Harrison Ford is definitely considered a living legend for his iconic roles in two geek-beloved franchises. And now he will meet a living legend in his own mind – the iconic San Diego news reporter Ron Burgundy. The Hollywood Reporter is stating that the actor has signed on to appear in the Will Farrel comedy Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues.

Ford will be playing a well known national news anchorman when the sequel begins production in Atlanta later this month.

In addition to Farrell, this sequel to 2004′s Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy will see the return of Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, Christina Applegate and David Koechner.

Honestly, outside of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones pictures, I’ve not found the moments where Ford has been called upon to act comedically to be all the funny. Hopefully director Adam McKay can get a solid and funny performance out of Ford for the film. But his casting is the first qualm I’ve had

Well, this is something that I really didn’t expect to not happen, but Latino Review is reporting from unnamed sources that Harrison Ford has agreed to strap on the Han Solo blaster holster for Star Wars: Episode VII.

Needless to say, there aren’t any further details and Episode VII screenwriter Michael Arndt’s script is probably better guarded than the plans to the Death Star. (Though come to think of it, those probably weren’t all that well guarded to begin with.)

But with this news we have the last of the three core characters from the original Star Wars trilogy returning for the new films that Disney is planning. How involved will their characters be in the main action, or will they simply serve to hand things off to a new generation of characters?

And with a potential “young Han Solo” standalone film in the mix, it is a good time for fans of a certain Corellian scoundrel.

Harrison Ford is reportedly “open” to playing Han Solo in Disney’s upcoming Star Wars: Episode 7. But if he were to return, he may want to make sure that this would be Han’s last hurrah.

EW is quoting an unnamed “highly placed” source as stating “Harrison is open to the idea of doing the movie and he’s upbeat about it.” But their source also indicates that a condition of returning to the franchise that launched his career might be  killing the character off.

Ford’s condition isn’t that surprising, seeing as he has been vocal about not really understanding the character or the films as much as he has had other roles. He also famously complained to Lucas about the state of the dialogue in the first film saying, “You can type this shit, but we have to say it.”

Further, back when Return Of The Jedi was in production, Ford pressured Lucas to kill off his character then, but visions of that affecting future toy sales squashed the idea. I suppose there is something to be found in the fact that Lucas did go on to contemplate killing off Bill Dee Williams’s Lando Calrissian character.

With Ford’s interest, it does appear now as if all three principals of the original Star Wars series – Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher – are at least possibilities for coming back in some sort of capacity for the new trilogy of films. (Lucas met with Fisher and Hamill back in August.)

 Of course, any actor’s return could be contingent on any number of factors ranging from wheather their character is actually needed in the script to whether or not they were happy with what that script gave them to do. I would imagine that in Ford’s case the latter condition would be a string deciding factor.

But I wouldn’t write Ford entirely off though. After years of saying he didn’t want to play his other iconic role, Indiana Jones, again, he slowly reversed his feelings on that and returned to the franchise with Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull. Now he has stated that the film didn’t turn out exactly how he hoped it would, but considering that one of the reasons for that has been reduced down to the largely ceremonious role of “creative consultant,” perhaps he might warm up to the idea of one last trip in the Millenium Falcon.

1. ParaNorman (Focus Features, 3,429 Theaters, 93 Minutes, Rated PG-13): Stop-motion animation has the air of an especially quaint form of film making. It is time consuming, exacting, and considering you get a similar look and feel from CGI animation, seems especially archaic. That’s what makes it all the more charming.

Of course, charming might not be the right word for this one. This film centers on a young boy who has the ability to see ghosts. He stumbles across an centuries old curse and must save his town from legions of the undead.

2. The Expendables 2 (Lionsgate, 3,316 Theaters, 102 Minutes, Rated R): I feel I don’t even need to talk about this film, because The Expendables 3 is already in the works. Nicolas Cage is already on board, and producers have a wish list that includes Clint Eastwood, Harrison Ford and Wesley Snipes (All the while, a lonely Steven Seagal sits by the phone, desperately waiting for a call that looks likely will never come).

Of course, we’ll have to see how this one does first. They’ve upped the ante by adding Jean-Claude Van Damme and Chuck Norris to the cast and supposedly signing Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis up for more screen time. But will that be enough to have this one improve in the surprising success of the original?

3. Sparkle (TriStar, 2,244 Theaters, 116 Minutes, Rated PG-13): This film is a remake of the 1976 film of the same name that starred Lonette McKee, Irene Cara, and Phillip Michael Thomas. It is a pastiche of the story of the Supremes, only with the 60′s singing group in question being sisters who fall apart as fame takes hold instead of complete strangers.

It is a story that hold some interest and has been made into movies and musicals a number of times (Dreamgirls, anyone?). But this version has an extra dollop of pathos being that its the last film of Whitney Houston.

The original had a plot line that one of the sister’s downfall was brought on by drug abuse. I wonder if that plot point carries over to the remake, and how fans of Houston will react to it considering the pop star’s final fate.

With Ridley Scott starting to do the promotion circuit for this summer’s Prometheus, reporters are already peppering him with questions about his next most anticipated project – his mysterious follow up to his 1982 classic Blade Runner. And we are already getting some news about how the project might be shaping up. Spoilers obviously follow, though they are fairly vague.

First up is a small tidbit about the film’s protagonist, specifically their sex. This nugget comes out of an interview with The Daily Beast and was dropped in the midst of a discussion about Ridley’s use of a strong protagonist in Alien.

Funny enough, I started my first meetings on the Blade Runner sequel last week. We have a very good take on it. And we’ll definitely be featuring a female protagonist.

If you read closely, you’ll actually find two bits of information. The first being that the hero of the film, or at least one of the heroes, will be female.

But Scott also reveals that the project will be a sequel, where before all involved were playing coy as to whether the film would be a prequel or a sequel to Blade Runner. The producers of the film, Alcon Entertainment, confirmed that it will be a sequel in their press release announcing that original Blade Runner Hampton Fancher was coming back to write the new film. (Bolded for emphasis.)

LOS ANGELES, CA, MAY 17, 2012—Hampton Fancher is in talks to reunite with his “Blade Runner” director Ridley Scott to develop the idea for the original screenplay for the Alcon Entertainment, Scott Free, and Bud Yorkin produced follow up to the ground-breaking 1982 science fiction classic, it was announced by Alcon co-founders and co-Chief Executive Officers Broderick Johnson and Andrew Kosove.

The filmmakers are also revealing for the first time that the much-anticipated project is intended to be a sequel to the renowned original. The filmmakers would reveal only that the new story will take place some years after the first film concluded.

The three-time Oscar-nominated Scott and his “Blade Runner” collaborator Fancher originally conceived of their 1982 classic as the first in a series of films incorporating the themes and characters featured in Philip K. Dick‘s groundbreaking novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?“, from which “Blade Runner” was adapted. Circumstances, however, took Scott into other directions and the project never advanced.

Fancher, although a writer of fiction, was known primarily as an actor at the time Scott enlisted him to adapt the Dick novel for the screen. Fancher followed his “Blade Runner” success with the screenplays, “The Mighty Quinn” (1989) and “The Minus Man” (1999). He has continued to write fiction throughout his career.

Scott also will produce with Alcon co-founders and co-Chief Executive Officers Broderick Johnson and Andrew Kosove as well as Bud Yorkin and Cynthia Sikes Yorkin. Frank Giustra and Tim Gamble, CEO’s of Thunderbird Films, will serve as executive producers.

The original film, which has been singled out as the greatest science-fiction film of all time by a majority of genre publications, was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” The film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 1993 and is frequently taught in university courses. In 2007, it was named the 2nd most visually influential film of all time by the Visual Effects Society.

State Kosove and Johnson: “It is a perfect opportunity to reunite Ridley with Hampton on this new project, one in fact inspired by their own personal collaboration, a classic of cinema if there ever was one.”

Setting this new film “some years after the first film concluded,” does seem to leave the door open for a return of Harrison Ford, doesn’t it?

The biggest and most surprising bit of movie news this week was yesterday’s announcement that Alcon Entertainment had lured Blade Runner director Ridley Scott back to produce and direct a new film in the cinematic world that he created with his 1982 science-fiction classic.

Andrew Kosove, the Alcon Entertainment producer who will be working with Scott on the film, spoke to the LA Times and briefly elaborated on the plans for the film. He states that getting the director involved in some capacity was of primary importance.

We had a few Plan Bs. But we were really focusing on Plan A, which was Ridley.

Scott was initially approached to be involved with the project soon after Alcon bought the Blade Runner prequel/sequel rights last March. Kosove and his partner Broderick Johnson flew to London for a meeting with the director during which time they discussed “out how a new film would look, how it could avoid seeming too similar to the many movies that have since paid homage to the original, and how different the new film should be from the original itself.” Inspired by the meeting, Scott made a handshake deal with Kosove to do the film and agents and lawyers sprung into action to set up the deal which was finally announced yesterday.

Armed with his thoughts about what the movie should be, Scott’s next step is to meet with writers to pick one to find the right one to turn those ideas into a screenplay.

Kosove cautions that the time it will take to hire a writer, get a screenplay crafted and move the project to a point where filming can start will probably take approximately 18 months. If shooting were to start in early 2013, the earliest we could hope to see the film would be early 2014.

Kosove also stated that ultimately whether this film is a sequel or a prequel, it will pretty much stand on its own and won’t have too many overt connections to the plot of the original Blade Runner.

Everything Ridley does as a filmmaker is fresh… I believe he sees an opportunity to create something that’s wholly original from the first Blade Runner.

Unfortunately, this means that there will probably be no cameo from the original film’s star Harrison Ford.

In no way do I speak for Ridley Scott… But if you’re asking me will this movie have anything to do with Harrison Ford, the answer is no. This is a total reinvention, and in my mind that means doing everything fresh, including casting.

I suspect that with the exception of news about a writer being hired for the project that this will be the last we hear about the project for a while, at least until next year when Scott begins doing publicity for his upcoming not-quite-a-prequel-to-Alien Alien prequel Prometheus.

With his Cowboys & Aliens opening in just a few days, Harrison Ford has already lined up his next cowboy role in an adaption of the novel Black Hats.

Ford will be playing an ageing Waytt Earp, his best days behind him at the dawn of the 20^th century.

The novel, written by Max Allan Collins under the pen name of Patrick Culhane, mixes fact with fiction. It focuses on the time in Earp’s life when was a film consultant on silent film westerns in the boomtown of Hollywood (fact). In the book, he meets up with the son of his old friend Doc Holliday and helps him keep a young Al Capone from trying to take over the young Holliday’s New York City speakeasy (fiction).

Reportedly, Ford was intrigued by the idea of playing a gunfighter in 1920’s New York.

Currently, 300 writer Kurt Johnstad is set to script the project. No director has been attached yet.

Via Hollywood Reporter.

Say what you will about Sean Young’s long history of public kookiness, she did some amazing work in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner.And through her website, she’s giving us a peek backstage at the production of the science-fiction classic via a series of photographs she took on-set with an old school Polaroid camera. Many of them are her mugging with her co-stars and the crew, but there’s also some that look like costume and hair tests. And if you’re a fan, it’s just one of many photo galleries the actress has posted.

Via Badass Digest.

It is the scene in Raiders Of The Lost Ark that gets the biggest laugh. As Indiana Jones is chasing after the Nazi agents who have kidnapped Marion through the marketplace in Cairo, he is beset by numerous turbaned adversaries. After dispatching them in hand to hand combat, he is confronted with a hulking thug armed with a rather menacing sword.After the swordsman does some impressive posturing with his lethal looking scimitar, Indy just rolls his eyes, pulls out his pistol and casual shoots his opponent.

And for years, we have been told that that humorous moment came at the suggestion of Harrison Ford. During the film’s month long shoot in Tunsia, which was doubling for Egypt, nearly the entire crew came down with dysentery and on the day they were shooting the fight scenes, Ford was feeling particularly under the weather. Rather than go through with the arduous task of shooting yet another fight scene, Ford reportedly grumbled to director Steven Spielberg, “Why don’t we just shoot him?” Spielberg liked the idea, shot it that way and a classic film moment was born.

But Vic Armstrong, legendary stuntman and who doubled Ford on Raiders, remembers a different way as to how that moment came about. In his new book The True Adventures of the World’s Greatest Stuntman: My Life as Indiana Jones, James Bond, Superman and Other Movie Heroesexcerpted over at the LA Times‘ Hero Blog, Armstrong relates a different set of events that lead to the creation of that moment -

In “Raiders” there’s that famous scene where Indy meets this hulking great Arab swordsman and simply shoots him dead. Originally there was an elaborate fight sequence planned and a stunt team went up to the coast for two weeks working it out. They really drew the easy ticket – we heard all this talk about fabulous beaches and topless tourists, and there we were stuck down in bloody Nefta with the dysentery mob. When the main crew finished with us they flew up to the coast to join Peter Diamond, who showed Steven the fight routine. Big Terry Richards played the Arab and he swished his sword about and then the fight carried on through the whole of the Casbah.

Steven watched and said, “Look, I’m going to shoot whatever I can until three o’clock because then I’m getting out of here.” Peter Diamond was dumbstruck: “You can’t do that, it’s gonna take four days to film this fight. It’s a huge fight and the guys have been rehearsing it for weeks.’ Steven said, ‘I’ve got a plane coming at three, I’m out of here, I’ve got enough, I don’t need any more here.’ Tomblin butted in, ‘For Christ’s sake Steven, you’ve got to do this.’ But Steven was standing firm, “No, I’m out at three.” Tomblin said, “Well, it’s stupid doing this whole routine, you might as well just shoot the guy with a gun.” “Don’t be facetious Dave.” Then Steven paused. “I’ll tell you what, let’s try that. Yes, let’s try just shooting him.” And the rest is history.

So, whose version do you believe? Granted, Ford has gotten a lot of mileage out of the version that casts him as the author of the gag. And admittedly it does make a good talk show anecdote. But I have to think that maybe Armstrong’s version might be closer to the truth. Granted, it doesn’t cast Spielberg in a particularly flattering light, but that may be why the other version has been circulated for years.

There may be more Blade Runner in our future, and I’m not just talking about how Ridley Scott’s 1982 film predicted the rise corporate conglomerates and nearly ever-present advertising in our lives.

Alcon Entertainment, the Warner Brothers based production company that The Blind Side and The Book Of Eli, are in final negotiations to secure the prequel and sequel rights to Scott’s classic science-fiction film from its producer Bud Yorkin.

The original film starred Harrison Ford as a police officer who specialized in the hunting down of “replicants,” a type of cloned worker slave class created to work in conditions too harsh for normal humans to endure, being called out of retirement to chase down a group of replicants who have escaped from an off-world colony and have returned to Earth to find their creator. Not much of a hit with critics or the public when it was first released, its fusion of film noir and cyberpunk literary influences have lead Blade Runner to be re-evaluated as a classic in the years since.

While I am sure that there are some who will reflexively moan about tampering with a classic like Blade Runner, let us note that Yorkin is not selling the remake rights to the film. As per the press release -

Alcon’s franchise rights would be all-inclusive, but exclude rights to remake the original. The Company, however, may produce projects based on situations introduced in the original film. The project would be distributed domestically by Warner Bros. International rights are yet to be determined.

This is an interesting and important distinction. (And besides, it’s not like Scott himself wasn’t above tampering with Blade Runner himself.) That still leaves a lot of room to play in as Scott’s film hinted at a rich universe of story-telling possibilities.  It also leads me to wonder if we won’t see similar kinds of deals in the future.

I think the big question, though, is what tack any possible sequel will take. If you haven’t seen the original film, and shame on you if you haven’t, its ending leaves certain issues ambiguous. Do we want to see those issues addressed, as any supplied answer will not satisfy everyone who has discussed and debated the film in the three decades since its release? Personally, I don’t. I would rather they leave those elements off to the side and use a sequel or prequel to further explore Scott’s dystopian future.