s a tough affliction to live with. Because their just isn’t enough Rachel Weisz in the world. Luckily Hollywood is hell-bent on changing that… Guess what this week is… Rachel Weisz week. Based on a survey of our male 18-35 demographic, which represents a solid percentage of our readership, this is somehow preferable to all of my updates about Doctor Who. I don’t see why, as Doctor Who is excellent. But I can understand your affinity for Rachel Weisz news. Anyway, she’s not only in line to take a high profile role in Oz the Great and Powerful and The Bourne Legacy. According to a report from Cinema Blend, Weisz is high on the list to star opposite Johnny Depp in Rob Marshall’s remake of The Thin Man. Even though that film sound unnecessary, we just can’t say no to more Rachel Weisz… can we?

Due to the long-standing love affair between Quentin Tarantino and the Weinsteins, there was never really any question as to whether or not The Weinstein Company would be doing the domestic distributing for the filmmaker’s upcoming spaghetti western homage Django Unchained. Which studio would handle the international distribution was very much in question however, and the subject of a pretty intense bidding war. Popular opinion was that Universal would end up with the duties, as they just teamed up with Tarantino for Inglorious Basterds, and that was his most financially successful film in quite some time. Unfortunately for Universal, those works ended up getting gummed up because of The Fresh Prince.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s waiting to watch the latest episode of Community because it promised its girlfriend it would. And that’s really hard to do, because that show’s really good. Also, Josh Holloway from Lost guest stars in the two-part season finale. How can that be resisted by the world’s most interesting nightly movie news linkdump? Must… hold… on… Must… do… the news… Quentin Tarantino went big when he cast Brad Pitt as his lead in Inglorious Basterds. So to see him considering Will Smith as the titular character, a freed slave trained by a German bounty hunter that sets out on a quest to save his wife from a head slave, is an act of pure bravado — he’ll just go get anyone he effing pleases to star in his movies, won’t he? And if that wasn’t enough to blow your mind, consider this: Christoph Waltz is said to be circling the role of the German trainer, with Samuel L. Jackson in consideration as the bad guy. That’s potentially a perfect storm of awesome, so we’ll see.

We’ve been playing “Smith, Smith, Shyamalan” around Reject HQ for years. Neil always wins for some reason. He’s a bigger dude, but he’s quick. Now, the world will get to join in, because Will Smith and son Jaden Smith will be teaming with M. Night Shyamalan for a new science fiction feature which sees Earth a thousand years after humanity has abandoned it. Smith and Smith will play a father and son who return to the planet to find what must be desolation, death threats, and the body of Wall-E. It’s too early to tell whether this will get off the ground before Smith’s other projects. In fact, it’s unlikely that it’ll be his return to the screen since his last appearance in Hancock three years ago. However, I’m excited for it. Why?

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a focused, coordinated strike upon the oppressive barrage of movie blogs who think you should really be reading 700 words on the latest third-tier casting rumors for the next Adam Shankman movie. We take all the interesting news and otherwise notable articles of the day and bring them together, in one place, where you can kick ass and gain knowledge quickly. It also includes some funny videos. Because everyone loves funny videos. With Jason Eisener’s Hobo with a Shotgun finally getting to theaters (and iTunes — go watch it!), Canuxploitation is on its way. To celebrate, Quiet Earth asked Canadian grindhouse cinema expert Paul Corupe to write of Canuxploitation’s weidest, wildest Canadian exploitation movies. Yes.

If anyone out there wants to see Will Smith’s house knocked down, his body covered in boils, and his sanity loosening from his grip as he scrapes at his raw skin with broken bits of pottery, the opportunity might be on the horizon. The Oscar-nominated screenwriter team of Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson (The Fighter) wrote the script for Joe – a modern retelling of the Job story that you may have learned about in Sunday school while wondering why the teacher was telling you all those horrible, terrible, disgusting things. Tamasy went on Eric Snider and Jeff Bayer’s Movie B.S. Podcast and spoke a bit about the movie. In his own words, “It’s about a man [living] the American dream. He’s got the nice house, white picket fence, great kids, great wife, nice cars. God and the Devil get together every thousand years to bet on a man’s life, and the fate of the world is at stake. What all of us get hit with in a lifetime, this man gets hit with in a week, and it’s about whether or not he can still pick himself up from that and survive it. It’s a dramedy. At its heart, it’s a comedy, but it’s got, obviously, a real dramatic core to it.” Sony will be developing this, but Will Smith is attached to a lot of flicks right now, and no single attachment really means anything anymore. This would be an insane return to acting for the Fourth of [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]

First it was getting a remake of The Karate Kid together as a starring vehicle for his son. Then it was the news that he is getting a remake of Annie together for his daughter. Will Smith has really been pushing it in regards to how much he can exert his influence in Hollywood without creating a backlash. But, you know, those are his kids. Nobody likes nepotism, but at least it’s understandable. Everyone wants to do right by their children. Especially when that doing right can rake in millions of dollars. But with this latest news Will Smith may have just gone too far. In an interview with The Billy Bush Show Justin Bieber, the love of teen girls all over the world and the bane of commenters all over the Internet, has revealed that Smith has become something of a mentor to him. Especially when it comes to his budding film career. Bieber said, “The Smith family’s been really amazing to me and really supportive in everything I’m doing.” That sounds nice, doesn’t it? A veteran of the music world reaching out to the younger generation and letting them sit under the learning tree? But the bad part for film fans comes with further explanation. Bieber added, “He’s definitely looking at different scripts for me and trying to develop stuff.” Oh really Justin Bieber, scripts? Being a man rapidly approaching thirty, I have only a peripheral awareness of who Justin Bieber is. I know that I had never [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]