1. Hop (Universal, 3,577 Theaters, 90 Minutes, Rated PG): There hasn’t been a really good coming of age movie set in the world of dance since Footloose or, some might say, Shag. Well, we might have just found another one here.

Set in the 1950s, Dakota Fanning plays a young army brat who is making the subtle change from a tomboy to a grown woman. When her army colonel father (J.K. Simmons) relocates to an army base in Alabama, Vanessa (Fanning) becomes swept away by the local sock hop culture of her new town. A friendship with a rebellious young woman/mother figure (Kristen Stewart) threatens the once rock solid relationship between father and daughter. But things really start heating up when the coolest boy in town (Joe Jonas) takes an interest in Vanessa. 

The film is an interesting mix between a coming of age love story, McCarthyist politics, and the sock hop, not an easy combo to pull off. But Sam Raimi felt so passionate about the script that he felt comfortable leaving Spider-Man 4 behind to shoot this film. Let’s hope it’s worth it.  

2. Source Code (Summitt Entertainment, 2,961 Theaters, 93 Minutes, Rated PG): I wonder if the makers of this film somehow knew that The Social Network would become such a critical and commercial success when they had this film greenlit. Because how else would you explain how a film about the creation of the Linux operating system kernel could ever get made?

Shia LaBeouf stars as Linus Torvalds, the University of Helsinki, Finland student who came up with the idea of the free operating system while studying to be a computer scientist. The film studies the rise in the popularity of Linux amongst the computer savvy hipsters of the world.

The true life story doesn’t have all the twists, turns and backstabbing that the creation of Facebook has, but director D.J. Caruso has amped up the story by adding elements of fantasy, including a slow-motion, Matrix-like martial arts fight between Torvalds and Microsoft CEO Bill Gates (played by Rainn Wilson) over the latter company’s use of Torvalds’ Hyper-V network driver.  

3. Insidious (FilmDistrict, 2,408 Theaters, 98 Minutes, Rated PG-13): Andy Warhol once said that everyone will be famous for 15 minutes. I would like to add a correlary to that maxim. Every rap artist, no matter how obscure, will get their own biopic.

This film tells the life story of The Insidious SML, a “rap star” that was a curiousity in the late 90s-early 00s due to his strange road to fame.

Insidious SML (played by Jonah Hill), originally known as Joachim Hesse, who as a young teen, as part of the Amish Community in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, found his life was changed when he inadvertently heard a Snoop Dogg song coming from a car that passed his buggy.

Taking it as a sign from God, Insidious SML became known briefly as “The Mennonite Matisyahu.” He scored minor hits on the Billboard Rap and Dance charts with his songs “Churn That Butter (It’s For Real)” and “Not Buttoned Up” before a tragic threshing accident claimed his life at 23.  

Seriously, I don’t know how his life can fill eight minutes, let alone 98, but I trust director Taylor Hackford can find something to fill up that time.

4. The King’s Speech (PG-13 edit) (The Weinstein Company, 1,011 Theaters, 118 Minutes): On August 27, 1926, King Ludwig the Fourth of Fredonia gave a speech to the National Flower Registry of Fredonia on the germination patterns of the Fredonian Marigold. The speech was renowned for being one of the longest speeches (just over 115 minutes) and on one of the most boring subjects imaginable.

Well, leave it to Lars von Trier to turn that black mark in Fredonian history into an art house film. He presents the original speech, in its entirety, on a blank black stage. He has taken some liberties with history. Now, at various times during the speech, the King (played in Kabuki makeup by Udo Kier) is randomly pelted with compost and peat moss.

This is a different version of the film than the one that played at the Cannes Film Festival, as von Trier reshot some of the full-frontal nudity scenes so that the film could get wider distribution.

And, on behalf of everyone here at FilmBuffOnline, we would like to wish you, if you haven’t guessed, a Happy April Fool’s Day!

In what is sure to be a disappointment to many fans, it turns out that while Marvel Studios hired Die Hard creator Shane Black to direct Iron Man 3, they will be turning to someone else to pen the screenplay for the film. Instead, Marvel has tapped Drew Pearce to script the threequel.

Deadline is reporting that Marvel picked Pearce for the job on the strength of his draft for their in development adaptation of the comic book The Runaways. Pearce also has superhero experience through his BBC comedy series No Heroics, about a bar where the superpowered can hang out and have a few drinks under the proviso that they don’t use their powers on the premises.

Black won the director’s chair following the departure of Iron Man I & II director Jon Favreau based on his relationship with star Robert Downey Jr.

According to the report, Pearce will be working closely with Black on the screenplay, but that is too be expected. So I guess we shouldn’t be too disappointed that Black won’t be writing the script himself. I’m willing to bet that Black’s strong sense of action will still permeate the screenplay.

Here’s the first clip from Marvel Studio’s upcoming Thor film. It’s from the sequence where the titular Norse god (Chris Hemsworth) has just been thrown out of Asgard by his father Odin (Anthony Hopkins) and is found in the desert by Jane Foster Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) and friends (Kat Dennings, Stellan Skarsgård). It’s a scene we’re already familiar with from the trailer,though here we get to see it play out in its entirety.

Thor arrives in theaters on May 6.

Academy Award winner Geoffrey Rush will be lending his voice to one of the alien characters in the upcoming comic book adaptation Green Lantern.

Rush will be voicing the CG character of Tomar-Re, an alien member of the inter-galactic police force that Ryan Reynold’s Hal Jordan finds himself inducted into. Introduced in the comics in 1961, the beak-faced Tomar-Re was the first member of the Green Lantern Corps that Hal met after he was given a Corps power ring by another dying member. Tomar-Re served as a teacher and mentor to Hal, helping him to learn how to use the ring and master its amazing abilities.

In addition to the picture to the right, you can catch a glimpse of Tomar-Re in the teaser trailer below. Hopefully there will be more of him to see when the first full Green Lanter trailer debuts in May when it is scheduled to be attached to Thor.

Green Lantern hits theaters on June 17 and marks the first time that a DC Comics superhero who isn’t Batman or Superman* has made it to the big screen. It certainly won’t be the last if their corporate sibling Warner brothers gets their way. In addition to a third Christopher Nolan-helmed Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises, the studio is currently developing a Flash film and the superhero team-up The Justice League.

Via LA Times Hero Complex.

So yesterday evening George Lucas announced the post-production firm that will be handling the conversion of his Star Wars series of films to 3D. But if the name Prime Focus doesn’t ring a few bells than perhaps their work will. But those bells it rings may just be warning bells.

Prime Focus is the production house behind the post-production 2D-to-3D conversions of last year’s Clash Of The Titans.

I’ll let that sink in for a moment.

Clash Of The Titans. The most critically and audience-reviled 3D conversion job in the short history of the current 3D boom is on the resume of the company that will be handling the conversion of Star Wars to 3D. Now to be fair, the company only had 10 weeks to complete the entire job. But still, it was some pretty dodgy work. Prime Focus had more time to do conversions on the Wes Craven film My Soul To Take and The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader, and while the results for those were a bit better, they still aren’t anything to write home about.

But despite this track record, Lucas has chosen them after what he describes, “an exhaustive testing process.” And let it not be said that Lucas and his Industrial Light and Magic effects company don’t know their business when it comes to visual effects.Lucas himself gave the company the thumbs up last night when he stated, “It was incredibly important to me that we have the technology, the resources and the time to do this right. I’m very happy with the results I’ve been seeing on Episode I.”

We have almost a year until the 3D conversion of Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace hits theaters. Hopefully this will be enough time for Prime Focus to deliver the results that Lucas seems to be promising. It still doesn’t answer the question why, outside of a it being another money grab, we actually need to see the Star Wars movies in 3D though.

Paramount’s troubles in finding a co-financier for their adaptation of Max Brooks’ zombie novel World War Z may be over. Deadline is reporting that the studio is currently in negotiations with David Ellison and his production company Skydance “and as many as two other financiers” to help shoulder the projected $125 million cost of the project.

Last week, it was looking doubtful that Paramount would proceed with the project without a co-production deal with someone. Ellison was mentioned as a possible candidate, as Skydance already was working with Paramount on their upcoming films Mission: Impossible IV and Top Gun II.

The film will star Brad Pitt and focus on a UN researcher investigating the cause of a world wide zombie outbreak ten years after the fact. Marc Forster is set to direct.

Once the financing deal(s) go through, the plan appears to have the film in production by June. And Paramount needs to hurry, if they want to beat the horde of zombie projects currently shuffling towards cinemas. In addition to a sequel to Zombieland and new installments in the 28 Days Later and Resident Evil franchises,  there are at least four other zombie projects in development right now. Two scripts that were on last year’s Black List – The Kitchen Sink and Boy Scouts Vs Zombies – have been bought and are being worked on. Jonah Hill is already attached to direct Kitchen Sink, which features some teenagers allying themselves with a zombie and a vampire to fight off an alien invasion. Sony has recently made a deal with Platinum Dunes to adapt the indie comic Zombies Vs Robots. But the most intriguing project has to be Paul Is Undead, a comedy which retells the story of the Beatles as if they were zombies.

Disney has announced the title for the follow up to the hit Pixar animated feature Monsters, Inc. – Monster University.

The announcement was made earlier to day at CinemaCon in Las Vegas, though the names of any screenwriter or director were not forthcoming.

Little is known about the film’s plot other than it will be a prequel and will show how scare engineers Mike and Sully became friends. Billy Crystal and John Goodman will be back to supply their voices to the two characters. Steve Buscemi will also be back to play their nemesis Randall Boggs.

The film is currently scheduled for a late 2012 release.

Via Hollywood Reporter.

Here’s the difference between the Marvel and DC film empires. The Marvel film efforts are such a well oiled machine that nothing short of a fistfight on set will get mention in the trades. However, all it takes is a casual mention about a potential film schedule from a head executive at Warner brothers to have all the people to start running around like a chicken with their heads cut off.

What’s causing all the chicken’s to run, including this one, is information culled from an L.A. Times interview with Warner Brothers executive Jeff Robinov and reported on the paper’s Hero Complex blog about the company’s plans for  DC Comics properties. The information concerns the future of the Bat-franchise after The Dark Knight Rises—and what role Christopher Nolan’s role in that future will be—and a potential restart to the aborted Justice League film.

While it does appear the The Dark Knight Rises will close out the Christian Bale starring/Nolan directed Batman trilogy, the Batfilms will go on as the property will be rebooted once again immediately afterword. The good news is that Nolan will stay on board, producing the reboot with his wife Emma Thomas.

The bad news is that producing isn’t the same as directing or writing. Nolan’s involvement in both those areas is what makes the current series of films great. Well, maybe they learned a lesson from the first films series. If they rebooted at three back then, we wouldn’t have had to suffer through Batman and Robin.

The news about Justice League being in the works is interesting for a number of reasons. Robinov makes it seem like the film is on the fast track, with a 2013 release date mentioned.  Of course, a Justice League film got all the way to the costume-making, cast-relocating-to-shooting-location stage back in 2007 before a litany of problems caused Warners to pull the plug on it.

Also, Geoff Johns, DC’s liaison with Warner Brothers concerning film adaptations of DC characters, stated as recently as last October at the New York Comic Con that there was no Justice League film in the works.

This film is mean to be a vehicle that restarts the stalled Flash and Wonder Woman film franchises. This fact cause many to question if, like Marvel’s The Avengers, will this be shared universe project, meaning Henry Cavill as the Justice League’s Superman and Ryan Reynolds as its Green Lantern. This kind of shared universe was expressly disavowed by Nolan back when he took over producing the Superman reboot. He made it clear that his Batman films were definitely in a different universe that the Superman films.

One question was addressed by Robinov—how Wonder Woman in the Justice League and her own film franchise would affect the Wonder Woman TV series in the works. Robinov considers it to be like Smallville and Superman Returns—two different takes on the same concept, different enough to avoid confusion. However, it worked that time because Smallville was an unique take on Supeman’s life as a teen and young adult, while Bryan Singer’s film dealt with a grown Superman. The Wonder Woman in the films and the TV show would appear to be much closer in age, so the lines of distinction will be far muddier.

Paramount Pictures likes being in the Chris Pine business. Not only is he heading up the studio’s highly successful Star Trek franchise reboot, they have tapped the actor to star in their relaunch of their Jack Ryan franchise, based on the popular series of novels by Tom Clancy. Initial plans called for Pine to make Paramount’s Jack Ryan feature before reporting for duty on board the starship Enterprise for his second Star Trek film this fall. However, script issues are forcing Paramount and Pine to flip that schedule.

The setback to the Ryan franchise stems from writer Steve Zaillian backing out of a rewrite assignment for the upcoming film. Zaillian, no stranger to franchise having scripted Clear And Present Danger (1994) and did an uncredited polish on Patriot Games (1992), was brought on board just a month ago to do a rewrite of the script currently in development. Zaillian backed out of the project about two weeks later, leaving the studio scrambling to hire another writer.

Deadline is reporting that the while Paramount has “an OK version of Ryan [that] could have been put into production this year,” the studio is more concerned with taking the time to relaunch the franchise as strongly as possible rather than rushing to meet a pre-ordained release date.

The Jack Ryan reboot has its roots back in an Adam Cozad unrelated spec script titled Dubai, which was one the 2007  Black List. At the time, the script had the log line “A young economist is forced to go on the run to prove his innocence after Iranian operatives in Dubai use him as part of a plot to collapse the United States economy.”

Paramount purchased the script and hired Cozad to retool it to relaunch the franchise. Anthony Peckham came on board and took a pass at it followed by another draft from Cozad. Somewhere along the line the title changed to Moscow. The film’s plot would launch out of a line of dialogue from the very first Jack Ryan cinematic adventure, The Hunt For Red October, where it was mentioned that Ryan was the only survivor of helicopter crash when he was a 23-year old Marine platoon leader.

I have to applaud Paramount for how they are handling this. I’m not even a big fan of the franchise or of Clancy’s original novels, but I’m glad to see that they’re not pushing forward with this relaunch until they are happy with the script. Now granted, further delays could motivate signed director Jack Bender to seek other work and that could lead to a further delay while a new director is hired. Overall, though, the caution that the studio is showing is reason to be optimistic.

Russell Crowe is reportedly in discussion to star in Step Brother‘s director Adam McKay’s in development comic book adaptation The Boys.

Crowe would play Billy Butcher, the head of an elite CIA black ops group of misfits who are charged with policing the world’s superhero population and who often fulfill their duty with excessive force. The original comic series was created by writer Garth Ennis and artist Darick Robertson as a dark satire on standard superhero fare.

McKay has previously stated that Simon Pegg is already attached to play another one of the Boys, Hughie. Pegg was the visual inspiration for the character in the comics.

Currently, McKay is working on the screenplay for the project.

Via It’s On The Grid.