With Renny Harlin's 12 Rounds opening this Friday, you might hear a little more about Harlin's plans for a sequel to The Long Kiss Goodnight. Earlier this month, he told Moviehole that all plans were on the back burner, but that he had a script ready and waiting should the oppertunity arise. Naturally, it would be a Samuel L. Jackson vehicle, as 95% of all movies being made today are.

I can't stand the idea of a sequel -- namely because no script Harlin penned would ever be as good one by Shane Black, but also because the movie was about an amnesiac assassin named Charlie Baltimore. The charm of the movie is that her psychotic nature is buried within a happy-go-lucky mom who enjoys baking muffins and wearing ugly Christmas sweaters. Making a sequel that centers on her sidekick (even if her sidekick was Jackson) is just a little insulting.

So, to remind Harlin of what made The Long Kiss Goodnight so damn cool (or at least a guilty pleasure), here's one of my favorite scenes. I'm a sucker for "I remember who I am now, and I'm a psycho" character moments (and the final look Geena Davis gives David Morse is awesome), but I'm especially partial to this one due to the cosmetic overhaul. I think about it every time I'm putting on my own make-up, and occasionally have to fight the urge to chop off my hair and bleach it blond.

The language and hint of nudity make this NSFW, so watch at your own risk.

Warner Bros is ramping up yet another DC property, according to Variety. Producer Dan Lin is setting up Suicide Squad as a potential franchise, with Justin Marks penning the initial screenplay. The series centers on supervillains both great and small, who are recruited by the government to serve as expendable agents on missions too dangerous for superheroes. What Variety doesn't say is which villains will be used, so it's difficult to say how cool or crappy this could be. It's also hard to get too excited about yet another DC property when so many of them are stuck in endless pre-production. (Ok, so we do have a date on The Green Lantern -- but without a Green Lantern, it's kind of uninspiring, isn't it?) We're definitely on a supervillain trend now, though, aren't we? And just think ... people said it wouldn't work!

CHUD is reporting that Samuel L. Jackson's nine picture deal is a sign of things to come, and that this is Marvel's new contractual item. You can expect similar deals in the future -- you can kind of imagine which characters might be locked down in perpetual servitude. Apparently, this may have been one of the issues that prevented Emily Blunt from signing to Iron Man 2.

Finally, there's a new X-Men Origins: Wolverine photo from Stark Industries, featuring more Sabretooth and Wolverine going claw to claw, muttonchop to muttonchop:

There is a delicious irony in the penny-pinching that surrounds Iron Man 2. We're talking about Tony Stark, a Marvel character who is wealthier than God, and whose sequel will bring in millions at the box office. Yet the studio reportedly didn't want to bring Jon Favreau back because they were convinced they could pay a new guy less. Then came reports that they dumped Terrence Howard largely because they had overpaid him. Last week, Samuel L. Jackson told the world that Marvel was feeling the economic crunch, and wouldn't pay his asking price to reprise the role of Nick Fury. Now, Variety reports that Marvel is offering Mickey Rourke the grand total of $250,000 to play Crimson Dynamo, and hints that he may not sign for such a low offer. Seriously Marvel? Of course, actors are hideously overpaid and all, but I think Rourke deserves a decent chunk of change for Iron Man 2 considering what Marvel will make on the film.

Meanwhile the "maybe they aren't overpaid, money doesn't heal humiliation" category, check out this Liev Schreiber quote from Details about playing Sabretooth in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. "I started to read blogs in the comic world with things like 'That's the dumpiest, most out-of-shape Sabretooth I've ever seen in my life!' They gave me a muscle suit at the beginning. I was so humiliated I thought, I've got to try to do this on my own ... I felt like I owed it to the genre to be big." Now take a moment, and be glad Fox cast someone as committed as Schreiber so that you didn't have to see Sabretooth in a rubber muscle suit.

First, let's tackle the Watchmen legal update. The Hollywood Reporter says that the January 20th court date has been canceled, and Warner Bros and Fox are talking about a settlement. It was expected we'd have one by now, since they started over the weekend, but it's apparently "serious" and probably heated too. You'll get your movie on March 6th though. What did we tell you?

Samuel L. Jackson might be out as Nick Fury, telling Hero Complex: "I saw Jon Favreau at the Scream Awards and we had a conversation. He said, 'I hope things are working out for you because we're writing stuff for you.' Then all of a sudden last week I talked to my agents and manager and things aren't really working that well. There was a huge kind of negotiation that broke down. I don't know. Maybe I won't be Nick Fury. Maybe somebody else will be Nick Fury or maybe Nick Fury won't be in it. There seems to be an economic crisis in the Marvel Comics world so [they're saying to me], 'We're not making that deal.'" But Geoff Boucher called Marvel Comics, who refused to report on active (their emphasis) negotiations. So don't count yourself out yet, Mr. Jackson.

Sam Mendes told MTV that he's still waiting for a Preacher script before he'll commit to the project, as he's not very good at "developing" projects, he needs to read the script. But he does love Garth Ennis' series. "I think it's absolutely brilliant. It's a gripping story, fantastic characters, great visual landscape. It mixes supernatural and real worlds brilliantly, it's not entirely a CGI creation if you make it into a movie. It's funny, and it's absolutely, completely blasphemous, possibly even sacrilegious I would say. Which might be a dangerous thing to take on. Whether or not I have the skill to make it into a movie, I don't know."