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Q: What happens when you take a man on a comeback career plan (Jean Claude Van Damme) and another man whose got a string of credits where he plays the heavy (Vinnie Jones) and put them together in a movie?

A: I’m not entirely sure, but neophyte producers Todd Moyer and Alison Semenza will find out as they plan and shoot the first film to come out of their new production company Flagship Films, Weapon.

According to Variety, Weapon will tell the tale of two rival assassins who each have a different preferred method of dispatching their targets, have probably been double-crossed by the head of a drug cartel that’s backed by the DEA, and now have to team up to get their revenge. (Raise your hands if you’ve seen that plot somewhere before.)

The film will be directed by Australian Russell Mulcahy, a former music video director whom genre fans love for having directed Highlander, and then turn around and despise when they learn he also directed Highlander 2: The Quickening.

Perhaps the most unfortunate part of this story is that Moyer and Semenza do have a talent for putting movies and deals together, but they just may not be the right kind. Moyer worked for several years at Dark Horse Comics and helped put together the deals that resulted in The Mask and Timecop, and Semenza has a string of straight-to-DVD sequels and prequels on her IMDB credits page, but also worked on the upcoming Powder Blue (which reminds me a hell of a whole lot of Dancing at the Blue Iguana; I blame the strip club setting).

Here’s hoping the second film they produce can be a bit more original.

It must hurt to be Terry Gilliam.

I mean, what use is being one of the most original and fantastic directors of the 21st century if no one has enough faith in your work? The story of how Brazil was re-cut by Universal Pictures for U.S. distribution to create a more happy ending and how Gilliam had to conduct secret screenings, just so he could get the movie released without all the cuts is a classic one for film buffs. And, of course, Brazil has a near perfect score on the Tomatometer.

According to Anne Thompson at Variety, it looked like Gilliam’s latest The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus—which contains the last film shot of Heath Ledger before his death in January 2008—was doomed to a similar kind of fate because the Cannes festival organizers scheduled its screening two Fridays from now, when almost all buyers have packed their bags and are back in the States.

Now, Thompson confirmed courtesy of a scoop from an unnamed distributor who isn’t interested in the film that before the film hits France, it will be making a pitstop in New York City to be screened for buyers from Sony Pictures Classics.

Let’s hope that the news and reviews from Cannes are favorable, hmm?

Related Posts: Enough about Heath Ledger; won’t somebody think of Terry Gilliam?,Trio to complete Ledger’s role Doctor Parnassus…? (updated again: maybe)

Though I normally hate remakes and re-adaptations, I’m actually a bit curious as to how Marisa Tomei and Liv Tyler are going to handle themselves in the remake of the 1995 Korean psychological horror film 301, 302, now to be called 10A/10B (in reference to their apartment numbers).

As Variety notes, the story that will be produced and financed by Christopher Mallick’s Oxymoron Entertainment will also be directed by original director Chul-soo Park, so that’s a plus in its favor. Tomei and Tyler will be playing a “culinary perfectionist” who lives next door to a fading actress, and if the movie retains the character detail from the original movie, the actress will be bulemic as well.

The most fascinating detail of this movie is that not only can I not predict which actress will be playing which part, this movie also has the potential of being one that could possibly pass the Bechdel test, and in my opinion, that’s always a good thing.

In a move that isn’t surprising anyone, 20th Century Fox is crafting another X-Men spinoff movie but this time it’s for Deadpool, the “merc with a mouth” that was played so well by Ryan Reynolds in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The film is (tentatively) titled simply, Deadpool.

Announced by Variety as being “under development,” there’s also talk of another Wolverine movie that touches more another of the “Easter egg” credits scene where he’s drinking in Japan. (It seems that there are at least two cuts of Wolverine, with various different clips cut into or after the trailers; my screening got one with Stryker and the Deadpool clip, not the Japan scene. — GEM)

Unlike several of my friends, I actually liked Wolverine—once I realized that it was just a big action movie and that I shouldn’t think about the plot too much.

I haven’t read the comics continually since the mid-to late 1990s, so any little bit of jiggering that was done to the character’s timeline was completely okay with me, as was taking the current White Queen’s powers and giving them to Silverfox’s sister, all just so the fans could giggle and nudge each other when it showed Scott and Emma working together near the end of the movie.

So if they end up doing a lot of jiggering with Deadpool in order for an awesome action movie to be made (and with Reynolds’ good looks, I do not see them hiding him under a mask for very long or disfiguring him too deeply), I’m also perfectly fine with that.

UPDATE: Coming Soon is reporting that — according to “a source close to Fox” — the Deadpool movie will be developed by Lauren Shuler Donner and Marvel, not Fox (although presumably Fox is still distributing).

Fresh off of its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, Magnolia Pictures acquired the world distribution rights to The Eclipse on Friday, says Variety.

Eclipse tells the story of a recent widower (played by Ciaran Hinds, who won an award from the festival for his performance) who is learning how to adjust to being a single father while nightmares threaten his daytime hours, all amidst the backdrop of a literary festival in a seaside Irish town. Iben Hjejle plays a British novelist whose book about her own experiences with ghosts provides the spark for their romantic encounter, while Aidan Quinn rounds out the trio as Hjejle’s married former lover who wants her back.

Written and directed by Conor McPherson (who is also an award-winning playwright), I’m making the prediction right now that The Eclipse will be the new Once and will end up taking home at least one award at the Oscars next year, which means that I can’t wait to see it in the theaters.

One of the numerous heartwarming stories that came out of last year’s U.S presidential election was “A Butler Well Served by This Election” written by Wil Haygood for the Washington Post, about Eugene Allen, a black man who had served as a butler and maitre’d at the White House for eight presidential administrations (from Truman to Reagan), and how excited he was to have been able to vote for now-President Barack Obama.

Sony Pictures acquired the feature rights to the article a few weeks after the election, and now Variety is reporting that Danny Strong (Recount) will be adapting the script for The Butler for producer Laura Ziskin (As Good as It Gets, the Spider-Man series).

It’s too early to tell whether or not the film will have the same ending that the feature article did (it ends with former butler Allen’s wife’s death a day before the election) or if there will be some schmaltzy scene at the White House during a fictional version of Obama’s inauguration.

I pray that the latter will not happen.

As usual, I’m a tad conflicted about the news from Variety and other sources that not only has Oliver Stone been confirmed as the director for the previously-reported sequel to 1987’s Wall Street from 20th Century Fox, but there are current negotiations with Shia LaBeouf (also upcoming in Transformers 2) to play the young protege that gets corrupted by Michael Douglas’ Gordon Gekko.

This time, though, it’s not the choice of cast, Oliver Stone’s recent lackluster effort with W. (according to Box Office Mojo, the damn thing almost didn’t make any money), or the fact that they’re doing yet another freaking sequel that’s got me concerned.

Frankly, I’m a little curious as to exactly how screenwriter Allan Loeb is going to spin exactly who the “bad guy” is because while it’s easy to cast the people who work on Wall Street as being evil and greedy because their entire raison d’être is making tons of money out of nothing, the only reason why Wall Street traders have that reputation to begin with is because other Americans urged them to do so in order to satisfy their own greed instead of making do with what they already have.

As the current economic crisis unfolded, I found myself thinking about a scene near the end of Pretty Woman, a movie from 1990 whose logline can be summarized as thus: My Fair Lady + prostitution. It’s the scene where Richard Gere’s character decides to renounce his evil corporate takeover ways and instead invest his money into making an old man’s shipbuilding company prosperous again.

“We don’t make anything, we don’t build anything!” he rants to Jason Alexander, echoing a query from Julia Roberts’ prostitute character when she asked what he did to earn his mega-bucks. And, apparently, I’m not the only one who thought of that scene and that movie recently in connection with the current recession/depression.

That, in my very humble and untutored opinion, is one of the reasons why we got into this mess, but I highly doubt that a “villain” like our own manufacturing hubris is ever going to make it to Wall Street 2‘s big screen.

Recent Posts: Fox says “Greed is gooder” by fast-tracking Wall Street sequel

According to Variety, Robert Rodriguez is has two movies that are coming up on his slate, and as usual, I have mixed feelings about one of them.

The news about which I’m most pleased is that he’s going to be making a full-length movie out of Machete, for which he already created a fake trailer that appeared in Grindhouse. The story is about a Mexican ex-Federale who is hired to come across the U.S. border for a job, gets double-crossed by a corrupt state senator, and vows his revenge.

Danny Trejo will reprise his role as Machete from the trailer, and it will be his first leading role. Rodriguez will be the film’s writer and director, and it will be Rodriguez’ first non-studio film that he’s directed since he did El Mariachi. My biggest hope is that he’s able to recapture the same kind of gleeful lawlessness that inhabited El Mariachi and other films of that style. Filming will hopefully start in June.

The other movie that Rodriguez will be making is Predators for 20th Century Fox, another sequel to the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger movie; no other details have been released at this time.

Ever since the plot of the first Alien vs. Predator movie was revealed and it was not revealed to be the same story as the very awesome Dark Horse comics series, I’ve kinda given up on a good film adaptation of these movie sequels. I lay the blame at my first boyfriend’s feet, because he’s the one who introduced me to both movie franchises, the novels, and the comics, and I immediately found the comics versions to be the best.

This is definitely an “I need to know more” sort of situation.

It must be awesome to be best-selling novelist Patricia Cornwell.

Because as Variety noted, Cornwell, who writes a series of mystery novels with a female medical examiner as the main character, is so protective of Dr. Kay Scarpetta that only after getting to meet Angelina Jolie in person and have discussions about how one would bring the project to life in a screen version would she allow Fox 2000 to acquire the rights to her book series.

The very idea that Cornwell has so much creative control that she can make Angelina Jolie come to her just gives me the shivers, you know?

There are 16 books in the series which screams “Franchise!”, but the article states that the first movie won’t be specifically tied to any one of the movies. It sounds like any movie version would be “inspired by” rather than “based on” and I really don’t know how Cornwell fans would feel about that.

There are also going to be two non-Scarpetta books being made into TV movies for Lifetime (At Risk and The Front), and part of me wishes that Cornwell were so protective of those books that she didn’t sign the contract.

I’m a huge Nora Roberts fan, so when Lifetime recently did showcased four movies based on Roberts’ properties, I was so excited because I’d read two of the books, and the actors were people I thought were okay.

I don’t have DVR so I couldn’t tape the shows, but when I did get to sit down to catch a showing of Midnight Bayou one Saturday, I ended up turning off the TV in disgust.

Here’s hoping the Fox 2000-Angelina Jolie-Kay Scarpetta triad has more success as a live-action movie.

While negotiations are still going on, I’d like to assume that Mark Wahlberg is at least breathing a sigh of relief at the news that one of his next projects can get off the ground.

As reported in Variety, Relativity Media will be financing the production of The Fighter, with Christian Bale set to star opposite Wahlberg and David O. Russell directing. Based on a true story, Wahlberg will play contemporary boxer Micky Ward whose half-brother (Bale) redeems himself from a former life as a drug addict to regain some glory as Ward’s manager on the road to a world lightweight championship title and three legendary fights against Arturo Gatti.

All this came after both Brad Pitt and Matt Damon bowed out of playing the Dickie Eklund character, a boxer in his own right who once knocked out Sugar Ray Leonard, did hard time for a robbery spree that fueled his crack habit (and was one of the subjects in an HBO documentary about the crack addiction problem in Lowell, Massachusetts), and came out of prison a changed man.

Given that information, you have to wonder why they’d pass on such a meaty part, even if it is in service to playing the supporting role. I mean, Pitt’s favorite characters of mine have almost always been his supporting ones, and you’d think that Massachusetts native Damon wouldn’t mind playing a role based on a guy they call “The Pride of Lowell.”

Anyway, for Wahlberg’s sake, I hope that this time, Bale and Russell stick.

According to Variety, Fox Searchlight picked up the rights to Nice, a quirky little novel by Jen Sacks that was a huge hit for her in 1998, and are looking at Reese Witherspoon to star.

Originally, these rights had been at Warner Bros. and the movie was being developed as a vehicle for Helen Hunt, but it never got its act together—because the romantic comedy-style plot revolves around a female serial killer.

Sure, the blurb from Publisher’s Weekly completely glosses over the fact that the main character is a 30-year old woman who kills a boyfriend rather than break up with him, which turns into a “Meet Cute” when she gets some help from a former KGB assassin when trying to get rid of the body. And that she continues to kill boyfriends she can’t get rid of because she’s too nice to hurt their feelings when she dumps them.

I have very mixed feelings about this movie prospect. I recall famously vowing never wanting anything to do with The Devil Wears Prada because I hated the main character on the very first page of the book. (Note: Any woman who does not know how to drive a stick-shift car through Manhattan while smoking a cigarette isn’t my kind of woman.) However, even after two years, the movie intrigues me the more I read about it and I’m probably going to end up renting or borrowing it somewhere down the line.

I guess that if Fox Searchlight manages to be able to keep the dark tone of the novel along with the comedy, it’ll be okay; it’s all up to picking the right screenwriter, it seems.

I don’t know why the zeitgeist happened more with Facebook than with MySpace, but the sheer fact that now I’m vaguely in touch with people from high school with whom I’ve not had real contact in almost 15 years sometimes freaks me out—which is why I feel such a connection to the newest character on Kristen Bell’s production slate.

According to Variety, Bell will play the lead role in You, Again under Andy Fickman’s direction at Walt Disney Pictures. Bell will play a woman who discovers that her new sister-in-law-to-be is the same girl who bullied her and made high school a living hell for her, and she feels as if she’s gotta set her brother right. This will mark Fickman’s third Disney film (he’s also developing Monster Attack Network).

Again, the reason why I feel such a connection to Bell’s character is that for a very long time, I harbored a resentment towards a specific person I knew in high school, and Google-spied on this person every now and then over the years.

When I finally was able to get a message to this person via Facebook, I discovered that the thing I’d been hurt over and stewed over all these years had not happened the way that other person remembered it, which had the odd effect of making that initial hurt less important.

I wonder what direction the movie will take.