Watch "Legion" and "Alice" Movie Trailers

Sony Pictures has just released the trailer for the feature film Legion, starring Paul Bettany. I had so many panel reports and videos from Comic-Con to get posted that I never got around to talking about Legion, but the trailer for this (especially seen on a big screen) impressed the heck out of me. There are angels.  Angels with machine guns.  Angels with machine guns trying to exterminate mankind.

Check out the trailer below!  Legion is in theaters January 22, 2010.

And because I totally missed this trailer when it came out a month ago (since I was traveling for the convention), but it's too good to pass up, I'm posting the first trailer for Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland too.

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Film News: Pirates 4 Director Ahoy, Twilight Controversy, Theron & Worthington Are Tourists

- Disney is in talks with director Rob Marshall (Chicago, Memoirs of a Geisha) for the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film. While producer Jerry Bruckheimer and Johnny Depp will return to the franchise, previous director Gore Verbinski has chosen to move on to new projects.  If a director is confirmed soon, the new film would begin shooting in 2010. [Variety]

- Rachelle Lefevre is out as Victoria in the third Twilight film, Eclipse, and will be replaced by Bryce Dallas Howard.  Evidently Rachelle and her castmates aren't happy about her dismissal, and Summit Entertainment isn't happy that people know Rachelle isn't happy . . . [E! Online]

- The projects keep rolling in for Hugh Jackman. The Wolverine actor has signed on to portray P.T. Barnum in The Greatest Showman on Earth, an original big screen musical. Jackman "will play the showman with a penchant for hoaxing a gullible public as he creates the three-ring circus that made him famous." Singer/songwriter Mika of "Grace Kelly" fame is in talks to write the music an lyrics. Anne Hathaway is being eyed for the female lead. [Variety]

- Charlize Theron and up-and-coming leading man Sam Worthington(Terminator Salvation, Avatar) will star in The Tourist, a remake of a 2005 French thriller. Theron will play a spy who chooses an "everyman" tourist and uses him as bait to lure a wanted criminal, who also happens to be her ex-lover. Worthington replaces Tom Cruise, who was strongly considering the project but eventually passed. [Hollywood Reporter]

- Steven Spielberg's next project will be . . . a remake?  Spielberg has chosen to tackle a remake of the 1950 film Harvey, in which Jimmy Stewart memorably played a man whose best friend is a 6 1/2-foot-tall invisible rabbit. [Variety]

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The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus at Comic-Con

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus will always be remembered as the last film Heath Ledger worked on before his untimely death in 2008. Because of the fantastical nature of the film, writer/director Terry Gilliam (Monty Python, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) was able to complete work on the project, with actors Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell stepping in to portray Ledger's character Tony at various points in the movie.

The Imaginarium panel at Comic-Con was a mix of humorous and somber moments. Gilliam made sure to manage expectations by reminding the audience that the movie is Dr. Parnassus' (Christopher Plummer) story, not Tony's. The clips we saw had a distinctive visual look and were tantalizing snippets that gave only hints of the worlds to which the Imaginarium leads. Gilliam said that he had done the opposite of most Comic-Con presenters by choosing "boring" clips from the film so those of us in attendance would "get our money's worth" when the movie opens, but the footage we saw was far from boring.

Three clips from the film can be viewed at Yahoo! Movies. Four high-definition video clips of Terry Gilliam and Verne Troyer (Austin Powers trilogy) at the Imaginarium panel are now available on our YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/popwenches. Here are a couple for your viewing pleasure:

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Ice Age, Transformers Neck and Neck at the Box Office

The July 4th holiday was very good for theaters, with Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen ending the three-day weekend in a rare tie for the #1 spot.  As of Sunday night, each flick had brought in $42.5 million domestically with final numbers expected in this morning.

The Johnny Depp/Christian Bale vehicle Public Enemies also opened well, with a gross of $41 million from Wednesday through Sunday. [Variety]

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Film News: Third Twilight Film Starts Shooting in August; Depp & Burton Team Up for Dark Shadows, Amy Adams in Talks for Boxing Movie

- Good news for Twilight fans: Eclipse, the third installment in the movie franchise, is set to begin production in Vancouver on August 17th.  Kristen Stewart (Bella Swan) is currently portraying a young Joan Jett in the movie The Runaways. Robert Pattinson is in New York filming his new project, Remember Me, with Emilie de Ravin (Lost). [Production Weekly's Twitter]

- Johnny Depp has confirmed that he will reteam with director Tim Burton and producer Richard D. Zanuck for a big screen, Burton version of Dark Shadows, the cult favorite gothic soap opera from the 1960s.  "I will be thrilled to work with him [Burton] again on Dark Shadows," said Depp at the LA premiere of his current film, Public Enemies. "I was a big fan of it when I was a kid and I think it is another of those perfect projects for Tim to reimagine." [Entertainment Weekly]

- Amy Adams in talks to costar in The Fighter with Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale. The silver screen drama tells the story of boxer "Irish" Micky Ward (Wahlberg) and his succesful struggle to earn the world lightweight championship.  Adams "would play a gritty bartender from Massachusetts who ends up dating Wahlberg's character." Bale will portray Ward's half-brother, who helps him on his journey to the championship. [Variety]

- Christina Applegate (most recently of ABC's Samantha Who?) is confirmed to play Drew Barrymore's big sister in the new romantic comedy Going the Distance. Barrymore will costar with Justin Long as a couple in a long-distance relationship. Charlie Day (It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia) will play Long's friend.
[E! Online]

- Michelle Trachtenberg and Jason Lee have signed on to the new Kevin Smith comedy flick A Comedy of Dicks.  The movie stars Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan and is "centered on a pair of cops who track down a stolen baseball card, rescue a Mexican beauty and must deal with gangsters and laundered drug money." [Variety]

- The Academy of Arts and Sciences has tweaked the rules for Best Song category for next year's Oscars. [Hollywood Reporter]

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First Glimpse Down the Rabbit Hole into Burton's Wonderland

As slew of first-look images from Tim Burton's fantastical version of Alice in Wonderland have hit the web today . . . and wow! Take a look:



Johnny Depp once again teams up with Burton and Helena Bonham Carter, this time playing the Mad Hatter. Film producer Richard Zanuck says that Depp adopted an accent for the character that is "indescribable," summing it up by saying "This character is off his rocker."

Helena Bonham Carter (below) plays the tyrannical Red Queen, complete with her well-remembered phrase "Off with their heads!" and "a moat filled with bobbing noggins."

[bxA]Anne Hathaway (below) plays the deposed, good White Queen, who, according to Zanuck, "doesn't walk. She floats. She's very eccentric."

In Burton's film, Alice will be played by 19-year-old Australian actress Mia Wasikowska. Screenwriter Linda Woolverton (Beauty and the Beast) has tweaked Lewis Carroll's original story by aging up his leading lady. In the movie, a 17-year-old Alice "attends a party at a Victorian estate only to find she is about to be proposed to in front of hundreds of snooty society types." Alice flees the crowd and follows a white rabbit (Michael Sheen) down a hole and back into Wonderland, which Alice had visited as a 7-year-old girl but doesn't remember. The residents of Wonderland however, do remember her.

In additon to the Mad Hatter and the Red and White Queens, Alice will encounter the Caterpillar (Alan Rickman), the Jabberwock (the newly knighted Christopher Lee), the Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry), the Knave of Hearts (Crispin Glover), the Bloodhound (Timothy Spall), the March Hare (Noah Taylor) and Tweedledee and Tweedledum (Matt Lucas), among others.

Filming on the project is complete and post-work is in process since the film will combine live-action, CGI animation and motion-capture creatures that will be transferred into 3D. Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland has a US release date of March 5, 2010. [USA Today][Tim Burton Collective News]

Images courtesy of Disney Enterprises

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