If you ask me, it's about time that Michael Douglas got the chance to play with his reputation as a lady killer and, frankly, a bit of a hound. ComingSoon recently got the chance to speak with The Spiderwick Chronicles director Mark Waters and managed to score a little casting scoop for his next project, The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. According to their sources, Douglas is in talks to appear in the comedy alongside Matthew McConaughey.

The story centers on "a womanizer (McConaughey) who attends the wedding of his younger brother and bride. There, he's haunted by several old flames, including the bride's best friend. Douglas will play "Uncle Wayne, a '70s playboy, who was his mentor and he wears Bob Evans shades and guides him (McConaughey) around the ghost world". The cast also includes Jennifer Garner as one of McConaughey's exes, Lacy Chabert (Black Christmas) as the bride, as well as Anne Archer and Emma Stone (Superbad).

Originally, the film was set to star Ben Affleck with Betty Thomas directing. The production hit a snag when Disney shut the film down and Affleck walked away from the film. Maybe Affleck just wasn't looking forward to all the conversations at home on the subject of previous girlfriends. McConaughey then rode in to save the day and now the film is back on. Plus, I have to agree with Waters when he says that, "There's something great about Matthew. He has an aspect of him that he can get away with murder with women. He's the kind of guy where women are apologizing to him when he breaks up with them, because he's so charming". Girlfriends Past will start shooting February 19th in Boston and will hit theaters sometime in 2009.

The pieces have now fallen into place for the upcoming Mark Waters romcom The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. Back in September, Jennifer Garner was circling the long-gestating project, which already had Matthew McConaughey so surprisingly attached as the lead womanizer. (Fun note: Jen's hubby was originally attached to the film, but now she gets to run around with another guy instead.) Now The Hollywood Reporter has laid out the plot and main players. Matt and Jenn will be joined by Breckin Meyer, Lacey Chabert, Anne Archer, Amanda Walsh, and Emma Stone.

So, McConaughey is "Connor, a womanizer who attends the wedding of his younger brother (Meyer) and bride (Chabert). There, he's haunted by several old flames, including the bride's best friend (Garner)." I have to say, it's strange to think of Meyer as an adult and not a Clueless skater, or to think of Chabert getting married. Man, I'm getting old. Anyway, by "womanizer," they're not meaning just a deluge of sexy women who are Connor's age -- Archer, who will play Chabert's mom, is also "a potential Connor conquest," while Walsh will be the one "bridesmaid he hasn't conquered." (Canadian audiences will recognize her as the ex Much Music VJ.) This suggests that Garner is definitely the school sweetheart, since she's Chabert's best friend, but not the one girl who hasn't gotten it on with Connor. (Unless, for some reason, her best friend isn't in her wedding party.)

Stone, finally, will lead Connor through his womanizing wasteland. A move from Superbad paramour to supernatural guide isn't bad at all. Production begins this month in Boston.

Black Christmas is a slasher film of what I like to call the 'speed-demon' variety. Unlike, say, a Friday the 13th film where Jason Vorhees gets a lot of screen-time, often doing a geriatric stroll toward his intended victims in full view of the camera, the speed-demons are not stars: they are disposable villains who must remain in the shadows, anonymous, until they are finally 'revealed' in the third act. The speed-demon is forced to prowl around outside for most of the running time of the film, tending to the cutting of phone lines, slashing tires, leaving calling-cards or other busy work. When it's time to kill, the speed-demon will typically attack with great speed from outside of camera range or burst out of the closet like a Tazmanian devil, slashing a victim into scissor dolls before the camera has time to get a fix on what's going on. Defenestration is also a good tactic for a speed-demon -- one lightning-fast blur of action, and the busty brunette is sailing down toward the pavement, mission accomplished.

Since we usually never find out who the speed-demon is until nearly everyone is dead, the last fifteen minutes of the film must be squared away for a pointless blab-a-thon in which a third-grade sleight, prom date gone wrong or other psycho-forming event is re-hashed in a therapy session at knife-point. Black Christmas mixes this up a bit, providing us with an entire parallel story-line, told in flashbacks throughout the present-day action. It's in those flashbacks that we meet the Lenz clan, who are sort of like a Far Rockaway version of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre family. The mother, played by Karin Konoval, not only keeps her teenage son Billy padlocked in the attic at all times, she also rapes him, gets pregnant, and carries Billy's sister-daughter to term. The link between the flashback action in the 1980s and the present is the family home itself, which has, in the intervening years, become an upscale sorority house populated by the likes of Lacey Chabert and Michelle Trachtenberg.

One of the very few good movies that Bob Clark can claim to have directed is the 1974 holiday chiller Black Christmas, a film that's been accurately cited as one of the original inspirations for what's now known as the American Slasher Renaissance. Long before Jason grabbed an axe, Freddy sharpened his claws and Mikey hacked his big sister to death, there was a sorority house full of kids who were hacked up solid over Christmas break.

And yeah, you heard about it a while ago: MGM & Dimension decided that the flick was worthy of a remake, so they hired the two-man filmmaking unit that is Glen Morgan & James Wong (aka the guys who brought you Final Destination, The One and Willard) and ogled a late December release date. The original Black Christmas starred Margot Kidder, Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullea, John Saxon and Andrea Martin. The new version features the likes of Michelle Trachtenberg, Katie Cassidy, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Lacey Chabert and ... Andrea Martin.

So I'm taking bets now, horror fans: Go watch the new teaser and then answer this question: Will this be one of those good remakes (Chainsaw, Dawn, Hills) or one of the other (Amityville, Fog, Wax) ones?

Man do I hope Sherman's Way isn't as Precious and Sweetly Wacky as it sounds. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the movie is about "an eccentric Olympic has-been who prefers leisure to work and finds himself stuck with a rigid, pre-law Yale student who has no time for wasting time." So far so good, I guess. (But "stuck with"? What does that mean? Did her car break down outside his isolate house, or something, and all the world's tow trucks have disappeared?) Here's where the annoying Charm! comes in, though: "Between skinny-dipping and stealing cars, this odd couple learns that balance is the key to finding love, getting the job and getting a life." Um, ew? I mean, of course it could end up being brilliantly pulled together by director Craig Saavedra, but when you go INTO a movie with that as your summary? To me, that's scary, because every step on-set is supposed to serve that nice, tied-up-with-a-bow conclusion. Did I mention ew?

And, speaking of ew, guess who's playing the girl. Remember Claudia, the frighteningly smart violin prodigy on Party of Five? Yep, it's her. Though I refuse to believe it, the IMDb insists that Lacey Chabert is now -- wait for it -- 23 freaking years old. Like I said, I don't believe it. (Do you have any idea how old that would make me?!) The guy with whom young Lacey steals cars will be played by James LeGros, and Enrico Colantoni, aka the greatest dad in the history of TV, will play a supporting role.