Hot Hollywood star Amy Adams is negotiating to star in The Fighter, along with Terminator Salvation's Christian Bale and Mark Wahlberg. David O. Russell is directing the biopic of the boxer "Irish" Micky Ward, which will call for Marky Mark to dust off his tough-guy Boston accent and don boxing gloves to fight his way to the championships with help from his trainer and brother Dick Eklund, who will be played by Bale. Multiple Oscar nominee Adams will be playing Ward's love interest, a tough-talkin' bartender in Lowell, MA.

The Fighter, which will be distributed domestically by Paramount, is supposed to begin filming this summer, although with Russell's track record, whether that will really happen is anyone's guess. The project has been through several incarnations, which you can read about here, and Russell is infamous for his on-set outbursts, as is Bale. Russell's last project, Nailed, is in a holding pattern indefinitely.

So will The Fighter make it to the ring? Will Bale and Russell have a shouting match that will find its way to YouTube? Will Mark Wahlberg say "how's your mother?" And will Amy Adams, star of the upcoming Ephron flick Julie & Julia, be totally awesome? I'm voting yes on all counts!

(Via Hollywood Reporter)

While The Fighter might sound like it could have a fighting chance, bad luck has plagued the project for a while. Back in 2007, Mark Wahlberg and Matt Damon were attached, and Darren Aronofsky had signed on to direct. Then Damon dropped out, and Brad Pitt signed on. Then Pitt dropped out. Then Aronofsky.

When a light-haired beau and funky director leave, the studio must find replacements! Variety reports that Christian Bale and David O. Russell are in negotiations to join The Fighter, and offer another manly trio for Mark Wahlberg, who is still pumped and ready to fight. This will, of course, be the third feature for the manic director and Wahlberg, who previously worked on Three Kings and I Heart Huckabees, and O. Russell's second mainstream grab in a row (there's also that romantic comedy).

Should things go well from here, production will begin in July on the Rocky-esque story of Boston fighter "Irish" Mickey Ward. Wahlberg will play Ward, while Bale will take Dicky Ecklund -- the brother who once decked Sugar Ray, got involved with drugs and crime, cleaned up in jail, and then helped his brother do what he couldn't.

Yes, it sounds like the typical sports drama, but I can't help but have high hopes for anything that reunites Mark and David, and mixes Bale into the O. Russell world. Now if only we could get Bale into something strange and darkly comic again...

How do you imagine heaven? Peter Jackson's vision of the place may not be the same, based on an advance look published by Empire Magazine, and that's probably a good thing. The director of The Lord of the Rings trilogy has revealed a glimpse of his concept of the heavenly realm, from his upcoming movie The Lovely Bones, and it looks a lot like ... the Empire Magazine logo (if you click through to their site and enlarge the image; see part of it above). Yup, the Brit zine promises many more pictures in their upcoming issue, but for now all we have is one shot that makes heaven look like a studio with some clouds in the background.

If you haven't read the book, it's an absolutely devastating read, written by Alice Sebold from the point of view of a 14-year-old girl. Susie Salmon (played in the movie by Saoirse Ronan) narrates the tale from her own personal heaven: she was brutally raped and murdered by a neighbor / serial killer and has to come to terms with her own death while watching her family and friends deal with extreme emotional trauma. Susie's heaven is not like Warren Beatty and Buck Henry's Heaven Can Wait or, really, like most other heavens depicted in film, so this initial image is promising.

It's also in line with what Jackson told USA Today: "It is quite like the world of dream, using the magic of metaphor to convey Susie's psychological and emotional life." USA Today also has a different, exclusive image (see above), which shows a shadowy Stanley Tucci as the neighboring serial killer. Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon, and Michael Imperioli also star. The Lovely Bones is due in theaters on December 11.

Yeah, Mark Wahlberg has come a long way since his Marky Mark days. In fact, if there is anyone that the young and cherubic pop icons should try to emulate, it's him. Wrenching your way out of your niche is one thing. Moving from a good, vibrating, spunky underwear model to notable big-screen name -- that takes talent. But these days, that's talent has been squeezed into the serious with no room left for laughs.

Until now. Five years after his Huckabees angst, The Hollywood Reporter posts that Wahlberg is signing on to 20th Century Fox's upcoming comedy, Date Night. In fact, this will be his first all-out mainstream comedy, setting aside existential detectives and Middle-East action laughs. Date Night follows a couple who go out for dinner and a movie, and then get mistaken as other people -- that leads to, one would assume, comic moments.

As Eric pointed out when the news first hit last year that Steve Carell and Tina Fey joined the project -- it's getting directed by Cheaper by the Dozen helmer Shawn Levy, which doesn't bode well. But the cast certainly does. Fey and Carell are the couple, while Wahlberg will play a black ops man in private security who offers to help them. But there's more. James Franco somehow found time in his schedule to sign on and play a "dim con man," the Oscar-nominated Taraji P. Henson will play a cop who doesn't take things at face value, Common and Jimmi Simpson will play detectives on the take, Leighton Meester will play the couple's babysitter, and Kristen Wiig will play Fey's best friend.

Could all of these names have signed on if this was going to be like other Levy features? Maybe he's ready to surprise us.

Sometimes the movie business seems like a giant game of Jenga doesn't it? Just when you think you have a solid little tower on your hands, boom! Some jerk yanks out the support beam and suddenly you're looking at a bunch of wood. But one of the hottest spec scripts in Hollywood right now has gotten one very high-profile block added to the pile. The Hollywood Reporter's Risky Biz Blog is reporting that Christian Bale has unofficially "attached" himself to star alongside Mark "Say hi to your mother for me" Wahlberg in the thriller, Prisoners.

There aren't many details about Aaron Guzikowski's script, but here's the official synopsis so far: "After his 6-year-old daughter and her friend are kidnapped, a small-town carpenter butts heads with a young, brash detective in charge of the investigation. The father is a Bible-reading, deer-hunting survivalist. The cop, meanwhile, can't wait to get to the city. Feeling failed by the law, the father captures the man he believes responsible and begins to torture him in a desperate attempt to find out what he did with the girls, whom he's convinced are still alive." When Wahlberg first signed on, there was no mention of his role in the film, but I'd like to play fantasy casting director if I may and suggest Bale as the bible-thumping survivalist and Wahlberg as the cop?

Everybody loves a package deal, right? It makes things much easier when you can buy a property kit and caboodle -- think of it as a cinematic value meal. Even though it may not be cheap, Will Ferrell and his comedy cohort Adam McKay are counting on the lure of star power to sell their latest comedy. Variety reports that McKay is currently shopping around an action-comedy titled The B Team with Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg attached as mismatched cops.

Not much is known about the story, but I think it's a safe bet to say it will be pretty much the same as most of the films that Ferrell and McKay have done together. B Team was scripted by Land of the Lost writer, Chris Henchy, who also serves as a producer on Wahlberg's Entourage -- which would probably explain how Wahlberg got involved.

So even though most people have started to lose patience with the duo of McKay and Ferrell, I still have hope that a few laughs will be had. To be honest with you, my only concern is the comedy stylings of one Mr. Mark Wahlberg. Other than a few brief moments here and there, Wahlberg has never really been intentionally funny. But I guess studios are going to have to pay, and pay big to find out. Mainly because the studio purchase pretty much means that the studio will be on the hook to make the flick no matter what. Ferrell and McKay are already working on Ferrell's one-man show about G.W. Bush's last night in office, You're Welcome America, but the two are expected to get to work on B Team this summer, with an eye on a 2010 release.

There are a lot of things I love about Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights (the sight of Don Cheadle in a Stevie Wonder wig is worth the price of admission alone), but if I simply had to choose, the scene of a botched drug deal with Rahad Jackson (Alfred Molina) probably ranks as one of my favorite movie moments of all time. Why? Between the Night Ranger soundtrack and the sounds of Cosmo's cherry bombs going off in the background, I was right there with Reed Rothchild (John C. Reilly) on the couch wanting to get the hell out of that living room. I get film geek goose pimples all over as the camera settles on Dirk (Mark Wahlberg), watching his face gradually realize how far he'd fallen. At the time, it even managed to convince me that Wahlberg might be an honest to goodness actor -- a notion he's been working hard to dissuade me from ever since.

Boogie Nights fun facts:

• Paul Thomas Anderson intended for further scenes involving Rahad Jackson (Molina) that would have had him going out in a blaze of gunfire when the cops arrived on the scene.
  
  
• There are numerous references to John Holmes in the film, but this sequence is loosely based on the infamous Wonderland murders that centered on Holmes and gangster Eddie Nash in real life.

I'm not sure if you've been following Saturday Night Live over the past few weeks, but they've made some viral waves with a few sketches -- most notably Tina Fey's Sarah Palin impersonation, but also with Andy Samberg's Mark Wahlberg in a hilarious skit called Mark Wahlberg Talks to Animals. Of course, it didn't take long for someone to catch the real Wahlberg (who's conveniently making the TV rounds promoting his new flick Max Payne) and ask him what he thought of the sketch.

Guess what? He didn't like it. Not only did he not like it, but he also told Jimmy Kimmel that next time he sees Andy Samberg, he's going "to crack that big f**king nose of his." All kidding aside, though, Wahlberg does seem a bit flattered he was chosen, though he admits to wanting something a bit more "legendary" and says they're trying to figure out a way for him to appear on SNL tonight. He notes [via Vulture], "I wasn't unhappy with it. It's just that after seeing the Tina Fey–Sarah Palin thing you were kind of hoping for something on that level. That's legendary. But they actually called and asked me if I would do something on the show this weekend, but I can't stay until Saturday, so maybe we'll film something in L.A."

Check out the video of Wahlberg on Kimmel below, then we've provided the original SNL sketch for those who missed it after the jump. Oh ... and say hi to your mother for me.

Update: Wahlberg appeared on SNL tonight with Andy Samberg in a pretty funny follow-up skit. We'll add video when it's available -- what did you think of it? Funnier than the original?

Update 2: New Wahlberg SNL video with Samberg after the jump.

For a movie based on a video game, there's a curious dearth of action in Max Payne. I know we've often complained that these movies were ALL action and NO substance, but this one has gone in the opposite direction. Well, except there's not really any substance, either. So it went in the opposite direction, but only part of the way. It stopped in the middle and is now a one-dimensional detective noir rather than an exciting shoot-em-up.

By the way, I have never played the Max Payne video game. Does this disqualify me from reviewing the movie? Then stop reading now! Cuz I'm totally about to review the hell out of it anyway.

Mark Wahlberg takes a break from his talking-to-animals duties to play the title character, a New York City police detective whose wife and baby were murdered three years ago by three assailants, one of whom escaped and was never identified. (The other two are dead and thus unhelpful.) Max now works in the cold case bureau of the department, basically pushing papers around all day so he can focus his efforts on his real objective: finding the guy who killed his family.

Following a lead, he winds up in the company of a sultry Russian named, like all sultry Russians, Natasha (Olga Kurylenko), whose sister, Mona (Mila Kunis), is a villain of some kind. (Assassin? Gangster? At one point Mona reminds Max, "You know what I do for a living," and I thought, "Well, that makes one of us.") Natasha winds up dead with Max's wallet nearby, making him a suspect. The subsequent death of a police officer in Max's apartment makes things look even worse.