While Tropic Thunder may have been one of the best satires of the Hollywood system and funniest comedies of the past few years, one thing that every person who saw the film couldn’t help but love was the collection of fake movie trailers preempting the film.

Ben Stiller, director of Thunder and the brains behind most of the trailers as well as the classic Heat Vision & Jack pilot, has decided that there’s more than enough interest from fans to support doing more parody trailers that will stand on their own. Here’s the full deal from Deadline.

The new project, essentially a series of at least 12 short trailer parodies, will be distributed online via a partner to be named shortly. The plan is to bring together top actors and filmmakers across all genres to take part. I’m now told that they’ll come one per week, starting in the late fall or winter.

Stiller will produce with Stuart Cornfeld and Mike Rosenstein through Red Hour Digital, with longtime Red Hour collaborator Robert Cohen exec producing and directing some of the shorts. Among the actors and directors who’ll contribute content are Stiller’s Tropic Thunder co-writer Justin Theroux, Night at the Museum scribes Tom Lennon & Ben Garant, and Clueless helmer Amy Heckerling.

Expect to see more directors show interest in this project, as Robert Rodriguez and his band of genre and horror friends have been attempting the same thing after Grindhouse was such a cult success.

Yesterday, we brought you the first full batch of clips from next weekend’s Your Highness, the stoner road comedy set in Medieval Times starring Danny McBride and James Franco. The clips were so good, we wanted to bring you more.

In this newest batch we have for you, you’ll get a little bit of Natalie Portman being bad ass, Justin Theroux being sinister, and Danny McBride trying to pull off a terrible British accent.

The film that first comes to mind when looking at clips and trailer for Your Highness is easily Cheech & Chong’s The Corsican Brothers. McBride and Franco have developed a modern-day Cheech & Chong personas, with very little changing other than the contemporary references.

Another great element in what we can see from these clips is that Portman is acting like she’s in a completely different film. This could either help or hurt her role. If the character never breaks from the stoic, hard-assed maiden to McBride and Franco’s cartoonish antics, it could most certainly help the film’s tone.

Check out the three new clips after the jump, and be sure to go see Your Highness in theaters on April 8th.

Continue Reading →

Imagine a world where the characters from Pineapple Express and Lord of the Rings clashed. That’s exactly what Danny McBride and his writing partner Ben Best had in mind when they gave birth to the idea which became Your Highness.

The synopsis is just about what you’d think this team could come up with after getting really stoned and reading old Dungeons & Dragons sourcebooks.

Thadeous (Danny McBride) is a lazy, arrogant prince with his brother, Fabious (James Franco) must go on an epic quest in order to save their father’s kingdom. Natalie Portman plays a warrior princess who is also the lazy prince’s love interest. Zooey Deschanel plays Belladonna, Fabious’ virginal bride. Justin Theroux plays Leezar, the evil wizard who kidnaps Belladonna. Michael Clarke Duncan plays the Giant Troll.

Pretty funny, right? That’s what we thought. We’ve got some pretty awesome clips for you this week so be sure to check out the first batch after the jump.

Catch Your Highness and all of its antics in theaters on April 8th.

Continue Reading →

Even though Iron Man 2 wasn’t quite as good as its predecessor, it still managed to entertain and excite enough fans to bring in over $300 Million at the domestic box office. And what follows a terrific box office performance like that (besides a sequel of course)? Why it’s a feature packed Blu-ray DVD release.

To commemorate the pending debut of the three-disc Iron Man 2 on Blu-ray, we’ve got a new behind the scenes video from the release to share with you today. In it you’ll see director Jon Favreau and stars Robert Downey, Jr. and Samuel L. Jackson discuss their characters and the film with screenwriter Justin Theroux. Interesting insight indeed.

Iron Man 2 hits Blu-ray and DVD on September 28th. For more info on the release, check out the official press release for it as well as the video after the jump.

Continue Reading →

Are you excited for this summer’s Iron Man 2? Do you know French? Then you’ll love this new clip that the kind folks at French MSN.com put up. The second half of the video is the trailer that we’ve all seen before, but it’s the first half that has all new footage.

Director Jon Favreau, Robert Downey Jr., Mickey Rourke, and Scarlett Johansson all chat about some of the effects in the upcoming film, and some of the things they’re doing to introduce Stark’s newest opponent, Whiplash. The character is more of a hybrid of both Crymson Dynamo and Whiplash from the comics, with Dynamo’s backstory and Whiplash’s abilities and name.

With a screenplay from Tropic Thunder’s Justin Theroux, Iron Man 2 is set to hit theaters and IMAX on May 7th of this year. Along with Rourke, Downey, and Johansson, the film also stars Don Cheadle, Gwyneth Paltrow, Sam Rockwell, and Samuel L. Jackson.

Check out the french footage, courtesy of MSN.fr here. They don’t allow embedding, sorry.

Ben Stiller and Robert Downey Jr. seemed to strike gold when they had actor Justin Theroux co-write Tropic Thunder. The film got rave reviews from the critics and even took in a large chunk of change at the box office. To repay him, Downey decided to step up to the plate for Theroux by having him pen the script for the soon-to-be released Iron Man 2 for Paramount.

Now it seems that Stiller is taking interest in the young actor/writer/director by having him write and direct the sequel to 2001 comedy Zoolander, also with Paramount. From Deadline Hollywood:

I’ve learned that Ben and Justin are working on the script together, and Theroux is going to Fashion Week in Paris to “immerse himself on what is current in fashion”. ”It’s got momentum,” a studio source just told me. Everyone’s hoping Owen Wilson co-stars again but no deal is set. The villain likely will be Jonah Hill who’s in negotiations.

No word yet on who or what else they have planned for the sequel, but with names like Will Farrell, Billy Zane, Jon Voight, Milla Jovovich, David Duchovny, and dozens of others in the first film, you can expect to see some of Stiller’s new on-screen companions such as Jack Black, Tom Cruise, and Matthew McConaughey pop up in between glances of Blue Steel.

Justin Theroux, the man of a thousand projects, has just added one more flick to his plate.  According to The Hollywood Reporter, Theroux is now looking to set a comedy in the stars.  He’s strapped in to pen a little romantic comedy called Space Invader for Fox, and may even oversee its mission control as director.

By now, the men out there (and many of the women) will immediately be recoiling at the idea of a romantic comedy. But this is Theroux, writer of Tropic Thunder, so you know it’s not going to be that kind of movie. Invader follows a man who suspects his astronaut  girlfriend is cheating on him with another astronaut while they’re stationed up top,  so he finds a way to blast off into space and confront her. The deliciously funny and sexy Will Arnett is set to star as the jilted, Earthbound lover.

It sounds silly, but it’s the right kind of silly, the kind of thing Don Knotts would have made in his heydey, only raunchier. With Theroux and Arnett on board, I think it’s one we’ll eagerly countdown to.

Sam Rockwell was out promoting his new film Gentlemen Broncos so reporters took the time to ask him a few questions…about Iron Man 2 of course. About playing Tony Stark’s competitor, Justin Hammer, in the upcoming film Rockwell said: He’s a rival of Tony’s – they are competitors in the weapons industry. I team up with Mickey Rourke and we decide we want to take him down and take down the Stark legacy. He’s sort of like a cousin of the Charlie’s Angels character I played. The smarmy cousin. But it’s Mickey – he does the fighting and the kicking ass in the film.”

Alright, I know a lot of you read Charlie’s Angels and had a giant collective groan. However, the first Angels film wasn’t that bad (Did I just lose some geek cred by admitting that?) but more specifically Rockwell turned in a great performance. That being the case, I’m really intrigued by what he will do with his character given that Hammer is pretty old in the comic book series and Rockwell…well, isn’t.

He’s one of those actors (much like Iron Man himself, Robert Downey Jr.) that brings something unexpected and fun to the roles he takes on. To really appreciate that, I highly recommend Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. When asked about the film overall Rockwell gave us what we wanted to hear, “It’s a bigger scope. There’s a lot more action and fighting. More characters. It’s bigger and there’s a lot more to get your head around, so it’s a tougher job for [Jon] Favreau and Justin Theroux, who wrote it.”

More action, fighting, and characters?  Sounds like the recipe for a perfect followup to a fantastic film.  Iron Man 2 hits theaters next summer.