Today, alternate beginnings and endings of films are a standard feature on DVDs. But that wasn’t always the case.

Back in the early days of the format, 1998 specifically, studios were just starting to discover that consumers really liked the extra stuff that could be put on to the shiny round discs and began rummaging around their vaults and closets to see what they had that could be used to add some value to, and raise the price a bit of, a DVD.Unfortunately, every now and again that approach would backfire on them.

For their DVD release of director Frank Oz’s 1986 screen adaptation of the musical Little Shop Of Horrors, Warner Brothers decided to include the film’s original ending as a bonus.

Filmed at an expense of around $5 million, the approximately 23 minute, original ending to Little Shop Of Horrors faithfully translates and then expands upon the stage version’s finale. I won’t spoil how things play out, you can see that after the jump below, but after watching it, you can understand how the test audiences may have responded negatively to such a dark finale. Some quick rewrites and reshoots later and the film had the happier ending with which we’re familiar.

Unfortunately, when the film’s producer David Geffen saw that Warners had only a grainy-looking, black and white work print of the finale, lacking some finished effects, postproduction sound and other tweaks, he blew his stack. Warners responded by quickly recalling the discs off shelves. Promises were made that a better, more complete and in color version would eventually be added to a new release, but so far it has yet to materialize. A search of studio materials in 2007 revealed that Warner Brothers copy of the ending was lost in a fire in 2002. While Geffen claims to have a copy of the finale, it has yet to be released.

In the meantime, we have relief for those of you who want to see the original ending, but don’t have the $150 to pickup a copy of the quickly recalled Little Shop DVD off eBay. The workprint version has been posted on YouTUbe, and we bring it to you in three parts right after the break. Personally, I like it. It is big, epic and bold. And I can also see how most people would be ticked off by it, which I think is another reason why I like it.

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With its release Christmas Day release fast approaching, Lionsgate has released the final theatrical poster for their comic book adaptation The Spirit. (See below, click to make bigger) The buzz has been decideedly mixed on this, but I have my fingers crossed. I have long been an admirer of the adventurers of cartoonist Will Eisner’s masked hero and am hoping that director Frank Miller can successfully capture the strip’s tone and unique graphic style that made The Spirit one of the most influential comics in the history of the medium.

Via Cinematical.

With 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand pulling in $459 million at the box office world wide, it seems only natural that studio Twentieth Century Fox is looking to extend its X-Men comic book movie franchise beyond next summer’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine and their planned X-Men Origins: Magneto spinoff films.

Towards that end, the studio has brought on Josh Schwartz, creator of the teen soap opera Gossip Girl, to script X-Men: First Class, which will focus on a group of younger mutant heroes, some of whom have already appeared in the previous three X-Men films.

Variety reports that the studio is hoping that Schwartz, who has also created the teen-oriented The OC and the comedic spy series Chuck, is “expected to inject a next-gen sensibility into the superhero series.”

The X-Men universe certainly holds plenty of storytelling opportunities. The original 1960s comic book series, about a group of teens who received superpowers through an accident of birth and who fought to overcome the fear and prejudice they encountered because of their differences, is often seen as an allegory for the then current Civil Rights movement. Writer/director Bryan Singer tapped similar allegorical territory for the first two X-Men films, when he drew parallels between the mutant heroes and the gay rights movement.

Officially, Fox has been keeping quiet about its plans for the future of the X-Men franchise. However, hoping that Schwartz will “inject a next-gen sensibility into the superhero series,” sounds more like a marketing decision than any kind of storytelling one. And while studios are definitely in the business to turn a profit, turning the franchise into some angst-ridden teen soap opera is probably going to alienate a lot of fans, ultimately diminishing the odds that Fox will be able to milk the concept for additional sequels. Of course, super powered soap opera is what has been fueling the Superman-as-a-teen television series Smallville for nearly eight years now. That show has been getting continuously good ratings while annoying many comic book collectors who feel it has habitually strayed far from the traditional story of a young, pre-Superman Clark Kent. Can a balance be struck to appease both fans and the general public? Singer was able to do it with his first two films. Hopefully, that kind of lightening in a bottle can be captured again.

RKO continues to plunder its vaults for classic movies to remake with the announcement that it is giving a modern makeover to the 1936 comedy Love On A Bet.

The original starred Gene Raymond as a man who bets his rich uncle that he can start in New York City’s Central Park in nothing but his underwear and travel to California, arriving with a new suit, $100 in his pocket and a fiancée. The adorable and sassy Wendy Barrie co-stars as Raymond’s love interest.

Steve Carr is set to be directing this new version from a script by Dave Punch. Producer Ted Hartley told the Hollywood Reporter-

The original took place in the days where it was racy to be in underwear. This movie is going to start out with the guy wearing a lot less than his underwear. It’s going to be edgy and romantic.

I’m not sure that the words “edgy” and “romantic” really go well together. But if this project gets the greenlight – it is looking to start shooting next year – then perhaps it will help get the original version out on DVD.

Steven Spielberg and Will Smith’s English version of the Korean director Park Chan-Wook’s Oldboy may be getting a screenwriter. Scripter Mark Protosevich is reportedly in early talks with DreamWorks to write the remake.

As if I didn’t have much faith in this project already, this news does nothing to allay my fears. Protosevich is the screenwriter behind 2006’s update of The Poseidon Adventure, Poseidon, which was not a great film. He also turned in the first drafts on what would become Will Smith’s disappointing 2007 film I Am Legend. Though to be fair, Protosevich’s draft had been written when Arnold Schwarzenegger was still attached to the project and it under went some significant rewrites when Smith took Schwarzenegger’s place on the cast list.

Protosevich also worked on Marvel Studio’s upcoming Thor comic book adaptation, though his draft has been rewritten, by J. Michael Straczynski as rumor would have it, to bring its budget down to a more manageable level.

Via The Hollywood Reporter.

Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely are in negotiations to script Marvel Studio’s Captain America comic book adaptation. The film, now entitled First Avenger: Captain America, will tell the story of how the Army experimented on a 4F Steve Rogers during World War II, giving him enhanced strength and agility to go and fight the Nazis. Rocketeer helmer Joe Johnston is already on board to direct.

Markus and McFeely already have some experience at adapting works for film, having worked on the scripts for The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe and its sequel Prince Caspian.

Captain America is set to be the penultimate chapter in Marvel’s plans to crossover their various superhero film franchises - Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk and the upcoming Thor - in the superhero team film The Avengers. Captain America is due in May 2011 with The Avengers hitting screens a few months later.

Via The Hollywood Reporter.

It was 80 years ago today that the cartoon short Steamboat Williepremiered at the 79th Street Theater in New York City. Created and directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, the film introduced the world to Mickey Mouse, who in a few short years would become one of the most famous cartoon characters in the world. Although it had been released as a silent a few months earlier, the version that bowed on this date contained the first fully synchronized music, dialogue and sound-effects soundtracks.

More recently, the film has generated some controversy when it was suggested by some legal analysts that the Walt Disney Company’s copyright claim on the film may be in doubt. As such, we feel on reasonably solid legal ground to present to you Steamboat Willie. Enjoy. 

With the release of the first real footage from J. J. Abrams upcoming Star Trek reboot in the form of an exciting trailer, fans have probably been pouring over the clip, analyzing it like the Zapruder film. The folks over at Slash Film have posted a collection of 50 screengrabs form the hi-def version available online. Check them out below. 

Seth Gordon, the director behind the really fun documentary The King Of Kong: A Fistful Of Quarters, has signed to helm the feature Suicide Squad for Working Title Films Universal Studios.

The film, from screenwriter Chris Johnson, will tell the story of a recently paroled con man who recruits a crew of amateur henchmen to help pull a heist at the Kentucky Derby. Most recently, screenwriting siblings Matt and Billy Eddy have turned in a draft of the script.

The film marks the fourth fiction feature that the director has signed for following the critical success of his video game documentary The King Of Kong. His first feature, Four Christmases, is due in theaters next Wednesday. Gordon is also attached to The Only Living Boy In New York for Sony and is developing a fictionalized version of King Of Kong at New Line.

Gordon hasn’t completely abandoned the documentary genre as he will be contributing a segment to the upcoming multi-director documentary Freakanomics.

Via The Hollywood Reporter.

Howard Stern starring in a Marvel Comics superhero movie?

It almost happened according to a revelation the talk show host stated this morning on his Sirius-XM Satellite Radio program. Stern was chatting with a caller who had asked if there was ever a chance that he would ever considering resurrecting his comedy superhero film project The Adventures Of Fartman. (See our review of the hilarious script written for the project here.) Stern stated that he would like to get around to someday before disclosing that he came close to making another superhero movie.

I met with these guys from Marvel a few years ago and they had an idea for a superhero movie for me, but it was a serious superhero movie. I liked that better. There were some funny aspects to it because my parents were involved, my real parents. It was funny.

I would have done that movie. I don’t know what happened. We just kind of burned out. They went off on another project, some stupid thing like Iron Man, and we never got around to it.

Unfortunately, Stern did not specify which character he had been approached with. While I am more a reader of DC Comics’ output than I am of Marvel’s, I think I am fairly conversant with Marvel’s characters, but after wracking my brains for the past couple of hours I can not think of any superhero character that Howard Stern would be a good fit for.

Outside of Spider-Man, I can’t even think of a character whose parents or parental-type figures are an active part of their story. Thor? While I think seeing Stern’s father Ben (“Shut up! Sit down!”) as Odin would be a rather interesting and funny way to go, I just don’t see Howard himself as the God of Thunder. Unless it was butt thunder, that is.

Every now and then you hear about some interesting ideas for movie casting that never panned out for one reason or another. This is one of those stories with just enough details to be maddeningly tantalizing. Hopefully, more information as to what this project might have been will come to light.

Previously, Stern had been rumored to be in consideration for the part of the villainous Scarecrow in a projected fifth Batman movie back in the 1990s, though Stern always denied that he had been approached by anyone involved.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has released its shortlist of feature-length documentaries that are eligible for nomination for an Academy Award.

They are, in alphabetical order-

• At the Death House Door
• The Betrayal (Nerakhoon)
• Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh
• Encounters at the End of the World
• Fuel
• The Garden
• Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts
• I.O.U.S.A.
• In a Dream
• Made in America
• Man on Wire
• Pray the Devil Back to Hell
• Standard Operating Procedure
• They Killed Sister Dorothy
• Trouble the Water

According to the Academy’s rules, members of the Documentary Branch will select five films from the shortlist to be the official nominations for the Documentary Feature Oscar. Those five will be voted on by all Academy members.

This year’s hopefuls are an interesting mix, and I don’t think that there are really any here the don’t deserve one of the five nomination spots. While I don’t like making Oscar predictions, I am going to go out on a limb and suggest that Man On Wire, the story of a high wire walker who strung and walked a line between the Twin Towers of the World Trade center in the 1970s, will be the film taking home the gold.

It is no secret that in recent years, studios have embraced the internet as a way to promote their movies. (We’ll put aside the fact that they also excoriate the internet when information about their films leaks early or digital copies of films are available for download before they’re even in theaters.)

But potential ticket-buying audiences aren’t the sole online target of the studios. They’re also using the web to promote their films as potential Academy Award nominees to those in the business who are members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and who get to vote on such things.

The last couple of years have seen a sharp rise in studios with specific websites touting their films for Oscar gold. While most of these sites are simply variations of the “For Your Conisderation” advertisments that have appeared in print publications for decades, there is a boon for those film fans who like to read screenplays. Rather than go to the expense of printing up hundreds of copies of the scripts they hope to get nominated for the Academy Awards’ two screenplay categories, many studios have taken to posting them on line as downloadable PDF files, available for anyone who wants a copy.

Here is a breakdown of what you can find to read where-

Fornearly a year up until its release this past summer, the screenplay for Christopher Nolan’s epic comic book adaptation The Dark Knight was the unobtainable Holy Grail among script traders. But now, Warner Brothers has posted it on their Oscar promotion site. Warners is also promoting the upcoming Clint Eastwood vehicle Gran Torino for Academy Award consideration, but probably are withholding from posting the screenplay until after the movie is released in December.

Meanwhile, Paramount Vantage has placed the screenplays for two of their three nomination hopefuls The Duchess, Defiance and Revolutionary Road on line. Unfortunately, the studio has decided against posting them as downloadable PDF files, instead opting to make them readable only on the site. Currently only the scripts for The Duchess and Defiance are available to read, with Revolutionary Road’s screenplay is being held back until after the film’s theatrical release. I guess no one at Paramount Vantage realizes that anyone who has ever traded a script at the IMDb already has a copy of it.

Universal has posted the scripts for a pair of true-story stories- Changeling and Frost/Nixon.

Walt Disney is promoting five contenders for Oscar gold, three of which - Bolt, High School Musical 3 and WALL-E - the studio hopes will make the Best Screenplay shortlists. However, only the WALL-E screenplay is available to read at this time.

Although Paramount Studios is pimping The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, Kung Fu Panda, Tropic Thunder and Madagascar: Back 2 Africa for nominations in several categories, including the screenplay categories, the studio has not posted any of the screenplays they would like Academy voters to consider on their site this year. Other studios that have posted screenplays in the past, but have not done so as of yet include Lionsgate, Miramax, Fox Searchlight and Focus Features.

If you’re thinking about picking up Guillermo Del Toro’s Hellboy II: The Golden Army, which is coming out on Blu-Ray disc today, you’ll probably want to pick it up before the weekend.

On Sunday, Del Toro will host a live chat powered via the BLu-Ray disc release. All you need to do is go to Universal’s website and register for the event and then have your Blu-Ray player hooked up to the internet and be ready to ask a question of the director starting at 6 pm Pacific time.

While I am sure that there are a few folks with Hellboy related questions, I have a sneaking suspicion that a majority of the questions are going to be in regards to the progress he is making on his collaboration with Peter Jackson on the upcoming two films based on J. R. R. Tolkein’s The Hobbit.

Late last week, an earlier version of the final one sheet for Darren Aronofsky’s upcoming film The Wrestler. Now, we have the official, final version of the poster for your purusal.

Mickey Rourke stars as a washed up professional wrestler who contemplates going back into the ring even though it may kill him. It is Aronofsky’s first film since the poorly received The Fountain (2006).

Although it still has a month until it hits theaters, The Wrestler has already been gathering positive notices from its handful of film festival screenings it has already had. This one has been one my short list of anticipated films of the season, a time when a lot of Oscar bait will be hitting the screen.

Screenwriters are often overlooked in the production process. If a film is a hit the praise goes to the actors or directors, likewise the blame if the project bombs. But it is the writer who builds the framework for those successes and failures. While it is a shame that they rarely get the accolades for a box office triumph, they also avoid the stigma of a disaster, allowing them to work again.

For example, Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, the writing duo behind this past summer’s terrible The Mummy: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor, the waste of Jackie Chan’s time and talent known as Shanghai Noon and Shanghai Knights and the long-running teen soap-opera disguised as a superhero show Smallville, have been hired to do a rewrite on Warner Brothers in development Robotech film. The pair will be rewriting a draft by the great Lawrence Kasdan.

Robotech is a popular animae franchise that tells the story of Earth beating back three successive alien invasions using technology discovered in a wrecked alien spacecraft. At the height of its popularity in the 1980s, the series spun off a multitude of toys, comic books, novels and role playing and video games.

Audaciously, the Hollywood Reporter attributes Gough and Millar’s hiring to a desire of the studio to “bring action and geek cred to the table.” Really? The studio thinks that bringing in the guys who wrote Herbie: Fully Loaded to rewrite a screenplay by the guy who wrote Raiders Of The Lost Ark and The Empire Strikes Back is going to give the project some “geek cred”? This sounds like hiring a Burger King fry cook to tell Wolfgang Puck how to cook a haute cuisine dinner. While I guarantee that this will definitely bring attention from genre fans to the project, I don’t think that their reaction will quite be what the studio is hoping for.

Meanwhile, Variety is reporting that Columbia is in talks with Michael Ferris and John Brancato to take on the screenwriting duties for their planned XXX: The Return Of Xander Cage. Ferris and Brancato have previously written the screenplays for Terminator 3, The Net and Catwoman, while XXX: The Return Of Xander Cage will bring back director Rob Cohen and actor Vin Diesel for a third installment of a franchise that no one was really clamoring for.

In their defense, though, Ferris and Brancato might be the best candidates for this film. The second XXX film killed off Diesel’s Cage character, so perhaps the two guys who managed to write a Catwoman movie that never once references Batman or Gotham City will be able to weasel their way out of that particular plot difficulty.

With the exception of extreme stupidity, and I’m of course talking about the upcoming Day The Earth Stood Still remake, I am willing to give any film project a chance. However, these early steps do not inspire much confidence.