Andrew Garfield and director Marc Webb have signed on for Amazing Spider-Man 2 according to Deadline.

While it isn’t a surprise they would return for the sequel, it is a bit shocking the deals weren’t already in place as Amazing Spider-Man 2 was announced in Aug. 2011, almost a year before the first one even hit theaters. Emma Stone still hasn’t signed to return as Gwen Stacey, but she is expected to do so at any time.

The sequel is scheduled for release on May 2, 2014, so filming is going to have to begin in the not too distant future if they are going to make that premiere date. Once again convincing me filmmaking is now backwards and the release dates are all that matters, but that shouldn’t really surprise anyone.

Here’s hoping the new contracts include an option for Amazing Spider-Man 3.

[via Deadline]

There’s nothing like a school’s stupidity to screw up a young girl’s life.

You may not remember Alexa Gonzalez, but back in 2010 she was arrested for doodling on a desk at Junior High School 190 in Forest Hills, NY. The school had a zero tolerance policy on graffiti, and it deemed her writing on a desk in erasable marker as violating that policy. She was searched, handcuffed and taken to a the police station across the street by four New York City police officers.

On this week’s episode of 20/20 it was al about school scandals. Britini Colleps and her escapades with five students was featured, but by far the more interesting update was on Alexa Gonzalez. Now 15, Gonzalez ended up suing the school over her 2010 arrest and settled out of court for an undisclosed six figure sum.

Sounds like all ended well for her, doesn’t it?

Sadly, that’s not the case. It seems that the one thing that couldn’t be taken care of was the arrest remaining on her record. She was indeed “guilty,” so her heinous act of doodling that she loved her best friends on a desk – again, in erasable marker – has left her with a record. I would assume it will be expunged when she turns 18, but for now, this sits there, haunting her, and who knows what it could do to her job and college prospects.

As I stated in the original report, what has happened to common sense? Okay, she violated the graffiti policy, but how about detention or something else for such a minor infraction? Oh no, have her arrested and screw up her life for years. That’s a perfect solution!

Schools never cease to amaze me.

Do you think you may have a problem with your movie when you have to market the home video release as what will fix it? Say howdy to the Prometheus Blu-ray and DVD release.

As I pointed out in my Prometheus review, this movie had a lot of issues … a lot. So when it comes time to sell it into the home video market, it of course makes perfect sense to market it as the key to making sense of what you saw back int he theater.

Awesome.

As I suspected when I saw it in the theater, we got about half the story, and I think this is now more of an effort to save any chance there is of a Prometheus 2.

The sad thing is … this will work. I just ordered my Blu-ray. Please feel free to call me a sucker.

You may want to sit back and get ready for the Marvel cinematic universe to get a whole lot bigger in Thor: The Dark World.

A Russian site is reporting that it has learned that all Nine Realms of the Marvel universe will be covered in the next Thor film.

The film promises to cover not just the Earth and Asgard, but the entire Nine Realms. The studio hopes that ‘Game of Thrones’ director Alan Taylor has the experience to build upon the fantasy of the series.

Seeing as Thor explained the Nine Realms to Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) in the first film, it isn’t too surprising that this will come into play. Seeing as it has already been revealed that the Dark Elves – which dwell in the seventh realm of Svartalfheim – will be playing a major role in the story, it makes sense we will see all of this playing a part.

You can check out the all of the realms in the map above (click for a larger image) and get ready to sit in the theater and go, “Huh?” because most comic readers do. While it’s fun to see the Marvel cinematic universe going deeper, there is some stuff that even long time readers of the books sometimes scratch their heads at, and the Nine Realms is one of those things.

Seeing as this is part of The Avengers Phase Two story, which is all building towards a fight with Thanos, it’ll be interesting to see how this all plays out.

Despite getting several facts wrong, this “honest trailer” for The Avengers did have me laughing.

As I was skimming the digital copy of the movie last night, one of the things that did pop through my mind was, “You know, Spider-Man should really swing through right now.” Alas, those film rights currently reside over at Sony, so that means he can’t show up in the Marvel films. And seeing as this took place in New York, yes, the Fantastic Four should have showed up – which would have been odd as Chris “Captain America” Evans played the Human Torch in those movies.

Yes, all of that would have made sense, but, what do you want? Marvel has actually done a great job of setting up its own little cinematic universe, and it works.

Oh, and no, they never said Loki was dead in Thor … they explained how Thor got to Earth in this movie … Iron Man isn’t a secondary character … but I will agree with them that Captain America isn’t anyone’s favorite character. That one they get.

But yeah, I knew who Thanos was. Shut up.

Yep, it’s time to reboot the Mummy series over at Universal … again.

Apparently the new series of Mummy movies launched back in 1999 have run their course and it’s time for Universal Studios to once again launch the series with a fresh start. Makes total sense doesn’t it? Well, wait until you see who all is involved in this relaunch and you’ll know instantly what sort of quality we’re in for.

Remember that Total Recall remake that was in the theaters for about two minutes this summer? That was directed by Len Wiseman, who will also be directing this film. He’s excited about the project … which doesn’t lower my fear of this one iota.

When I first heard Universal was relaunching this, that is the image that popped into my head, the period tale, the old monster, but when Bob and Alex pitched it, there was a great new take and approach, and a very different mummy as well,” “It’s a darker twist on the material, a scarier version.”

We’re reaching into the deep roots of The Mummy, which at its beating heart is a horror movie and then an action movie, and putting it into a context that is real and emotional. It’s still a four quadrant film but as a lot of recent movies have proven, audiences are hungry for more than they used to be. You can still have a family movie, an action movie that’s more grounded than these used to be. Without saying too much, we’ve drawn a lot of inspiration from Michael Crichton’s books, and how he ground fantastical sales in modern day science.

Okay, okay maybe this has a hope.

Wait … Jon Spaihts is scripting? The guy who wrote Prometheus? I … well … okay, he had a lot of baggage to work with on making a prequel to the Alien series, and I’m sure he’ll do his best here.

I’m sure the producers will keep all this in line. Wait … its Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, the writers of the first two Transformers movies? And it’s being fast tracked for a summer 2014 release?

… Someone hold me?

This project has disaster written all over it. People with spotty track records are all over this thing, and it’s a property that no one really is in the mood for I believe. And Hollywood can’t figure out why box office numbers keep dropping. When a project is raced through the development process like this, when there is nothing threatening it like another Mummy movie, why rush this?

Oh, Hollywood. You silly, silly people.

[via Deadline]

With a 28 percent decline in the take at the box office from the same weekend last year, no one is going to be crowing about the last three days.

As it stands right now, House at the End of the Street and End of Watch are both claiming to have taken $13 million this weekend, so the real number one won’t be known until later in the day until the actuals are reported. Suffice it to say, this is a fight of mediocre returns, however. End did about average for cop movies, but House actually came in a little bit ahead of the norm. Considering the budgets – $7 million for End and $10 million for House – both studios are still looking at profits in the not too distant future.

The new Clint Eastwood vehicle, Trouble with the Curve, came in with $12.7 million, although some are saying its up there in the tie for first place. Either way, that is way off the mark for baseball movies as of late.

Finding Nemo 3D dropped 43.4 percent to land in fourth place with $9.4 million. It is definitely looking like 3D re-releases aren’t going to do as well as some thought.

Fifth place went to Resident Evil: Retribution with another $6.7 million, but it’s still not doing that will with only $33.4 million domestic so far off of a $65 million budget.

While I normally don’t come out of the top five, for all of the coverage I’ve given Dredd 3D – including reviewing it – I’ll sadly report it landed in sixth with $6.3 million. The producers already said it needed to hit $50 million in the U.S. to even consider a sequel, and that looks out of the question now.

Next week’s big releases are Hotel Transylvania, Looper and Won’t Back Down. With the way things have been going as of late at the box office, I wouldn’t expect to see any of these to be break out hits.

Dredd 3D can be summed up very easily for fans of the long-running comic book series: Pitch freaking perfect.

I was able to slide out of the office early enough today to catch a 2D matinee of the film – I have yet to see a 3D screening of a film, and don’t plan to – and walked in with a lot of trepidation. From rumors of problems in the editing room, to Mega-City One not looking quite right,  I wondered if I was walking into a disaster of a film that would leave me angry at the inconstancies with the source material.

While there was one moment in the opening monologue that made me a little concerned (it sounded like Mega-City One was the only city, and it isn’t in the books, but a very minor quibble), from that point forward this movie hit all of the right notes. From the oppressive nature of the city, to the dystopian system that is held together by a thread, everything is here.

Karl Urban’s performance as Dredd does, however, seem to teeter at times between intense and caricature. His snarled lip almost sent me into fits of laughter in one scene, but otherwise it was believable and carried the gravity of the city’s top judge. There is no compromise with Dredd, the law is black and white and everything he does is 100 percent by the book of the law.

Olivia Thirlby’s turn as Judge Anderson does something I thought was impossible: It made me actually care about Anderson. While the character has had a long run in the series, she has just never appealed to me, but showing her as an uncertain rookie that could teach Dredd something about not being so quick with his judgement made her more human and likable. Yes, we have seen the story of a “seasoned cop with the rookie under his wing” more times than I can count, but it worked here on a very different level due to the stark and brutal nature of the world they inhabit.

This movie is not for the squeamish. The slow motion violence though is beautiful in its own way, but it will leave you wondering about the fragility of the human body as you see it ripple from impacts. A good portion of the $45 million budget had to of gone to the amount of blood that gets splattered generously around the edges of the frame, but it is shot in such a way that you never feel like its gratuitous.

In short, it a fun romp with a highly unoriginal basic plot, but you don’t care. You can just sit back and enjoy the ride and receive a crash course in the world of Judge Dredd and his totalitarian police state future.

Stallone who?

The 1978 John Carpenter horror classic Halloween is coming back to theaters on Oct. 25.

This is a concept that I can totally get behind, Hollywood. How about instead of remaking everything under the sun, you just re-release them? It happened recently with Raiders of the Lost Ark, and now Halloween is on the way … lets do some more of this. Rotate them, don’t do it every year, just every so often, such as on anniversaries.

Need an example? I was too young to see Jaws when it was originally released, and I would love … LOVE … to see it on the big screen some day. Halloween on the big screen? Sign me up. Yes, I own it on DVD, I’ve watched it pretty much every year for the last 30 or so, but I have never once seen it on a big screen.

… the original theatrical cut of Star Wars.

Sorry, I slipped into a fantasy world there for a moment where George Lucas isn’t a giant, pompous ass.

Re-release away, Hollywood, I think you may be surprised how many people can get into this idea.

Money.

Oh, I’m sorry, did I boil it down too fast for you?

Michael Bay did an interview with The Huffington Post recently where he talked about why he was returning to the Transformers film franchise for one last go. Remember, he said Transformers: Dark of the Moon would be his last, but something was bringing him back for a fourth go.

I thought I was done. Then the ride came out [at Universal Studios Hollywood] and the two-and-a-half-hour lines. And then you’re thinking, Oh my God, someone’s going to take this over. And you start doing a lot of soul-searching. Like, OK, I’m about to do a little movie, “Pain & Gain” … and the studio says they want to restart the franchise. And someone could come in here and screw it up, you know? So I’m thinking that if I do this last one, we set it on a new footing, we change a lot of things — but we keep the history of the three in place. But we broaden it so it can be set up and be carried on — it would have a better chance for survival, I guess. You know?

So it was just one of those things. It’s like, when you look what’s going on in the film business with the franchise frenzy right now, why is Cameron doing two more “Avatar” movies? Why is Peter Jackson doing three more “Hobbit” movies that are in the same world as “Lord of the Rings”? When you have a franchise, it’s very hard to give it up.

No, it isn’t hard to give up a franchise, you just do so. Every example Bay has given is a money churning machine. You don’t see people sticking with the James Bond franchise endlessly, you see people sticking with franchises that make stupid amounts of money.

Yeah, and it is fun to do something different. Somehow when you do these movies, they kind of sit in your core a bit. Listen, the press will do whatever they do on “Transformers.” But, the bottom line is, when you go to Universal Studios and you have the two-and-a-half-hour line, it’s hard to give it up. You birth a baby and you want to carry it on.

Well, looking at how “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” did at the box office, it’s obvious that people like these movies. So I can see your hesitation to give it up.
Well, no, you’ve got to do different things in life. But it doesn’t matter. This is probably the last one.

So with the plot of “Transformers 4,” it’s not like the other three movies didn’t happen? It’s not a reboot?
No. We’re basically taking from the history of where it was — or where we left it in Chicago. And we’re going to carry it on from there.

Having finally seen the third film – it came with my Nexus 7 tablet for free – it was horrible. It was … well, to be honest, it was a steaming pile of dung. I’m not going to sugar coat it. Regardless of how I feel about what Bay has done to the source material, he mad an incredibly bad movie with plot holes you could drive Optimus Prime through. Picking up from that? No thank you.

So, yes, Bay continues to live in some fantasy world where he makes “art,” and it would be nice if someone told him some day to just shut up and do the only thing he does well: Blow stuff up.

[via The Huffington Post]

Okay, last one on Dredd 3D, I swear. I just need this movie to do $50 million in the U.S. so that I can someday see a sequel. They’ve said that’s all it will take to get the second one rolling, and I want it folks, so … thanks for indulging me.

Learn a little bit about the tools of Dredd from his Lawgiver (gun) and Lawmaster (motorcycle) to the expalantion of the iconic helmet. I so want one of those helmets.

And if you head out to see it this weekend, let me know what you think!

After a lot of speculation, James Gunn has officially landed the directing gig for Guardians of the Galaxy.

While many people are still trying to wrap their brains around the concept this is even going to make it to the silver screen, those of us familiar with Guardians of the Galaxy knew it was going to take a bit of an oddball director and writer to pull this off. Well, Marvel found its boy in James Gunn. If you aren’t familiar with his work, just watch Super and … be prepared for where it goes.

Gunn issued the following statement about the news.

For a month or so there’s been a lot of Internet speculation about my involvement with Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. Until now I haven’t said anything, because I’m trying to be less expulsive about this project than I am about the rest of my life. But last night I got the go-ahead from Kevin Feige to let you all know that, yes, indeed, I am rewriting and directing Guardians of the Galaxy. As a lifelong lover of Marvel comics, space epics, AND raccoons, this is the movie I’ve been waiting to make since I was nine years old. Kevin, Joss, and all the folks at Marvel have been amazing collaborators so far, and we’re committed to bringing you something majestic, beautiful, and unique. I am incredibly excited. I am also incredibly grateful to the fans and the press for all their words of encouragement and support regarding my involvement with this project since the news first leaked. Thanks – you have, honestly, touched and overwhelmed me. And that’s it for now. Other than the occasional photos of my dog and cat here on Facebook, I’ll talk to you again in August 2014 when Guardians is released!

This is definitely going to be a heck of a ride.

[Thanks to WinExtra for the tip]