If this happens, it could make a lot of people really happy and have a lot of people complaining.

Deadline New York, the East Coast version of Deadline Hollywood gossip blog, is reporting that Joss Whedon is in “final negotiations” to direct the big screen adaptation of The Avengers comic book.

The film version is the ipso facto sequel to all of Marvel’s films from the last two years and the ones yet to come before The Avengers’ May 4, 2012 release date. Many of the stars of Marvel’s slate of films, including Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans, are rumored to have signed on to reprise their roles in the team-up film.

Whedon has a relationship with Marvel as a comic book writer, yet not on any of the Avengers‘  titles. He has written Astonishing X-Men and Runaways for the comic book company. Plots from his X-men comic book made it into X-Men: The Last Stand and he did an uncredited rewrite on the first X-Men film.

His past experience on such genre-friendly TV shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly and Dollhouse show his ability to juggle many interesting characters and be able to give them moments to shine. But this is usually chalked up to his writing ability, not his skill as a director. Also, those last two projects were cult hits yet ratings failures and his only film directing experience, the 2005 Firefly spin-off, Serenity, was a box office bomb. So while his legion of fans might be giddy with excitement, there is cause for concern.

How is this for awkward?

Columbia Pictures wants a third Ghostbusters film, but are reportedly starting to cool on the idea that  Ivan Reitman, who directed the first two comedies in the 1980s, should be the one behind the cameras for this third installment. From a studio standpoint, that doesn’t seem to unreasonable as Reitman’s last film was 2006′s unfunny My Super Ex-Girlfriend and who hasn’t had a strong hit since 1993′s Dave.

However, based on the deal made when the first Ghostbusters film was produced, Reitman and stars Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray and Harold Ramis all have a vote on any further potential Ghostbusters film and just one of them could scotch any attempted project. It’s this situation that has kept a potential third film from happening over the years.

I think you can do the math here. If Columbia tries to force Reitman out of the director’s chair and he doesn’t want to give it up, we have at best a stalemate that would delay the start of production on the sequel and at worst we are looking at the bullet that kills this attempt to get a Ghostbusters III made. And if Ghostbusters III doesn’t happen, the studio looses its last blockbuster off of its 2011 schedule.

Currently, Reitman is set to start production soon on the comedy Friends With Benefits (formerly known as Fuckbuddies when it made the 2008 Black List) for Paramount and perhaps Columbia was hoping that his duties there would preclude him from directing Ghostbusters III. However, Vulture is reporting from unnamed insiders that Reitman feels that he can handle both projects.

While we all sit and wait to see who may blink first, I think that Columbia should back down in this instance. It seems to me that working on Friends With Benefits before going in to production on Ghostbusters III might be a good way for Reitman to loosen up his directorial muscles. I certainly think that once he gets on set with Murray, Aykroyd and Ramis, the chemistry that made the first Ghostbusters film a smash will reassert itself. And perhaps that will be more of a certainty if Ramis gets a running start.

James Bobin, co-creator of the HBO comedy series Flight Of The Conchords, has been picked by Disney to helm their upcoming Muppet film. He’ll be working from a screenplay written by Forgetting Sarah Marshall scripters Jason Segal and Nicholas Stoller. Stoller, who also directed Forgetting Sarah Marshall, has been busy with that film’s spin off, Get Him To The Greek, and an upcoming film with Zac Effron. Bobin has passed on helming the Judd Apatow-produced Bridesmaids to take on the film.

Variety‘s report about Bobin’s hiring states that the film’s plot is still under wraps, but back in March 2008 Segal and Stoller stated that the storyline would center on the Muppet’s reuniting to save an old theater from an evil businessman who wants to tear it down for an oil deposit underneath. It’s unknown if this story has been abandoned or not. Also, at one time the film was going to be titled The Cheapest Muppet Movie Ever Made, but that title could be up in the air as well.

In the eight days since Sam Raimi walked away from the Spider-Man film franchise he built into a moneymaking powerhouse over a disagreement with studio Sony over the creative direction of a planned fourth installment and the studio announced that it was going to reboot the series, speculation has been rampant as to who the studio was going to tap for the director’s chair. Sony announced today that they have hired Marc Webb, director of the this summer’s indie hit 500 Days Of Summer, for the job.

A press release (feel free to ignore the self-congratulatory snark at the link destination) from the studio announced the hiring, with Sony Co-Chairman Amy Pascal stating-

At its core, Spider-Man is a small, intimate human story about an everyday teenager that takes place in an epic super-human world. The key for us as we sought a new director was to identify filmmakers who could give sharp focus to Peter Parker’s life. We wanted someone who could capture the awe of being in Peter’s shoes so the audience could experience his sense of discovery while giving real heart to the emotion, anxiety, and recklessness of that age and coupling all of that with the adrenaline of Spider-Man’s adventure. We believe Marc Webb is the perfect choice to bring us on that journey.

The rest of the press release is filled with similar upbeat quotes from Webb, Spider-Man co-creator and comics icon Stan Lee and the film’s producers Avi Arad and Laura Ziskin.

It should be noted that officially, Webb has only been hired for this one film, though there is speculation that his contract has the standard clauses for at least two sequels.

Most distressing is the Hollywood Reporter stating that Columbia is looking to give the film a budget of somewhere in the neighborhood of $80 million, a pretty crappy neighborhood if you’re looking to make a special-effects laden summer blockbuster. I’m old enough to remember the old live action Amazing Spider-Man TV series from the late `70s featuring Nicholas Hammond as Peter Parker. As special effect technology and television budgets were both impediments to really bringing the Wall Crawler to the small screen, so the show spent a lot of time focused on Peter Parker investigating what ever organized crime group he was up against in that week’s episode. I forsee much more of Peter in his “civvies” rather than swinging on a web through the concrete canyons of Manhattan.

They may not know yet when they’ll be rolling cameras, but we know who will be yelling “Action!” on the next James Bond adventure.

American Beauty and Revolutionary Road director Sam Mendes is currently in negotiations to direct the next installment in the long running James Bond franchise. It looks as if Eon Productions, the franchise’s producers, is hedging their bets in their waiting game over the sale of the films’ distributor MGM.

Mendes is known more for his films that place an emphasis on drama, though his 2005 film Jarhead, which was set in the US war in Kuwait, did contain some well done action sequences. As the rebooted Bond franchise has taken steps to include a previously little seen emphasis on strong characterization, Mendes’s participation suggests that the next film, as yet untitled, will continue with that.

While Eon Productions has stated that they are making no concrete production plans until MGM’s financial problems are resolved, the Hollywood Reporter is stating that the company is gearing up for a June shooting schedule in order to meet its projected late 2011 release. Writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade have turned in a script which Frost/Nixon scripter Peter Morgan is revising.

It’s a well known story that David Lynch was once offered the director’s chair for Return Of The Jedi by Star Wars creator George Lucas. Although Lynch turned the offer down, he never really discussed how the meeting between himself and Lucas went until recently, when he spoke about it last month at a speaking engagement at New York’s Russian Tea Room.

Given Lynch’s own science-fiction film Dune, which he released just a few years after Jedi, it is hard to imagine what kind of film Return Of The Jedi would have been if he were to be given free reign by Lucas. But the truth of the matter is that Lynch would have been strictly a director for hire on the project and very likely would have chaffed under the micro-management that Lucas supposedly subjected Richard Marquand, the director who eventually won the job, to. If he just didn’t walk off the picture, I wouldn’t be surprised if Lynch would have wound up taking his name off the film, perhaps giving credit to “Judas Booth,” the name he had placed on the extended TV version of Dune assembled without Lynch’s participation or approval.

And if you’re having trouble wrapping your head around a Lynch-helmed Return Of The Jedi, your brain will probably explode contemplating what another project he was offered to direct that he declined would have looked like- Fast Times At Ridgemont High.

We don’t discuss the Twilight franchise much around here. Mostly because it receives such abundant coverage elsewhere that there’s nothing new that we can really add. (I also have some reservations about some of the book series’ elements, but that would be the topic of a whole other post.)

This weekend, though, the second film adaptation of the popular tween novel series managed an impressive feat- It pulled an impressive $140.7 million dollars at the box office to become the third biggest weekend opening of all time despite getting even worse reviews than the first film did (29% on critic aggregate site RottenTomatoes versus the 49% the first film earned).

And when Twilight rears its head in the media, it invariably leads to sniping between critics of the series and its ardent fans and supporters. never was this more apparent than at last summer’s San Diego ComicCon when Twilight fans over ran one of the exhibit halls, making it near impossible for others to get into see the non-Twilight programming that was scheduled before the Twilight: New Moon panel. Disappointment and frustration quickly lead to hastily homemade t-shirts reading variations of “Twilight Ruined Comic Con” springing up on attendees for the rest of the weekend.

Filmmaker Kevin Smith addressed the whole hub bub later that weekend, in his own inimitable fashion during his own panel discussion. Smith, who has been open about his love of teen angsty John Hughes movies and the long running Canadian series Degrassi High, leaped to the defense of Twilight‘s fans, making an argument that only Kevin Smith could make, as seen in the clip below. Of course, it’s Kevin Smith, so the language gets a little coarse, so headphones on if you’re at work.

I think Smith misses one important thing about the whole Twilight/ anti-Twilight debates, though.

New kids on the fandom block have often been derided by more established fan groups, it’s part of the circle of fandom life. When Star Wars first exploded in to popularity, literary science-fiction fans derided the movie, most famously in Harlan Ellison’s critical essay “Luke Skywalker Is A Nerd and Darth Vader Sucks Runny Eggs” for the August 1977 issue of Los Angeles magazine and reprinted in his collection of film criticism Harlan Ellison’s Watching.In the early 1990s, Star Trek fans clamored that there was room for only one space-based science-fiction series and that Babylon 5 should pack its bags and go home.

Now, it’s Twilight‘s turns to take their knocks from other fans. But buck up members of Team Edward and Team Werewolf Guy. Someday soon, we’ll all be on the same side, mocking some other dopey group of fandom.

Comic book writer Mark Millar has announced that he will be directing a superhero movie next March. Thing is, he isn’t saying what superhero it is.

Millar made the ambiguous statement this weekend on his website, stating-

Bet you didn’t see THAT coming, laddies and lassies!

But this is one of several big surprises planned for next year and you’ll hear a bit more about this in February when we start to release details. What is it? Who is it about? Well, that’s all a secret for now, but I learned a lot from Kick-Ass and love having the same creative freedom I have with comics when I work in cinema. I never want to be a studio bitch and go in there pitching for them to love me. The closest I came to this was a couple of calls regarding Superman, but pretty much none of my plans ever revealed as I didn’t like the idea of anyone nicking them.

Similarly, I don’t like the idea of asking for funding and justifying scenes with the money-men so I’m doing what Matthew Vaughn did with Kick-Ass and just making it outside the system with private investors. The financing is all secured and the movie stands or falls on how good I can make it, doing what Matthew did and just selling it once completed.

As you can imagine, I couldn’t be more excited. More as it happens, but this might just beat out War Heroes and American Jesus as my follow-ups to the Wanted and Kick-Ass movies. Have two other pictures about to go into development (and Wanted and Kick-Ass 2, of course), but I think you need to scare the Hell out of yourself every once in a while and something totally new like directing should do the trick.

The big question: Are you allowed to direct without wearing a baseball cap? Is it the modern version of the 70s BEARD?

So what does this mean? I think that we can assume that since he is doing this film independently that it is probably not a DC or Marvel Comics characters, as they are all pretty much tied up with their various corporate entanglements. However, there’s not much in his work outside of the “Big Two” that would fall under the superhero umbrella. Of the two, Wanted was turned into a film last year and an adaptation of Kick Ass directed by Matthew Vaughn is currently in post production.

That leaves us with two possibilities- 1)Millar will be tackling another creator’s character, which doesn’t strike me as likely, or; 2) this superhero character may be an original creation of Millar’s who hasn’t appeared in a comic yet. This is definitely a story we’ll be keeping an eye on.

Millar has been recently flirting with the edges of Hollywood. In the summer of 2008, he made some noise about a take on Superman he wanted to pitch to the execs at Warner Brothers. Before that, he was one of several Marvel Comics writers who met with Jon Favreau to consult on the first Iron Man script.

Although he is still working his way through post-production on the upcoming Bruce Willis-Tracey Morgan cop comedy A Couple Of Dicks as well as currently promoting his new book Shootin’ The Sh*t, Kevin Smith has found a little time to hint about his next film, the hockey comedy Hit Somebody. Late last week in a Twitter post, Smith hinted that former Star Trek: The Next Generation actor Wil Wheaton will be appearing in the film.

@ThatKevinSmith: Via @jpavleck “Mister Smith – your thoughts about Wil Wheaton?” @wilw is my hockey brother from another mother. He’s gonna HIT SOMEBODY.

@wilw: @ThatKevinSmith [::secret goalie handshake::]

Smith is a longtime hockey fan, including a scene in his debut film Clerks, where the employees of a convenience store close the shop down in the afternoon to play street hockey on its roof and staging a key dramatic scene between two characters in Chasing Amy at a hockey game. Hit Somebody is based on a Warren Zevon song co-written by Mitch Ablom, a will tell the story of Buddy, one team’s enforcer who dreams of getting a chance to score just one goal.

Via News Askew.

Noted hack director Paul W. S. Anderson is bringing Alexandre Dumas’ classic swashbuckling heroes, The Three Musketeers, back to the big screen with a new 3D adaptation. Bridget Jones’s Diary scripter Andrew Davies will join Anderson in writing the screenplay.

Anderson’s work – which should never be confused with the films of Paul Thomas Anderson – on the Alien Vs. Predator, Death Race and the video game adaptations Mortal Kombat and the Resident Evil series has been derided by both fans and critics for his all around ineptitude in working with the material and his vision for The Three Musketeers sounds now different- “We are definitely modernizing The Three Musketeers without compromising the fun of shooting a period piece.” Ugh.

The story of a young Frenchman who becomes a member of the King’s private household regiment and falls under the mentorship of its three most skilled, but notorious, members has been filmed numerous times before. If you haven’t seen any of them, you have plenty of time to seek them out before Anderson’s version arrives in 2011.