Will we really get "The Greatest Muppet Movie Ever Made"? Here's hoping

If Jason Segel somehow manages to screw up his very-long-gestating Muppet movie, I'd be genuinely surprised, because as the pieces have - very slowly - come together, it all seems to be coming together perfectly so far.

The latest pieces to fit into the puzzle are the humans, apart from Segel, who long ago swiped the human lead in this for himself, and now he's surrounded himself with people I always like to watch. Amy Adams, Chris Cooper and Rashida Jones are all in negotiations to join the cast of what I believe is still titled "The Greatest Muppet Movie Ever Made."

In the movie, assuming it ever really happens, Adams would play Segel's character's girlfriend, Jones would play a TV executive, and best of all, Cooper would be the big bad, an oil man who - of course - wants to drill for black gold beneath the Muppets' studio.

And along with this casting news, it seems the story from Segel and co-writer Nicholas Stoller has changed in the many months since this was first announced. One of the benefits of making your movie at Disney, I suppose, is you probably constantly have really smart people giving you advice, and it seems that after table reads with Pixar folks like John Lasseter and others, the movie will now be loosely based on a Jim Henson idea originally titled "The Cheapest Muppet Movie Ever Made." In Henson's pitch, Gonzo is hired to direct a film, but ends up blowing his entire budget on the first day, and turns to his Muppet friends to bail him out and help him finish the flick.

Sounds like a classic Muppets premise to me, and though I have no actual idea when filming is set to begin on all this, to be directed by "Flight of the Conchords" vet James Bobin, it still has a release date set of Christmas Day 2011, so Muppet fans like me, keep hope alive!

Just a short report after that today with one more bit of good news, then it's off to a busier than usual Friday on which I have to care for some dogs and cats along with the regular daily grind.

Coming together much faster than "The Greatest Muppet Movie Ever Made" is "Sopranos" creator David Chase's as-yet-still-untitled first feature film.

He's found his three relative unknowns to star in the rock 'n' roll coming of age flick set (natch) in New Jersey: John Magaro, Jack Huston and Will Brill (mission accomplished, I suppose, because I've never heard of any of them.) Even better, he's now hired guitarman-turned-actor-turned-garage-band-promoting-DJ Steven Van Zandt, aka Silvio on "The Sopranos," to supervise the music for this and serve as executive producer.

The movie, set to begin shooting in January in New York, follows a group of suburban New Jersey guys making their way during the 1960s as a rock band called the Twilight Zones. Many of Chase's "Sopranos" behind-the-camera running mates have followed that up by working on HBO's sublimely entertaining Atlantic City crime epic "Boardwalk Empire," so here's hoping Chase now finds similar success on the big screen.

OK, all I have for the big finale is the first five minutes or so of the upcoming animated (in 3D if you choose, I have to assume) flick "Megamind," set to come out Nov. 5 with the voices of Will Ferrell, Brad Pitt, Tina Fey and Jonah Hill. Judging from this preview of sorts, the film should at least be very funny, and that's really usually all we can ask for from animated flicks nowadays. Enjoy the clip and have an at least excellent weekend. Peace out.

Will the best scripts of 2009 be the best movies of 2010?

The short answer to that question is of course not, because it certainly takes a lot of steps to get a movie from great script to even somewhat good flick.

And though I have to admit I had never heard of it until I stumbled on it yesterday at Collider.com, Franklin Leonard has been releasing "The Black List" (rather unfortunate name, but great idea) since 2004. It's a list of the best scripts that Leonard, now an executive at Universal, has received each year, in 2009 culled from 97 offerings. You can read the whole thing here, but below are a few highlights from the top 10 that caught my eye, with commentary from me.


1. The Muppet Man
By Christopher Weekes
I had no idea that a biopic about Jim Henson was in the works, but I'm just jazzed beyond all reason that it is and may even be coming soon. Like everyone of a certain age, I grew up with the Muppets, and just loved them, especially the thoroughly magical "Muppet Movie." This is listed as being set up at the Jim Henson Co., so may not exactly be an objective view, but who would really want to watch a hatchet job about Jim Henson anyway? With this and (maybe) a new Muppet movie coming from Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller, it truly could be a new golden age for my favorite puppets (who somehow even have their own very fun Youtube channel, too.)

2. The Social Network
By Aaron Sorkin
I just lent out my copy of Sorkin's "Sports Night" to my fellow cubicle slave Randy Waters, and he now shares the minority view with me that it's even better than Sorkin's "The West Wing." Either way, his wit shined again in 2008 with "Charlie Wilson's War," and hopefully will also with this story about the creation of Facebook (which I'm somehow on.) In the words of Leonard, the "fascinating biographical elements of Shattered Glass meets the courtroom drama of Kramer vs. Kramer, without the tears." Namechecking one of my favorite movies ("Shattered Glass") will get my attention every time, and with David Fincher directing this for an October 2010 release starring Jesse Eisenberg and Justin Timberlake (a surprisingly good actor), this is definitely one I've got my eyes on.

3. The Voices
By Michael R. Perry
I certainly like twisted movies, and from the right perspective I also don't mind some horrific violence thrown in too, so this sounds right up my alley. According to Leonard, this one's about a schizophrenic worker at a bathtub factory who accidentally kills a beautiful woman from his workplace. While trying to cover his tracks, he starts to hear voices from his foul-mouthed cat and dog. In describing it as like "watching the lovable pig from Babe join forces with American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman," Leonard already had me hooked. Mark Romanek (One Hour Photo) will apparently direct this if he can find someone crazy enough to take the lead role.

5. Cedar Rapids
By Phil Johnston
You can count Miguel Arteta's "Youth in Revolt" starring Michael Cera as one of the near-future movies I'm really looking forward to, so it's certainly good news to hear that his next one should be a winner too. He's attached to direct this flick starring Ed Helms as a small-town insurance man who hasn't accomplished much of anything until he gets invited to represent his company at the Cedar Rapids insurance convention. Helms is still the funniest guy on "The Office," and with Alia Shawkat, John C. Reilly and even Sigourney Weaver set to co-star, it should be a real hoot.

6. Londongrad
By David Scarpa (The Day The Earth Stood Still and co-wrote The Last Castle)
It seems like forever since I've seen a great spy movie (or at least one without Paul Greengrass' uncontrollably shaky camera), but this one certainly seems to fit the bill. It's an adaptation of Alan Cowell's 2008 book "The Terminal Spy: A True Story of Espionage, Betrayal and Murder," which chronicles the life and death of Alexander Litvinenko. The story itself seems way too good to be true, with Litvinenko allegedly poisoned by radioactive tea, but it really did happen in 2006, and thoroughly fascinated me at the time. Leonard says the script evokes "Born of the Fourth of July, Silkwood, and Robert DeNiro’s history-of-the-CIA saga The Good Shepherd - but in Russia, with spies," which sounds great to me. Warner Bros. has apparently optioned the script, and I somehow think I read Johnny Depp has been attached to star in it, though I read so much about movies that I could be just all wet about that.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to see one movie today, but I can't decide between "Invictus" and "The Princess and the Frog." I'll eventually see them both, but I'm leaning with starting with Disney's return to 2D animation. Peace out.

Oscar's big gambit: Power to the people?

Before we get into this madness with the expanded Oscars, there's news about two things out there today that will snag a bit of this aging geeks' money, so I thought I'd pass on what I know.

The first is that the Director's Cut for Zack Snyder's "Watchmen" should be a truly wild affair. It's set to come to DVD the third week of July or so, and if you're lucky enough to live in New York, L.A. and maybe a couple of other cities you will be able to see it in a theater for one weekend only right before that.

The flick will clock in at an admittedly rather ridiculous 188 minutes, but if you're like me and loved the movie almost as the funny book by Alan Moore, I think you'll happily sit through it all. No word yet on whether or not there will be a giant squid anywhere to be seen, but I do know that it will restore one scene that was just sorely missing from the theatrical cut: The murder of Hollis Mason. This is a very poignant moment in the comic, so it's about damn time.

Comingsoon.net also had a bit this morning about something from Zack Snyder that I can't say I'm terribly excited about: A sequel to "300."

Now, don't get me wrong, it certainly will look cool. But didn't "300" have a definite ending already? Frank Miller is apparently hard at work on the comic that would precede the movie, but personally, I'd much rather see what Snyder can come up with for "Sucker Punch." Though it sounds a whole lot like "Pan's Labyrinth," I'm betting his tale of a young woman who creates an alternative reality to escape from a mental institution will be nothing but cool.

The second thing that caught my eye this morning may well only appeal to me, but here goes anyway: They're actually making a Fraggle Rock comic book. Things just don't get much odder than that, but I'm definitely in.

It seem that the Jim Henson Company is partnering with Archaia Comics to release a whole bunch of comics, everything from "The Dark Crystal" to "Labyrinth," with "Fraggle Rock" set to start it all off. With Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller hopefully still working on a new muppet movie, we may be looking at a second golden age for Henson's creations, and that would be just fine with me.

But beyond what interests me, of course, the biggest news of the day is the Oscars' big gambit: To double the number of best picture nominees from five to 10.

The move, which sounds great to me, leads back to a much earlier era; The last the time the academy had 10 Best Picture nominees was from 1931 to 1943. But why now?

Well, both the most obvious and probably the right reason is what happened last year with "The Dark Knight." Many folks, though by only a nose, not me, thought Christopher Nolan's flick should have received a Best Picture nomination. And, to be clear, if I had had a vote and there were 10 slots, I indeed would have given one of them to "The Dark Knight."

But what might it mean for this year? Well, I think it almost certainly means that "Up" will finally break into the Best Picture pack, and given it's rather rapturous reception, could even come very close to winning. Beyond that, if geeks are allowed to dream, could "Star Trek" even make the cut too? Probably not, but you can see how the wider field opens a bunch of possibilities.

My only possible beef with any of this is that it will probably make the already unbearably long Oscar broadcast even longer. My suggestion: Cut, immediately, that extremely morbid bit where the audience offers dead folks varying degrees of applause. That just makes me cringe every time I see it.

But, of course, beyond expanding the field to a wider range of films, there is a bottom-line factor that plays big into this. Though they won't say it publicly, I'd imagine the ability to stamp "Best Picture nominee" on 10 DVDs rather than five each year had to play a big role in this decision.

So, there you have it. Please feel free to chime in with any thoughts you might have on all of this, and have a perfectly pleasant Thursday. Peace out.

New hope for an "Arrested Development" movie

Although there's definitive movement afoot regarding a possible end to the WGA strike, for fans of a certain dead TV show there also have been talks of a different kind going on that could generate something unbelievably cool (or perhaps incredibly disappointing, but here's hoping not.)

According to E!'s Kristin Vine, who rarely gets things wrong, Jason Bateman, who has been talking up this rather amazing possibility nonstop, has revealed that "AD" gurus Mitchell Hurwitz and Ron Howard have launched the project with new vigor and contacted all the major cast members to measure their interest in a flick.

"I can confirm that a round of sniffing has started," Bateman says. "Any talk is targeting a poststrike situation, of course. I think, as always, that it's a question of whether the people with the money are willing to give our leader, Mitch Hurwitz, what he deserves for his participation. And I can speak for the cast when I say our fingers are crossed."

How she knows this I have no idea, but Vine also claims that Universal is very interested in backing this if it ever comes together. And, since Jeffrey Tambor is about to have his second post-"AD" sitcom, "The Captain," cancelled very quickly (I predict, anyway) and none of the "AD" cast members except Bateman can seem to find good movies to star in, I'd imagine everyone would be eager to get going on this as soon as possible.

Even with all this buzz this is still just a rumor, but here's hoping it becomes a very welcome reality.

Is "Dr. Parnassus" alive and well?

Speaking of rumors, I've heard a lot of them about how Heath Ledger's death will impact Terry Gilliam's "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus," but have tried to stay away from them until something official is announced.

The craziest idea I've heard is that, since Ledger's character had the ability to transform himself with different appearances as he went down the different paths in Dr. Parnassus' contraption, a variety of actors could be used to augment what they were able to shoot with the late Mr. Ledger.

That would indeed be a crazy kind of tribute, but later today we may get to have some kind of official word. Though it's not live yet, a Web site for the movie is set to go on line later today, so click here and see if it actually does, and if it offers any more clues about this rather murky mess.

Finally, a biopic I can get behind

Maybe it's because he grew up in Maryland or just because the Muppets are so friggin cool, but for whatever reason I've always had an inordinate amount of love for Jim Henson and just about everything he put his hands on.

And now he's about to get the proper tribute he definitely deserves. Empire Film Group, Inc. has acquired the motion picture production and distribution rights to Henson, an original screenplay by Robert D. Slane that chronicles the life and achievements of the Muppets creator. Empire has pegged the film for production in late summer with a $30 million budget.

None of this can be called bad news, but who would you pick to play the puppetmaster? For my money there couldn't be a better choice than Jeff Daniels. What do you think?

A teaser for M. Night's "Happening"

Even though "The Village" and even moreso "Lady in the Water" can easily find homes on any list of the worst movies I've ever seen, I'm still holding out hope for a M. Night Shymalan comeback with "The Happening." As you can see from this teaser, there's some pretty creepy stuff going on in the flick set for release this summer. Enjoy, and have a perfectly bearable Tuesday. And, of course, if you live in a Super Tuesday state, vote (as I'm going to do for Barack Obama as soon as I wrap this up)! Peace out.