No source knows Disney better than Jim Hill Media, which is why anyone interested in the future of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise should pay attention to this new info. Actually, some of it is not that new -- you may remember a couple months back when Keira Knightley told reporters that she had no intention of returning to the series for a fourth film -- well, Hill reports that the current thinking inside the house of mouse for how to proceed with an inevitable fourth Captain Jack adventure would not involve either the Elizabeth or Will characters, who were so neatly wrapped up in the button at the end of the last film. Their show is wrapped. The fourth film, according to Hill, will "toss the Elizabeth and Will characters over the side in favor of doing a bawdy buddy picture which would star Jack Sparrow and Barbossa. Where both captains of the Black Pearl would initially be competing for the exact same prize."

"Eventually, all the double crossing would have to stop as these two rivals were then forced to join forces in order to defeat some supernatural terror," Hill says, going on to speculate on a possible problem with the Pirates franchise and the National Treasure franchise both wanting to pursue a 'fountain of youth' story in their next installment. "Wouldn't it be funny if -- when Benjamin Gates arrived at the Fountain of Youth -- he then found Captain Jack Sparrow and Barbossa?" Hill asks. "It could be the Disney version of Alien vs. Predator." Not likely. And anyway, who are they going to replace Keira Knightley with in this next film? If I'm going to be watching another three hours of poor CGI and sitcom-level humor, they better have some saucy wenches for me to look at.

[via IGN]

A lot of my colleagues seem to be practically empurpled lately over the fact that Juno is being feted as not merely a success, but an indie/crossover success. This seems like a moot argument to me -- more on that in a second -- but first I will say that whether you think it is or isn't, you shouldn't overstep and give the PR machine too much credit here. Any studio shingle PR team worth its salt obviously has a 'media manipulation/other shenanigans' Trapper Keeper ready to be opened at a moment's notice if the clouds part and a movie actually connects with the public, but that's the point -- it has to connect first. Juno is a quadrant pimp and Once isn't -- that's why EW isn't piling on the plaudits for Once, even though it's currently enjoying 98 percent positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. If your response to this is "Um, yeah, I'm sure Once would love to have Fox Searchlight's Scrooge McDuck-swimming pool of money to buy some ads with" I would say, first, it does, and second, I'm increasingly of the opinion that most of that money is wasted on an ad-saturated public anyway.

All the marketing in the world and a bevy of A-list stars couldn't push a big movie like The Golden Compass even to $70 million, nor keep a crazy-hyped film like Cloverfield from swan-diving in its second weekend, so Juno clearly has legs, which is a rare commodity these days for any film, big or small. And to suggest that Juno's success rests on its popularity with teens, as some have, is wishful thinking. The scary reality is that today's 16 year-olds would probably like to see Step Up 2 in the Oscar race, not a Jason Reitman movie.

Perhaps desperately needing an influx of star power, The Santa Barbara Film Festival, which is going on right now, put together a big celebration of Angelina Jolie's work and persuaded the star to appear the other night. I know nothing about these SBIFF events, but according to the NY Post they seem to be half honorarium, half roast, as the honoree is asked to watch old clips of their bad movies and then acknowledge them. The problem, of course, is that this comes on the heels of Jolie being snubbed for an Oscar nomination for her performance as Marianne Pearl in A Mighty Heart, so the ribbing seems to have been toned down considerably. (I wouldn't go so far as to say Jolie's was a great performance in that film, but considering that the academy tapped Cate Blanchett for a noticeably bad performance in an exceptionally awful film, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Jolie would have every right to be upset.)

So a planned montage of clips from Jolie's old movies was shelved at the last minute. The actress did speak about the old days, though, calling her earliest movies "cheesy" and saying of Cyborg 2, "The first one was Jean-Claude Van Damme, the second was me at 17." In other words, 'not my fault.' She also had the following to say about Hackers: "As Brad knows, he's in the audience, I really don't know how to turn on a computer." Jolie also seemed to take a halfway-swipe at Mr. and Mrs. Smith, which isn't a bad movie in any sense. "It's one of those that I think Brad and I both tried to get out of," Jolie said. "Obviously I'm grateful I did [the movie] because it changed my life," apparently referring to meeting the afore-mentioned Brad.

Multiple sources are reporting today that Universal has invited John Landis into the office for a couple of meetings about potentially directing The Wolf Man, probably at the behest of the film's creature effects maestro Rick Baker, who Landis worked with on the seminal modern werewolf picture, An American Werewolf in London, many full moons ago. There are reports that the studio was taken aback by the hissy fit that the usually compliant Harry Knowles went into over the studio's almost-sealed deal with Brett Ratner to take over the project that Mark Romanek has inconveniently exited, and so now they're keeping their options open by meeting with a whole host of potential candidates. I don't really buy that -- there's no way the Universal brass actually takes fanboy reaction that seriously, but nevertheless, here we are, and I'm left with one question: John Landis -- really?

Landis has been persona non grata in Hollywood for a long, long time -- being negligent enough to allow Jennifer Jason Leigh's dad to be decapitated on your movie set is a great way to have your phone calls go unreturned -- but he did get at least a couple of comeback opportunities in the 90s, most notably the chance to helm a third Beverly Hills Cop film, and he bungled that opportunity fabulously. BHCIII is one of the worst big-budget action-comedy films I've ever seen in my life, so lifeless and listless and such a franchise-killer that even Jerry Bruckheimer will tell you, if you ask, that he wouldn't be involved in a fourth one if they begged him. Landis's 1992 vampire film, Innocent Blood, was also a hokey disappointment. Still, some swear by the man who brought us Trading Places, Three Amigos and American Werewolf, and would be giddy at the thought of his return to the brass ring. Are you one of those people?

Shortly after I first saw Casino Royale, someone asked me what I thought about it and I blurted out "B-." How could I, a Bond fan, give the movie such a low rating, they wanted to know, to which I replied that it seemed more like a movie-movie than a Bond movie and it should have gone further in its realism, and been R-rated. "If they had made this as a sort of R-rated version of Majesty's Secret Service, it might have actually been a great film," I said at the time. All of this is a long-winded way of leading up to mentioning that Daniel Craig is apparently keen on executing an explicit nude scene in Quantum of Solace, according to reports, which would seem to necessitate an R-rating this time around. Access Hollywood recently asked Jeffrey Wright about the rumors that Craig was trying to work some full-frontal into the movie this time around, to which he replied "The world is ready for anything, but I'm not licensed to reveal that." He also conceded that the title of the film was "pretty exotic."

Meanwhile, for those of you who have completely given up on trying to remain spoiler-free, there are now many details of a key car chase that will occur in the film. The Italian press has been all over this one, with an Italian Bond fansite detailing that the chase will take place along the banks of Lake Garda, between the resort towns of Navene and Malcesine and that the cars are expected to top speeds of 125 mph. According to them "the pursuit will feature spectacular and reckless maneuvers in a series of tunnels, culminating with a scene where a truck brings the action to an abrupt halt and a huge explosion." I don't know about you, but hearing that makes me immediately depressed because I have zero confidence that Marc Forster can pull it off. I mean, really, this is the guy who couldn't even make kite-flying seem realistic.

Finally, thanks to some advance toy marketing, we know that there will be a character in this film known as 'Elvis.' There's no confirmation on who this character is supposed to be, but since he's prominent enough to be toy-worthy, expect yet another casting announcement soon.

[Via MI6]

In a new, in-depth interview with British magazine Sight & Sound, Quentin Tarantino, who I had the pleasure of meeting at this year's Sundance, goes into all his upcoming and most of his past projects, and gives a detailed update on exactly where he is with his next feature, a war movie called Inglorious Bastards. "I've got tons of material and a lot of stuff written but now I've figured out what to do, I gotta start from page one, square one," Tarantino says, seemingly putting to rest any notion that this thing will be going before the cameras in the next year or so. "I started just before I came on this trip and brought the stuff with me but I haven't had a chance to continue yet. But maybe on the flight back home I'll come back into it. I love writing in other countries." No further details about the plot or potential casting is given, just that quasi-confirmation that the film is in his cross-hairs at the moment.

Tarantino also talks at length about Grindhouse, admitting to being depressed and disappointed over how the film was received at the box office, but defending his longer, original cut of Death Proof as the definitive one and arguing that it stands on its own quite well. Tarantino also talks about the process of getting involved with the double feature in the first place, and reveals that he first wanted his contribution to be a Candyman-style horror film about the ghost of a slave that terrifies a group of white girls. "The first idea was a bunch of young college history students that were going through a tour of the plantations of the old South. And there's a ghost of an old slave that is part of negro folklore. Jody the Grinder actually went down and bested the devil, by f**king him. And so the devil put him on earth for all eternity to f**k white women."

So why didn't this idea make the cut? "I would probably have had Sam Jackson playing that part," Tarantino continues," and it was really good, but then I didn't have anywhere to go with it, because if you have a story about a killer slave with supermacho powers done in the style of a slasher film, then even if he's doing it today, and even if the white girls are innocent, how can you not be on the slave's side?" Tarantino goes into many other areas in the interview, talking about his writing process, the books he's reading, the British movies he'd like to make one day, and even his plans for eventual retirement.

Who among us hasn't wanted to get Nicole Kidman in a similar pose? But I digress. The February issue of Vanity Fair is boasting an exclusive photo and a jam-packed sidebar promoting the November release of Australia, but there's not a hell of a lot of new information here. Anyone who has been following the progress of the film since its filming began last year already knows the basics of the plot and characters, and that's mostly what gets re-hashed in the sidebar. Baz Luhrmann is quoted as saying that his ambition was to make a movie with "big emotions, big comedy, big stars, big stories and big landscapes." In a word, big. The sidebar then goes on to insult Kidman by declaring her character to be "a middle-aged (!) and childless British aristocrat." Come on now -- it may be true, but was that necessary?

This is one of the first Australia teases since a December 23 piece in the Herald Sun that detailed the conclusion of filming and talked up a sex scene between Kidman and co-star Hugh Jackman, for which Jackman helpfully reports that he "brushed his teeth five times" before commencing. Even though the big summer blockbusters are presumed to own the advertising airwaves over the next few months, Fox has so much money tied up in Australia that I would imagine you'll start seeing posters and teaser trailers -- and get more info on that rumored Elton John soundtrack -- over the next two months.

[via Australiamovie.net]