[Many apologies for being late with this post, but hey, you know how it is on a three-day weekend. – TL]

Note to Aspiring Writers: Don’t Use the Word ‘Babylon’ in Your Script Titles
Though it came in second place to action-comedy Tropic Thunder on this past weekend’s top 10 list, Babylon A.D.‘s estimated $12M draw over the Labor Day weekend comes in on the low end of what the studio had hoped it would make. The Tuesday evening disownment of the movie by director Mathieu Kassovitz — but not the application of an Alan Smithee credit — probably didn’t help either. (Source: Variety)

Hilary Swank Hopes to Borrow a Strong Starring Role From First-Time Author
Hoping that lightning strikes twice thanks to the respectable performance by her last chick flick P.S. I Love You, Swank and her producing partner Molly Smith (she also produced Chasing Liberty) acquired the rights to the debut novel by author Emily Giffin called “Something Borrowed.” The plot of Borrowed will concern a woman who has an affair with her mean best friend’s fiance, and apparently, is very sympathetic to the cheating couple. Um, you go girl? (Source: Variety)

Chanel Bio Pic to be Number One Priority for Warner Bros. in September
The U.S. studio will join Haut et Court in financing the biographical picture titled Coco avant Chanel about the most celebrated French fashion designer of the 20th century, which will star Amelie‘s Audrey Tatou as the fashionista. Filming begins in Europe on September 15. (Source: Variety)

My friend Tori Morris is a huge fan of screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, but she’s definitely one who has her head screwed on straight, as you can see in the blisteringly honest reviews/critiques of Sorkin’s last TV effort “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” that she wrote for Sequential Tart. So when she recently said that she admitted to Sorkin directly on Facebook that she’d talked smack about him, I took it for her making a silly joke and moved on.

Until… (Source: Variety)

Columbia Pictures will be financing the currently unnamed film, Scott Rudin (There Will Be Blood) will be its producer, and both parties were surprised when Sorkin actually went and created a Facebook profile and his own group — and no, you cannot add him directly as a friend, believemeItried — in order to do research. From the synopsis in the Variety story, it sounds like Sorkin’s filming a documentary about how Facebook got started; from my scans of the earliest posts where Sorkin was actually responding to comments, he’s disappointed that everyone’s been so nice to him so far. The prevailing theory is that unless you’ve created a fake first name and surname for your Facebook profile — or use your first name and middle name like I do to protect my family’s privacy — everything you say can be held accountable to you, and that prevents many people from adhering to the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.

What I find interesting about this NY Times profile on screenwriters Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith (Legally Blonde and now The House Bunny) is the body of their work. They think about women in films in a way that not many of their colleagues do.

Take Legally Blonde, for example. The protagonist is a rich, beautiful blonde girl who is the leader of her sorority. Not your typical leading woman, where Hollywood runs towards embracing the leading female clichés like the misfit freak (but not too freaky looking), the hard-as-nails reporter, or the sassy black woman. I also find it interesting that question that drives The House Bunny is “What do you do with a beautiful woman when her looks can’t get her anywhere anymore?” If this were a drama or an indie film, she’d downspiral into doing porn in the Valley. If it were a porn film, she’d be trying to reinvent herself as a fetishist. The House Bunny does neither (because it’s a comedy — and sadly, the reviews aren’t all that good) but you do have to give them credit for at least having asked the question. At the same time, it doesn’t look like any of Lutz and Smith’s scripts will ever pass the Bechdel Test, and that’s profoundly sad to me as a female writer.

[Gordon and I are toying with the format for the all-purpose news posts; let us know what you think! – TL]

MGM to Remake Poltergeist; No Director Yet
Scriptwriters Stiles White and Juliet Snowden (The Boogeyman) have been tapped, and here’s hoping they don’t fall victim to the alleged Poltergeist Curse. (Source: Variety)

Jackson + Walsh + Boyens + The Hobbit Movies = Satisfied Tolkein Geeks
In a move everyone was hoping for and would have wreaked havoc if it didn’t take place, Lord of the Rings director and puppet master Peter Jackson along with his writing partners (and wife) Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens have signed on to collaborate with announced director Guillermo del Toro on the two movies that will make up The Hobbit. In other news, water is wet, and the sky is blue. (Source: Variety)

Miyazaki’s Latest Film Clears ¥10 Billion, Sets New Box Office Record
Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea is the first Japanese film to make this much money since Hayao Miyazaki’s 2004 film Howl’s Moving Castle. No, not the first animated film — the first film period. Suck on that, anime-haters! (Source: Variety)

Catfight Between SAG Factions Heating Up Going into Board Elections
Spokespersons for both MembershipFirst and Unite for Strength took swipes at each other, complete with blog posts, secret leaked emails, and bombastic speeches by Martin Sheen (“The West Wing”). All of this is in advance of the board elections which will be decided by September 18. It’s good to know that professional actors have the maturity of teenagers on Fandom Wank, isn’t it? (Source: Hollywood Reporter)

Though some ink has been previously given to this story, now’s as good a time as any to mention that if 20th Century Fox gets its way, the highly anticipated Watchmen movie — which has already wrapped and been previewed in front of movie “luminaries” like Kevin Smith — may not even see the light of day thanks to a judge’s refusal to dismiss the lawsuit. According to sources, Fox said it would rather see the film killed instead of settling with Warner Bros. and collecting a percentage of the box office. This all came about when Warner Bros. picked up the project in a turnaround deal back in 1994, but Fox claims that it never sorted out the complete rights to the intellectual property. (Source: Variety)

As any one who has been penalized by credit card interest charges knows, it’s the fine print that will kill you. When the customer service person you’ve been screaming at for the last half hour calmly says, “It was in the contract when you signed up for the card; there’s nothing I can do,” you’re the one who’s going to look like an idiot for saying, “Yeah, but who really reads those?” It is gross negligence on Fox’s part for not having checked their ownership documents all the way back in the ’90s, even if everyone thought the project was “great, but unfilmable” back then.

It’s also gross negligence on Warner Bros. part for having not checked up on those rights over the years, especially once they got a really good script together and signed Zack Snyder to direct. Don’t you think it would have behooved someone to have gone back to Fox, saying, “Yeah, listen, about those incomplete rights? Can we just give you some money now for the rest of them? We think we’ve got something good going, and we really want to avoid any 11th hour dramatics.”

It’s enough to make you wonder if Alan Moore deliberately put a curse on the movie version to this film.

UPDATE: EW says that their insiders at 20th Century Fox are more correct than the Variety insiders, and that they “want affirmation of ownership and/or restitution, and there are many scenarios by which Fox could get paid, including a cash settlement or distribution rights to the film.”

This story came on the heels of the predictable fanboy howling and boycott threat that accompanied the news articles on Monday. EW’s Jeff Jensen does at least go beyond the surface of the issue:

Fox filed its complaint back in February — just as Snyder was wrapping production on Watchmen. The assumption many are making is that Fox stood by and did nothing as Warner Bros. actively and publicly developed and produced a movie it had no right to make, and then, at a maximum moment of leverage, sandbagged its rival with a lawsuit. And yet, according to a Fox source, studio lawyers contacted Warner Bros. about the distribution rights issue several times prior to the start of production but were rebuffed.

But if you feel like wading through all the legalese yourself, check out the official documentation, courtesy of UncivilSociety.org

The breakaway group within SAG whose members include Marcia Wallace (left, The Simpsons“), and which is running for membership seats in SAG’s board of directors against actors like Keith Carradine (right, “Deadwood”) is urging the guild to rejoin forces with the AFTRA actors… and not saying that they want to limit voting on SAG issues to “working actors” as its incumbent rival group Membership First is saying it does. (Source: Variety)

Honestly, all this in-fighting among the actors’ guilds makes both of them look very, very dumb. If you have some extra time today, I suggest you really do go through the stories on the SAG Watchdog site, but make sure you’ve got your hype and bullshit hip waders on. I remember when the WGA strike was happening, there were lots of rumors flying about including those about top writers who were breaking away from the guild’s united stance, but those were quickly refuted and debunked by the United Hollywood bloggers and the guild leadership. The SAG Watchdog site reads more like a series of whiny, angsty LiveJournal posts than a reasoned and reasonable source of information about what’s really going on behind the scenes during these troubled negotiations.

I really hate to say this, but I’m starting to feel like I really want the actors to get shafted during these negotiations, so that next time they learn their lesson and take some tips from the WGA on how to handle themselves during the next crisis.

Last Friday, Hollywood Reporter printed a pretty macabre story which said that even though all the major studios are falling over themselves to be the ones to distribute the last movie for which Heath Ledger shot film — that’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, remember? — they’re reluctant to do so because it’s a film by Terry Gilliam, and he hasn’t necessarily been the best box office bet.

This kind of thinking makes me a little sick. Yes, Gilliam can be difficult, but it was the movie industry that made him so by ruining the first important movie he made by not trusting in his vision. His movies are strange and aren’t necessarily for everyone, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Parnassus is a movie that wanted to be made, because three heavyweight actors (Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, and Jude Law) agreed to appear in the movie, continue Ledger’s role, and donate their salaries to his estate, just so his performance wouldn’t wind up in some film vault somewhere, and Depp is certainly aware of the problems that can happen with a Gilliam production.

My words to studio executives is this: You probably make $20 million a month picking your nose or scratching your armpits. Putting up the money to distribute this film should be a piece of cake if you don’t treat it like a major studio movie and go ape-wild on marketing stunts that make no sense. Movie-going audiences these days can be smart, and the slavering Heath Ledger fangirls are armed with the Internet. They can read up on Gilliam’s weirdness on blogs like this one, and won’t be disappointed like they may have been with The Brothers Grimm. Their minds may even be expanded just a little bit, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing considering that one of Gilliam’s major themes is a rejection of conformity.

Just release this movie, okay?

Even with the success of Michael Bay’s Transformers movie and the buzz about its sequel, Variety reported on Sunday that New Regency has put their Voltron movie into “turnaround” which according to the IMDB’s glossary (Ctrl-F is your friend) means that it’s not likely to be made unless they can snatch up a director and some hot acting talent. However, the trade publication article reads like this is a done deal and that all producers Mark Gordon (10,000 B.C.) and Jordan Wynn have to do is just to pick from its many suitors for the project. Personally speaking, I don’t think this bodes well.

Listen, I loved “Voltron” as a kid, and wanted to drive the blue lion because it was driven by a girl, and there weren’t many kick-ass female characters back then. At least “G.I. Joe” had three of them, you know? But I think one of the reasons why it’s going to be more difficult for this movie to get anywhere is that despite it selling well on DVD, that’s about the limit of its audience. People went to see Transformers because the franchise had more time and more opportunities to gain a foothold in the American pop culture psyche due to the fact that they just kept making the show, and the creators of “Voltron” did not do the same with its property. I need only to point at Speed Racer‘s total worldwide gross of $88,645,114 versus its production cost of $120 million to hammer the nail into the coffin that is my point, and say no more.

UPDATE: The movie blogosphere is buzzing with the news that a little-known director named Max Makowski has signed on to direct the film, but until a real news outlet reports on it, I’m not buying it.

New York Guild Says to SAG Re: Ongoing Stalemate: “Fuggedaboutit”
Also on Sunday, the regional board for New York City’s screen actors told the national union leaders that it needs to seek out more meaningful steps towards a resolution of the contract terms before August 25 or bring in a federal negotiator, as reported by the Hollywood Reporter but mentioned nowhere on the SAG Watchdog site and United Hollywood 2.0 returns a 404 error as of press time. This, and other news coverage found online only serves to highlight what a empathetic divide in the public’s eye there is between these negotiations and the WGA negotiations earlier this year.

The Stupidest Viral Movie Marketing Ploy in the World…Or is It?
It’s only because I was recently caught in a “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” feedback loop that I happened to see the hard-sell trailers for The Rocker, which stars comedic actor Rainn Wilson (“The Office”) as a washed-up never-been who tries to relive his ’80s rock band dreams by co-opting his nephew’s teenage band. The commercial’s voiceover narration proclaims it to be the “hit sleeper of the summer” and yet it’s never popped up on my radar.

Since the movie opens on Wednesday, though, they’re pulling out all the stops to get butts in the theater seats, because six days ago, Wilson said on “Office” co-star Jenna Fischman’s MySpace blog that he had kidnapped her, bound her, placed her in his trunk, and will not let her go until the movie grosses $18.7 million. Since then, he — or the clever people in Fox’s marketing department — have started up their own blog called Free Jenna Now! where he posts shorts video clips of Fischman’s kidnapping experience and has even interviewed Guns ‘N’ Roses guitarist Slash (who is credited in that video clip as Maya Angelou).

Part of me wants the movie to tank, just so I can see how they’ll backpedal out of the stunt, and because I am a mean, mean person.

Oh sure… of the four buzz-worthy actors who are in talks to star in Quentin Tarantino’s WWII film Inglorious Bastards, the one that gets signed next is none of them, but instead Canadian comedic actor Mike Myers, according to Variety.

Listen, I used to like Mike Myers films. Laughed my butt off during the first Austin Powers movie, and for some strange reason, my sister and I watched and re-watched the first Wayne’s World movie. Now that I think about it, I think the main reason why I watched the it so often was because of Tia Carrere’s performance as a sexy, no-nonsense, punk-rock star. It’s hard to find female role models on the big screen when you’re ethnically Filipino, you know? But after having seen the second Austin Powers movie three times and becoming bored of his schtick, the bloom faded quickly from the rose, I was no longer a fan and therefore, I don’t buy this casting.

My problem with Mike Myers is that I can’t see him playing anything straight. See, Jim Carrey’s a great comedic actor, but he does know when to stop and he does have the chops to do more serious roles (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, anyone?). I can believe someone like him in a serious role because he’s proven that he can do it. However, I can’t see Myers being able to rein anything in without a Scottish accent (because he is remarkably restrained in the Shrek movies), and even worse, I don’t want to imagine Tarantino doing a WWII movie with a silly British general because it’s going to make me think of either Peter Sellers or Graham Chapman too much and then I’ll get sad.

Steve Carrell, Tina Fey Going Out on a Date
I’ve recently become a fan of “30 Rock” thanks to Hulu.com and my very weird work schedule, so I couldn’t help but grin a little when I read in Variety that Tina Fey and Steve Carrell will be in a comedy called Date Night from 20th Century Fox. The movie’s about a couple who starts out on an average date but it quickly turns into something that will probably be described by critics as “zany” and “wild.” The movie will be directed by Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum) who told reporters that he wanted this movie to be his next assignment from the studio.

Former Subway Worker, College Student Makes Good in Creating Brooklyn’s Finest
Admittedly, I’m going to be a little biased about stories in the New York Times because it’s my local newspaper of choice and it’s the standard to which I hold a lot of journalists (though that’s changing due to the weirdness that is newspaper conglomerations). Reading this story about first-time screenwriter Michael C. Martin, an almost-degreed film student from Brooklyn who got second prize in a screenwriting competition while he was recovering from an accident that totaled his car, and then parlayed that into a movie deal for Brooklyn’s Finest (starring Richard Gere, Don Cheadle, and Ethan Hawke, and directed by Antoine Fuqua [Training Day]) makes me feel a little better about the world and my place in it as a freelance writer.

It’s worth it to note that the difference between this piece and the Hollywood Reporter piece on another first-time screenwriter is how Martin’s path seems to be more accessible by the average person, whereas the HR piece pushes you away by mentioning its subject’s maneuvering within the system. Anyone can enter a contest, and anyone can go to film school to get the training and basics down for writing a screenplay. In contrast, no one’s exactly sure what one needs to do to be assigned as an assistant to a major screenwriter, and that kind of job is something you achieve after lots of networking and being exactly in the right place at the right time.

I already wrote about Variety Editor in Chief Peter Bart, whose attempt at making Comic Con look less like the biggest elephant in the hype room flopped when he referred to its attendees as “freaks and geeks.” Uh, no thank you, only Paul Feig and Judd Apatow are allowed to call us that, and that’s because they understand what it means to be one. As thus, I was ready to give up on reading the Variety blogs because they rarely speak to me.

However, these choice words from one of Thompson’s regular pinch-hit bloggers David S. Cohen about the trailer for The Express caught my eye:

I’m a guy, I get sports movies. I also trace some of my earliest memories to the days of the civil rights movement in Illinois and Kentucky, so I enjoy stories about that time. But I’m getting tired of movies that put the two together.

My complaint isn’t that racism is a settled issue (It’s not.) or that these stories don’t deserve to be told (They do.). But Jim Crow is a settled issue, so these tales of the struggle against American apartheid seem to me to have entered the realm of always-safe messages for a studio film, like “It’s okay to be different” in a kid pic, or ‘Family is more important than money” in a Christmas movie.

As a result, to me it feels like these athletes-against-racism stories are becoming rote and predictable, too, and are blurring into “Remembering the Titans on Glory Road While the Express Rumbles By, Singing Brian’s Song.”

Cohen goes on to write that filmmakers shouldn’t be afraid to make controversial movies, even if they aren’t going to be blockbuster hits, suggesting other stories that the sports/drama genre could get into, such as what it’s like to be a gay male on a sports team, or the pressures experienced by the team that Iraq sent to the 2004 Olympics (who placed a respectable fourth).

I don’t know about you, but I’d spend $12 on that.

The City of Ember Pulls Out All Stops on Promo Train Ride to SDCC
In one of those “blink and you’ll miss it” stories that was initially reported last Wednesday in Variety, Walden Media took advantage of Southern California’s usual traffic problems and the rail lines that connect Los Angeles to San Diego by hooking two train cars together, filling them with 23 entertainment reporters who were going to the convention anyway, and for the two-hour commute, bombarded them with clips, information, and interview opportunities for director Gil Kenan for the fall film based on a fantasy novel. Well, it worked, since I’m telling you guys about it, aren’t I?

Leading Actors for Magdalena Introduced During Top Cow Panel on Comics
During their panel on Saturday afternoon, president Matt Hawkins introduced actors Luke Goss (Hellboy II) and Jenna Dewan (Step Up) who will be playing Christoph and Patience, two characters from the upcoming movie based on the comic book. Mega-producer Gale Ann Hurd (the first three Terminator movies, and why wasn’t she on EW’s 10 influential people list?) was also on-hand to promise more information and more to show at next year’s Comic Con.

EW Staff Members at Front Lines of Most Popular Comic Con Panels
Reading Entertainment Weekly’s PopWatch coverage of Comic Con, you’ll notice the phrase “EW’s own” a lot when they speak of whomever is moderating the panel. As a journalist and a fan, that makes me feel a little uncomfortable knowing that someone who is already supposed to be an objective observer becoming part of “the inside” by directing what’s supposed to be a fan-friendly event. While I am a huge fan of the idea of moderated panels at genre conventions–because fans can sometimes ask the stupidest questions–fans have also provided some of the more memorable moments during panels (see the Samuel L. Jackson/Nick Fury comment that I posed about on Saturday). Besides, the only reason why the actors and directors are even at the convention is because of the 125,000+ people who spent a lot of their hard-earned money to go see them. It’s a dichotomy for the ages, I suppose.

Variety’s EIC Peter Bart Thinks He Gets Comic Con, But He’s Wrong
The editor-in-chief weighed in on what he thinks the myths are about the annual Nerd Prom in San Diego, and in my opinion, he not only fails at debunking the myths, he does so at the expense of the very audience that makes Comic Con so great. Examples include such bon mots as: “The geeks and freaks positively thrive on the frenzied overcrowding” and “The dweebs then feel hip!” If you don’t believe me, read the article for yourself.

Early Saturday evening, the national board for the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) announced they would unanimously back their negotiators in L.A. in rejecting the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers’s (AMPTP) final offer, citing the concerns over allowing non-union work for new media productions.

“For some time, we have been telling the industry how important it is for all new media productions under our contract to be done union and how important residuals for made-for new media programming are when programs are re-run on new media,” said SAG National Executive Director and Chief Negotiator Doug Allen in a prepared statement.

The AMPTP responded with a statement of their own, saying, “The continued refusal of SAG’s negotiators to accept AMPTP’s final offer means that actors will continue to work indefinitely under the expired contract – an old contract that contains none of the $250 million in additional compensation provided by AMPTP’s final offer, and an old contract that provides none of the new media rights and residuals that other Hollywood Guild members have now been enjoying for months.”

And though no one has dared utter word “strike,” the uncertainty over where things stand between SAG and the producers is just one of the three things mentioned as a factor behind pushing back the start production date on Ridley Scott’s Nottingham, which is a re-visioning of the tale that casts the Sheriff (Russell Crowe) in a sympathetic light. (The others are having a green enough forest and the script.)

Still, that didn’t seem to dampen the enthusiasm of movie goers this weekend where The Dark Knight grossed an estimated $75.6 million in the domestic box office, losing just 52.2% of its previous weekend’s audience. The Will Farrell/John C. Reilly comedy Step Brothers debuted at around $30 million and movie musical Mamma Mia! came into third place with $17.87 million, despite adding 14 more theaters.

The only downer note was for The X-Files: I Want to Believe, which grossed only $10.2 million, just barely ahead of two other movies that have already been in theaters for almost a month.

While we’ve been stuck here in Chicago and New York, everyone else in the world seems to be at the San Diego Comic Con, including representatives from several major motion picture companies who were there to talk up their movies, show off footage, and drum up support and advanced buzz amongst the geek-heavy crowd that can control how the rest of the mainstream public sees their films through the Internet.

Scanning several reports, here’s what we think some of the best moments of the convention have been from those movie panels. It’s worth noting that the convention’s stance on filming exclusive preview reels and clips is that if the studio doesn’t want you to see them, they warn you several times and they have spotters whose job it is to note the people who are filming and kick them out of the convention.

Hugh Jackman Appears at 20th Century Fox Panel with X-Men Origins: Wolverine Footage in Tow
After the expected Q&A sessions on Thursday with cast members from The Day the Earth Stood Still and Max Payne, Fox pulled off a big upset by getting the Wolverine star directly from the airport to the convention. Jackman earned huge points with the crowd by thanking them for giving him a career and running down from the stage to thank Wolverine co-creator Len Wein for creating the character.

But of course, the biggest upset was having footage from the movie in hand, and the crowd went crazy upon catching their first glimpses of Deadpool and Gambit who will be making their first Marvel movie appearances.

Female Fans Flood Twilight, Summit Entertainment Panel with Estogen
As a female geek, I am always constantly annoyed when female fans aren’t seen as being a viable demographic with its own, different sense of power. When I was an editor for Sequential Tart, one of the things joked about was the fact that you could gauge how many women were at SDCC by how long the line was for the bathroom.

However, in the years since the first Lord of the Rings movie came out with its highly telegenic and swoon-worthy male cast, Internet-savvy female fans have become a growing demographic that mainstream Hollywood is finally starting to notice. The best indicator of this would have been Summit Entertainment’s Q&A session with the cast of Twilight where women asked all the questions and screamed the loudest. It may not be a step in the right direction towards equality amongst the genders, but at least it’s a step.

Samuel L. Jackson Encourages Young People to Follow their Dreams in an Unusual Way During Panel for The Spirit
When prompted by the audience shouting about a Nick Fury action figure at this timestamp referencing his special appearance in the coda to Iron Man, Jackson said, “When I was growing up, Nick Fury was a white man. He finally evolved into something that makes sense to me.” The entire crowd howled with laughter when he followed that up by saying, “But don’t worry, see? You, too, can grow up to be a black man.”