Originally intending to auction off the rights to Red State at its Sundance premiere last year, Mr. Smith turned-tail and decided to self distribute through Smodcast Pictures instead. The film was shown in the “road show” format in select cities before receiving an official release. Smith’s sudden change of heart naturally erupted into accusations of dishonesty from some attending distributors.

One year after the controversy, Smith has once again stepped forward and struck a partnership with Phase 4 Films in what seems to be an abandonment of his rebel ways. On Monday, Smith released an official statement regarding the exclusive distribution in cooperation with Smodcast, the production company founded by Smith himself.

Phase 4 gains U.S. and Canadian rights for the option to distribute up to a maximum of twelve films alongside the newly entitled Kevin Smith and Smodcast Pictures Presents label. Four features will release theatrically and include a film tour similar to that of Red State.

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Coming off of the heels of potentially tragic news in the world of comedy television in NBC putting Community on ice, there is some excellent news to brighten our spirits. Comedy Central has agreed to renew South Park through its full 20 seasons, bringing it through 2016.

Deadline was able to nail down the comedic duo of Matt Stone and Trey Parker to see what they had to say.

Parker and Stone will continue to write, direct and edit every episode of South Park, as they have since the series’ premiere in 1997. “The collective genius of Matt and Trey knows no bounds,” Comedy Central’s president Michele Ganeless said. “Week after week and season after season they continue to surprise and delight South Park fans, and that includes all of us here at Comedy Central. We’re thrilled that the adventures of Stan, Kyle, Kenny and Cartman will continue through 2016.”

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The art of the horror comedy is in danger of becoming extinct these days, if not for the zombie genre’s resurrection (pun not intended) with hits like Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland. Now, rising star in the horror genre Adam Green (Hatchet, Frozen) is taking a whack at it with his new film Killer Pizza, which just got picked up by MGM.

From Deadline:

MGM is in talks to acquire Killer Pizza, an Adam Green-scripted adaptation of the Greg Taylor book about a 14-year old boy who lands a summer job at a pizza joint that is actually a front for a monster hunting enterprise.

Rafaella De Laurentiis is producing with 1492 Pictures and CJ Entertainment. 1492 Entertainment’s Chris Columbus brought it to MGM after meeting with the brass there and sensing the studio’s appetite for Gremlins and Goonies-type fare, and Killer Pizza fit that bill.

The film is said to have a very Joe Dante-esque feel taking tonal cues from Gremlins and Matinee. Can newcomer Adam Green join in the ranks of Dante and Landis in bringing these two genres to a happy medium? We’ll have to find out when MGM brings Pizza into production in the next year.

As if it were any surprise really, after two of the most successful first-run episodes in cable TV history, AMC has graciously decided to give their zombie drama based on a comic by Robert Kirkman a third season. The second season has already done gangbusters for the network, and even given the bad press surrounding Darabont’s departure from the series, fans keep coming for more zombie-killing action.

Here are the details on season two from a recent AMC press release.

Season two continues to deliver the strongest telecasts for any drama in basic cable history against Adults 18-49 shattering a basic cable record set nearly 10 years ago for a single drama telecast (“The Dead Zone”). “The Walking Dead” is based on the comic book series written by Robert Kirkman and published by Image Comics. Glen Mazzara serves as series’ showrunner. Kirkman, Gale Anne Hurd, David Alpert and Frank Darabont are executive producers. Greg Nicotero is a co-executive producer.

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The internet business is a pretty tricky thing to keep one’s thumb on. Especially when you are in charge of hundreds of thousands consumers ready for their on-demand entertainment. That’s why it was especially puzzling when Netflix CEO Reed Hastings decided to belly up to the DVD/VOD war and claim Qwikster would be his champion.

That’s when things got tricky, as Netflix subscribers were fleeing the scene, hoping this meant they wouldn’t have to spend double the amount they were spending to get the same DVD and streaming service. Now that Qwikster is dead and gone, it seems that the original company is still suffering from its mistake. From Variety:

While investors were disappointed with the reported decline of 810,000 streaming subscribers in the second quarter, some equally depressing projections for the final months of 2011 also contributed to a 27% drop in after-hours trading, sending the stock to $85. It had opened the day at $119.37.

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When I was growing up it was always ABC’s Monday Night Football with Howard Cosell, “Dandy” Don Meredith and Frank Gifford. Meredith would often sing ‘Turn out the Lights, the partys over” as one team or another dominated the proceedings and Cosell would often clash with Meredith or insult one or more players. It was fun and it seemed like anything could happen at any moment.

That was then, this is now. Monday Night Football has a home on ESPN and has been there since 2006. Now, it seems, ESPN is determined to hold on to the venerable franchise and has announced a new agreement to keep it until 2021. The cost? A reported $15 Billion.

The new agreement will cost ESPN 73% more than its previous NFL deal which likely means the Disney-owned sports channel will ask cable and satellite companies to pay more. Some other terms of the new deal kick off immediately.

Today ESPN’s NFL Live expands to an hour from a half hour. A discussion show based on fan-submitted questions, Audibles, also joins the Thursday night line up. This weekend Sunday NFL Countdown will run three hours, up from two.

On Tuesday ESPN2 will introduce a weekly, hour-long show NFL 32, followed on Friday by another weekly hour long show NFL Kickoff. Click through for all the details from the official ESPN press release.

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If you’re as addicted to Instant Netflix as the rest of us, you’re probably glued to the New Releases feed to see what the benevolent Netflix gods will bring you to enjoy from the comfort of your bed/couch every night. One company who has helped aid in their vast streaming library is Starz, which expands to original series and films that make it to their movie channels.

It looks like that deal won’t last much longer, as it’s been announced that Starz will choose to discontinue their deal with Netflix and Instant Netflix, pulling their content from the servers. Here’s the press release from Starz.

ENGLEWOOD, Colo., Sept. 1, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Starz, LLC, President and Chief Executive Officer, Chris Albrecht, issued the following statement today regarding the status of affiliation agreement renewal discussions with Netflix.

“Starz Entertainment has ended contract renewal negotiations with Netflix. When the agreement expires on February 28, 2012, Starz will cease to distribute its content on the Netflix streaming platform. This decision is a result of our strategy to protect the premium nature of our brand by preserving the appropriate pricing and packaging of our exclusive and highly valuable content.”

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In the interest of full disclosure, I have to reveal I’ve had Stephen King’s Under the Dome on my Kindle for about a year and still haven’t gotten around to reading it. Not that I think it won’t be good, it’s just that other things have come up.

Fortunately, it seems I may not ever have to bother reading the book. Why? Well, today it was announced Showtime is partnering with Steven Spielberg and Stephen King for an Under the Dome drama TV series, which will be produced by DreamWorks Television.

In case you haven’t had the time either and don’t know the story of Under the Dome, it’s a supernatural thriller which revolves around locals at a Maine vacation spot who battle one another when a force field suddenly surrounds their town and cuts them off from the rest of the world. Wasn’t that the premise of an old Twilight Zone episode? Huh.

Anyway, now that the deal appears to be done with Showtime, the search is now underway for a writer (or writers) to adapt the novel into series form. No word yet on who that may be.

However, if I may make a suggestion, I hear Frank Darabont is available. I think he would be a great choice.

Showtime, you listening?

Thought of as a pretty massive production for years, it seems that Disney is finally getting wind of the potential stack of cash it will cost to make the Gore Verbinski’s Lone Ranger and they aren’t too happy.

Back in 2008, it was announced and promoted that Johnny Depp was attached to the project as Tonto, and more recently The Social Network’s Armie Hammer was attached to play the lead role. It seems that if the film can’t get to a more reasonable budget, there may not be a Lone Ranger–at least not for a while.

From what Variety has to say, it looks like the film isn’t completely dead, just in a state of adjustment.

Despite reports that Disney has pulled the plug on the bigscreen adaptation, the pic is far from dead at the studio, sources close to the production told Variety.

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It was less than a week ago that Syfy announced its long running series Eureka would get a six episode season six order and that those six episodes would be the last for the series. Then, Syfy apparently had a change of heart and announced Eureka would not get six episodes for a final season and instead would end after this season.

Now, things have apparently changed yet again. Syfy has announced, and Deadline has confirmed, that Eureka will get one more episode after current episodes air to properly wrap up the series.

According to reports, Syfy executives called the cast to apologize for the conflicting decisions over the past week, which included a six-episode final-season order, followed by no-final-season announcement and then the additional episode pickup. Well, at least they apologized, which is nice.

Reports are that the six-episode order was overruled by the new post-merger management as the series was getting expensive after 5 seasons and has enough finished episodes. Most affected are some crew members who turned down job offers last week when Eureka was picked up for 6 more episodes only to find out later that wasn’t happening. I bet they didn’t get a call from Syfy executives.

At least the network still has other cool shows like Warehouse 13 and Alphas which, after a bit of a slow start, is getting better and better.

Johnny Depp doesn’t seem to ever want to stop. The man’s been going strong since his first appearance in Nightmare on Elm Street in 1984. Now he’s taking a slightly more controlling role in his films, as his production company, Infinitum Nihil, has been obtaining the rights and working on several new things.

They blew the lid off the roof with this year’s Rango, which grossed over $240 Million worldwide in theaters, and now they’re looking to go slightly more science fiction with an adaptation of the original comic The Vault. Here’s the scoop from THR:

Films has picked up film rights to The Vault, an Image comic book written by Sam Sarkar, an executive at Johnny Depp’sInfinitum Nihil production shingle. Depp and Nihil’s president Christi Dembrowski will produce the movie adaptation along with GK’s Graham King and Tim Headington.

Written by Sarkar and drawn by Garrie Gastonny, the underwater sci-fi story centers on a group of divers who, off the coast of Nov Scotia, uncover a sarcophagus with unusual remains and inadvertently unleash an ancient evil. Sarkar and Gastonny previously created the supernatural Western graphic novel Calberfor Radical Publishing.

The film has the potential to be a modern Indiana Jones, and could just be the perfect vehicle for Depp now that the Pirates of the Carribbean films are all over. We’ll have to see who Nihil decides to go with as a lead when the film goes into production in the coming months.

The online content streaming landscape just got a bit more interesting as Amazon announced late Thursday it has made a deal with NBCUniversal to provide 1,000 Universal Pictures movies to its streaming customers. The new content includes films such as Being John Malkovich, The Jetsons, Flipper, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Billy Elliott. Well, that’s quite a cross-section of content.

This new deal is in addition to the one Amazon recently made for it to offer CBS shows such as Star Trek and Cheers to its customers. All these deals for content make perfect sense if you think Amazon is about to release a tablet in the next few months.

It’s widely been speculated that said tablet would be coming out and give users access to the company’s Amazon Unbox, Amazon Mp3, Kindle, Cloud Music and Cloud Drive services. All of that and a well done tablet powered by Android could, potentially, take a bite out of Apple’s iPad dominance. We’ll see.

Check out the full press release after the jump.

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