Evil Dead IV is on…and that’s not just pillow talk, baby!

Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi to return to their roots.

Two weeks ago, at Comic-Con, Evil Dead director Sam Raimi announced that after an apparent end to the trilogy back in 1992 with Army of Darkness, the franchise will, in fact, return with a fourth installment. And Campbell is all in. As he told MTV recently, “When [Raimi] is ready, I’m ready.”

While Evil Dead IV seems an eventual certainty at this point, very little else—really, nothing—is ready for the telling. “Nobody knows anything,” said Campbell, though he indicates a desire to harken back the early Evil days, when filming happened on in a low-scale way. “If we were really smart, we’d go back to a handheld movie and shoot it in 16mm and find someplace in the middle of nowhere. And have a crew of 10 people.” There is also no word on whether IV will pick up in present time, or in the post-apocolyptic future that Ash arrived at in an alternate ending to Army of Darkness.

As far as the 16-year gap between Army and Evil Dead IV, Campbell speculated that his advanced years will be handled differently than in recent fourth films Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Live Free or Die Hard, which both took on younger characters to span the generation from aging stars. “I think the audience would be insulted if you did [that],” he said.

More at Paste Magazine.

Batman: The Dark Knight trailer spoof

I know, I know….lots of Batman content lately, but hey, this is pretty funny for being shot on a shoestring budget.

Terminator: Salvation trailer

I love Christian Bale as an actor, and wholeheartedly endorse his plans to star in every movie released for the next 15 years.

Michael Bay talks about “Transformers 2” and “Friday the 13th” remake

Fresh off his all too funny self-parody in a Verizon commercial, Michael Bay talks shop. Specifically, Transformers 2 and his remake of Friday the 13th. Lord help us………be sure to read his comments about the funny blog posting of his Rejected Script for Batman: Dark Knight. I don’t think he gets it.

During a break on the set of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen — described to us as a “remote air force base” at an “undisclosed location” — horror franchise reviver and blockbuster director extraordinaire Michael Bay hopped on the phone to give us the scoop on the Transformers sequel, his other projects in the works, and his reaction to that Dark Knight script circling the Internet with his name on it…

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What can you tell us about Transformers 2? Or, better yet, what will you tell us?
MICHAEL BAY: When we were writing the script, I said to the writers, “I hate sequels that try to make it to the third movie. Pretend like we’re never having a third movie, so let’s go for broke on the second one. I hate those cliffhangers! Let’s just make this movie stand on its own.” I really feel this movie is not a forced sequel. I think the script is really good, and I think it’s got a lot of new stuff in it. There are a lot of rumors out there, but we’ve released a lot of fake stuff. We’ve done a really good job of keeping things secret.

Can you give us a hint of something that is true then?
[Laughs] No.

C’mon, anything?
There are some great, new robots that are really inventive.

You recently wrapped production on your update of Friday the 13th, and horror buffs out there are dying to know: what’s it going to be about?
It’s a reconception of the original. We’re introducing a whole group of new kids. What we always try to do is add a little bit of freshness to these movies that were really scary back then and update them for a new audience.

AFTER THE JUMP: Bay continues on Friday the 13th (“You’re just not going to believe the first 12 minutes!”) and talks Ouija boards.

So are you following the same plot as the very first Friday the 13th?
It’s a little different. I don’t want to give it away because of the Internet crazies.

There’s been rumors that you’re going to include plots from all three Friday the 13ths into your remake. Is that true?
The first two, yeah.

Where did you film the Crystal Lake scenes?
In Austin, where we also shot Texas Chainsaw. Austin gives you a lot of looks.

Is there anything else you are willing to divulge about it?
I haven’t seen the director’s cut because he’s still cutting, but I know this one will really be scary; it’s also funny, as well. It’s a fun college adventure that goes awry. It’s not a movie I would ever show my mom! (Laughs) We don’t make these for our mothers; we make these for the fans out there.

Speaking of those fans, what do you say to people who are worried that an update of Friday the 13th will ruin the original?
There are always haters out there, and you can’t get rid of that. We try to be faithful, and we’re fans ourselves. It’s like when I did Transformers — I listened to the fans, you know, but you still have to make your own movie by respecting what was done and trying to give it a whole new twist.

How have you given it a new twist?
You’re just not going to believe the first 12 minutes! It’s a twist in itself.

And you’re actually working on a remake of Nightmare on Elm Street, too, right?
Don’t know yet. We haven’t made our deal, but it’s worth every penny.

What are you working on next? Ouija?
It’s something we’re playing with, yes. I’m just producing it. As far as being a director, I’m not sure what I’m doing next.

What will Ouija even be about?
We’re just meeting with writers now. There’s a plot that I actually wrote the outline for; we’re just trying to get the script right.

Finally, I just have to ask, did you happen to see the “Michael Bay’s Rejected The Dark Knight Script“ floating around online?
[Laughs] That’s complete bulls—! I might’ve read one line of that.

Did you find it funny at all?
It’s just, where do people find all of this time?

Little kid can dance!

The guy blabbers a bit about the movie Step Up 2, apparently he was in it, but then watch this little kid break it down in his pj’s.  Amazing.

A review of the Frank Darabont’s original script for Indiana Jones 4 surfaces online (and then is quickly removed)

Frank Darabont, screenwriter of such films as “The Green Mile,” “The Shawshank Redemption,” as well as several episodes of “The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles” worked for a year on a preliminary script for “Indiana Jones 4.” It’s thought that while both Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford liked the script, George Lucas didn’t. So, the script was passed. Last week, a script that several sources claim was the original Darabont first draft was leaked online, and then pulled quickly. Read a review below that appeared on G4’s website. I’m sure subsequent drafts would’ve had revisions, but it’s hard to imagine it being as bad as any script George Lucas would’ve liked.

Original posting

Frank Darabont’s script for Indiana Jones IV, entitled Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods, is an archaeological wonder in its own right. However, we’ve received a bootleg copy of the script that’s making its way around the internet, which is reported, but not confirmed, to be the real thing. We read it, and it seems pretty legit, or the person who is faking it is a terrific screenwriter. Either way, here’s a review.

CAUTION: SPOILERS EVERYWHERE – IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN ‘INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL, READ THIS AT YOUR PERIL.

First off, the script is largely the same, storywise, focusing on the discovery of the crystal skull, as well as the lost city in Peru where the Gods were thought to live, only to discover that these “gods” were aliens with a culture advanced thousands of years beyond our own.

Also, Marion Ravenwood is in the script. In fact, she’s featured even more prominently than in the actual film. And, yes, she and Indy end up married in the end. Oxley’s there, as well as a double-crossing friend, and, to my surprise, the “nuking the fridge” sequence and the giant ants are there, as well.

However, also in this script are Dr. Henry Jones, Sr. and Sallah, making awesome cameo appearances that really help cement the whole history of Indiana Jones, and tie the whole saga together.

What’s not in the script? Well, Shia LaBoeuf’s character, Mutt, for one thing. There’s no mention of a son and no appearance of one either. Now, while I didn’t necessarily think that Mutt’s character was one of the most egregiously awful things about the movie, his absence definitely makes room for more character development on Indy’s part, and it allows the story to shine through, in opposition to the constant ‘wink-wink-he’s-his-son-but-neither-of-them-know-it-yet’ portions of Crystal Skull that drove me nuts.

This script is awesome in exactly the places that Crystal Skull was lame. Just those few flips in the sequence removed all of the punch from this really excellent, well thought out, super exciting script, and rendered it vacuous and boring. In other words, Spielberg and Lucas chose the right story, but they neutered it to focus on the wrong things.

There are at least three awesome action sequences in this script, including a fighter plane chase that would have blown the doors off the theater had it actually happened on film. In addition, the double-crossing friend is a Russian, which makes the whole America vs. the Soviet Union thing work a lot better. Oxley’s character isn’t like a family pet, and there are some nods to the Indiana Jones mythology that really work well here.

Perhaps the biggest difference in the script is the treatment of Marion Ravenwood. First off, she doesn’t spend the entirety of the story standing in the background grinning like she’s happy to have a job. She’s the Marion we came to know and love in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and her story arc is so much more believable in this script that it’s a night-and-day experience.

Also, the aliens are mean. They’re a legitimate threat, not fascinating, but terrifying, and there’s an implication that they have been the reason that humans believe in God for the past several thousand years. The resolution of the plot is so much more satisfying here than in the actual film, and the script just shows that Lucas and Spielberg were too soft to make the choices that turned the plot a little dark and/or scary.

At the end of the day, Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods is 100% a better script than the one that was shot for the film. This would have been the right way to close out the series, and it would have been a return to form that no one could have expected, instead of a movie that everyone places just above the abysmal Temple of Doom in the Indy canon.