Only a day after being announced as writers for the upcoming Deadpool movie, Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese have gotten yet another gig as the writers for the sequel to another summer movie franchise: G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Taking over from the guys who had written the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and giving it to the team that brought us Zombieland, is I think a step in the right direction.

All of the main cast from the first film are contracted to return for sequels, with director Steven Sommers being the possible hold out. But, with the promise of this new writing team, hopefully the next GI Joe film can add more story to go with the anticipated amount of destruction.

The Rise of Cobra, now available on DVD, cost a reported $170 million and has so far brought in just over $300 million worldwide. But with a Rotten Tomatoes score of about 36%, it’s really got no place to go but up.

This week on The Flickcast, your tireless threesome dive into some great new topics including the film Kick-Ass being picked up by Lionsgate, the box office and merits of District 9 versus G.I. Joe, Frank Darabont taking on The Walking Dead for AMC, Christopher McQuarrie writing a sequel to X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Bryan Singer’s Battlestar Galactica movie and a whole lot more.

The team also made some new picks this week including Christina’s pick of the documentary Boy Interrupted, Matt’s pick of Boston Legal, featuring James Spader and William Shatner, and Chris’ pick of Robert Kirkman’s excellent comic The Walking Dead.

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

Thanks for listening.

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Though we try to keep things fresh here at the site, especially with our features like Fan Film Friday, sometimes it’s hard to skip over things that are quite well done, even when they aren’t really topical anymore. Though G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is already week-old news, we felt that this week’s fan film needed to be a little musical number from our friends at Funny or Die called The Ballad of G.I. Joe.

Continuing the trend of filling their skits with a who’s who of Hollywood, the Ballad includes names that will pretty much blow your socks off. Names like Alexis Bledel as Lady Jaye, Billy Crudup as Zartan, Zach Galifiankais as Snow Job, Tony Hale as Dr. Mindbender, Vinnie Jones as Destro, Chuck Liddell as Gung Ho, Julianne Moore as Scarlett, Henry Rollins as Duke, Alan Tudyk as Shipwreck, Olivia Wilde as The Baroness, and even a little Sgt. Slaughter thrown in as well.

There are a few other names thrown in, so be sure to keep an eye out. Check out the Ballad of G.I. Joe after the jump.

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Pull of the Week:

Blackest Night #2 – DC – $3.99

Score: 8.0

As mentioned yesterday in Dave Press’ Weekly Comic Book Recommendations,  this was a big week for DC’s Blackest Night event between Blackest Night #2, Blackest Night: Batman #1 and Green Lantern Corps #39. A previous Pull of the Week with issue #1, Blackest Night #2 continues the eerie first chapter of this horror tale.

After Hawkman and Hawkgirl have been attacked and killed by the Black Lanterns Elongated Man and Sue Dibny, the Atom desperately begs for Hawkman to pick up the phone unaware of his fate. Over in Gotham, Commissioner Gordon stands atop the police headquarters next to the Bat-Symbol with his daughter Barbara awaiting sunrise before Hal Jordan lands on it as a result of his fight with Martian Manhunter.

In Amnesty Bay, Mera and Tempest, the wife and son of Aquaman look to move their king’s remains to the sea only to find the grave desecrated. Thinking they are witnessing a graverobbing, the duo along with guards from Atlantis are attacked by the resurrected Black Lantern Aquaman who has retained his control over the creatures of the sea as seen in a bloody attack on the guards.

Blackest Night #2 feels a lot like it is the part of a movie where the team is being formed. The foundation has been laid out in issue one and now the Black Lantern corps is being built. While the biggest reveals happened in the first issue, these other players are obviously going to be key components to the story moving forward, especially since writer Geoff Johns took the time to give so much attention to their Black Lantern reveals. A perfect example of this is Deadman who already appears in Blackest Night: Batman (which will be reviewed on tomorrow’s edition of the Pull List). Along with that, the two major fight scenes are great glimpses of just how powerful the Black Lanterns can be.

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Remember the old G.I. Joe PSA’s that would play after each episode of the series in an attempt to teach kids morals and safety instructions? Remember how truly annoying some of them were? We all do, but now we have a reason to look back at them and laugh. Introducing Fensler Film’s G.I. Joe Spoofs, which are re-cut from the original PSA’s and re-dubbed to be pretty ridiculous but also very funny.

Some of them are pretty random, almost too random to be funny, but for the most part, they are worth a chuckle or two. There are nearly 12 of them, all scattered across the web. We managed to round up a few, including Body Massage, Porkchop Sandwiches (NSFW), and our personal favorite, Computer, which you can check out after the jump.

These all circulated the web a few years ago, and it seems like creator Eric Fensler has moved on to bigger things. They are all still worth watching and knowing about, which is good because knowing is half the battle!

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Two years ago, there wasn’t much to be said about a film that was only based off of a toy line. Then a dude named Michael Bay came along and changed all that, making over a zillion dollars with two films about robots that change into other things. The movies weren’t exactly rich with story or character development, but they did the source material justice, which is all most fans wanted. One would think that a movie about a secret squad of soldiers would be more believable, but sadly, this wasn’t the case.

There is more than enough source material to play with, given the G.I. Joe toys, comics, and many incarnations of the TV show and Director Stephen Sommers’ other projects including Van Helsing and The Mummy have a decent story and are both relatively entertaining. For this film, however, it felt like Sommers left the passion and creativity he had for his previous films at home when reporting to the set of Joe — which is pretty evident in the first five minutes of the film.

It’s easy to pick on G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra for its poor dialogue or predictable story because when you force lines like “he’s a real American hero” into a scene, it warrants ridicule. When it comes to the story, it’s predictable because it is a blatant ripoff of another film, when the main villain brainwashes his victims to do his bidding, identified by a small lesion on the neck. It’s also funny how you can call this movie The Rise of . . . when the entire film is lacking in any rising action.

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Just over 24 hours before G.I. Joe hits screens nationwide, there are still plenty of rumors and whispers on how good or bad this movie will be. Critics seem to be torn as well, as RottenTomatoes gives it a 93% while Empire says the film is “Bond without the style and Team America without the bellylaughs“. Before the rest of the world gets to weigh in on the subject, it looks like director Stephen Sommers is already planning a return to the franchise.

In a recent interview with Sommers, he talked about some of his new projects coming up, including a retro-style Tarzan film, and yes, a sequel to G.I. Joe. From Super Hero Hype:

There’s a couple [projects], but mainly I’m getting very excited about doing “G.I. Joe 2.” I’m working on “Tarzan” at Warner Brothers and they’re a bunch of great people. (It will be) live action but we’ll contemporize it. It’ll still be a period movie, but it’s almost like “The Mummy,” it took place in Ancient Egypt and the ’20s and ’30s, but it felt more contemporary, that sort of deal.

Sommers continues to say that if Paramount wants it, he’d be ready to start work on G.I. Joe 2 as early as September. While we’re still clambering for details on this Joe movie, Sommers released a new concept image of Destro’s mask, and to say the least, it looks more promising than Cobra Commander’s helmet. Paramount’s G.I. Joe hits theaters this Thursday night at midnight at select theaters. Check out a bigger version of the helmet after the jump.

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We’ve been following the upcoming film Pandorum a bit here at The Flickcast and were able to bring you an early look at the trailer and a cool pic of some of the cast. Now, we’ve got the final poster for the film to share with you today. Before we go on, in case you’re not familiar with the film, it concerns some astronauts who wake up on their spacecraft and have no memory of where or who they are.

Once awake, they discover something horrible has happened, most of the rest of the crew is dead and they are not alone. After that, there’s lots of running, shooting, yelling, death, explosions and various mayhem which fans of horror/sci-fi/action films will probably eat up with a giant spoon. After watching the trailer and reading a bit about the film, I think I understand some things about it. Looking at the poster, however, I’m not exactly sure what I’m seeing — which could be good or bad.

To some extent, I like the fact that I need to know more about the film after looking at the poster. On the other hand, it would be nice to get a bit more info about the movie from it other than the ominous tag line “Fear what happens next.” However, it is good to see a poster that tries to be different instead of just featuring the heads of the film’s main stars standing there looking earnest. In my book, that alone puts Pandorum ahead of many other films coming out this year.

Pandorum, which stars Dennis Quaid, Ben Foster, Cam Gigandet and Cung Le, hits theaters September 18th. Check out the new, big poster after the jump.

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According to a recent TV Guide interview, one of my favorite characters from Lost who, sadly, got eaten by the smoke monster, would like to return to the show. Like most fans of Lost, I was pretty disappointed when Mr. Eko, played by the awesome Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (previously seen on Oz),  seemed to die in season three. Eko was a very interesting character who helped Locke discover new ways of looking at things. Plus, he was just cool.

Adewale, who will guest star in the Aug 7 episode of Monk and appears in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, now says, according to the interview, that he wants to go back to the island. The actor says he left the show after his parents died in 2006, but he’d like to return to give his character some closure.

“To be able to give that rich character some completion would be nice,” he told TV Guide.

Agreed. It would be great to see him return to Lost. The show is still going well and I’m enjoying it very much, but his character, of all the ones who’ve died so far, is the one I miss the most. If there’s a choice between bringing him, or one of the other characters like Charlie or Boone back, I hope Lost’s producers decide on Eko. Let the rest stay dead. They weren’t that interesting anyway.

Over at Latino Review they’ve got a story up about G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra director Stephen Sommers being locked out of the editing room and fired from the film. This story is based on an internet message board post at producer Don Murphy’s website claiming to be from an “insider” who talks about how bad the film was testing with audiences and that in an attempt to save the film, Sommers was fired and a new “fixer” editor was brought on board.

Latino Review has also updated the story recently with an interview with the film’s producer, Lorenzo di Bonaventura, who denies everything and says of the story: “It’s very unfair to Steve, it’s completely untrue he was never asked to leave or been fired or any of that. That’s ridiculous. The movie tested very well.” He goes on to say that: “Everybody was happy, the studio was happy, the filmmakers were happy, the audience was happy with the movie. We had three test screenings, three different times and tested it and each time it just got better and better. We started off in a good place and we ended up in even in a better place, which is what you hope on a film from testing it.”

Whatever your personal feelings about the upcoming film, its easy to understand why the producer of it would want to immediately squash any and all rumors about a troubled production. However, and this is something people probably don’t realize, especially if they’ve never worked on a film before, most productions have problems. You can’t have that much money and that many people working together on that kind of schedule with so many balls in the air and not have problems. It’s just the nature of filmmaking. So, he may not just be trying to save face.

Although, test screenings and their results are usually an internal matter and not info studios like to have circulating, especially if the news is not so good. So sadly, if this info is actually true, this may indeed be a case of damage control and the film may be as bad as people seem to think it is. That said, I’m actually looking forward to the movie.

I had all the G.I. Joe stuff as a kid and seeing it all on the big screen will hopefully be a real treat. Of course, as with most movies coming out of Hollywood these days, it could also be a loud, explosive mess emphasizing style over substance and not be good at all. You pay your money, you take your chances. Either way, we’ll find out when the film hit theaters on August 7th.

UPDATE: Today in Variety, the trade has a story which completely refutes the entire thing and says Sommers was never fired or anything like it. So, there you go. Just another day in Hollywood.