Since his writing and directorial debut with the acclaimed found footage thriller PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, Oren Peli has preferred to serve as a producer, working on films such as INSIDIOUS and THE LORDS OF SALEM, as well as the television series The River. His newest film CHERNOBYL DIARIES continues this trend, with Peli creating the story directed by Bradley Parker and written by Shane and Carey Van Dyke, the duo behind some of Asylum’s most noteworthy mockbusters.

Opening with the found footage aesthetic that Oren Peli is known for, CHERNOBYL DIARIES quickly moves into a standard narrative as doting couple Chris (Jesse McCartney) and Natalie (Olivia Dudley), accompanied by their recently single friend Amanda (Devin Kelley) visit Chris’s brother Paul (Jonathan Sadowski) in Kiev. After a night of drinking and carousing, Paul suggests they skip their planned trip to Moscow in favor of a guided tour of Pripyat, a city abandoned in the wake of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. After some initial hesitance on the part of Chris, the four decide to head to the city, guided by local extreme tour guide Uri (Dimitri Diatchenko) and accompanied by tourist couple Zoe (Ingrid Bolsø Berdal) and Michael (Nathan Phillips).

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While pickings have been slim lately, there are several interesting things to check out over the long Memorial Day weekend.

How about a dark comedy about a pedophile and his kidnapped sex slave and a documentary about a legendary housing project? (more...)

Let the guessing game begin.

Variety reports that Mads Mikkelsen has nabbed a baddie role in the upcoming sequel, THOR 2, which at this stage in the game, is set to follow the pending IRON MAN 3 as Marvel’s next step in their attempt to craft one hell of a cinematic universe.

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Kathryn Bigelow’s upcoming film ZERO DARK THIRTY is a topical project that just got a bit more interesting.

Finding the director back in the trenches (pardon the play on words) alongside her HURT LOCKER partner in crime Mark Boal, the film will look at the raid that found Osama Bin Laden at the wrong end of Seal Team Six’s bullets, in what will likely be the year’s most talked about film.

Early in the film’s production, the team was accused of procuring top secret or high level documents relative to the events leading up to Bin Laden’s death. According to the watchdog group Judicial Watch (with a hat tip to EW) the pair chatted with the “planner, Operator and Commander” of the mission, making this feature, for all intents and purposes, the closest thing we’ll get to being on that mission. Color me excited.

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Film crews, film studios, and film fans have a necessarily symbiotic relationship. In the process of making a successful movie, artists of varied description come together to create a product, the studios market and distribute said product, and the fans (who are hopefully sufficiently enticed to see it) go see the final result, delivering a huge stream of cash that makes the crews and studios feel that all of their hard work was worthwhile. This is the way of things.

But Hollywood is a strange enterprise. Although the above relationship is clear to even the greenest of industry followers, there is an unspoken rule that serves to protect the film trade's aura of artistry and creativity. And that rule is this: you're not really supposed to tell the public that you're making movies to make money. It doesn't matter that everybody knows, to varying degrees, that it really is about the money. As a film executive or spokesperson, it's not about the dollar signs. It's about breathtaking artistry, the excitement of scope, the incredible actors. Making hundreds of millions of dollars is historically treated as a happy side effect, at least in public; the deserving result of a job well done.

Turns out that the folks at Paramount Pictures and Hasbro lost their copy of the memo.

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No, that’s not a typo.

Vulture is reporting that MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE director Sean Durkin will team up with Morgan Creek to helm a ten-part TV adaptation of the classic horror film, THE EXORCIST. Produced by Roy Lee, the same guy behind remakes of films like THE GRUDGE and THE EYE (as well as THE DEPARTED), the studio has been eyeing a prequel/remake for years now, in the form of EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING and DOMINION: THE PREQUEL TO THE EXORCIST.

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Talk about a career change for director Josh Trank: From found footage superhero film to what is sure to be one of the grandest epic films we’ve seen in a while.

Deadline reports that the CHRONICLE director has signed on to the upcoming film SHADOW OF THE COLOSSUS for Sony. Based on the beloved and genuinely brilliant Sony video game of the same name, the film synopsis reads a little something like this:

A young man thinks his lover has died. Desperate to bring her back, he heads into a forbidden land, and summons a demon who can wake the dead. The price for bringing back his girl: slay 16 colossi that dominate this mystical place. These are skyscraper-sized giants that rise from the ground, fly through the air and come from the water. As the young man works through his quest on horseback, he begins to wonder if he is on a noble pursuit to bring back his lover, or perhaps has made a deal with the devil and is being used.

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Talk about coming out of nowhere.

Various sources (primarily through Twitter, such as THR and Variety) are reporting that Paramount has decided to shift the upcoming film, G.I. JOE: RETALIATION to March 29, 2013, with the hopes of drawing bigger box office through a pending 3D conversion.

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As much as DreamWorks may deny the fact that they’ve been hard at work on an adaptation of the beloved EA video game Need for Speed, it appears as though it’s coming sooner than any of us could have expected.

Deadline reports that ACT OF VALOR co-helmer Scott Waugh has been offered the director’s chair for the film, which at this point is all that is known about the project. George Gatins is working on the script for the film, which will be based on an idea he crafted with brother John Gatins.

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With MEN IN BLACK 3 appearing to be quite a shockingly good little action film, a return to form for a middling franchise shall we say, director Barry Sonnenfeld appears to be finding a second wind in his directorial career.

The same man behind films like WILD WILD WEST, is, according to Comic Book Movie (and a hat tip to /Film), set to team with WB for a new film based on an old property. The director will helm a comic book film based on a book that hasn’t seen the light of day since the ‘60s. At this point, that’s all we know, so let the questioning commence.

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