Guillermo del Toro Working on Dark Universe… Yeah, Basically The 90s Vertigo Comics Movie

Update, 6:40 a.m.: The video after the jump is fixed. What can I say? That Benzedrine’s a hell of a drug.

Guillermo del Toro is finishing up work on Pacific Rim, which will be in theaters in July. And since between movies and books and comics, he seems like a guy who likes to keep busy… you know, in the sense that a methamphetamine addict like to occupy the day by disassembling the television in an attempt to find parts to improve the AK-47 they use to keep the Goddamned bugs away.

Which, as analogies go, certainly is one, but my point is, del Toro probably has another project in mind. And it seems that he does. Is it the adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s At The Mountains of Madness that del Toro was working on before the project went tits up? Well, apparently maybe; supposedly he thinks he can get one more bite at that apple, hard R rating and ridiculous budget or no:

“I’m going to try it one more time. Once more into the dark abyss,” he laughed. “We’re gonna do a big presentation of the project again at the start of the year and see if any [studio’s] interested.” And yes, Tom Cruise is still game to be on board if they can find a home for it. “Yeah, Tom is still attached. I think it would be so fantastic to make it with him. He’s been such a great ally of the project.”

Okay, that’s pretty good news… certainly better than the news about the Hulk TV show that del Toro was supposedly working on a few months ago:

“After ‘The Avengers’ there’s been complete radio silence,” he said. “I had one more meeting after ‘Avengers’ with Jeph Loeb from Marvel and he said, ‘We’re working on it, we’re waiting for a writer,’ he gave me the name of the writer and their resume and I said, ‘That sounds great, let’s wait for him’ because we had delivered a teleplay and I haven’t heard since then.”

So yeah, those sound pretty good… but that’s not the good shit. The good shit is that del Toro is apparently working on a project with Warner Bros. A movie including Swamp Thing, John Constantine, Zatanna, Etrigan… pretty much all of the cast of Justice League Dark. And it’s actually in preproduction, with a writer attached and everything.

Find The Nerve Is Not As Pleasant As It Sounds: New The Dark Knight Returns: Part 2 Teaser Video

Over the New Year’s holiday, we here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office spent an entire day drinking whiskey and watching DC animated movies on streaming Netflix. We went through Justice League: Doom, Batman: Under The Red Hood, Superman Vs. The Elite, and All-Star Superman, all in one big throwdown. Because you can say what you want about Warner Bros. and DC and their inability so far to make a decent major motion picture that doesn’t star Batman, but they are light years ahead of anything that Marvel’s been doing in the animation space, and they have been for years. They just make good animated series and direct-to-video features, so clear and fun you can follow them despite, by the time All-Star Superman started bubbling down the magical pornography wire into the XBox, being so drunk we couldn’t make our desires known to an establishment that only sells pizza.

But the one film we didn’t stream was The Dark Knight Returns: Part 1, despite being excited by the teaser trailers that were released for that release back in July and August, because we are huge fans of Frank Miller’s original comic series, and if we’re going to watch it, we want it all in one whack.

And soon, our wait will be over; The Dark Knight Returns: Part 2 is scheduled to be released on DVD, Blu-Ray and video on demand on January 29th… and Warner Bros. has released another teaser trailer for the second part. This particular clip presents Batman stomping the living shit out of a heavily-armed SWAT team. Hang on while I get my Jack Daniel’s, and let’s meet up after the jump.

…Moviegoer of Kleenex: New Man of Steel Teaser Trailer Released

As I’ve said before, since it’s the end of the year, the movie studios are starting to get we genre geeks hyped up about the 2013 summer blockbuster movie season. They’ve given us a wealth of teaser trailers and posters, which has led to the staff of Crisis On Infinite Midlives to argue, in the past week, as to which summer movie we’re looking more forward to: Iron Man 3, directed by the guy who wrote Lethal Weapon, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, and The Last Boy Scout, or Star Trek Into Darkness, directed by the guy who directed Star Trek and Super 8, and also produced Lost and Alias.

Oh yeah, and then there’s Man of Steel, directed by Zack Snyder. The guy who directed the completely unnecessary Dawn of The Dead remake, the can’t-even-sit-through-while-drunk-and-the-remote’s-broken Sucker Punch, and the resoundingly “no homo” 300. Sure, Man of Steel will be opening too, but I can’t imagine there’s gonna be anything that could vault it to the top of the “must see” list, even if we’re totally willing to forget Superman Returns, a movie that even a half-quart of Jack Daniels couldn’t make entertaining.

What’s that? There’s a new teaser trailer for Man of Steel that’s been released? *Sigh*

Fine. Let’s give it a look.

Outsourcing: Iron Man 3 Japanese Trailer Features Some New Footage

I realize that we live in a streaming video world, and that because of the ready availability of streamed movies, many of you no longer buy DVDs. And if that’s the case, you are the worst fucking people on Earth.

Because since DVD and Blu-Ray sales have flatlined in the past few years, the international market has become more important for movie studios than ever. And because of that, the cool genre movies that geeks want to see are opening overseas before we get to see them here (Most recent example? About 25 countries are getting The Hobbit before it opens in the United States). So thanks to you swine who have stopped accumulating movies on physical media for the rotten and unjustifiable reason that streaming is inexpensive and convenient, other countries are getting all the cool shit before us! I hope you’re Goddamned proud of yourselves.

But there is a positive about the whole situation: because those markets are so lucrative, they tend to get trailers with a little more detail and a little more footage than the American versions. We saw it earlier this week with the Star Trek Into Darkness trailer, where the Japanese version had a bit more going on than the American version… and now we’re seeing it with the Japanese version of the Iron Man 3 trailer, which has some previously-unseen footage in it. You can check it out after the jump.

The Captain The Federation Deserves: Star Trek Into Darkness Teaser Trailers Released

There’s nothing like the holiday season, and its attendant shopping, travel, insufferable parties, rotten fruitcake, family gatherings, family arguments, family recriminations, family embarrassment, and, well, family, that makes the heart yearn for summer blockbuster movie season.

And Hollywood knows this. This is why they spend millions on new Christmas movies (not that I begrudge Tim Allen a living), on funnelling It’s A Wonderful Life onto every second-rate expanded cable channel in America from Thanksgiving until about Valentine’s Day, and its why your local oldies radio station alternates playing Paul McCartney’s Wonderful Christmastime and Bing Crosby’s White Christmas from the day after Halloween until the smile on the face of the clerk at your local convenience store begins looking suspiciously like a silent prayer for the sweet release of death.

They want you to feel that level of despair so that, when they give you a tease of the big, explodey action of the summer flicks, you become disproportionately excited over the idea of big sun, long days, and starship captains blowing up bad guys.

And in that spirit, the first teaser trailer for Star Trek Into Darkness has been released… along with a little something extra for people in a country where Christmas is a time you spend with your boss instead of your family. Those lucky motherfuckers.

Post No Bills: Star Trek Into Darkness and Man Of Steel Posters Released

It’s getting to be the end of 2012, which means two things. First, it’s the time of year to get ripped to the tits on egg nog and try to convince the local constabulary that I just got some bad Boston Cream Pie, and second: it’s time for next summer’s genre movies to start dropping teaser posters.

And yesterday gave a wealth of still-framed, Photoshopped, Public Relations Department approved brain candy that starts the geek glands a-drooling while showing us absolutely nothing of concrete value. And in that spirit, we at Crisis On Infinite Midlives are happy to present two new teaser posters, both after the jump.

Monstrous Teasing: Pacific Rim Teaser Video Released

About a year and a half ago, it looked like things were good to go for Guillermo del Toro to get the green light to film a live action adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s At The Mountains of Madness, with a 150 million dollar budget and a commitment to turn the story of the Antarctic discovery of Elder Things, Shoggoths and Cthulhu into a film with a hard R rating, in accordance with the horror of the original story. That was good. However, at the eleventh hour, Universal pulled the plug on the movie, because it had a 150 million dollar budget and a hard R rating. That was less good.

However, del Toro took the adversity on the chin, wiped it off like a pro, and took the disappointment of suddenly finding himself unable to adapt a classic of the cosmic horror genre to sink his teeth into something equally weighty: a flick about giant monsters and robots.

Pacific Rim is scheduled to open on July 12, 2013, and the first teaser video of the flick has been released, which you can check out after the jump.

World Building: Man of Steel, Joseph Gordon-Levitt May Be Involved In Justice League Movie

Update, 7 p.m.: According to Sydney Bucksbaum at Hollywood.com, Gordon-Levitt’s representatives have “refuted the rumor entirely.” Of course, one time I had representatives “refute” the “rumor” that I had “run over” an “elderly person” while I was “hammered.” At least they did until my representatives negotiated a final “plea agreement.” So for now, I guess this will remain, as it did this morning, a cool-sounding rumor.

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Ever since Marvel Studios’ Avengers movie made about a bazillion dollars earlier this year, it was all but a foregone conclusion that Warner Bros. would be coming out with a Justice League movie. You know, unless for some reason they hate money. Watching a movie about a superhero team make beaucoup delores, to the point it has only been beaten by blue people fucking or young lovers freezing to death in the frigid North Atlantic (again: blue people fucking. Pow! Thank you folks, I’ll be here all week! I work here!), and then leaving your own superhero property on the table, would be less a poor management decision than terminal self-destructive whiskey insanity.

The Justice League movie has quietly been in pre-production since Warner Bros. won the latest battle for the rights to Superman against the estate of Superman creator Joe Shuster about a month ago, but without a lot of detail as to how they were gonna proceed. Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy had ended, with both Nolan and Batman actor Christian Bale saying pretty strongly that they wouldn’t be involved in anything else Batman-related. Zack Snyder was deep into production on Superman movie Man of Steel, but he’d said back in March of last year that Man of Steel wouldn’t be part of any Justice League movie. So all initial indications were that Warner Bros. was planning pull a reverse of Marvel Studios, and just make a Justice League movie, spinning individual heroes’ movies off of that.

But that was then, and $623,279,547 Avengers movie dollars ago. Today, it looks like there might be some moves to make Justice League tie not only into Man of Steel… but into Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy.

Surely, You Belong With Us Here Amongst The Clouds: Lando in Star Wars VII?

It’s been a good couple of weeks since the news broke that Disney purchased Lucasfilm and then announced that they were beginning production on a new Star Wars movie. And in that time, there has been a small amount of concrete news about the new movie: such as the fact that it is being written by Michael Ardnt, the dude who wrote Little Miss Sunshine and Toy Story 3… and not very much else.

Sure, we’ve learned a few things that aren’t happening, such as the fact that, despite working on a film in development for Disney, Brad Bird won’t be directing Star Wars VII. Nor will Quentin Tarantino, Steven Spelberg, or Zack Snyder. We’re reasonably certain that the film will be set after Return of The Jedi, and we’ve heard that Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford, at least, wouldn’t be averse to coming back in some capacity or another. So that’s where we are: we know the writer and we think we know the general era in which the story will be set, and there’s at least a chance that the three main characters will be coming back.

So that’s that. Nothing new to report. Nothing we’ve missed or forgotten that we might carry over from the original trilogy?

Oh yeah: there’s that guy who blew up the second Death Star.

Lando Calrissian might be coming back.

Well, maybe.

Your Move, Creep: Robocop Concept Art Sizzle Video

As you might or might not be aware, there is a reboot of Robocop in production. This is noteworthy for a couple of reasons, as it introduces the character to a new generation of moviegoers, and it marks the first real sign to the world that Generation X is sliding into obsolescence. This is how it starts, kids; I am convinced that we will learn that someone is remaking Pulp Fiction at exactly the same time we are being fitted for our first medical grade bag, or perhaps sack.

We got our first inkling that the remake was coming based on the fake OmniCorp ad for the ED-209 we saw outside the convention center at San Diego Comic-Con in July, and have since learned that it will be directed by Jose Padhila, director of The Elite Squad, about which I can only say: “Huh? I don’t speak Portuguese.” It will star Joel Kinnaman, formerly known for being That Other Cop in AMC’s The Killing, and is due for release on February 7, 2014…

But up until now, that’s about all we’ve known about the flick, other than the fact that new new Robocop suit looks like the old one went on a diet, walked through a vat of flat black Rustoleum, and decided to do himself the kindness of leaving his wank hand handy. However, a marketing reel about the flick has leaked, including interviews with Padhila and Kinnaman and a bunch of concept art.

So does it look like the remake can possibly keep up with Paul Verhoeven’s classic 1987 original? Well, take a look and decide for yourself.