A new adaptation (I refuse to use the word remake here) of Fahrenheit 451 has been in the works for ten years now. I was very excited by the news that Mel Gibson was planning it as a Braveheart follow-up, as it seemed like that would mark a new and serious phase of his directing career. I wish that was something I could have been right about.

Frank Darabont was the next one to take it on, and he's been attached to it since 2001, rewriting Terry Hayes' script and being delayed by everything from Indiana Jones IV, Mission Impossible III, The Mist, and Law Abiding Citizen. SciFi Wire caught up with Darabont at the Saturn Awards, and the director / writer declared that it was really time to get on with it already ... and that it might actually get underway this time, depending on whether or not the Big Name Actor he wants signs on.

"Fahrenheit is the thing I'm trying to get up next, which is casting-dependent, so it's one of those. I'm out to somebody at the moment, fingers crossed, because, boy, do I want to make that movie. I'm not giving up. I'll die in the traces before I don't make that movie ... It's not one of those movies that are vastly expensive by any contemporary standard, but money is still money, and it's of a price that requires somebody that will justify that investment. This is definitely going to be more than The Mist, so those other considerations do come into play."

You can go crazy wondering just who that Big Actor who can pull in the money and box office might be. Could it be someone that rumors have long attached, like Tom Hanks (Darabont's pick for years), Brad Pitt, or Tom Cruise? Or could we be looking at someone newly bankable, like Johnny Depp?

When there was a rumor last year that Mission Impossible could live on without Tom Cruise, most of you were primed to say adios, but it looks like you might not get your wish. The Hollywood Reporter posts that Cruise has agreed to produce a fourth installment of the franchise with JJ Abrams, and they're looking at a potential 2011 release date.

The idea of having Cruise step away to make room for a younger star, and the meetings to discuss the idea, have been denied by those (allegedly) involved. But as THR rightly points out -- this news is sparse on the details, or rather the most important: Is Cruise going to star as Ethan Hunt once again? Or, are those rumors right-on about a new spin on the franchise?

With all the effort Cruise has been putting into his career over the last few years, I can't imagine that he'd agree to step down, or to act as some sort of Mr. Miyagi or Ra's Al Ghul. However, why doesn't this news include Cruise's casting announcement if he was going to star? One would imagine that the producing and starring agreements would go hand in hand. Could Cruise actually be willing to step down, and what, do you think, is the motive if he is?

Don't hold your breath, but Tommy Boy may have chosen his next project. Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz "are in advanced negotiations" to star in an action comedy currently titled Wichita, according to Variety. Cruise is notoriously indecisive cautious, though, so it's not a go until the cameras start rolling.

If all goes well for 20th Century Fox, the idea is to throw the movie into the summer 2010 maelstrom. Fox already has The A-Team, Gulliver's Travels, and Predator set for the season. The bigger question is how Cruise would handle the role. The character he would play is described as "a secret agent who pops in and out of the life of a single woman." The movie is described as having "several action scenes," so it sounds like it would lean more on comedy and romance. The sole time Cruise has tried to be funny and romantic was his Academy Award-nominated performance 13 years ago in Cameron Crowe's Jerry Maguire. Cruise looks very good when he's running, and can play stoic and stiff in his sleep, but comedy is basically an undiscovered country for him.

The secondary question is James Mangold, who is set to direct. He has mad skills with actors (Girl, Interrupted, Walk the Line), but his only previous romantic comedy was Kate & Leopold with Meg Ryan and Hugh Jackman in 2001, which, alas, I haven't seen. Cameron Diaz is a definite asset as a comedic actress. Still, I'm wondering: is this a recipe for disaster?

Writer-director Rian Johnson burst onto the scene when his high school-set noir riff, Brick, took home the Originality of Vision prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. Now, after bouncing around Summit's release slate like the proverbial beach ball, his follow-up -- the romantic, romanticized con man caper, The Brothers Bloom -- is finally receiving a NY/LA bow this Friday before rolling out to more markets in the weeks to come.

Johnson obliged us to do a follow-up interview this week to complement our original chat from last November, and between the two, the filmmaker discusses everything from making the festival rounds and absorbing critical response to the glory of talking monkeys and just where he likes to stick his tea kettle...



Download Part 1 (31 mins.) by clicking here



Download Part 2 (12 mins.) by clicking here

-Score samples by Nathan Johnson, the film's composer and the director's cousin.-

Oh, Tom Cruise ... you make it so hard not to bash you. Last time I wrote about ol' Tommy, I focused on the excellent, insane rumor that he and John Travolta wanted to redo Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. But this one doesn't seem to be a rumor.

Variety reports that while screenwriters "have been taking haircuts on every deal," Tom's script doctors are making a ton -- sometimes as much as $250,000 a week for 2-6 weeks. The job: Take Cruise's notes and hone the scripts for his upcoming movies. The pressure is on to continue Tom's post-Tropic Thunder buzz!

The doctors and projects in question: Scott Frank is changing up Wichita so that Cruise can be an action hero, Richard Curtis made some changes to Lost for Words, and Paul Attanasio is flipping rewriting David Cronenberg's script for Matarese Circle. Furthermore, those free of script doctors are not immune to Tom's notes: Billy Ray "continues to hone" Motorcade, while Christopher McQuarrie does the same with The Tourist.

Actors always seem to meddle a bit with their scripts, but this takes that to a new level. And really, it hurts my heart to think that Tom Cruise is guiding Cronenberg's vision, or rather, tainting it. And why on earth are they paying so much to have a struggling star get his way? Thunder might have helped win him back favor, but not hundreds of thousands of dollars worth.

I seriously love the Daily Express. These guys know how to scheme up a good rumor. This time around, they're going for the ultimate buddy remake. Forget the likes of Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Who'd want those guys when you can have Tom Cruise and John Travolta? According to the gossip rag, Cruise wants to remake the 1969 classic Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and star in it along with Travolta. Not only that, but Cruise reportedly got the blessing of Paul Newman before he passed on.

According to the Express' source, this remake has "been a pet project of his [Cruise] that has been on the back-burner for years. But now he's ready to go, and will most likely happily eschew the enormous salary that he normally commands."

Now I'd love to see Travolta and Cruise as buddies on the big screen. I think they could have a lot of fun with each other. But a Western? One of the most iconic Westerns with two of Hollywood's most notable and critically loved male stars? No thanks. If this is, in any way, true, Newman must have been high on pain meds. And if it comes to fruition, I think we're all going to want to be high on them.

Would you like Travolta Cassidy and the Sundance Cruise?

My main (and only big) problem with Bryan Singer's Valkyrie is the same problem I have with "movie stars" in general. For example, I believe that Tom Cruise is a very fine actor, or at least a generally underrated one, but since he's a Movie Star before he's an Actor (and yes, he is), I find it almost impossible to LOSE him in a role. Sean Penn gets lost in a role. He just vanishes! Johnny Depp does it a lot, too. (Or at least he used to before the Pirate flicks came along.) Julia Roberts as a Victorian Queen is still Julia Roberts to me, which is why I prefer those chameleon-ish character players like Gary Oldman and John Malkovich.

In other words, I never once (for a second) "bought" Tom Cruise as a grizzled, burnt-out, one-armed German army officer in the new wartime thriller Valkyrie -- but because he's a movie star who knows how to carry a flick, he still anchors the tale with a strong and crisp screen presence. And while, yeah, it is a little distracting to hear high-ranking German soldiers speaking with American, British and Irish accents, the simple fact is that Valkyrie is a very slick old-school-style adventure movie. In some ways it feels like a perfectly enjoyable mid-'50s war movie that's been re-made with only the finest in modern cinematic technology. The plot is pure potboiler, but the look is grade-A Hollywood.

Okay, maybe Tom Cruise and Valkyrie screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie won't be together forever ... but they are in for a very long haul. Variety reports that McQuarrie is penning no less than three projects for Cruise to star in.

The first up is likely to be The Tourist, which has Cruise and Charlize Theron attached as the leads. A remake of the French thriller Anthony Zimmer, the original script was penned by Julian Fellowes. McQuarrie is quickly rewriting it so that the film can begin shooting by March.

The pair also might be returning to World War II, as McQuarrie and Mason Alley are teaming up to write Flying Tigers, the real life story of a volunteer fighter squadron that was formed to assist the Chinese in fighting the Japanese during WWII. Cruise isn't formally attached, but he has been itching to do another fighter pilot movie since the days of Top Gun.

But the most intriguing film on the McQuarrie-Cruise slate is the UA project The Champions, which McQuarrie is penning and producing alongside Guillermo del Toro. Based on the British television series about super-powered government agents, it's now being developed for Cruise to star in. It was inevitable that Cruise was going to want in on this whole "superhero" trend -- the aura around his Tropic Thunder costar Robert Downey Jr. was espcially hard to miss. How could he not want some of that? Remember, he's already attached to Sam Raimi's Sleeper, so he's obviously waking up to the trend and franchise potential of superpowers. Well, best of luck to McQuarrie and Cruise -- may the relationship be a fruitful one.

I don't need much of an excuse to visit Austin, Texas. Find me an event that A) strings more than four movies together, and B) takes place at one of the Alamo Drafthouse movie theaters, and there's a good chance I'm checking my bank account, desperately scrambling for flight money. But despite the fact that I've done five SXSW visits, three Fantastic Fest trips, and a few more Austin journeys just for the heck of it ... I'd never attended a BNAT shindig. But I made it to the tenth annual Butt-Numb-a-Thon, and of course I had a damn good time once it got rolling.

Let's just do a quick run-through, chronologically speaking, and I'm listing just the FULL movies here. At the end I'll go over the various clips we were treated to...