Paul Walker To Star In Skyscraper and Hours

Paul Walker has signed a deal with Universal Pictures that will see him reprise his role for The Fast and the Furious 6 and also star in Skyscraper and Hours.

Skyscraper is "described as a modern-day Towering Inferno, in which a Donald Trump-esque developer sets out to build a mile-high structure in Chicago. When the tower starts to falter, a crew must rescue the city from mayhem."

Here is the press release from Universal:

Action star and producer Paul Walker has signed a two-year first-look production pact with Universal Pictures to house his Laguna Ridge Pictures, the studio announced today. The first project under this agreement is the action thriller Skyscraper, based on an original idea by Mike Sobel. Walker will executive produce and star, with Neil Moritz's Original Films producing.

Walker's most recent film with the studio, Fast Five, grossed over $630 million dollars at the worldwide box office, making it one of the biggest films in Universal's history.

This spring, Walker will start production on Fast & Furious 6. Walker is also attached to star in and executive produce Hours, alongside producer Peter Safran's, Safran Company. The thriller, set in post-Katrina New Orleans, is slated to begin production in April. Walker recently starred in and executive produced Vehicle 19, also with the Safran Company producing.

Poster For Tim Burtons Frankenweenie

Here is the first poster for Tim Burton's Frankenweenie. The film opens on October 5th and features the voices of Winona Ryder, Martin Short, Catherine O'Hara, Martin Landau, Charlie Tahan, Atticus Shaffer, Robert Capron and Conchata Ferrell.

How Much Would it Cost to Build The Death Star?

The question "How Much Would it Cost to Build The Death Star?" has been asked for years, and now we know thanks to Gizmodo. The amount would be $15.6 septillion and 94 cents, and that number looks like this: $15,602,022,489,829,821,422,840,226.94. That number is 1.4 trillion times the current US debt. Here is a breakdown of some of the stats, for those wondering…

• First, assume that 1/10 of the 17.16 quadrillion cubic meters of the Death Star is something other than empty space and 6/10 of the total volume is pressurized space.
  
  
• That will require 1.71 quadrillion cubic meters of steel, about 134 quadrillion tonnes. That's $12.95 quintillion in current 2008 prices, and that's without counting strange alloys and elements.
  
  
• Shipping that to space will cost $95 million per tonne: So add $12.79 septillion in transport.
  
  
• Now you need to add air, which will require 8.23 quintillion cubic meters of Nitrogen, and 1.65 quintillion cubic meters of oxygen, for a total delivery cost of $2.81 septillions and $212.46 quintillion.

Other notes: It would take over 833,000 years to build, and the iron needed for construction would have to come from the earth's core, which would likely bottom out the planet.

McG Says Robert Downey Jr Would Have Been Lex Luthor

McG recently revealed that he had cast Robert Downey Jr. as Lex Luthor for his Superman film, Flyby. Here is the latest on the film that never was…

"We had Robert Downey Jr. locked up to be Lex Luthor, which I think would have been extraordinary," McG enthused. But his pick for the Big Blue Boyscout is actually much less of a surprise. "Ironically, we liked Henry Cavill a lot, but we hadn't cast him yet," he says of the actor currently wearing the tights in the upcoming "Man Of Steel." "J.J. wrote the script, and we got that to a really good place in the end," he says of the film, the first in a proposed trilogy. "But I'm to blame for [the film not happening]." While we've heard no shortage of superhero movie casting over the years, the idea of a then-low-key Downey Jr. as Lex Luthor is enough to make us wonder a whole score of what-if fantasies, particularly considering his own subsequent ascension to the top of the A-List following "Iron Man."

Henry Cavill will star in Man of Steel, which opens on June 14th of 2013.

Directors Talk Act of Valor

Directors Scott Waugh and Mike McCoy recently spoke about Act of Valor, here are the highlights…

McCoy on How They Made the Movie: No, four years ago we were humbled and honored to be invited into the world of Navy special warfare, to take a look at their story. What would telling their story even look like? It was just sort of an exploratory situation, so we spent quite a bit of time inside the community, meeting the men and hearing the stories. From that, we started to really shape the potential for this film. When you start to hear these stories that have gone with the men in the last ten years, sustained combat deployments, it's pretty unbelievable. I mean, we're hearing stories beyond anything anybody could write that actually happened to men. It became pretty inspiring, and through that, you really start to understand the depth of brotherhood inside the community. That really became something we wanted to explore. What's creating this brotherhood?

Waugh on How They Made the Movie: So when we got down there, we really wanted to organically conceive of the film from within rather than from an outsider, so with that, we wanted to find real acts of valor that have happened to the guys in the last 11 years. The guys really opened up to us after six months of really hanging out with them and when we found five incredible stories in particular that are in the film, we hired a writer, Kurt Johnstad, to architect a screenplay that would weave through these fives acts of valor, through these really amazing stories. That was kind of the genesis of the project.

Did The Guys The Used Actually Experience These Stories? (Waugh): No, they were either around the events or they knew about the events. It was really when we did meet and really became a part of their world and hang out with them for that long and see the complexity of their character was when (we thought), "How is an actor going to get the nuances of everything right?" They train and work in such a fashion at such a high level for so long, a two-month boot camp is not going to bring you up to sleep, it's just not. It's like trying to be a professional ice skater, what? An actor is going to go on the ice for two months? They're going to have to pull him on a dolly track. Our brand of Bandito Brothers is about not faking it, our brand is about doing it for real in-camera.

McCoy on the Same: Then when you get to meet these men, they are maybe smarter than they are tough, which is pretty interesting. They are some of the most intelligent, intellectual guys you ever met as well as being super-human physically. When you tie that together, well, how does that translate? What does that look like when they're operating? So you really want to see what that actually looks like. That would be like if you're making a movie about basketball and you have the Lakers in there versus having actors and stuntmen trying to play pro ball players and work together like a cohesive team. So you see the teamwork in this film as well, and the guys move like an organic machine. It's pretty amazing to watch how graceful and poetic they are in their movement.

Waugh on the SEALS That Were in the Film: You know, they're active duty, so they are either coming on workouts for deployments or coming back from deployments, and we were originally talking to all the operators. The ones that are in the film were really ones we just gravitated towards, just because they were very confident men, they had multiple deployments and they were very secure within themselves of who they were. We just felt once we had the idea to just use the real guys, at least these eight guys we met are awesome, let's see if we can get them to be in the movie. When we approached them, all eight turned us down. They said, "No, we're not actors, we're not Hollywood guys. We're Navy SEALs, we have a job to do."

McCoy on Shooting the Live Fire: Oh, yeah, because we shot so much live fire. So many scenes were live fire and it was fantastic to be as challenged as we were physically and mentally, because we were running in real time with these guys and we were shooting the main cameras in the middle of the gunfights. We're both shooters as well, so all the main situations where the cameras are in the gnarliest situations, he and I were (there). We'd never have our crew do something that was dangerous without us doing it first.

New Tie In Comic For The Avengers To Feature The Black Widow

A new tie-in comic featuring Scarlett Johansson's portrayal of S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Natasha Romanov (aka The Black Widow) will be released in time for The Avengers.

Black Widow will be featured in a three-issue miniseries from Marvel called Marvel's The Avengers: Black Widow Strikes. It is meant to bridge the gap between Iron Man 2 and The Avengers with an original story of Romanov going to Russia to stop an international crisis.

Writer Fred Van Lente said: "Black Widow is running down some loose ends from 'Iron Man 2, namely some bootleg Stark technology that Justin Hammer made. It's her and Agent Coulson going into Russia, but you'll also probably see Nick Fury and the other heroes as necessary... I've [also] given Black Widow a kind of fan/stalker--a freelance espionage operator who has modeled herself on Black Widow. She's attempting to usurp the Black Widow title from Natasha, so these two are in competition with one another."

The series will first debut in Maxim Russia before hitting US comic book stores.

David Cross Has High Hopes For Arrested Development Movie

David Cross had an interview with Playboy in which he discussed the return of Arrested Development with another season on TV and a film. Cross played Tobias Funke in the show.

He said: "Based on what was described to me, it seems to be a very smart, original, interesting idea. I have high hopes for it."

Show writer Dean Lorey says a new series will premiere on Netflix sometime next year. Cross said of this: "I'm definitely more confident than I was before, but that's not to say I'm 100% confident. I won't be 100% confident until it's made."

The show was originally broadcast on FOX between 2003-2006. In addition to Cross, it starred Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, Jeffrey Tambor and Michael Cera. It was critically acclaimed (winning six Emmys and one Golden Globe) but it was cancelled after three seasons due to low ratings.

Greg Kinnear and Alan Arkin Talk Thin Ice

Here are Greg Kinnear and Alan Arkin discussing their roles in Thin Ice, which is directed by Karen Sprecher and hit limited release last weekend. The movie co-stars Billy Crudup, Lea Thompson, David Harbour and Bob Balaban and is about a small-time insurance agent (Kinnear) who tries to con a lonely retired farmer (Arkin), only to have everything spin out of control:

Mark Millar Says Kick Ass 2 Will Shoot This Summer

Mark Millar stated during a recent interview that Kick-Ass 2 is coming, and will shoot this year. Millar stated the following…

"We shoot Kick-Ass 2 and American Jesus this summer".

There was a lot of doubt surrounding Kick-Ass 2 when writer Jane Goldman and director Matthew Vaughn had ruled themselves out of the sequel. While not confirmed, it appears as if a new writer and director has been found.

Millar also spoke about the American Jesus project, and described it as follows…

"It is the reverse of the Omen, which is about a kid who finds out he is the anti-Christ. This is a kid who finds out he is Jesus Christ."

Rosie Huntington Whiteley Not Returning for Transformers 4

Earlier this month it was revealed that Michael Bay was returning to direct Transformers 4. Since then there have been many rumors about the project, including the casting. Well don't expect Rosie Huntington-Whiteley to return to the franchise. A source close to Whiteley had the following to say about her status for the film…

"Rosie enjoyed being in the third film but action's not really her bag. She doesn't want to get typecast."


Josh Duhamel recently stated that none of the franchise's stars would be returning for the fourth film, stating the following…

"I don't think anybody's doing it. I know Shia LaBeouf is not doing it. I don't think Tyrese Gibson or Rosie or anybody else is doing it."


Transformers: Dark of the Moon made $1.23 billion at the worldwide box office, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen made $836 million at the worldwide box office, and Transformers made $709.7 million at the worldwide box office.

Dwayne The Rock Johnson Talks Fast 6 And 7

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson recently spoke about the plans for filming Fast 6 & 7, here is what he had to say…

''We were going to try shooting them together. It would make sense while we have the same crew and everybody in one place. But I think we're dealing with some weather issues, so from what I know we're going to shoot 'Fast 6' first, and then worry about 'Fast 7' a little later.''

Emmy Rossum Almost Had Lindsay Lohans Role In The Parent Trap

Emmy Rossum revealed in an interview that she was up for the lead role in the 1998 remake of The Parent Trap. Lindsay Lohan eventually got the part.

She said: "I was 12, but I really wanted the role."

When asked if there were any hard feelings, she added: "Not at all. Lindsay beat me out of the role. I'm having the time of my life and currently working on Shameless."

Naomie Harris Talks About Her Role In Skyfall

Naomie Harris talked about her character in the new James Bond movie Skyfall.

She plays a field agent named Eve who sees herself as 007's equal.

She said: "My character would like to see herself as a female Bond but I don't think anyone's really a match for Bond."

She also discussed the training she went through to prepare for the film. She added: "I kickbox and do a lot with guns. I started off terrified by the sound of a gun, let alone having any idea of how to hold one but now I really enjoy it."

The film is directed by Sam Mendes and stars Daniel Craig as Bond, along with Judi Dench, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw, Bérénice Marlohe, Helen McCrory and Javier Bardem. It opens November 9.

Warner Bros Moving Forward With I Am Legend Sequel

Warner Bros is now moving forward with a sequel to the 2007 film I Am Legend.

The company has closed deals with Akiva Goldsman and Will Smith's Overbrook Entertainment for the sequel. The original made $585.3 million worldwide on a budget of $150 million. They want Will Smith to star as Robert Neville, who was the last man on earth after a man-made virus wiped out the population, except for mutated monsters.

Arash Amel (The Expatriate, Grace of Monaco) will write the script. The film is not being called a prequel, so it remains to be seen how Smith's character will return. It's unknown if director Francis Lawrence will come back at this point.

Three years ago Will Smith described the potential sequel. He said: "It's essentially the fall of the last city – the last stand of Manhattan. The movie would be...within the body of the movie D.C. and then Manhattan would fall as the last city. It's a really cool idea trying to figure it out...there's a reason why we have to take a small band and we have to get into D.C. So we have to make our way from New York to D.C. and then back to New York."

Bruce Campbell and Jane Levy Talks Evil Dead Remake

Bruce Campbell and Jane Levy recently had a few words for the Evil Dead remake which is set to shoot in New Zealand. Levy, who took Lily Collins' place in the lead role, spoke about her enthusiasm for the original and how the film will compare to that.

"I'm so excited," she said. "I'm a big fan of the original. To me it's the scariest movie, ever. But this one is really different. They've changed it a lot, but it's still a pretty gory movie. My mom probably can't see it. As for the tone, I think the humor in the first one came from the special effects of the time. I don't know that they meant it to be funny...this one is not funny. It's definitely dark."

Campbell, who serves as a producer, commented on the evil trees, saying that they will be back. He added, "They're not terribly well-behaved this time either."

Denis Leary Talks Amazing Spider Man

Denis Leary (who plays Captain George Stacy in The Amazing Spider-Man) recently said in an interview with Hero Complex that he didn't read many Spider-Man comics as a kid, but has come to appreciate the character in recent years.

"I never read Spider-Man comics as a kid. I was always more of a Batman guy. But my wife has always loved the Spider-Man character and found the working class ethos, the young teenager turning into a man melodrama and his orphan back story intriguing -- as did I once she'd introduced me to the series. He's far from a billionaire and he's born of this world -- it's easy to struggle to identify with."

Leary also talked about how his casting as Captain George Stacy in the movie may have been destiny.

"A good friend of mine -- comedian and actor Jeff Garlin, who I've known for about 90 years -- said when he first met me that I reminded him of George Stacy. True story. We were in our 20s at the time and I thought he was insane. After I got a call from director Marc Webb asking me to play the part, I called Jeff and filled him in on the news. His response? 'You never listen to me! Ever!'"

The movie opens on July 3rd.

Marc Guggenheim Writing Perry Mason Film

Marc Guggenheim is in talks to write Warner Bros. Perry Mason. The Hollywood Reporter says that Guggenheim (Green Lantern, Arrow) would pen the script as a potential starring vehicle for Robert Downey Jr., who is producing with his wife/partner Susan Downey under the Team Downey banner. The script is based on an original story by Downey and David Gambino.

The film will be based on the original books and be set in the 1930s. Characters such as secretary Della Street, private investigator Paul Drake, and Mason's longtime courtroom nemesis Hamilton Burger will be included. The books were the source for the Raymond Burr series from 1957 - 1966.

Robert Pattinson Im Too Old For More Twilight Films

Robert Pattinson says that he may be too old to play Edward in the Twilight franchise should a fifth book come about and be turned into a film. Pattinson told Reuters that he would be curious but would be unlikely to do it.

"I'd be curious what Stephenie would write, but I just think I'd probably be too old," he said. "I'm already too old. But yeah, it'd be kind of interesting."

The final film, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2, opens on November 16.

Casting Updates For Enders Game The Lone Ranger

Deadline is reporting that Nonso Anozie (The Grey), Stevie Ray Dallimore and Andrea Powell have signed on to Ender's Game. Anozie will play Sergeant Dap while Dallimore and Powell will play Ender's parents. Filming is set to start this month in Louisiana.

Additionally, the site says that Dwight Yoakam has dropped out of The Lone Ranger. Yoakam was set to play the villain Butch Cavendish but departed due to scheduling issues. No replacement has been named. in The Lone Ranger due to scheduling conflicts. No word yet on who will replace him. The film is set for a May 31, 2013 release date.

Hugh Grant Talks About Cloud Atlas

Hugh Grant had an interview with Empire magazine in which he discussed his role in Cloud Atlas, the new film from the Wachowski brothers and Tom Tykwer.  He said: "I have six cameo parts in this strange, ambitious film. I do a lot of killing and raping. I wear an awful lot of prosthetic make up, too. You probably won't know that I am in the film! But it was a laugh."  He said his characters are "incredibly evil" and added: "I slightly called my own bluff. In one of the parts I am a cannibal, about 2000 years in the future, and I thought, 'I can do that. It's easy.' And then I am suddenly standing in a cannibal skirt on a mountaintop in Germany and they are saying, 'You know, hungry! We must have that flesh-eating, like a leopard who is so hungry...' and I am thinking, 'I can't do that! Just give me a witty line!'"  Finally, he gave his thoughts on how the film will turn out. He said: "I have seen little bits of cut footage and it is just astonishing. I probably had 20 shooting days, and each of them is shooting their own part of the film with their own crews. It's remarkable."  The Warner Bros film also stars Halle Berry, Hugo Weaving, Ben Whishaw, Susan Sarandon, Jim Broadbent, Bae Doona and James D'Arcy. There is no release date yet. 

Gillian Jacobs of Community Joins New Steve Carell Comedy Burt Wonderstone

Gillian Jacobs (Community) has joined the cast of Burt Wonderstone. The film stars Steve Carell, Jim Carrey, James Gandolfini, Steve Buscemi, and Olivia Wilde. Carell plays a Las Vegas magician who is knocked from his perch by a rival (Carrey) and who must then rediscover his love of magic.  Jacobs will play "a woman who meets Carell at one of his shows and hooks up with him."