Sylvester Stallone is ready to step into Charles Bronson's shoes. Variety reports that Stallone is in talks to direct and star in a remake of Death Wish, to be scripted by Michael Ferris and John Brancato. That's the writing team responsible for The Net, The Game, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines -- and Catwoman. Draw your own conclusions, but with Stallone in the director's chair, this could be another project that ends up better than it initially sounds.

Michael Winner's 1974 original starred Charles Bronson as mild-mannered Paul Kersey, a New York City architect transformed into a killing machine meting out street justice after his wife is brutally murdered and his daughter is raped. Four sequels would follow over the next 20 years, but with Bronson's passing in 2003, the search for a successor was inevitable.

Early September saw two new vigilantes hit the screen: Kevin Bacon in Death Sentence, a straightforward and enjoyable revenge flick misunderstood to be a message movie, and Jodie Foster in The Brave One, which drew more direct comparisons to Death Wish because it was set in Manhattan. It's hard to imagine that a new Death Wish will try to be profound or offer anything new on the subject, but if it's well made and Stallone restrains himself a bit, that may be enough.

Stallone has been working hard on the comeback trail and made some major coin for the backers of Rocky Balboa. He also has Rambo due out on January 25, 2008, a release date that's normally a death wish of its own, but the trailer looks fairly awesome as an action pic. If Rambo hits big, this deal for Death Wish will generate even more excitement. And if Sly's Death Wish hits big, MGM is prepared to make it into a franchise for him, which could sustain Stallone well into his 70s (Bronson was in his early 70s when he made his last Death Wish). While you contemplate that thought, MGM is hoping to start production before March 2008.

A revenge thriller is a tough animal to tame. Go too far in one direction and you're practically advocating vigilante behavior -- but if you err on the safe side your drama begins to feel like a flaccid little network flick. Third-time director James Wan (Saw, Dead Silence) deserves some hearty praise for trying to balance hard-edged escapism with some surprisingly ambiguous social commentary -- even if the two approaches sometimes mix as well as oil and vinegar. But "more than half a brain" is what this dark-hued action thriller has to offer, and nowadays that's just enough to get excited about. (Had the flick been full-bore bloodthirstiness, I suspect it would have gotten really tiresome after about 25 minutes or so.)

Fortunately Mr. Wan also has Kevin Bacon in the lead role -- as an All-American dad who seeks revenge on the brutal drug gang members who murdered his son -- and if ever a genre movie hinged on a lead performance, it's Death Sentence. Bacon is able to be "the perfect dad" without being too sappy or cloying; he has no trouble creating a character who's being gradually sucked down the tubes; and once Bacon gets down to the very end of his rope -- he has no problem selling himself as a desperate shell who simply wants some justice revenge ... ok, both.

While Kevin Bacon was absent from the Death Sentence breakfast, we did manage to corral Garrett Hedlund over eggs and ... bacon. He talked to us about starring in the movie, his relationships with co-stars Kevin Bacon and John Goodman, how he grew up with guns, and shooting very long action sequences with a lit cigarette in his mouth.

Garrett Hedlund isn't a household name just yet, but you've probably seen him on the big screen at Patrocles in Troy. He played the brash, young cousin of Achilles (Brad Pitt), and is somewhat of a chameleon. He's also been in Friday Night Lights, Eragon, and Four Brothers. With a shaved head and tribal neck tattoos in Death Sentence, he's looking to extend that streak. Click on his picture for the audio interview and read the highlights below.

• He plays Billy Darly, the son of Bones Darly (John Goodman) and is the older brother of Joe Darly (Matt O'Leary).
• He leads a gang of thugs who run a meth lab in an abandoned insane asylum. Sounds like a nice place.
• There is a great scene between John Goodman and Kevin Bacon in the movie, where John realizes that Kevin Bacon is after his son ... who in turn had killed Kevin's son.
• He's worked with everyone from Brad Pitt, to Terrence Howard, to Billy Bob Thornton, but his dad was most impressed when he told him he was working with John Goodman. "He finally feels proud of me."
• "I don't care for working with actors that just come in and read the lines and pretend that the character is them, instead of them the character. A lot of people think that they're the one to bank off of, as their personality as a celebrity. They feel that people just want to see them. Where I like trying to do something different with each role."
• They did extensive research for the role by gathering as a "gang" at strip clubs and bars, and calling each other by their gang names.
• "I had my rifle permit when I was eleven, kids couldn't wait to deer hunt ... even girls. I grew up with an environment of guns. I've always used them, and always learned how to be safe with them. If I did something like pointing the gun at the sun or did anything stupid with it, I'd get slapped in the back of the head."

Okay, seriously ... that title isn't a joke. Fox Atomic invited us to have "Bacon with Kevin Bacon" at Comic-Con for a movie he's in called Death Sentence. Granted, putting those together in the same sentence makes it appear worse than the Bataan Death March, but it was actually a lot more pleasant. Although a more apt title would have been "Bacon Without Kevin Bacon," because he wasn't at the breakfast. We did manage to catch up with him later, though.

We were treated to the promised bacon (along with other breakfast acoutrements) and some footage from Death Sentence. Kevin Bacon stars as Nick Hume, your average, boring, subarbanite "nerd" (as Bacon calls him) whose life changes dramatically when he witnesses his son being murdered. After that, things click into revenge mode, and before long Bacon is a badass, hunting down the gang who did him wrong. However, it's not like a switch gets flipped and he's instantly a commando. He slowly builds from hockey dad to serial killer, although by the end of the footage we saw, he has a shaved head and is a fairly expert hand with a shotgun.

In a whirlwind of Comic-Con Kevins, which involved Kevin Smith, Marvel Studios' Kevin Feige, G4's Attack of the Show Kevin Pereira, AOL's Kevin Polowy, and yours truly, I was able to get one more Kevin under the wire ... Kevin Bacon.

He's spent more time making movies than the rest of us have spent watching them, and I was able to catch up with him to talk about his upcoming thriller Death Sentence, and to ask him about some other things, including the upcoming Nixon/Frost film that reunites him with Ron Howard, Rails and Ties, directed by Alison Eastwood, and of course, the upcoming remake of Footloose.

Kick off your Sunday shoes, if you're still wearing them, and check out the video.

This week on Trailer Park, darkness falls across the land.

1-18-08
The turning point in this trailer is when a party is plunged into darkness. This preview, which has been playing with Tranformers, is one of the coolest trailers I've seen in... well, possibly ever. A farewell party in New York City is interrupted by a power failure and a massive explosion several miles away. The roar of something huge is heard in the distance, and a large piece of shrapnel turns out to be the Statue of Liberty's head. Over on IMDB this is still being called the Untitled J.J. Abrams Project. Speculation is running wild on this one. Just check out all the comments on Erik's posting about the film's teaser website. I for one am dying to see what this is all about.

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane
As Jette recently mentioned here, this teen horror flick has dropped off the summer release schedule entirely, been picked up by a new distributor and reassigned an early 2008 release date. In this fairly dark tale of teen lust and angst, a former ugly duckling has fallen in with the popular crowd. Every boy in her class has lusted after her, and during a weekend excursion to a remote ranch, several highly hormonal young men hope to get to know Mandy a whole lot better. Things turn ugly, though, and people start dying. The trailer resorts to lots of quick cuts, preventing the viewer from seeing who is getting offed, but there's a manic energy here that I find intriguing. Check it out:

I wasn't crazy about the last poster that was released for the upcoming Death Sentence, but this latest one -- a ComicCon exclusive -- more than makes up for that big red canvas with a little Kevin Bacon in the center. What's up with that poster, anyway? So odd. Check out the new poster to the right of your screen (click on it for a larger version over at /Film). This one is a whole lot better; not only has Bacon grown in size, but it's got this great disturbing vibe to it (those old Death Wish and Reservoir Dogs posters immediately came to mind). And if it does sort of remind some of Death Wish, that's because the movie is based off a novel by Death Wish author Brian Garfield. Thus, some of the same elements are present, although the story goes in a slightly different direction.

Another reason to look forward to Death Sentence (which also recently released a trailer) is that James Wan directed the flick. Wan, as you know, helmed the first Saw film, but didn't do so well with his latest, Dead Silence. Wan is great at establishing an unsettling mood, while slowly rising the tension. Unlike some of his other projects, he's got a great lead actor this time in Bacon, and a decent supporting cast in Kelly Preston, John Goodman and Aisha Taylor. Essentially, the story centers on a nice, suburban guy (Bacon) who, after witnessing his son's murder, decides to personally hunt down those responsible ... while they subsequently hunt him. And although the premise feels familiar, I have a good feeling about this one. Bacon scares me when he's angry, and I've been waiting for Wan to deliver a thriller that's on par with the stuff he gave us in the first Saw film. My fingers are crossed that Death Sentence is it. Look for the flick to hit theaters on August 31.

His first flick out of the gate was a smash hit. His second ... not so much. But young moviemaker James Wan is back for a third trip in the director's chair, and the resulting flick is Fox's Death Sentence, which is scheduled for release on August 31. At first I thought it was basically a Death Wish rehash, but it definitely looks like there might be a little Straw Dogs in there too... Then again, the IMDb tells us that Death Sentence is based on a novel by Brian Garfield ... as was the entire Death Wish series.

Based on this brand-new trailer (which comes on the heels of this new poster), the story looks pretty simple: Normal Joe's teenage son gets killed in a convenience store robbery, but the killer gets off and goes free. One act of bloodthirsty revenge then transforms into a man vs. street gang battle that's sure to get pretty nasty. Or maybe I'm just so big a Kevin Bacon fan that I'll give anything he does a break. (Actually, after The Air Up There and Trapped, the guy's certainly not infallible, but the guy's got a pretty strong track record overall.)

Adapted for the screen by first-timer Ian Jeffers (nope, not Leigh Whannell, although the Saw screenwriter does have a supporting role in the film), Death Sentence also stars John Goodman, Kelly Preston and a distressingly hairless (but still gorgeous) Aisha Tyler. I'm not much of a big prognosticator on the box office, but this one could turn out to be a solid double off the wall for Mr. Wan and Fox. These revenge flicks seem to do pretty well -- sometimes.

Over to the right you can check out the fancy new poster for Kevin Bacon's latest movie, Death Sentence. It's been a while since we've told you about the revenge thriller. In September, Scott Weinberg posted that Brian Garfield's book would be adapted into a feature directed by Saw helmer James Wan, and would star the famous side of Bacon. In October, John Goodman signed on to play a drug boss, of all things. Now the film has wrapped, and is set to be released at the end of next month. Sentence is about a man who witnesses the murder of his oldest son, and goes on an elaborate quest of revenge as a result -- kind of like the other upcoming revenge flick -- The Brave One.

Now, I'm trying to get into this movie, but I'm just not buying into the premise and star. Although I actually enjoy a lot of Kevin's work, he's got that rough, harsh edge to him these days, and it'll take a lot to convince me that he's the "mild-mannered executive" that 20th Century Fox says he is. What always intrigues me about stories where good people seek revenge is just how out of character the action is, and considering the film company's description of the man, we're on the same page. Looking at this poster, Bacon seems like the perfect vengeful guy, not the one you'd never expect. I've heard soft, caring and far-from-violent fathers spout tough words about what they'd do if someone ever messed with their family, but it's no trouble at all to imagine the Hollow Woodsman doing it. However, at the very least we should get some pretty creepy revenge scenarios that allow us to live vicariously and wipe our annoyances away.