When I went to bed last night, lulled by the barrage of television spots for The Bounty Hunter, I had only one thought — the world needs more romantic comedies! I mean, we only have one coming out this weekend! And then we have to wait an entire week for The Last Song! You’re killing me Hollywood.

Thankfully, Ivan Reitman senses the need, and is coming to the rescue.  According to Variety, Reitman will be helming an untitled romantic comedy for Paramount. He’s lured Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher to star, and it already has a release date of January 7, 2011.

Penned by Elizabeth Meriwether, the script has the working title of Friends With Benefits. (If IMDB is to be believed, it had an even raunchier working title that rhymes with Muckmuddies.  I can’t imagine why they had to change that.) The story is being kept secret, but it revolves around how much easier it is to fall into a sexual relationship over something with emotional bonds.

In other words, friends with benefits. Reitman feels this is untapped territory when it comes to the genre of cute people in love.  “It’s an issue ripe for discussion.”

January 7, 2011. The day when Portman, Kutcher, and Reitman became pioneers in the field of cinematic romance. Mark your calenders. History will be made.

The cast of DC and Warner Bros. upcoming big screen adaptation of Green Lantern, featuring Ryan Reynolds as the titular hero and with Martin Campbell directing, has just grown by two. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Temuera Morrison, best known as Jango Fett from the Star Wars movies, has joined the cast as well as filmmaker-actor Taika Waititi.

According to the trade, Morrison will take on the role of Abin Sur, a member of the Green Lantern Corps who gives Hal Jordan his power ring before dying. Waititi will play Hal Jordan’s best friend. They join a cast that, in addition to Reynolds as Jordan, includes Tim Robbins, Blake Lively, Peter Sarsgaard and Mark Strong as Sinestro.

With the addition of Morrison, who I’ve been a fan of since his earlier work in Once Were Warriors, Green Lantern looks to be shaping up as quit a film. Even if it’s being filmed in 3D, which may or may not be a good thing, I’m still getting pretty excited to see it when it’s eventualy released.

Green Lantern begins filming this week in New Orleans with a release scheduled for June 17, 2011.

This week on The Flickcast, Chris and Matt are again joined by resident gaming expert John Carle to talk about a whole slew of new topics. Some of these include the recent Oscars, upcoming video game releases, the recent Infinity Ward controversy, the Iron Man 2 and Tron Legacy trailers, Captain America casting rumors, XBox and PS3 hardware and the timeless classic Bosom Buddies.

The guys also make some picks this week, as they usually do, including John’s pick of the comic book Chew, Matt’s pick of the book Abe Lincoln Vampire Hunter and Chris’ pick of the Apple iPad.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques, offers of sponsorship or whatever, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter, at Facebook and MySpace or via email.

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The Coen Brothers’ latest film, a remake of the 1969 western True Grit, has found its Mattie Ross, the spunky teen who enlists the aid of alcoholic US marshal Rooster Cogburn to avenge her father’s murder. The role, played by Kim Darby in the original, will be filled by relative newcomer Hailee Steinfeld.

With two short films and a small role on the cancelled FOX sitcom Back to You, Steinfeld will certainly have her work cut out for her taking on the major role of Ross, described by the casting call as “tough, strong, and [telling] it like it is”–to say nothing of working with Hollywood heavyweights the Coens.

The casting of Steinfeld also comes after several other casting announcements, including Matt Damon as La Beouf, a Texas Ranger who joins forces with Ross and Cogburn (and played by Glen Campbell in the original); Josh Brolin as killer Tom Chaney (originally played by Jeff Corey); and Jeff Bridges as Rooster. The film is scheduled to begin shooting in the spring with a tentative release date of December 2010.

The original film, based on a 1968 novel by author Charles Portis, starred John Wayne as Rooster Cogburn, a role so popular it earned Wayne an Oscar (his only win) as well as a sequel, Rooster Cogburn, which also starred Katherine Hepburn as an elderly spinster.

Even though filming is still some time away, recently director Joe Johnston told MTV Splashpage a casting decision on who would portray Captain America in The First Avenger “was weeks away.” Well, weeks have gone by and according to Deadline Hollywood, the list of actors for the titular role has been narrowed down to five finalists.

The five front-runners for the role of Captain America are, according to the site, Chace Crawford (Gossip Girl), John Krasinski (The Office), Scott Porter (Friday Night Lights), Mike Vogel (Cloverfield) and Michael Cassidy (Smallville). All five actors have reportedly agreed to test deals with Johnston and Marvel Studios to try out for the role.

Not only must these actor agree to test for the role, if eventually cast, they must also sign for nine other options, including potential sequels to The First Avenger. This makes sense considering the upcoming Marvel movies and their desire to team them all for a potential Avengers movie in the future. Still, that’s a lot to negotiate.

Of course, fans everywhere have their personal favorites and I we have ours. Picking from this list as if these were the only choices, our first choice would be Smallville’s Michael Cassidy. He’s able to do the action as well as being a pretty good actor as well, so he’d be good for the part.

Sadly, our favorite choice of all and not on this list, Joel Gretsch (The 4400, V), is probably too old now, even though he would be great in the part. No matter who they choose, let’s hope they take this movie as seriously and do as great a job on it as Marvel did with Iron Man. Cap deserves no less.

Who do you think should play Captain America in The First Avenger?

It appears the search for Green Lantern’s arch enemy Sinestro is finally at an end. Amid speculation that is was going to be Jackie Earle Haley and other confirmed casting news about the film, it now looks as if Sherlock Holmes veteran Mark Strong is the clear winner and will definitely be taking on the role — assuming Geoff Johns knows what he’s talking about.

According to MTV’s Splashpage, Johns visited the New Orleans set of director Martin Campbell’s Green Lantern, the upcoming DC Comics adaptation starring Ryan Reynolds, and once there decided to let a few details about the project slip out via his Twitter account.

“Back from an amazing trip to Green Lantern town a.k.a. New Orleans!” Johns said on Twitter. “Ryan IS Hal. And Mark Strong is going to be a brilliant Sinestro.”

Johns also weighed in via Twitter with an opinion about several other key elements of the films including the inclusion of Kilowog, the Guardians, Oa and more. Said Johns:

“Kilowog, the Guardians, Oa…all breathtaking,” he surmised. “The age of Green Lantern is upon us!!”

It would appear the newly appointed CCO of DC is giving his stamp of approval to the film and also managing to confirm several details for fans everywhere all at the same time. Seeing as how Johns is the man pretty much responsible for putting Green Lantern back on the map and probably had a great deal to do with this feature film adaptation moving forward, his thoughts should go a long way to put fan’s worries about the film’s quality to rest.

Personally, I was pulling for Guy Pearce to be cast as Sinestro. Still, Mark Strong could be a great choice. I guess we’ll see soon enough. What do you guys think?

Hollywood has been remaking old television shows into big screen adventures for years now. It’s been a trend with limited success, and every time you think it’ll die off with something like The Mod Squad,  we get news of another Charlie’s Angels or a big screen McCloud.

Lately, there’s been a weird interest in reviving tv westerns.  Last August, CBS Films announced they were developing a feature film based on Gunsmoke, the legendary series that ran for an exhausting 20 seasons.   Prior to television, it ran for nearly ten years as a radio serial.  No one could get enough of Marshall Matt Dillon back in the day, and apparently he’s due for a modern makeover.

Despite having its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, Gunsmoke was quite edgy for its time. Long before John Ford or Sergio Leone,  Norman MacDonald and John Meston sought to dismantle the cutesy, archtypical Old West that had been seen up until then. They wanted a harder, cruder hero and a more realistic and brutal West. Their Marshall Matt Dillon was no hero in a white hat, and the Dodge City he patrolled was full of shady and violent characters.

It was aimed at adults, and was one of the first radio shows to depict scalping, prostitution, opium addiction, and massacres. Dillon killed a heck of a lot of people, and his creators proudly said that he was as scarred and dangerous as the villains of Dodge City.

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This week more than one thing involving Conan seems to be getting settled. Yesterday, we told you about Conan O’Brien making a deal with NBC to step away from The Tonight Show. Now, word comes from Deadline Hollywood that Millennium Films, Lionsgate and Paradox Entertainment have chosen an actor to take on the role of Conan the Barbarian in their brand new Conan movie — and that actor is Jason Momoa.

Momoa, who has appeared in Stargate Atlantis and also stars in HBO’s Game of Thrones, reportedly beat Kellan Lutz of Twilight fame for chance to play the titular hero. Apparently, Conan director Marcus Nispel was sold on Momoa, and won over the filmmakers by shooting some test scenes that allowed Momoa to wield a sword and behave very “Schwarzenegger-like.”

The film, which re-boots the Conan franchise and tells the origin of Robert E. Howard’s famous character, is now on course for a March 15 production start in Bulgaria. No word yet on additional casting or a release date but we have heard that producers have reached out to Mickey Rourke to play Conan’s father in the film. More on that as it develops.

With the news coming in just last week that Glee was getting renewed on Fox for another season, things have already been heating up for the upcoming episodes. Fox has completed most of the second half of it’s freshman season, which starts up again in April and they are now looking at the fans to be part of a few episodes next season.

According to a recent press release from the network, the show will be holding a nation-wide open casting call for a few parts in the upcoming season.

GLEE has also launched the acting and singing careers of its young, talented cast, and turned them into international sensations. Replicating and expanding on the process used to discover the stars from Season One, the series’ executive producers will begin a nationwide casting search this February to fill three new roles that will be added to the show’s second season.

Building upon the show’s incredibly supportive community of GLEEks and with the hope of bringing fans even closer to the series, auditions will be open to amateur individuals as well as professionals between the ages of 16-26, and all hopefuls will be able to submit auditions online. Additional details to be announced soon, please check www.fox.com/glee for updates.

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Or, more precisely, he’ll be making a movie about a man on the long-running game show. The story, written by William Wheeler (who also penned The Hoax), is based on a true story called “Prisoners of Trebek.” The plot is supposedly about Maguire’s character who spends time trying to master Jeopardy, falls in love, and experiences some “Charlie Kaufman-esque elements.”

Maguire’s production company, Maguire Entertainment, is producing along with Mark Gordon (who has produced films such as 2012 and Saving Private Ryan). The production is still looking for a director, and with the schedule Maguire currently has — soon to be shooting Spider-Man 4, The Details and Gary Ross’ The Crusaders — it might be some time before he can fit this film in so they probably have time to find a director.

One comment I read recently about this film mentioned something I thought would be hilarious casting: Will Ferrell as Alex Trebek. Probably not very likely, unless that’s part of the “Kaufman-esque” elements they’re talking about, but very funny nonetheless.