One of the surprise films of 2010 was Matthew Vaughn’s Kick-Ass. Based on the Mark Millar and John Romita Jr. graphic novel, the movie told the tale of a high school nerd who decides to be a super hero, despite his lack of any super powers.

The movie was a loud, vulgar, and gory explosion of awesome and it left many wanting more. Unfortunately the movie landed director Vaughn a chance at the “big leagues” and he went on to make the best X-Men movie to-date. With the head honcho otherwise occupied, it looked as if Kick-Ass 2 might not see the light of day.

Well that turns out not to be the case. Deadline is reporting that Universal is in talks to make the sequel as early as this year”

Universal Pictures is in talks to make Kick-Ass 2, with Jeff Wadlow directing his script. I’m told the intention is to get the film in production by August. Discussions are just getting underway with such original cast members as Aaron Johnson, Chloe Moretz and Christopher Mintz-Plasse, and they will have to be signed to new deals to reprise their roles.

The Wadlow script was actually written at the request of Vaughn who wanted work on the sequel to happen while he was occupied in the X-Universe. At first the concept of losing Vaughn might seem harsh to the fans of the first film, but knowing that he was involved at some point early on, and gives his blessing now is an encouraging sign.

Remaking old TV shows as movies is a tricky proposition. There are a few angles you can take with it, you could make the movie as direct an adaptation as possible. Or you could embrace the camp nature of the source material and make a farce of it.

Both tactics have failed miserably, but so to have they both worked. This spring’s 21 Jump Street is a prime example of a film that works by embracing the absurdity of the original’s sincere premise. Most indications of Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows might have succeeded in a similar fashion, so word of more classic TV adaptations can be met with some optimism these days.

According to Deadline, Universal has gotten behind their next TV to Big Screen adaptation:

Universal Pictures has set David Levien and Brian Koppelman to write The Rockford Files, a feature adaptation of the memorable series that ran on NBC from 1974-80 and featured James Garner as the down-and-out private eye. The studio will develop the film as a star vehicle for Vince Vaughn to play Rockford, and Vaughn and Victoria Vaughn will produce through their Universal-based Wild West Picture Show Productions banner.

Vaughn is a rather obvious choice, but hopefully it means they are going for a more comic approach. I know that will get fans of the original twisted up, but I think a strait forward adaptation of the show wouldn’t really work today. What could work is a Vince Vaughn staring vehicle using the show’s premise and the core of the main character. So long as it is more 21 Jump Street and less Starsky and Hutch we should be fine.

Oliver Stone is a very capable director. His visual style makes almost anything he crafts watchable. Unfortunately, lately his choices in films have not really allowed him to embrace his more frenetic skill sets.

That is about to change when the gloriously chaotic Savages hits theaters. For those unfamiliar with Stone’s new film here is the synopsis:

Laguna Beach entrepreneurs Ben (Aaron Johnson), a peaceful and charitable Buddhist, and his closest friend Chon (Taylor Kitsch), a former Navy SEAL and ex-mercenary, run a lucrative, homegrown industry—raising some of the best marijuana ever developed. They also share a one-of-a-kind love with the extraordinary beauty Ophelia (Blake Lively).  Life is idyllic in their Southern California town…until the Mexican Baja Cartel decides to move in and demands that the trio partners with them.

Sounds like a ton of fun, and now thanks to MTV we get a chance to see the trailer deliver on that promise. The film looks like a cross between Domino and Traffic with all the best parts of each preserved. Of course we wont know if that for sure until the movie is actually released, but this trailer has put Savages high on our to-see list.

Check out the full trailer after the jump.

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Last week I made mention that this weekend would be dominated by The Hunger Games. I never like to revel in such an easy victory, but for this week I will grant myself a little pardon.

The weekend was dominated by the new film that captured everyone’s hearts. The Hunger Games brought in a staggering $155 Million at the box office.  In just three days the film has already become the highest grossing film from Lionsgate productions ever.

The monstrous opening number is the third highest all time, coming in third behind Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt 2 and The Dark Knight. The number was also the highest among all non-sequels and non-franchises of all time.

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There is some good, some awesome, some sad and some well excepted news in this weeks box office results.

Coming in at number one for the weekend, 21 Jump Street makes a splash with $35 million, and it’s very good news. To see a successful TV adaptation that proves you can be R-rated, have a completely unexpected tone and still work is a wonderful trend starter for the industry.

Hollywood is a copy cat industry and if remakes and reboots have to happen, the only way you can maintain some artistic credibly is to bring something fresh to the table. Hopefully this success can grease the wheels with other creative folks and deliver something unexpected with these name brands. It will be interesting to see how the zany Dark Shadows is received in the wake of this win.

The well expected news comes in the form of our second place finisher, The Lorax. This Suess adaptation is performing well above initial expectations and is proving to have strong legs as it fell another soft 40ish percent to nearly $23 million. The Lorax will take a hit next week, but is well on it’s way to crossing the $200 million bar.

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The story of The Lorax has never felt right to me. Either the Once-ler is the most short-sighted whatsit in the world, next to the Lorax himself (or at least the forest creatures), or the entire tale is a buried parable on the importance of stable property rights. Given Seuss’s general lack of subtlety when making a political point, the latter probably isn’t the case. In any event, why does no one preserve the Truffula trees? If the Once-ler owns the forest, and his business is based on the Truffula trees, why on earth would he practice clear-cutting?

He, like pretty much every other private timber company that owns the forest they log, has an incentive to preserve the forest (unless he’s renting it from the creatures, but that doesn’t seem to be the case) – clearly the Once-ler needed to fire his business planner. Or, once the land had been deforested, should have sold it and the seed to another logging concern.

Heck, they’d probably seek him out, since Truffula trees are a hot commodity, and there’s a lot of Thneedians; we already know that one of the characters is a budding entrepreneur, it’d be a lot easier and a lot more profitable for him to replant the forest than find a way to sell air. Evidently the Thneedians don’t understand marginal utility, but that’s okay, what gets me is how Seuss (and the movie) stacks the odds in his favor.

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I’m not sure if the world needed a movie to put those damn hippies in their place, or needed to introduce us to the culture of nude wine-making, or why the name is Wanderlust when the characters stay in one place, but no matter.

Paul Rudd plays George, a 30/40-something someone (this is where I’d mention his job, but it’s never made clear), and his wife Linda (Jennifer Aniston), another 30/40 with a sordid and varied resume; her latest occupation is hocking a documentary she made about penguins with testicular cancer to HBO. They usefully inform her that it could use more sex, violence, and vampires.

George and Linda have recently purchased an expensive and tiny apartment in Manhattan, only for George to lose his job and Linda to, predictably, get tossed out of HBO for her lousy doc. So, unemployed and destitute in New York, they high-tail it to Georgia to stay with George’s brother Rick (Ken Marino). On the way, they stop overnight at Elysium Fields, an ostensible bed and breakfast, but really a hippie commune run by well-aged toker Carvin (Alan Alda), and featuring nudist wine-maker Wayne (Joe Lo Truglio), spacey moonchild Kathy (Kerri Kenney-Silver), eye candy Eva (Malin Akerman) and all-around douche Seth (Justin Theroux).

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The American Pie franchise lives in two planes of existence. For some the movies represent a loud and raunchy franchise that has slipped from the main stream and lives in the proverbial cinematic dumpster. For the rest of you American Pie represents something much more, and those direct to DVD sequels don’t even register in your mind.

As far as the theatrical films are concerned, the franchise has been about growth and the slow onset of adulthood. We have been with Jim and his friends through some of his most important life milestones, and we as an audience have grown up with them.

So the impending release of American Reunion has a chance to really be something special for an entire generation of film fans, and thankfully this most recent trailer has amped the nostalgia levels all the way to eleven.

Of course reckless nostalgia can be a really bad thing, and that will be the one test the movie will have to pass to be any good. However, the high school reunion plot should provide an easy in for a fond looking back tone. So long as they do not over milk it, odds are we will be in for a pleasant treat this April.

Check out the new trailer after the jump.

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There are certain comedy sub-genres that have either become parodies of themselves or just lost in Instant Netflix obscurity. Genres like the college comedy, the buddy cop comedy, and most importantly, the road comedy are among these. Something about protagonists finding themselves through an adventurous road trip has a certain amount of majesty to it.

Thankfully, comedy gurus David Wain and Ken Marino, best known as prime members of The State, have not forgotten the wonder of the road comedy, as the first trailer for Wanderlust has hit the web. The film stars Paul Rudd and (unfortunately) Jennifer Aniston as two workaholics living in New York City that decide to embark on a journey across the country to find themselves, and some pretty zany characters along the way.

If the writing style of Wain and Marino (the same minds that brought you Role Models) isn’t enough to get you into this flick, the massive cast of cameos should help. You can look forward to seeing actors like Justin Theroux, Malin Akerman, Alan Alda, Kathryn Hahn, Melissa Joan Hart, Ray Liotta, Reba McEntire, and Kerri Kenney-Silver in the film, just to name a few.

So before you pass judgment, check out the new trailer after the jump! Wanderlust is set to hit theaters on March 24th, 2012.

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You may have heard of a film called Sullivan’s Travels, and if you’ve heard of it, you may know the gist: Popular but unfulfilled director Sullivan is tired of making commercially successful but emotionally and intellectually vapid films. He decides that his next film (named O Brother, Where Art Thou?) will be a socially conscious depiction of the lower classes.

Through a series of comic mix-ups, he gets tossed in prison. One night a cartoon is screened for the inmates and Sullivan has an epiphany: The best way he can help the downtrodden is not by making high drama, but low-brow crowd-pleasers.

Larry Crowne is the kind of movie Sullivan would make if he were alive today. It’s full of plot-holes, cheap laughs, lazy pop-culture references, and utterly devoid of conflict. But for the women-age-45-and-up demographic wanting to see a cute romantic comedy with Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts (have they ever been paired together? I can’t recall), this should suffice.

Tom Hanks, who wrote, directed, and produced it, plays Crowne, a middle-aged supermarket drone/former Naval cook who loses his beloved job because he never went to college. Low on cash but doggone tenacious, he enrolls in community college, taking a speech class taught by the jaded Mercedes Tainot (Julia Roberts, who’s getting more attractive with age) and an Econ 101 class taught by the zany Dr. Matsutani (George Takei).

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Green Day is a generation defining band. They have grown and evolved with their fans consistently over the past two decades but have also managed to remain as relevant today as they were when their first hits came out in the early ’90s.

Green Day’s evolution as a band took another interesting turn last year when their latest mega-hit album ‘American Idiot’ was adopted into a stage musical. Logically there is only one place to go after you take Broadway: Hollywood!

Deadline is reporting that Universal Pictures is looking into turning the successful musical into a feature film:

Universal Pictures is negotiating to turn the Green Day-fueled Broadway musical American Idiot into a feature film. Dustin Lance Black, the Oscar-winning Milk scribe, is in talks to write the script, and Michael Mayer will direct.

Mayer helmed the stage run of the musical, which is closing on Broadway April 24 and launching a tour in the fall. Black most recently scripted J. Edgar, the Clint Eastwood film that stars Leonardo DiCaprio as J. Edgar Hoover.

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Depending upon your feelings toward Russell Brand, you will be delighted or horrified by the most recent box office weekend totals. Despite the fact that four new films opened on Friday, last weekend’s holdover Hop managed to remain on top for a second week in a row.

Brand voices a rabbit who is the main character in the film. The film dropped about 42% from last weekend, which is a little high for a kiddie flick, but it has earned $68.2 Million in its first two weeks of release.

Coming in at number two was the Arthur remake, also starring Brand in the title role. The film only made about $12.6M. That total is quite low considering the fact that the film played on over 3,276 screens. That’s only a $3,276 per/screen average.

The moody assassin movie Hanna almost overtook Arthur with $12.3 million in ticket sales, while playing on a far fewer screens (2,600).  Another newcomer placed fourth. Soul Surfer played on about 2,300 screens, and made $11.1 M.  Even more impressive was the fact that the film got a coveted A+ from audiences polled by Cinemascore. That is extremely rare. Sony Pictures reports that over 80% of the audience was female, also rare.

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