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The Sweding Trend Lives On: ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ Trailer And Michel Gondry’s ‘Taxi Driver’ By Angie Han/Dec. 23, 2011 12:00 pm EST Michel Gondry’s Be Kind, Rewind was far from a box office smash when it was released in 2008, and drew decent but not spectacular critical reviews. It might have been forgotten by now if it weren’t for its introduction of “sweding,” or the practice of shooting no-budget remakes of big-budget projects....

Toby Kebbell, Richard Madden And Michael Pitt Testing For Tetsuo In ‘Akira’ By Russ Fischer/Nov. 18, 2011 8:57 pm EST At this point I’d be lying if I claimed I knew what to expect from the live-action version of Akira that Jaume Collet-Serra will direct early next year. The film is budgeted in the $90m range — not a lot to create a post-apocalypse future version of Manhattan in which motorcycle gangs do battle as a precursor to psychically-powered mayhem....

Warner Bros. Picks Up ‘Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter’ Author Seth Grahame-Smith’s ‘Unholy Night’ In Seven-Figure Deal By Angie Han/Dec. 2, 2011 5:00 pm EST Lionsgate’s adaptation of Seth Grahame-Smith’s novel Pride & Prejudice & Zombies is still struggling mightily to get off the ground, and Fox’s Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, based on another Grahame-Smith book, won’t be out til next year, but that’s apparently not deterring the writer’s fans in Hollywood....

Wolfgang Petersen Attached To Direct ‘Old Man’s War’ By Russ Fischer/Feb. 23, 2011 4:00 pm EST Wolfgang Petersen (Das Boot, In the Line of Fire) was once attached to the long-gestating film based on Orson Scott Card’s novel Ender’s Game. Now, years after moving on from that project, he is attached to another big sci-fi project. Mr. Petersen is currently set to direct an adaptation of the John Scalzi novel Old Man’s War, in which a 75-year old man is given a young body and sent to protect human colonies in space, where he meets a woman that seems to be his wife inhabiting a new young body of her own....

‘Act Of Valor’ Video Movie Review By Germain Lussier/Feb. 24, 2012 10:15 am EST Act of Valor is two movies. The first is your basic, exciting, yet simple war movie. It features some minor character development and emotion wrapped around a lot of shoot ’em up action, explosions and death. High-octane kind of stuff. Acting not required. Then there’s the second movie. And that movie is created by the fact that Act of Valor mostly stars real life, active Navy SEALS....

‘Feast’ Helmer And ‘Saw’ Writers Hired For ‘Piranha 3D’ Sequel By Peter Sciretta/Oct. 19, 2010 2:25 pm EST Piranha 3D made a big enough splash at the box office to ensure the film will recoup the film’s estimated $24 million budget. The film ended it’s run with over $65 million worldwide, and will likely make a bunch more on DVD/Blu-ray/tv deals. After the opening weekend, Dimension Films issued a press release announcing that they are already developing a follow-up with with director Alexandre Aja and producer Mark Canton returning....

/Film Featured As Tekzilla’s “Website We Just Can’t Get Enough Of” By Peter Sciretta/July 12, 2010 2:00 pm EST /Film was featured on Revision 3’s internet tech show Tekzilla as one of their “Website We Just Can’t Get Enough Of”. I want to thank hosts Patrick Norton and Robert Heron for featuring us on the show. It’s such an honor to hear people I’ve watched and respected for so long say nice things about /Film....

‘Oldboy’ Director Park Chan-Wook Made A Film On The iPhone By Russ Fischer/Jan. 10, 2011 9:01 am EST When the iPhone 4 first arrived, the quality of the video immediately became one of the selling points, and we posted a couple pieces about people using the phone to create films. We figured that a well-known filmmaker would eventually use the device to make a film. Here’s one of the first: Paranmanjang (Ups and Downs), a 30-minute “fantasy-horror” short film from Oldboy and Thirst director Park Chan-Wook, who shot the film entirely with the iPhone 4....

‘Paranormal Activity 4’ Trailer: Katie’s Back! By Angie Han/Aug. 1, 2012 9:30 am EST If Monday’s 13-second teaser for the Paranormal Activity 4 trailer whetted your appetite for more found-footage scares, you’ll be happy to see that the first full-length trailer has now hit the web. Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, who directed Paranormal Activity 3, are once again at the helm. Watch the video after the jump. The Paranormal Activity movies are dirt-cheap and quick to make (this one took less than a year from green light to release), and deliver such great box-office returns ($205 worldwide gross against a $5 million budget for the last one), that Paramount is probably going to keep cranking them out until the end of time....

‘Touchback’ Trailer; A Time-Bending Football Drama Starring Kurt Russell By Germain Lussier/Feb. 29, 2012 5:00 pm EST Varsity Blues meets Mr. Destiny in the new film Touchback, which features TV star Brian Presley as a high school football star who lost his chance at glory, only to grow up and magically travel back in time with a chance to do it all again. Kurt Russell stars as his coach, Melanie Lynskey is his girlfriend, Christine Lahti is his mom and you can watch the trailer for the April 13 film after the jump....

‘Tower Block’ Trailer: A Sniper Turns Home Into Hell By Russ Fischer/Sept. 17, 2012 3:28 pm EST We’ve seen a few thrillers and action films set in apartment blocks over the past year, from different countries: Attack the Block, The Raid, and Dredd are the major ones. Now add Tower Block, which hinges on a slightly contrived premise, but provides some good thrills in the middle section. The idea is that residents of the top floor of a soon to be demolished block are refusing to leave....

Adam Sandler And ‘Jack And Jill’ Pull A Huge Awards Sweep! (At The Razzies) By Russ Fischer/April 2, 2012 9:30 am EST Briefly: As spoof awards go, The Razzies are pretty rote. Calling out films like Battlefield Earth and Sex and the City 2 for being terrible doesn’t take a whole lot of effort. Sure, those movies suck, but they’re not interesting failures, just things to be ignored. Maybe their terrible qualities are good for a chuckle, but that’s about it....

Alice In Wonderland Becomes The Sixth Film To Pass $1 Billion Mark By Peter Sciretta/May 27, 2010 2:00 am EST On Thursday, Disney’s Tim Burton-directed 3D adaptation of Alice in Wonderland will become the sixth movie to cross the $1 billion at the worldwide box office, and the first Spring release to ever accomplish the milestone. The film has earned over $332 million domestically and over $667 million in international markets....

Amy Adams, Carey Mulligan, Joaquin Phoenix, And Samantha Morton Lined Up For Untitled Spike Jonze Project By Angie Han/Feb. 2, 2012 10:30 am EST Spike Jonze has been plenty busy cranking out short films over the past few years, but he hasn’t directed a full-length feature since 2009’s Where the Wild Things Are. That’s about to change, though, and he’s already lining up quite an exciting cast for his return to feature filmmaking....

Back To The Future And Jurassic Park Video Games In Development By Peter Sciretta/June 9, 2010 10:04 am EST Telltale Games will be developing a series of episodic video games based off the Jurassic Park and Back to the Future movie franchises, in a deal with NBC Universal. For those of you who don’t recognize the name of the company — Telltale Games is a video game developer founded in 2004, consisting of a group of former LucasArts employees who worked on the Monkey’s Island and Sam & Max games....

Batman Fan Film “City Of Scars” By Peter Sciretta/June 18, 2010 12:30 pm EST A new Batman fan film is now online called “City of Scars”. The 30-minute short tells the story of Batman, who is “pushed past his psychological limits to the point of focusing only on revenge on all who stand in his way.” When the Joker escapes from Arkham and murders the parents of a young boy, Batman recalls the pain of losing his own parents as a child....

Casting Bits: Emile Hirsch Also Joins Oliver Stone’s ‘Savages;’ Ralph Fiennes In Talks For ‘Great Expectations’ By Russ Fischer/April 22, 2011 5:00 pm EST Oliver Stone is quickly locking down the cast for Savages, the adaptation of Don Winslow’s novel about two pot dealers (Aaron Johnson and Taylor Kitsch) whose mutual girlfriend (Blake Lively) is kidnapped by a drug cartel (Salma Hayek and Benicio del Toro) in an effort to coerce the guys into bowing to the cartel’s will....

Charlize Theron Promises Death In ‘Prometheus’ TV Spot By Russ Fischer/March 23, 2012 3:30 pm EST We’ve gone from being ravenous for every bit of footage we can get from Ridley Scott’s Prometheus to being at a point where we might actually be sated until the film’s June 8 opening. I know I don’t want to see too much more than what we’ve been shown in the collection of footage that landed in the past week....

First Photos: Real Steel By Peter Sciretta/June 14, 2010 9:00 pm EST Update: This story has been updated with an additional photo and both photos are now uncropped and high resolution images. Dreamworks/Walt Disney Pictures has released the first couple production photos from Shawn Levy’s futuristic robot boxing movie Real Steel.. Want to see a glimpse of what the robotic boxing robots of the future look like? Hit the jump....

Gallery: Rejected ‘Star Wars’ Merchandising Ideas By Germain Lussier/Feb. 27, 2012 3:30 pm EST This is almost too much fun. Jason Geyer, a writer for Action Figure Insider, has posted a huge gallery of rejected Star Wars merchandise. How did he come upon these hidden gems? Simple, he helped to create them. In the late Nineties, he and a co-worker were two of the largest Star Wars fans working at a promotional merchandise company who had Pepsi as one of their clients....