One thing you can always count on with a Baz Luhrmann movie is that it will be full of spectacle. Said spectacle may take the form of exotic song and dance numbers, sweeping vistas or elaborately choreographed gunplay, but it will always be there.

His next production, an adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, is no exception. It has contemporary songs, dancing, singing and spectacle galore, as you can see from the first trailer for the movie we’ve got for you today.

Heck, it’s even in 3D. That’s a dimension Luhrman hasn’t explored bofore. It will be interesting to see what he does with it. If this trailer is any indication, he’s going to do a heck of a lot.

Look for Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan and Joel Edgerton, to hit theaters this Christmas. Check out the trailer after the break.

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For a while it seemed that every young starlet in Hollywood was vying for the part of Daisy Buchanan in Baz Luhrmann’s upcoming adaptation of the literary classic The Great Gatsby. Director Luhrman has finally announced that Carey Mulligan won the coveted role.

Leonardo DiCaprio has been cast as the wealthy and mysterious Jay Gatsby, and Tobey Maquire will play Nick Carraway. The story is set in the 1920′s, and Daisy is Gatsby’s long-lost love, now married to another man.

Mulligan has made a quick name for herself by appearing in some critically acclaimed roles.  She was nominated for an Oscar for her performance in An Education as Jenny, a naive teenager who is seduced by an older playboy.  She has also received accolades for her gut-wrenching performance in this year’s Never Let Let Me Go.

She beat out Scarlett Johansson and Blake Lively for the role of Daisy.

The Great Gatsby has been filmed several times, but the 1974 version is most well known. It was written by Francis Ford Coppola and starred Robert Redford as Gatsby, Mia Farrow as Daisy, and Sam Waterson as Nick.

This week sees the release of several new movies and TV shows, some for the first time ever on Blu-ray. Of the ones coming out this week, we’re excited for a few of them in particular.

These include District 13: Ultimatum, Elizabeth, Tombstone, the Criterion Blu-ray release of Ang Lee’s Civil War epic Ride with the Devil featuring Tobey Maguire and the Blu-ray release of David Lynch’s misunderstood adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi novel Dune (pictured above with Kyle MacLachlan and Sean Young).

Movies

Armageddon ~ Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck (Blu-ray)

District 13: Ultimatum ~ Cyril Raffaelli, David Belle, Philippe Torreton, Daniel Duval (Blu-ray and DVD)

Dune ~ Kyle MacLachlan, Virginia Madsen (Blu-ray)

Elizabeth ~ Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush (Blu-ray)

Elizabeth: The Golden Age ~ Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush (Blu-ray)

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Despite Tobey’s dropping that he knows who will be replacing Sam Raimi as director for the planned Spider-Man4 movie reboot, the bigger news surrounding the Golden Globe nominee has been a rumor fueled by the entire internet that he’s currently signed on to play Bilbo Baggins in Guillermo del Toro’s The Hobbit.

But word has come from the Headgeek over at Ain’t It Cool News, via email from del Toro and Peter Jackson who is stepping back to the role of Producer for the two films being made from J.R.R. Tolkien’s lead-in to The Lord of the Rings trilogy, that the rumors aren’t true and that the production is still about a month or two away from making any announcements. Peter Jackson, in his email response even said that they’re  ”currently auditioning for Bilbo.”

Will this mean that in a month or so we’ll be completely shocked at who gets the role? Or might Maguire actually have a shot at it and the filmmakers are just playing coy? Let us know what you think of this idea, or who you’d like to see as Bilbo, in the comments below.

As first reported via Deadline Hollywood, things are going in a completely different direction in the cinematic world of Spider-Man. According to the report, the fourth film featuring the web slinger won’t star Tobey Maguire or be directed by Sam Raimi. In fact, none of the creative team from the first three films will be returning and the next film will be an entire reboot of the franchise.

This news comes after recent reports of script and villain problems and delays in filming in order to reach a projected release date in 2012. In addition, Sony released a statement today and we’ve got that for you right here:

Culver City, CA (January 11, 2010) — Peter Parker is going back to high school when the next Spider-Man hits theaters in the summer of 2012. Columbia Pictures and Marvel Studios announced today they are moving forward with a film based on a script by James Vanderbilt that focuses on a teenager grappling with both contemporary human problems and amazing super-human crises.

The new chapter in the Spider-Man franchise produced by Columbia, Marvel Studios and Avi Arad and Laura Ziskin, will have a new cast and filmmaking team. Spider-Man 4 was to have been released in 2011, but had not yet gone into production.

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In the never ending quest for the perfect release schedule for big movies, studios often shift dates around in an effort to one-up the competition or, in some cases, counter-program so their movie is the only one of its genre coming out on a particular weekend. Other times, studios make changes that seem deliberately to undermine other movies. Case in point is today’s switch of Marvel Studios’ Thor movie from the original date of May 20, 2011 to May 6, 2011.

You may wonder why this is significant? Well, this is the same weekend that Spider-Man 4 is supposedly going to be released by Sony. Although, with the troubles the film is supposedly going through, it may end up getting the date pushed. Still, its a pretty interesting move on Paramount’s part.

Although this move does appear, at least on the surface, as an act of internal rivalry, the report states that Paramount simply did not want to wait on an “official” release date change for Spider-Man 4 in case other studios tried to get there first. This way, a Marvel movie still has a slot on the opening weekend of Summer. Makes sense I guess.

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.

With the fourth installment of Spider-Man slated for production in early 2010, Sony Pictures has shown a solid commitment to expanding the franchise even more by signing screenwriter James Vanderbilt (The Losers, Zodiac) to write the Spider-Man 5 and Spider-Man 6 sequels

Vanderbilt was the first writer on Spider-Man 4, but director Sam Raimi brought on David Lindsay-Abaire (Rabbit Hole) to rewrite him, and Gary Ross is currently rewriting that script. According to Variety, Raimi didn’t embrace all of Vanderbilt’s ideas, but execs at Columbia Pictures and Marvel Studios have. The fifth and sixth Spider-Man movies will have an interconnected storyline, which was originally discussed when Vanderbilt was signed on to write Spider-Man 4, but the idea of shooting a fourth and fifth film back to back with the original cast was scrapped.

Currently, it is unclear whether Raimi, Tobey Maguire or Kirsten Dunst will be back for future installments. If they aren’t, Vanderbilt’s script would most-likely be the blueprint for a franchise reboot with an all-new cast. Regardless of the established talent’s future involvement, Sony’s priority will be to release Spider-Man films on a more frequent basis. The lapse between films has grown with each installment. The second film came only two years after the first, but it took three years for a third installment, and four years will have passed when Spider-Man 4 opens in May 2011.

Stay tuned to The Flickcast for future developments on the Spider-Man franchise.

While the movie doesn’t come out until 2011, and there’s no official word on what the story is, that hasn’t stopped the friendly, neighborhood marketing machine from releasing the very first poster for Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 4. It doesn’t reveal much, but it at least gives us hope that there WILL be a fourth film.

In a recent interview with Raimi, he said that playwright David Lindsay-Abaire (Inkheart) is working on the script and should have it done any day now. With that, should come details on what the next plot will be, including the villain, (Lizard and Morbius?). But until then, we have this teaser-ish poster to hold us over.

Spider-Man 4 is set to hit theaters on May 6, 2011, and will star Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst.

After being dealt a moderate amount of criticism for Spider-Man 3, fans have been left wondering if director Sam Raimi was going to return to direct the franchises 4th installment. Fortunately, in a recent interview with SuperHeroHype, Raimi seems very excited to get back to work with our favorite, web-slinging hero!

With playwright David Lindsay-Abaire working on the screenplay (“He should be done with his script in about four weeks, I think”, says Raimi in the article), Spider-Man 4 is currently slated for a May 6, 2011 release date. In the interview, Raimi took time to address the reviews Spider-Man 3 received,  ”I simply am an entertainer and I make films for audience appreciation. When they don’t like it, I don’t have a leg to stand on.”

Raimi also plans on delving deeper into the character of everyman turned superhero, Peter Parker. “I only wanted to do it with Tobey because my interest is in living the character with Tobey in a deeper way than we ever have lived it before. There comes with the familiarity a knowledge of a lot of the basics. I think it’s really going to allow us to delve deeply into him as a human being, which is really why I’m into it this time.”

Sam Raimi’s current project, the highly anticipated horror film Drag Me To Hell, comes out next week on May 29th.