I’m rooting for Anna Faris. She is that rare combination of sexy and funny, but she hasn’t had much luck in picking material that showcases both aspects equally. (The House Bunny could have, if it was a better script.) Hopefully, becoming attached to a remake of the classic 1980 Goldie Hawn comedy Private Benjamin will yield a project to do so. New Line is currently developing the new version and is in negotiations with scripter Amy Talkington, currently working on a remake of another 80s classic, Valley Girl,  to write the film.

Although the story of a woman who enlists in the Army following the death of her new husband not knowing what she was getting into is remembered as Hawn’s best film, it won three Academy Award nominations for Hawn, supporting actress Eileen Brennan and original screenplay (Nancy Meyers, Charles Shyer and Harvey Miller). Although the remake will be set in contemporary times, it reportedly will concentrate on the fish-out-of-water elements rather than poking fun of the military.

Via Hollywood Reporter.

1. The Last Song (Touchstone, 2,673 Theaters, 107 Minutes, Rated PG): Gee, Miley Cyrus starring in a movie adapted from a Nicholas Sparks novel? Let me wrap this up quick so I can camp out in line for tickets.

That was sarcasm, kids. I’m sure this film will be like printing money, at least until Clash of the Titans opens, but it really isn’t for me.

This is the first film Cyrus has starred in that didn’t have “Hannah” or “Montana” in the title (although she did have a role in 2003′s Big Fish) another salvo in the all out blitz of making her the biggest star, like, forever. I really don’t like the way Cyrus is constantly shoved at us. She’s not all that charming a waif and her talent level doesn’t really match up with her exposure. But then again, I am three times as old as her target audience, so what do I know?

The plot revolves around an angry young woman who uses a vacation to where her divorced father lives to reconnect with him. And, knowing Sparks, she probably falls in love at some point too.

Although Twentieth Century Fox has been keen on having a sequel or two to their 1996 hit Independence Day, one thing has always been a formidable bump in the road- the price tag for the acting services of one Will Smith. But now that Fox has some cash burning a hole in its corporate pockets thanks to a little film called Avatar, they may just be willing to pay that price.

IESB is reporting that an unnamed source is telling them that Fox has locked Smith into a deal for a second and third Independence Day film, possibly set to film back-to-back. But don’t start making plans to camp out at your local cineplex waiting for this to open. Independence Day director Dean Devlin is first committed to the thriller Anonymous, while Smith’s next project will either be a third Men In Black installment or the fantasy The City That Sailed. Even with everything else is in place at the completion of those two projects, the earliest that cameras could roll would be 2011.

Of course, given that the original Independence Day grossed just north of a billion dollars worldwide in 1996, one has to ask the question why Fox didn’t feel like meeting Smith’s quote, which was probably a bit less than the reported $20 million and a percentage of gross profits he commands now, then.

Remember, Fox has not officially confirmed the story and IESB is quick to point out that they have not been able to verify things through a second source, so take it all with the requisite pinch of salt.

The King of the Monsters is heading back to the big screen, and for the first time in over a decade he’s going to be stomping on cities courtesy of an American movie studio.

Legendary Pictures has secured the rights to develop and produce a new feature film starring Toho Pictures’s biggest star Godzilla. Warner Brothers is set to co-finance, co-produce and distribute the film, which all parties hope will be in theaters for 2012. Outside of a few producers attached to the film to represent the various studios involved no creative personnel have been announced as attached to the project.

Previously, Godzilla stormed US shores in Sony’s 1998 eponymously-named film from disaster maestros Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich. While it isn’t a bad monster movie per se, it wasn’t a good Godzilla film. The design of the monster deviated a bit too far from tradition for many of the monster’s fans. On a more thematic note, there was no sense that Devlin and Emmerich really understood the allegorical nature of Godzilla or tried to bring that to the big screen, opting instead for a rather empty roller-coaster ride. And finally, there was no radioactive fire breath. Seriously, why even do a Godzilla film if you’re going to leave that out?

The Japanese didn’t think too much of the Americanization of Godzilla either. In 2001′s Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack there was a sly slam against the movie. In response to the news about a possible attack by Godzilla on the United States, a soldier comments, “The Americans said it was Godzilla, but all the Japanese scientists denied it.” Still, feelings about that version of the monster must have mellowed a bit across the Pacific by 2004 enough to allow a version of the monster to appear in Godzilla: Final Wars, even if he does get beaten down by the true Godzilla fairly quickly..

Before the Devlin and Emmerich version reached the screens, a few other attempts at Americanizing Godzilla had been made. Cashing in on the 3d revival of the early `80s,  a version came close to going into production (See storyboard panel at right) before the project fell apart. Before Devlin and Emmerich came on at Sony, Speed director Jan de Bont was developing a version with future Pirates Of The Caribbean scripters Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio.

Via The Hollywood Reporter.

Be it coincidence or homage or the outright hope that they don’t get caught aping someone else’s movie, filmmakers have been replicating the work of those who have gone before them for some time now. Every now and then we like to stop and point out one of those instances.*

Open this past weekend to a surprisingly low box office gross of $13 million, Hot Tub Time Machine sends four guys back to 1986 via the titular jacuzzi with the expected comedic results. To help set the mood, director Steve Pink has peppered the film with a number of references to teen comedies and dramedies of the `80s. Some are extremely subtle, but others are much more obvious. But no reference is more apparent than the scene where John Cusack’s character spends some time getting to know Spin magazine reporter April played by Lizzy Caplan. Pink decided to stage the scene in a way extremely familiar to anyone who has seen John Hughes’s Sixteen Candles. (And that’s a lot of people.)

As the scene comes late in Hot Tub Time Machine, I won’t spoil it by comparing it directly to the scene in Sixteen Candles. Suffice it to say, though, that there is a similar romantic tension, which Pink shorthands for us with the reference.

*And in the spirit of the swipe, we readily acknowledge that we were “inspired” by a similar feature over at Rich Johnson’s comic book news and gossip site, Bleeding Cool.

Normally, we don’t talk box office here, but this story caught my eye and was too amazing to not pass along.

If you haven’t heard of the Uma Thurman comedy Motherhood, don’t worry. Not a lot of people have. In its four weeks of theatrical release last year, it screened in just 48 theaters, earning an anemic $93,388 at the box office. But in England, the film has reportedly done even worse. The plan seemed to be to have it open on just one screen in London and hope that its exclusivity builds interest for a wider release. However, anything but that happened. According to the Guardian -

Over its opening weekend, no more than a dozen people went to see Motherhood, a semi-autobiographical account of stressed-out Manhattan parenting written and directed by Katherine Dieckmann. The film made just £88 (approximately $130) on the weekend of Friday 5 March. On its debut Sunday, box office takings were £9, meaning one person bought a ticket.

There have been plenty of films that have bombed at the box office, some even worse than Motherhood. The 2006 indie Zyzzyx Road, with Tom Sizemore and Katherine Hiegl, infamously earned $30 during its six day release in one Dallas, Texas cinema to become the lowest grossing film of all time. The Paris Hilton headlining 2008 comedy The Hottie & The Nottie only earned $27,696 during the one week it was on 111 screens , with an average of just 28 people per theater seeing the movie opening weekend.

Carter Beats The Devil, Glen David Gold’s 2001 historical thriller novel about a famous stage magician who gets caught up in the events surrounding the death of President William G. Harding, has been optioned by Warner Brothers.

The news comes from Film School Rejects, who got the word from Gold himself after the site ran a story recently about how the book was prime material for a possible big screen adaptation. As the deal had just been signed this week, there are no additional details as to what, if any, scripters, producers or other production personnel have been attached to the project.

The book fictionalizes the life story of Charles Carter, whom no less than Harry Houdini gave the nickname “Carter The Great.” After he performs for President Harding, even bringing him up on to the stage to assist with a trick for the show’s finale. But when the President is found dead in his hotel room hours later, Carter comes under the scrutiny of a US Secret Service Agent. As the investigation unfolds, we are treated to flashbacks to Carter’s life, with him encountering historical personages from a pre-film career Marx Brothers to Houdini to BMW founder Max Friz to Philo Farnsworth, the inventor of television.

The book has been optioned before, though nothing concrete ever got moving before the option lapsed. Perhaps Warner can perform the right magic to get it to the screen.

To cheer up a friend, four guys (John Cusack, Rob Corddry, Craig Robinson and Clark Duke) head to the ski resort that figured heavily in three of their wild youths. Disappointment over how the years have shabbily treated the town and ski lodge leads way to a night of heavy drinking in a hot tub. But as the title of the film attests to and the quartet quickly learn upon waking the next morning, it was no ordinary hot tub that they took their drunken dip in. They find themselves in 1986 and the three older friends realize that this may be a chance to change how their lives turned out.

If this sounds like a middle-aged version of Back To The Future, you’d be right. (One character even gets a story point directly lifted from the film, though here it pays off much differently for him than for Michael J. Fox.) The movie does sidestep the issue that these guys all kiss and two of them have sex with women roughly half their age. But then again, if this is a mid-life crisis fantasy, so it is probably to be expected.

Thankfully, the movie concentrates on finding laughs in its characters and situations, not in its setting. Things could very easily have degenerated in to a series of “Oh look, legwarmers! Weren’t they stupid!?” style of gags. Instead it finds its laughs in these three guys on the cusp of middle-age suddenly deciding whether or not to try and keep the one great girlfriend that got away, take a second stab at a music career or maybe avoid the fistfight that will shatter their inner confidence.

That’s not to say it doesn’t take advantage of the audience’s knowledge of `80s films. Skiing played a big part in Cusack’s Better Off Dead and in teen sex comedies like Hot Dog. A scene late in the film is staged just like a famous scene from one of John Hughes’s most famous films. There are certainly plenty of other references that speed by for those quick enough to catch them.

The movie assumes that the audience is familiar enough with the conventions of time travel stories (and some of them like the old Quantum Leap television series gets a knowing wink) and quickly dispenses with the obligatory scene in which one character warns the others about the dangers of changing the past.

At a crisp 90 minutes, Hot Tub Time Machine movies along at a good pace, though like its three middle-agers, it sags a bit around the middle when it tries to add a bit of pathos into the mix. Cusack, who star first rose in the latter half of the ‘80s, feels likes he’s playing a grown up version of Lloyd Dobler or Lane Meyer. Unfortunately, he is given the weakest material to work with out of the four leads and leaves me wondering if there wasn’t more of his performance left on the cutting room floor. Corddray’s normally broad comedic acting style is reined in somewhat, which helps bolster the moments when his character drops his boisterous attitude, exposing a more vulnerable side. It is a great turn which balances nicely with Craig Robinson’s more subtle and quiet, but no less funny, performance.

1. How To Train Your Dragon (Paramount/Dreamworks, 4,055 Theaters, 98 Minutes, Rated PG): I’m kind of glad that we have gotten to the point that people have been divided into Pixar camps and Dreamworks camps. It reminds me of the classic Disney versus Warner Brothers argument from the heyday of cel animation. In my opinion, not that Dreamworks is awful, but Pixar is vastly superior. But I digress…

This story is about a Viking youth who instead of killing a dragon as a rite of passage, decided instead to befriend and train the mythical creatures. This, of course, does not sit well with his tribe, and he must fight to protect his way of doing things.

Just an FYI, buzz abounds that this film will be the first where tickets to the 3-D showing will cost you $10 more per ticket. I, for one, am happy this is happening. Because something has got to kill the odius 3-D trend, and doubling the cost of a ticket for the silly trend in a shaky economy is something that will prove fatal. Then I won’t have to search so hard for 2-D showings any more.

2. Hot Tub Time Machine (MGM, 2,754 Theaters, 100 Minutes, Rated R):  I was a bit taken aback when I first saw John Cusack in this film. You usually think of him in more serious fare like 1408 or Grace is Gone or higher brow romantic comedies like Must Love Dogs, High Fidelity or America’s Sweethearts. You don’t automatically think of him in silly, man-child comedies such as this one.

Then I remember that Cusack got his start in the silly films of Savage Steve Holland–Better Off Dead and One Crazy Summer. He excelled in those films, so this one is like a return to his roots.

This film is about four friends who through a way ahead of its time hot tub, are able to go back in time to 1986. The trip to the past allows the four to right wrongs, rekindle romances, and wreak havoc.

Angela Bassett has been cast in the already-in-production superhero film Green Lantern. She will be playing Amanda Waller, the head of the super top secret government organization code named Task Force X, but more informally known as the Suicide Squad. The Squad is a group of supervillains pressed into service on dangerous covert missions in order to shave time off of their prison sentences.

Warners is positioning Green Lantern as the first in a series of big screen adaptation of the various superhero characters available in DC Comics’ library which will eventually take the tent pole positions currently occupied by the soon to finish Harry Potter series. While there has been no official announcement, many fans have assumed that Warners will try to do something similar to what Marvel Studios is doing with their comic book films and try and interweave them into one continuity. While it would definitely feel similar to the way Marvel Studios is using the spy organization SHIELD as one of the links between their movies, I have to wonder if Warners is looking at using the character of Amanda Waller in a similar way. Although Waller’s character has appeared through out the DC Comics universe, she is not particularly identified with Green Lantern, making her appearance in the film  seem unusual on the surface. Her inclusion would make more sense if the studio was setting the character up for additional appearances.

Green Lantern is currently shooting in New Orleans with Martin Campbell directing.

Via The Hollywood Reporter.