Near the end of last week, Defamer spread the rumor that Picturehouse, once the indie arm of New Line Cinema and currently dangling from the edge of the hulking entity known as Warner Bros., has its days numbered. Now that New Line is history and Warners, like many studios, has faced increasing cutbacks, it may give short shrift to the shingles responsible for handling artier fare. Along with Picturehouse, this also includes Warner Independent Pictures, whose recent release slate includes David Gordon Green's magnificent Snow Angels.

Defamer suggested that Picturehouse president Bob Berney might wind up at WIP or head up a new, currently anonymous company. On Friday, Variety's Anne Thompson put it in more coherent terms: It appears quite likely that WIP and Picturehouse will merge together as a single company, with current WIP president Polly Cohen working alongside Berney. Whatever happens, let's just hope that the final result still leaves room for the sharp selection of independent and foreign titles that Picturehouse has handled since its birth three years ago. Defamer points out that Marion Cotillard's unexpected Oscar win for La Vie en Rose matters less than the flop of Run, Fatboy, Run, while the John Simpson-directed horror film Amusement might get dumped on DVD. It was just last year, however, that the company helped edgy fare like The Orphanage and Rocket Science get the sort of release most studios would never try. Let's hope that bravery lives on, somewhere.

New Line might not be the company it once was, but they're continuing to pick up projects. The Hollywood Reporter posts that they've made its first purchase since downsizing, putting $500,000 against $1 million on the line for a comedy spec by Chad Kultgen (Average American Male) called Dan Mintner: Badass for Hire. Oh yes, it's just as it sounds.

Producer Beau Flynn says: "It's a homage to Cobra, Predator, Missing in Action. The baddest dude in the world in supertight jeans, chewing on a matchstick, stuck in the '80s but kicking ass in the present day." Being a fan of a good comedy/spoof mixed with action, this could be oh, so good, if it's teamed with the right music. It would also be awesome to see some cameos by the tough men of yesteryear (not just dudes like Van Damme or Lundgren -- I'm thinking the A-Team).

What confuses me, however, are the comparisons used in the piece. Flynn says it's an R-rated comedy in the spirit of Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle and the Wedding Crashers. Huh? Well, at least H&K made perfect use of a certain, grating infamous song. But the kicker in this -- who could play Dan Mintner? I'd think he has to be old enough to remember the '80s, yet young enough that it isn't just some old dude trying to be bad. Any ideas?

After waves of speculation and mass musing, Scott brought us the news we've been wondering about for months last week: Guillermo del Toro is going to the land of The Hobbit. Since then, we've got questions about whether or not this news is actually welcome, and just this morning, rumored word that Ian McKellen and Andy Serkis are on board -- "all bureaucracy pending."

Del Toro plans to use Peter Jackson's films "as canon," but there will be changes afoot. As Eugene noted earlier, there will be a different color palette for the world of the hobbits, and instead of inundating us with a film full of stunning CGI, Guillermo is anxious to make a lot more use of animatronics.

Will this change only be subtle, or will it look like an entirely new film that only has a few familiar faces? It's certainly possible to make a film that visually fits -- each Harry Potter director has added touches to their films to make them stand out while still creating a cohesive series. However, we've got to keep in mind that the seas haven't been smooth where Peter Jackson and this fantasy world is concerned. Eric Kohn brought up the "smells of George Lucas" thoughts in his post, and you have to wonder if Guillermo will be free to build his world in peace, and if behind-the-scenes issues could tarnish this whole affair.

Brace yourselves, genre geeks, because here's some fantastic news: It's official. Dark fantasy master Guillermo del Toro has been officially signed to direct the Hobbit adaptation(s). Obviously we halfway knew this was coming, but it's great to have the news confirmed: We have a few years to wait, but the two-movie MGM/New Line adaptation of The Hobbit ... will both be "del Toro films." That's just awesome.

According to Variety, Guillermo will actually MOVE to New Zealand for four years to work on the two films. How's that for commitment to a project? Although it's not a done deal, it's expected that producers Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Phillippa Boyens will co-adapt the Tolkien tale together. No word yet on which Lord of the Rings cast members will be invited back for the prequels, but I'm betting we'll soon see Sir Ian donning that wizard's hat again!

And if I could just editorialize for a quick second: Guillermo del Toro has never made a bad movie. And don't say Mimic because that's a really underrated horror flick.

For starters, I had no idea that a fourth Austin Powers film was even on the horizon. So imagine my surprise when the Boston Globe reported that Gisele Bündchen was in talks to star in the latest installment of Mike Myers' spy franchise. According to the Globe, Bündchen has already been given a script and her agent is arranging meetings with Myers and producer Jay Roach.

Myers first spoke about another Austin Powers film back when he was still prepping The Love Guru with Jessica Alba. Myers had told MTV, "We're developing a fourth [movie], entirely from Dr. Evil's point of view." Myers also said that he would only be working on a Powers film in his spare time. Judging by Myers' slate for 2009 it doesn't look like he is going to have much free time; the actor is still attached to star in the Keith Moon biopic, See Me Feel Me: Keith Moon Naked for Your Pleasure, as well as The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (both films are scheduled for release in 2009).

I said we would get news before long. I just thought it would be more exciting than this.

Entertainment Weekly sat down with Del Toro and managed to get a few quotes from him on his involvement with The Hobbit. It sounds like nothing is definite, not even his involvement as director. (Which explains all those "So, Del Toro is directing then?" comments I keep hearing.) On where production stands now, the hopeful director is only slightly more informed than we are. "There have been a lot of discussions of cast and crew, agreements on the direction the movies would go, and if and when I come on board. But other than that, frankly it's all immaterial until everything is signed and put on paper."

As expected, the death of New Line Cinema put a kink in the works, but not as much as anyone would think. "I think it played a role for a few days; being dramatic, I would say a couple of weeks. But the fact is [the movie is] a huge endeavor. It's about a half-a-decade of commitment. It's two movies back-to-back that are massive. So a lot has to be sorted out. All I can say is, creatively we are all in sync and eager to commit and move forward."

So it looks like all is not lost for the big-screen Gears of War. Coming Soon recently spoke with Twilight producer Wyck Godfrey about the feature film version of the best- selling video game. According to Godfrey, "We've got our script on and a director we're about to attach. We'll hopefully make that early next year for the summer of 2010." New Line had purchased the rights back in 2007, but it's not exactly a secret that they had a bit of a rough year. As a result, the future of the big-budget video game flick had a big question mark hanging over its head.

Gears was the story of your usual rag-tag group of soldiers known as the Delta Squad. When the planet Sera (a stand-in for Earth) is attacked by an alien force called the Locust Horde, Delta Squad is forced to defend the planet from this unstoppable enemy. Most of the story focused on Marcus Fenix and the rest of the Delta Squad, so I would imagine that the film would take their cue from the game and do the same.

A few years back I was lucky enough to spend a few days on the set of The Hills Have Eyes 2. I hate to say that I thought the final product was pretty ... meh, but the 2.5 days I spent on the set in Morocco were something pretty special. Among the many actors, stuntpeople, FX technicians and general crew members I met, one of the very coolest was a giant guy called Derek Mears. Everyone on the set was very nice, but Mears was the one who made sure to invite the "horror geek press" back to his hotel lounge so we could have a few beers and give the guy the scoop on American sports, recent horror movies, new video games, comic books, etc. (The man had been cooped up in Ouarzazate for a few months by this point.)

Anyway, Derek was a sincerely gracious dude (and he DID make for a pretty creepy freakin' mutant in Hills 2), so I'm happy to share the news (via BD.com) that he's landed the role of mad slasher Jason Voorhees in Platinum Dunes' upcoming remake of Friday the 13th. So while you might not recognize the face, you've probably seen some of Derek's work in flcks like Cursed, Zathura, Men in Black 2, and The Haunted Mansion. (Plus a whole lotta TV work.) Odds are you won't see a whole lot more of Mears once he dons the legendary hockey mask -- but the Jason character has always been played by a huge, likeable lug, and I think Mears fits the bill quite nicely. Plus he's really freakin' huge, and that's a big plus. The new Friday is due early next year.

After doing a surprisingly good job on the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake -- and then taking five steps back with the misguided Pathfinder -- it looks like Marcus Nispel has been signed to direct the Friday the 13th remake for Platinum Dunes, Paramount, and New Line Warner Bros. Not only that, but actor Jared Padalecki has been signed for a lead role. According to The Hollywood Reporter, "the remake will focus on the serial killer, who will wear his now-iconic hockey mask. Padalecki will play the lead, who investigates what happened up at Crystal Lake."

Seems like a strange direction for a "remake" to take, but obviously I'm more than happy to see the flick before I get all excited or all furious. We'll be waiting until February 13 of next year (yes, it's a Friday) to see what Nispel and screenwriters Mark Swift and Damian Shannon have in store for us. More casting news as it comes in -- and if the Dunes guys opt to go PG-13 on this project, I may just lose my mind.

Despite all the awards attention it received, Joe Wright's Atonement still sounds too much like a lushly romantic period melodrama for my personal taste. Still, it's one of those movies you probably need to experience yourself before deciding if the praise was too lavish (Ryan Stewart thought it was a "stunning achievement") or the criticism too harsh. The DVD from Universal Studios includes deleted scenes, two "making of" features, and an audio commentary by the director.

From all that I've read, Southland Tales sounds like an astonishing train wreck. Nick Schager began his review for Cinematical by writing: "Let me present Exhibit A in the case against granting talented young filmmakers extensive creative autonomy." Given my perverse nature, that makes me want to see Richard Kelly's futuristic epic even more. The DVD from Sony Pictures includes a "featurette" and an animated short.

Steep presents thrilling footage of big mountain skiers who swoosh down incredibly steep slopes. As I noted in my review, though, I felt it raised more questions than it wanted to answer. The DVD from Sony Pictures includes an audio commentary by director Mark Obenhaus with some of the skiers, photo montages, and an additional interview with one of the sport's masters.

Though it was ignored during last fall's awards season, Mike Newell's Love in the Time of Cholera might be ripe for discovery. (On the other hand, Jeffrey M. Anderson really didn't like it.) Javier Bardem and Benjamin Bratt star in an adaptation of the novel by Gabriel García Márquez. The DVD from New Line includes an audio commentary by Newell, a "making of" feature, and deleted scenes.

When I refer to David Schwimmer's Run Fatboy Run as "a modern-day screwball farce," that's a nice way of saying it's outrageously predictable, unabashedly sappy, and completely formulaic through and through. You know where the movie is going from frame one, and it sure doesn't take a lot of detours getting there. But the phrase "screwball" probably wouldn't have come to mind if Run Fatboy Run wasn't at least a little bit funny. Which it is. So if you don't mind an amiable-yet-seriously familiar 90 minutes -- and you're a big fan of British actor Simon Pegg -- I'd have no problem recommending the flick. Even if I'd never come close to calling it something brilliant.

The effortlessly likable Simon Pegg stars as one of those lovably lazy sad-sack types that you only come across in comedic films: Despite the fact that he left his pregnant fiancee (Thandie Newton) at the altar five years earlier, Pegg's "Dennis" is one of those losers we love to root for. (How a doofus like this ever scored a catch like Thandie Newton -- and then abandoned her! -- is one of the film's sillier conceits.) So when his former flame's smarmy new boyfriend (Hank Azaria) mentions that he'll be running in an upcoming marathon, Dennis senses a shot at redemption.

It was known as the house that Freddy built ... and now it's gone. Vanished. Absorbed whole into the corporate borg that is Warner Bros. It was announced yesterday that New Line Cinema, as we know it, is now dead. According to former chief Bob Shaye, it seems that WB will still use the New Line name for certain productions and / or pick-ups, but it probably won't be long before that idea is swallowed whole by Warner Independent Pictures.One can only assume that New Line subsidiary Picturehouse (formerly Fine Line) will also be absorbed, which is a shame because they've had a really impressive track record so far.

So while I'll always be grateful to New Line for giving me Freddy Krueger, Blade, Critters, Austin Powers and (of course) The Lord of the Rings, I thought it might be interesting to track back over ALL of the New Line, Fine Line, and Picturehouse releases and maybe even see what doomed the studio. Aside from withholding all those LOTR profits and inspiring a half-dozen very expensive lawsuits, of course. (And let's not forget: They distributed The Evil Dead, funded almost all of John Waters' films AND they bankrolled Boogie Nights, Pleasantville, Seven, and Dark City, so let's not talk too ill of the recently-deceased.) New Line celebrated its 40th anniversary last November, which means they set the "founding" year as 1967. At that point New Line was simply distributing old flicks to college campuses, but that all changed in the early '80s.

As a production company that we know and (sometimes) love, New Line was probably born in 1982, with the production and release of Jack Sholder's Alone in the Dark, a strangely amusing horror flick starring Jack Palance, Martin Landau and Donald Pleasance. From that small success, the die was cast; 1984 saw the arrival of A Nightmare on Elm Street and 1985 saw ... A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge. This would prove to be New Line's m.o. for many years to come: One novel idea followed by several uninspired sequels.

Some people might say that Will Ferrell is coasting, taking it easy, or skirting by on proven formula -- and that may be the case. There's a lot in Ferrell's latest flick, Semi-Pro, that feels like material left over from the comedian's soccer comedy (Kicking & Screaming), his car-racing comedy (Talladega Nights), and his figure-skating comedy (Blades of Glory) -- but it's really tough to complain when a comedian doles out "the same old schtick" when that same old schtick is still pretty damn funny. A recent interview with Entertainment Weekly indicates that Ferrell is pretty much finished with sports comedies, and that's probably just as well. Oh, and for the record: I happen to think Semi-Pro is Ferrell's best sports flick yet -- and probably his most consistently amusing movie since Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.

Semi-Pro marks the popular comedian's first foray into R-rated comedy, at least as far as his "leading man" status goes. So while much of the flick's broad, silly, and slyly absurd humor bounces across the screen, it will all feel very (perhaps comfortably) familiar to Ferrell's loyal fans -- but I'm not ashamed to admit that the inclusion of several F-bombs help to make the flick a whole lot funnier. We don't often get to hear Will Ferrell tell someone to "S his C," but the golden-'froed goofball dives into the potty-mouth material with a lot of enthusiasm. Semi-Pro is not an aggressively raunchy comedy, but it's definitely NOT for the 10-year-old Ferrell fans out there. (Sorry, kids. Go watch Elf again. It's hilarious.)

If ever a horror series depended less on character and more on the ingenuity of the writers in conjuring up death scenes, it's this one. Love 'em or hate 'em, horror sequels almost always have a reliably evil villain we can depend upon, whether it's Jason in Friday the 13th, Freddy in Nightmare on Elm Street, Pinhead in Hellraiser, or Jigsaw in Saw. But in the original Final Destination, the big bad antagonist was ... Death!

Yup, Death gets cheated out of killing a group of teenagers when one of them has a premonition that their plane is about to crash. In a terror-ific set piece -- a hallmark of the series -- we see the fiery explosion, and the kids spend the rest of the picture trying to escape their fate, not easy to do when Death appears to be such good buddies with Rube Goldberg. That tradition is set to continue with Final Destination 4; principal photography begins this month in New Orleans, according to Variety.

Shantel VanSanten (pictured - yay for Texas!), Bobby Campo and Haley Webb have been cast in the starring roles, with Nick Zano, Krista Allen (yay for sexy horror mothers!) and Andy Fiscella providing support. As Monika previously reported, David Richard Ellis (Cellular, Snakes on a Plane) returns to direct; he helmed Final Destination 2, which featured that amazing, out of control, highway log-truck pile-up; FD4 scripter Eric Bress was also credited as co-writer on that installment. This time, the premonition is about a deadly race car crash. Oh, did I mention that the whole picture is going to be shot in 3-D?!!! If you have the stomach for it, this could be a very memorable thrill ride. No word yet on when New Line plans to unleash this sick puppy.

(The following review ran during the Sundance Film Festival, but we're re-posting it now to coincide with the film's theatrical release.)

In Passaic, New Jersey, the thrift store and video rental emporium Be Kind Rewind offers customers their choice of films to rent, if by 'choice,' you mean 'VHS only.' But while owner Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover) is away, his counterman and almost-son Mike (Mos Def) lets Jerry (Jack Black) into the store, against Mr. Fletcher's instructions not to. Jerry is normally a walking disaster -- a dreamer of a mechanic, obsessed with the belief that the power plant he lives near is flooding him with radiation. A failed attempt to sabotage the power plant leaves Jerry energized and magnetized to such a degree that his mere presence wipes all of Be Kind Rewind's inventory. When loyal customer Ms. Kimberly, tasked by Mr. Fletcher to check in on the store while he's away, comes in to rent Ghostbusters, Jerry and Mike's solution to the crisis is hardly logical, but certainly inspired: Produce and shoot a replacement version of the film within 24 hours so she'll be none the wiser about the store's ruined inventory.

But Ms. Kimberly shows the film to some of her foster children, who can recognize that Jerry is not quite Bill Murray, and that Mike is not quite Ivan Reitman, and that holding the right-hand side of Hieronymus Bosch's "The Garden of Earthly Delights" up to the camera is not quite a special-effects shot of a demon-haunted landscape. The foster kids -- thugs and toughs to a man -- come around Be Kind Rewind the next day. But they're not mad; they're curious: "That was pretty good. What else you got?" And other customers are curious about the store's new selections -- which, it's explained, come from Sweden, which is why they cost $20 and you have to request them 24 hours in advance. ...

Written and directed by Michel Gondry, Be Kind Rewind is as much a work of creativity and passion as the re-shot, cut-in-camcorder, home-brew "Swedish Import" re-made Hollywood blockbusters that it revolves around. And, much like Jerry and Mike's re-shot versions of Driving Miss Daisy or Rush Hour or The Lion King, Be Kind Rewind is a film where the plot is less important than panache, where the lack of elegance is made up for by an excess of enthusiasm. Jerry and Mike aren't just shooting day for night; they're shooting day for night, male for female, white for black, Jerry for Jackie (Chan, that is). Aided and abetted by Alma (Melonie Diaz), an early recruit to their shooting requirements (they need a girl for Rush Hour), the store's new offerings rapidly become a sensation, as customers line up to request new films they want to see the 'Sweded' versions of and rent the rest of Jerry and Mike's oeuvre as soon as other customers bring them back. This not only makes Jerry and Mike celebrities (or, more correctly, sub-lebrities) in Passaic, but also may raise the money that Mr. Fletcher's store needs to come up to the building code and avoid being shut down. ...