Daniel Craig may have his own limited edition popsicle, but he's having a tough time choosing his next film role. After branching away from Bond with Defiance (a lot less 007 than most people give it credit for) and Munich, his next effort at ducking typecasting might be Jim Sheridan's Dream House. Might.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Craig is in early talks to star in Sheridan's psychological thriller, which would steer him clear of "Whatever, all he plays are vigilantes" talk. House centers on a family man who moves the wife and kids to an idyllic small town, and obviously the perfect house of the film's title. But you know what happens when you move to those dreamy small towns and those perfect Victorian houses ... they're haunted! Our hapless hero finds himself contending with the former occupants of the house, who hang around thanks to being brutally murdered.

As Craig decides whether Sheridan and Dream House is a proper departure from 007 territory, he'll be appearing on Broadway in A Steady Rain and is rumored to be interested in Kevin MacDonald's Eagle of the Ninth. (Would he be replacing Channing Tatum?) Should any one of these ventures fail, perhaps Craig will sigh, shrug, and just play Steve McQueen already.

If anything can make you forget the disappointment of Quantum of Solace, it's the news that James Bond 23 has taken the first big steps into production. No, that's not casting Bond girls or plotting explosions, but writing the script. Not surprisingly, producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli have looked again to the cream of Britain's film crop and hired a man who's gotten some attention at the Oscars lately: Peter Morgan. Few of his scripts have gone wrong (The Other Boleyn Girl is one mark on an otherwise impeccable record .. and even then, it's not that bad) and he'll definitely lend a lot of gravitas to the project. A lot.

Morgan won't be penning 23 solo, however. He's got some old hands in
Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (the pens behind both Quantum and Casino Royale), who are returning to the franchise ... and well, so long Paul Haggis. I guess he's taking the fall for Quantum.

So, now to find that new director. Rumors swirled that Danny Boyle had been offered the job, but that was quickly shot down by Boyle in an e-mail to EW. While it's always possible he could duck in once the script is done, we need to look to the rest of the United Kingdom ... and possibly to Morgan himself, who is about to make his directorial debut with The Special Relationship.

For all those boys and girls out there who've always wanted to suck on ... um ... Daniel Craig's six-pack abs, we've got great news for you: The food company Del Monte asked 1,000 British women to vote on which celebrity they deem worthy enough to appear as a delicious ice pop, and the current James Bond star won. Thus, for a very limited time (now through June 7), you can pick up one of these limited-edition Daniel Craig pops and do whatever it is you'd like to do to it (we don't want to know). The catch? They're only being sold in England. Sorry ladies (and men) from wherever it is in the world you live that isn't England. Click the image below to view the entire pop.



How creepy is this popsicle, though? I mean, I imagine some ladies (and men) might find some sort of bizarre pleasure in the Daniel Craig pop, even though it sort of looks like they froze the poor actor in carbonite. If these were being sold in America, would any of you buy one? And what if they did this with a popular actress like, say, Megan Fox -- would folks suddenly cry sexism? Would there be marches and protests and round-the-clock CNN coverage? Probably. Guess that's why this publicity stunt remained way on the other side of the Atlantic.

[via The Frisky]

Steven Spielberg's The Adventues of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn started filming with so little fanfare that I've nearly forgotten all about it ... but I doubt you diehard Herge fans have. Now you'll have a date to circle on the calender as Variety reports that Tintin will be hitting theaters on December 23, 2011, pitting it against Warner Bros Happy Feet 2 and Disney / PIXAR's The Bear and the Bow. (It may be two years away, but you can offer your box office predictions now if you like!)

At least, that's when it'll be hitting theaters on this side of the pond. Paramount and Sony plan to release the film in Europe first, as befitting its heritage and fanbase. There's no specific dates set, but they're eying a fall dates of late October and early November depending on what part of Europe you're in. If you're very wealthy, you could hop on a plane and catch it a few weeks early.

Variety also reports that the film will be released in 3-D. I guess that's a sign I've lost track of this project as I wasn't aware that was ever in doubt, but apparently the two studios have been debating that the past few months. Now after viewing dailies, they've decided that 3-D "would offer the best rendition" for the film ... and frankly the recent ginormous 3-D successes like Monsters Vs. Aliens probably helped convince them of that.

So, there you are, Tintin fans: December 23, 2011 in 3-D. Excited?

The cast has finally been completed for Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn, and once again, I'm really, really wishing this was live-action, rather than 3-D motion-capture.

Variety reports that straight off some Russian Defiance, Jamie Bell has signed on to play the titular role, while co-star Daniel Craig has grabbed the role of Red Rackham. If you remember from earlier reports, this installment will not only focus on 1943's The Secret of the Unicorn, but also 1944's Red Rackham's Treasure. This should fit together quite nicely since one flowed into the other with Tintin's adventures with Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis) ultimately leading to the search for Rackham's treasure.

Now Bell might be a smidge old to play a young, thrill-seeking kid, but I bet he'll do wonderfully (even better if this darned picture was live-action!); the actor has done everything from a dancing tyke full of wonder to a pacifist gun-toter to a doomed US Marine. The kid's got range. And Craig -- I'm sure he'll have no problem embracing his inner pirate.

What say you?

Based on some comments on my box office post and on Scott's review of Quantum of Solace, people want to talk about this. I want to talk about it too. So would someone who saw Quantum over the weekend please explain to me why this random action movie was released under the "James Bond" banner?

You know, there was that scene in Casino Royale where Bond, asked if he would like his vodka-martini shaken or stirred, replies: "Does it look like I give a damn?" At the time I -- and most others, it seemed -- thought this was actually pretty cool, part of Bond's facelift for the new millennium. The franchise retained its essence in that terrific film, but Bond was a little different: a little grittier, a little tougher, a little less studied and exaggerated in his suaveness. Besides, this was supposed to be a prequel. Bond is still learning the attitude and affectations that will eventually make him Bond, James Bond. Not to mention the fact that he ordered that martini after losing a fortune in poker.

After watching Quantum, I think back to the Casino Royale martini scene, and I'm dispirited. Because the truth is, his one petulant outburst aside, James Bond does care how he takes his martini. And I'm worried that the people behind this new, fantastically successful incarnation of the franchise really -- wrongly -- believe that he doesn't.

Remove all proper nouns from the equation and Quantum of Solace isn't a B+ action flick. It's brisk and shiny, partially smart and frequently flashy; it's got loads of chases, escapes, fights, and explosions, as well as a game cast and a leading man who really sells the physical stuff. The plot is nothing more than your standard "angry spy on a mission" hoo-hah, but it works well enough to support the sport and the spectacle ... so why is it that Marc Forster's Quantum of Solace also feels like a missed opportunity, kind of an also-ran, and sort of a day late and a dollar short? Oh that's right. Because this is supposed to be a James Bond movie.

The 22nd James Bond movie, to be precise, and if you haven't checked into the series since the days of Moore or Dalton -- and you happened to start here instead of with Casino Royale -- you'd be absolutely stunned to see how stripped-down the character has become. Call it a combined effort between three screenwriters, numerous producers, and a stern-looking lead -- but this particular version of 007 has become pretty one-note in rather short order: The guy's a lug. A bad-ass, quietly noble, and effortlessly believable movie hero ... but where's the charm? The ambiguity? The escapist fun in trotting along with a confidently capable super-spy? I know Bond isn't the deepest character in the annals of fiction, but in his latest flick he's been fitted into an acrobatic grump with a basic grudge. This time out the angered agent sets out to track down the killer of his beloved Vesper, only to realize that, yep, another egomaniacal super-tycoon has secret plans that are both greedy and evil.

Even as the franchise began to shed staples with 2006's Casino Royale and tomorrow's Quantum of Solace, the James Bond series is still known for several keystones across twenty other films: girls, gadgets, guns, martinis, silhouettes of female figures thrusting about during the credits, and so on. Some would say that these were the traditions that helped lead James Bond down the path that would end in 2002's Die Another Day, which some would say made them want to take a top hat to their own throats. (Me? I didn't hate it.)

Among these recurring touches were the last lines, often cheeky turns of phrase that seemed to suggest that everything was going to be just fine between Commander Bond and that chick who we'd never see or hear about ever again. So, out of twenty-one films, I humbly offer up my picks for the seven best of the bunch. I'll leave you to find out if Quantum ends more along the lines of Royale's "The name's Bond... James Bond", or with something a bit sexier...

The new Madagascar film dominated the box office, achieving the seventh strongest opening for an animated film ever, with the raunchy Role Models settling into second. Soul Men proved soul-less, missing the top five entirely and taking sixth. Here's the top five:

1. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa: $63 million
2. Role Models: $19 million
3. High School Musical 3: Senior Year: $9 million
4. Changeling: $7.2 million
5. Zack and Miri Make a Porno: $6.2 million

The other studios no doubt fear 007's license to kill, so there's only one major release this week:

Quantum of Solace
What's It All About: The latest in the long-running James Bond franchise and the hotly anticipated followup to the series' stylish reboot Casino Royale. Daniel Craig returns as Agent 007 in this globe hopping adventure that takes the super spy to Austria, Italy and South America.
Why It Might Do Well: For new releases, this is the only game in town this week, and it's a BIG honking release. Rottentomatoes.com is giving the film an 80% fresh rating and Casino Royale pulled in over half a billion ($594.2 million) worldwide, leaving ticket takers both shaken and stirred.
Why It Might Not Do Well: What, you're kidding, right?
Number of Theaters: 3,400
Prediction: $55 million

At this point, the most dangerous threat James Bond faces does not shoot from the barrel of a gun or glimmer from the lens of a laser but instead springs from the tightly-coiled engine of the audience's expectations. Any new Bond film has to not only compete with the films that have come before but also the other high-end entries in the action genre; any political or moral ideas in the film have to compete with the political and moral landscape of the world we live in. Quantum of Solace, the 22nd Bond film, is Daniel Craig's second outing as James Bond, and the blunt, brutal and brisk Casino Royale set the bar very high; if Casino Royale marked a return to greatness for the Bond franchise, Quantum of Solace represents a return to adequacy.

Directed by Mark Forster, Quantum of Solace has the basic bones of a Bond film -- globe-trotting settings, cars and chases, hair's-breadth escapes, nefarious plots. It does not, fortunately, have much of the fat that the worst Bond films have larded onto the series -- there's a minimum of high-tech gadgetry, no skiing sequences, no invisible cars, no henchmen with metal teeth. While Casino Royale brought Judi Dench's gruff spymaster M back to the series from the Brosnan era, it also brought Sir Isaac Newton's laws of motion back to the franchise; in the new Bond era, cars crash and buildings break with thundering, shuddering force as Daniel Craig's Bond smashes, crashes and grunts his way through a hard, painful world. In the film's opening car chase, on the winding coastal roads of Italy, there are a number of moments where the crunch and thud of the action catches you up in a two-fisted grip of exhilaration and terror. Part of that's the stunt work, but a big part of it is Craig's Bond -- who you believe as being capable of executing a perfect shift-and-skid turn while firing an automatic weapon out of what used to be his car window with shards of glass lacerating his face.