What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly movie news column born exactly one year ago today. And it’s very happy to still be around and well on its way to taking over the planet. It is convinced that it will have a very productive 2012 in that area, especially once humanity’s reign of terror ends later this year. In the mean time, it would like to thank you all for reading. Now enough of that mushy stuff, lets do the news. We begin this evening with an image of biker Jemaine Clement in Men in Black III. He’s playing an alien biker who turns out to be the villain in this time-traveling storyline…. And we wonder why that movie has had so many production problems? Either way, I’ll watch Jemaine Clement eat soap if I have to, as that guy is quite funny.

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]

Marco Beltrami is one of the most recognizable names in film scoring, and he’s earned that celebrity by scoring 4-8 high profile films every year for the past decade. For the most part, his work ranges from the darkly atmospheric to the engagingly violent, which makes him ideal for horror and for action films where Bruce Willis throws a car at a helicopter. It also makes him a fantastic candidate for World War Z, the zombie film starring Brad Pitt that should see the light of day this year. According to Film Music Reporter, Beltrami has been hired by the production amidst a busy schedule that sees him coming off work for The Woman in Black and looking ahead to A Good Day to Die Hard. It’s a significant pick up, although it’s not surprising considering his track record, although he hasn’t worked a lot with Paramount in the past. Still, Beltrami is rock steady when it comes to these types of scores. Hopefully they’ll make him write while being attacked by brain-hungry monsters (to give it a sense of realism).

There are a lot of good things that can be said about Hollywood. It creates tons of jobs, pumps out entertaining movies, makes art widely accessible and helps balance your LDL-HDL cholesterol panel, I’m pretty sure. There is also a ton of bad shit to be said about Hollywood, or else this column couldn’t even exist. Hollywood is many things, but it’s nothing if not extravagantly wasteful. Whether you want to talk about David Fincher’s obsession over every single detail in his movies (details = dollars) or the fact that Jack and Jill cost $79 million to make, probably because Adam Sandler had to be paid twice, once for each ball his comedy is missing these days. There are dozens of ways Hollywood wastes a buck, but the one in the news today is reckless buying of literary properties. You may have heard that Seth Grahame-Smith has sold another of his books to Hollywood. Unholy Night, which releases next year, will be a revisionist take on the story of the three wise men who are now thieves or something. I don’t know, I’ll wait for the movie. Or not, because while Grahame-Smith has sold three of his revisionist novels, not a single one has made it to theaters yet. You probably heard of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies at Lionsgate or Fox’s adaptation of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Heard of them, seen the book covers, but when it comes to seeing any real progress on the films, ha. Never mind. Toss another one of these on 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]

When Tara Brown, a journalist for 60 Minutes in Australia, asked Brad Pitt how much longer he was going to be acting, he answered flatly, “Three years.” She repeated for confirmation, he confirmed, and when she asked him what he’d do after his acting career was over, he said, “Hell if I know. Hell if I know. I am really enjoying the producing side and development of stories and putting those pieces together. And getting stories to the plate that might have had a tougher time otherwise, so…You know, I have gotten away with a few things in writing and I have been pissed off about a few things. How’s that?” Exclusively producing might not be a bad spot for the veteran, but retiring at 50? It seems like he wants to avoid his twilight years in front of the camera. Maybe he’s tired of it all, maybe he doesn’t want his legacy to shift the way Kirk Douglas’s (and so many others’) did, but no matter the reason, it appears as though getting Brad Pitt to star in your movie might be a limited time offer. Of course, that’s also what Viggo Mortenson said. About 20 times. Three years is a long time to change one’s mind, and announcements like this are all too common. We’re looking at you, Michael Jordan. For now, Pitt will be seen in the forthcoming Cogan’s Trade, World War Z, Voyage of Time, and Twelve Years a Slave. Will they be his last movies [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 about to get a little strange, that’s what it is… We begin tonight with… yes, a picture of Antonio Banderas and a few cats. This should serve as an official warning that tonight’s entry into the Movie News After Dark series may get a little silly. Mr. Banderas recently participated in a “Cat Premiere” of Puss in Boots at the Paramount Lot in LA. I can haz movie premiere? Si, mis amigos. Si.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s sorry that it didn’t send flowers. How was it supposed to know that it was your birthday? It’s only a nightly movie news column.. We being this evening with an image of Joss Whedon directing the shit out of The Avengers alongside Cobie Smulders and Samuel L. Jackson. It’s part of a group of images that hit the web this week. In moving images news, reports are now saying that a trailer for The Avengers will drop on Tuesday, October 11. They just had to beat the new iPhone to the punch, didn’t they?!

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a wild summer romp disguised as a prestige flick. We toss together some of the news that your brain needs to hold most tightly to for fear of losing it forever. Do you dare know what can’t be unknown? Since it’s going to be a bizarre (fiercely sexual) post tonight, we start off with the innocent pleasure of shoes. Custom painted movie shoes to be specific. For full disclosure, yes, PeregrinePaints over at Etsy is a friend of the site, but who cares? Her stuff is very cool, the work speaks for itself, and you can dictate exactly what you want painted on your kicks. Not a bad deal, especially for the super-fan who can’t understand why Nike hasn’t produced as an official El Topo sneaker yet.

A few weeks ago I interviewed Bryan Cranston for Breaking Bad, and at the time, he told me something I thought had already been reported: that he won’t be appearing in Marc Forster’s zombie epic, World War Z. IMBD had him listed and it was reported virtually everywhere that Cranston would have a small role in the film. Sadly, those reports are wrong. I talked to the Breaking Bad star a few days before speaking with Forster, so naturally, I asked how that collaborating was going. As Cranston pointed out, it’s not going, and for understandable reasons: “I didn’t work with Marc Forster. I was supposed to, but scheduling got in the way, so I’m not able to. I regretted the omission. I sent him an email, wished him well, and said I was sad it didn’t workout. You know, on some other project we’ll hopefully — will you please tell him I said hello? And tell him the zombies are coming to get him.” Of course I told Marc Foster that the zombies were going to get him — and like Cranston — he was disappointed the actor won’t be a part of the film. It’s a real shame Cranston isn’t in WWZ, because it would have been cool to see him fighting off some brutal, fast-moving zombies.

People are already ragging on World War Z, a movie over a year away. Adaptation always requires changes, but a book like World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War requires many, many changes. The structure doesn’t lend itself to a big budgeted Hollywood film. Director Marc Forster, clearly, knows this. Instead of making a documentary zombie movie, it’s a Brad Pitt and his family trying to survive movie! That’s not the World War Z fans know — and despite the current popular belief — that’s not the approach Forster is taking. A few weeks ago I spoke with the filmmaker, and his zombie epic was briefly touched upon. The interview was for Machine Gun Preacher, so I didn’t set out to ask about WWZ. But after discussing a few different aesthetics he’s shot and trying to bring smarts to blockbuster filmmaking, his currently filming adaptation naturally came up. Despite the narrative changes we all know about, Forster did set out to capture the spirit of the book, the political spirit:

What is Movie News After Dark? The more appropriate question would be: what isn’t Movie News After Dark? We open tonight with a look at The Avengers, or at least the version that will appear in the comic book prequel Marvel will release leading up to the release of the film. It’s a bit of art that we missed last week, so what better way to begin this week than with some good old hero money shots. In other Avengers news, production in Cleveland is done. Sadly, this means that my lovely home town will no longer be interesting, even to the people that live there. Hi mom!

Machine Gun Preacher! It’s not just fun to say! It’s a movie, too! Marc Forster’s latest (the one before the World War Zadaptation fans everywhere are already bemoaning) focuses on a true-life story that comes oh-so-conveniently pre-packaged with a catchily-nicknamed protagonist. The film stars Gerard Butler as that supposed “machine gun preacher,” Sam Childers, a former drug dealer who turned his life around to save the often-orphaned children of East Africa, youngsters forced into the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) to serve as soldiers before they’re even old enough to properly wield a gun. The synopsis for the film makes the story seem fantastic, and in the hyperbolic sense, because the concept of a former drug dealer saving African child soldiers by way of going straight into the belly of the beast and rescuing said kids by hand (and with a machine gun) is all a bit too much to believe. Yet, Childers is indeed a real person, and Forster’s film does depict some real life instances in between a mess of standard action film beats. Take a look at the boom-boom-pow trailer after the break.

When an adaptation of “World War Z” was first announced back in 2008 with Marc Forster at the helm, a major question was how they would take an oral history that recounts a globe-spanning amount of zombie action and turn it into a workable movie. After all, the conversations of the book take place after the war and deal closely with survival and societal themes. As it turns out, the answer is apparently to redo the entire thing. According to the synopsis sent out by Paramount, the movie will look a little something like this: “The story revolves around United Nations employee Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt), who traverses the world in a race against time to stop the Zombie pandemic that is toppling armies and governments and threatening to decimate humanity itself.  [Mireille] Enos plays Gerry’s wife Karen Lane; [Daniella] Kertesz is his comrade in arms, Segen.” Aside from nitpicking that they didn’t use the word “decimate” correctly, that description looks more than a bit different than the book…

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a rumblin’, stumblin’, often bumblin’ and at times even tumblin’ nightly look at the world of entertainment news through the lens of brevity and wit. But mostly brevity. And fancy images. Tonight’s lead image came to me randomly while browsing around Yahoo! Movies. It’s the first still from A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas, and I can’t for the life of me explain why we haven’t featured it yet. Perhaps it was just released. If so, I feel like I’ve stumbled upon buried treasure. A gold mine of full-force ridiculousity. And NPH.

As anyone who reads my Movie News After Dark column knows, I’m a huge fan of Max Brooks’ book World War Z, and a subsequent propagandaist for the upcoming Marc Forster directed film. I am also, without a doubt, a massive (both physically and emotionally) fan of Breaking Bad and Bryan Cranston, so this particular news is being reported with much adulation. Cranston is currently in negotiations to join Brad Pitt in the story of a UN Postwar committee agent (Pitt) who travels the world gathering the oral history of the great zombie war. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the role Cranston is considering is described as “small but flashy.” Anyone who’s read the book knows that it is filled with vignette stories, each of which has a number of memorable characters. No matter the role, Cranston makes a great addition to this potentially major film event. Consider the fires burning deep within me stoked once again by this project. The only question that remains is whether Cranston will have enough time. He’s currently promoting Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive, and will soon be seen in Disney’s John Carter, Len Wiseman’s Total Recall remake, Ben Affleck’s Argo, Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion, George Lucas’ Red Tails, along with the currently filming fourth season of Breaking Bad. He’s a busy guy, Malcolm’s dad.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly entertainment news column that doesn’t usually participate in such overt misogyny. However, in a week that has inundated us with more Michael Bayhem than the world was built to handle, it would like to take out its man card, flop it down on the table like a wet fish and display it to the world. Yes, this is about to get sexual. And no, it will not last long. That’s just how any good late-nite movie news linkdump rolls. It’s a slow news night. Allow me to illustrate right off the bat: Tonight’s lead story is about Brooklyn Decker, model-turned-actress and all-around attractive human being who has been cast in What to Expect When You’re Expecting alongside Cameron Diaz and Jennifer Lopez. Chris Rock will also star. The only thing about this story that I find interesting is the image above, which has less to do with a movie based on a pregnancy self-help book and more to do with reasons why anyone would want to make Brooklyn Decker pregnant in the first place. I think we all still win.

World War Z finally appears to be happening, with stories coming out quickly about who will be cast in which parts and when filming will start. The latest name to be tossed out is Lost star Matthew Fox, who might be bringing his trademark ability to scrunch up his face while crying to the production. According to Bloody Disgusting, they have reliable sources telling them the actor is on board to play “Parajumper.” There are apparently no other details about the character beyond the name (which sounds like a placeholder), but it does sound like Fox would be donning some military fatigues (or be donning veteran status). It would make for great casting alongside already great casting. Fox would join Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, James Badge Dale and Anthony Mackie to describe the time that the planet got overrun with zombies. No word yet on what cameo role Max Brooks will take, but the people demand that he be on screen. Fox will next appear in I, Alex Cross and in Speed Racer if you want to rent it.

What is Movie News After Dark? Well, it ain’t afraid of no ghosts. That’s for sure. Tonight’s top story is that Paramount Pictures (via Yahoo) has released a gallery of new images from Transformers: Dark of the Moon. The above image shows Optimus Prime kneeling before his mentor, Sentinel Prime (to be voiced by Leonard Nimoy). The entire gallery can be found at /Film. Just know that most of the other images focus on the humans, and that’s boring.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly movie news round-up column that didn’t mean to take the night off last night, but was forced into it by some “internet connectivity issues.” Which means, plainly, that its internet provider sucks sometimes. And things happen. Like trains — sometimes they get blown up in small town in Ohio, unleashing unknown terrors upon small-town, late-70s folk. Shit happens, y’know? My confession of the evening is that I was able to see Super 8 this morning. Reviews are under embargo for now, so I can’t share too much, but know this: whatever level of excitement you hold for it, you’re probably on the right track. Moving on, but not too far, Empire has a great interview with producer Steven Spielberg and Spielberg Jr., director J.J. Abrams. You can check it out after the jump. It’s not spoilery, as Abrams is a good keeper of secrets. But if you want to go in completely untainted, skip ahead and there’s plenty of other news to read.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a movie news column that is content with entertaining you on a nightly basis with the best links and tidbits the web has to offer. But in reality, it wishes that it could be out there fighting for the side of humanity in the great world war against the zombie invasion. It has big dreams, this nightly feature. As you know, there are three things I can’t avoid writing about in this here column: Michael Bay movies, Doctor Who and World War Z. The third is perhaps one of the greatest texts ever written about the zombie apocalypse. What I did not know is that it was almost turned into an awesome video game, as this Kotaku investigative report suggests. As you can see from tonight’s headline image, it would have been very cool.