If Men in Black III isn’t the complete, utter disaster we’ve been expecting (anticipating?) for more than a year, Barry Sonnenfeld‘s name will… probably still mean nothing; I guess that’s better than being in director jail, anyway. Early word indicates the movie is merely “fine” — that’s more than Sony was hoping for a few months ago — and an additional good sign has come from the filmmaker himself, who revealed that he and Warner Bros. have been considering a franchise as of late.

Sonnenfeld said this much to CBM, when asked about doing a superhero series:

“You know, I’m talking to Warner Bros. about doing a franchise based on a comic that hasn’t been around since the 60s. But it’s too early to talk about it. But possibly, yes.”

/Film made this astute observation: Warner Bros. means a DC character is, more than likely, on the table, while the pre-’60s dating means it’s probably not someone who’s been heavily rumored for translation over the past few years. What do we have, then? One of CBM’s commenters, named “Fogs,” offered up the possibilities of Captain Atom, Blue Beetle, The Hawk, The Dove, Metamorpho, The Question, Sgt. Rock, and Enemy Ace.

Sgt. Rock is the only character who’s been discussed for the big-budget presentation, but Guy Ritchie got his hands on the property in July of last year. This doesn’t entirely rule out the chances of Sonnenfeld taking the reigns — the British helmer has The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and, possibly, a third Sherlock Holmes waiting — but I’d take it as a roadblock. (Those other characters haven’t been rumored for film, as far as I can remember.) But, to be honest, I’m not interested enough to do much more deducting or blind guessing; I’ll just wait with full patience for the time being.

What do you think the project could be? Do you care?

Perhaps I’m being a little ostentatious in this declaration, but: Between this new project, The Hive, Haunter, and Ender’s Game, it would almost appear as though Abigail Breslin is situating herself squarely in the genre realm. (To be perfectly honest, I don’t know what the reasoning and/or significance behind this might even be; it’s simply an observation.) “This,” you may be wondering, would happen to be The Final Girl, an independent thriller that photographer Tyler Shields will make his directing debut on. [Deadline]

Written by Adam Prince — who worked from an idea formulated by Alejandro Seri, Steve Scarlata, and Johnny Silver — the picture revolves around a girl (Breslin) picked by “a pack of feral teenage boys [...] to be the victim of their final ‘initiation.’” Although the plans would, in all likelihood, call for her death, her character turns out to not just be the final girl, but also “the wrong girl” — which I take as a sign that some revenge will be dealt out in good, bloody measure.

A bit vague, description-wise, but the image of Breslin killing a bunch of “feral teenage boys” has me a little tickled, and that should count for something. Studio City Pictures will finance The Final Girl, while Prospect Park and Nasser Entertainment are producing.

Would you want to see Breslin take part in some onscreen aggression?

Although us Americans have yet to see his reportedly bizarre Sean Penn-starrer This Must Be the Place — even a year later, no release from The Weinstein Company is in sight — Paolo Sorrentino earned a whole lot of weight with his acclaimed 2009 picture, Il Divo, which helped establish his name on the international scene. My (overly-simple) point being: even if the movie where Penn dresses up like Robert Smith and tries to find a Nazi turned out to be terrible, we’d still be giving the fellow our time.

I, therefore, think it’d be wise to pay attention to a story in Variety, in which we learn he’s breaking ground on Great Beauty, an Italian feature that will reunite him with his Il Divo star, Toni Servillo; Sabrina Ferilli and Carlo Verdone will co-star. Although the specifics are not of access to ourselves, his Place co-writer, Umberto Contarello, has returned to Beauty, which is reported to focus on both “the city of Rome and its grotesque glamorous society and arts world underbelly.”

What does that even mean? I don’t know, but, as someone who’s seen the “grotesque glamorous society” of Rome firsthand, the capturing of such a world on film — and from a talented filmmaker, to boot — is something I’ll, by default, be fully interested in. Shooting on Great Beauty will begin in August; Indigo Film, Medusa, and Babe Films are all producing.

Is Sorrentino someone you keep tabs on? What do you take from Great Beauty so far?

It’s only been a day since his latest outing, Like Someone in Love, hit Cannes to a decidedly mixed response, but Variety reports that Abbas Kiarostami is formulating his next effort, currently titled Horizontal Processes. The “tentative plans” call for shooting to commence in Apulia, Italy, next year — making this the third straight film composed outside of his former mainstay, Iran — with MK2 returning to produce.

Well, this one’s seeds were actually planted some time ago; Kiarostami has been photographing the area for four years now, being taken with the “complex architecture” that, if you ask him, serves as a suitable aesthetic compliment to “the complexity of the people who live there.” (With any luck, this will be synchronized in the cinematic medium.) That long-standing and deep-seated enthusiasm notwithstanding, producer Marin Karmitz said that “you never know” with the Iranian auteur, what with him being someone that’s “absolutely capable of changing his mind.”

Out of pure excitement, let’s just ignore that little warning for the time being and, well, get said excitement going. While Kiarostami already perfected the all-too-difficult art of capturing Italy with Certified Copy — be it the Tuscan countryside, its narrow streets, or the imposing, dark archways that seem to exist at every turn — someone who’s experienced any of his majestic (not a word I use often) outings can express satisfaction over this, in all reality, basic turn of events. Right now, however, I’ll be focusing my attention on a) seeing more of his films, and b) keeping track of where Like Someone in Love heads next.

Does the news of a new Kiarostami film get the cinematic blood pumping?

This is looking better and better; THR reports that Nicholas Stoller is in negotiations to direct Townies for Universal. The comedy, from writers Andrew Cohen and Brendan O’Brien, stars Seth Rogen as a family man whose life is continually thrown into chaos by a hard-partying frat member (Zac Efron) that lives next door, the duo who was first attached to the project last summer. This will be Stoller’s follow-up to The Five Year Engagment, which bowed last month to disappointing box office returns and middling reviews.

Townies has all sorts of potential to be one hell of a comedy, and I love the casting choices. Rogen is well-established as a great comedic actor, but his role as a family man looks to put him as the “straight man” in this movie instead of the one cracking all the jokes. As for Efron, he has shown potential for comedy (I will defend 17 Again if I have to, against my better judgment) over the years and I think that Townies could unearth a more raunchier side and allow him to branch out a little more.

And even though I wasn’t too high on The Five Year Engagement, Stoller’s previous work (Forgetting Sarah Marshall and its spin-off Get Him to the Greek) is good enough to forgive that misstep. Townies could end up being the comedy everyone will be raving about next year.

What are your initial impressions of Townies? Do you think the talent involved will make for a good comedy, or will they end up stumbling?

A remake of a remake; John Sturges gave Akira Kurosawa‘s classic masterpiece The Seven Samurai the western treatment with The Magnificent Seven and now Hollywood is going back to the well again. Variety is reporting that MGM will begin development of an update to the film that brought together Steve McQueen, Yul Brynner, Eli Wallach, Charles Bronson and more.

And the studio already has a major star attached with Tom Cruise. While they are currently looking for writers, and although Cruise is passionate about making the film, I could easily see this attachment drop during the long road to production. Still, if they take it the right direction and get seven actors of highly quality to take on a genre that’s seen rejuvenation with films like True Grit, I’d be interested.

For those unfamiliar, the 1960 version followed seven rough-and-tumble gunslingers who were tasked with protecting a Mexican village from incoming terror. While I’m a fan of Cruise, especially his most recent action work in Ghost Protocol, he does seem a little too clean-cut to act as a western hero. We’re still a long ways off from the casting process though, so in the meantime check out a trailer for the original, as MGM gears up its remake slate with Carrie, RoboCop, Red Dawn and many more.

With production scheduled to get underway in about a month or so, it’s high time Steve McQueen rounded out the (already terrific) cast for his third film, Twelve Years a Slave — and, sadly, this latest pick is not one I can support. As it were, Deadline reports that Paul Dano will join an ensemble already led by Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, and Adepero Oduye, with Brad Pitt taking a cameo role.

Being an adaptation of Solomon Northup‘s seminal book — itself an account of his twelve years spent serving on a slave plantation — Dano has been commissioned to play a violent master who oversees the work of Northup, played here by Ejiofor. This makes him the second cast member to take such a role; Fassbender is up for a similar character, while Oduye is, conversely, on the other side of that societal coin. (Pitt‘s role — which is, again, very small — will be that of the lawyer who frees Northup.)

Here’s the thing: I don’t believe I’ve ever liked Dano in any film, ever, and have also found him to be a weight on the good material that ends up coming his way — There Will Be Blood being the loudest and clearest example. But since McQueen has, twice over, proven himself adept at working with actors and getting the rawest, most powerful work one could ever ask from them — and since I have such high expectations for Slave to begin with — I’m willing to be surprised on this outing. I just don’t want to be burned.

How do you feel about Dano joining Slave‘s ranks?

I’ve been praising MacGruber since I saw it in a nearly empty theater some two years ago — nobody believed (or understood) me when I raved about its implementation of “Take Me Home Tonight” — and people only started to catch on when it hit home video a few months later. I don’t know how big “the cult” of this film actually is, or if such a cult even exists, but it’s undoubtable that a whole new life came about quickly and forcefully.

Fitting that, on the same day we received a few teasers for Anchorman 2, director Jorma Taccone would speak with ScreenCrush and, semi-unofficially, announce that the hopes for a second MacGruber already exist. He, Will Forte, and John Solomon at least have the ambition to script the follow-up, which they’ve formulated in terms of an idea and title; both are mostly hush-hush, but we do know they’d like to pay homage to Die Hard and set the proceedings during Christmas. Someone more clever than myself can concoct a joke pertaining to the character and that holiday.

It’s purely speculative and hope-based — I can’t say MacGruber has yet to really make a profit, even two years later — but it’s an idea I’m willing to entertain at the moment. Ultimately, if Taccone and Forte can shake out their busy schedules, if Kristen Wiig can reprise the role of Vicki St. Elmo, and if there’s really something there, let’s make it happen.

Is a second MacGruber something you’ve felt any desire to see?

Their first collaboration, The Paperboy, has not even debuted yet and already, the word at Cannes says that director Lee Daniels and star Nicole Kidman have decided to reunite for The Butler [Screen Daily].

Kidman joins a star-studded cast that includes Paperboy co-stars David Oyelowo and Matthew McConaughey, as well as Oprah Winfrey, Terrence Howard, Alan Rickman, Jane Fonda, Cuba Gooding Jr. and Forest Whittaker. Whittaker leads as Eugene Allen, a butler who served in the White House for 34 years under 8 different presidents. Other potential cast members include Liam Neeson (possibly as Lyndon B. Johnson) and another Paperboy star John Cusack (once linked to the Ronald Reagan role). We’ll keep you updated as more casting announcements come.

Joining Daniels on the creative side is screenwriter Danny Strong, behind Jay Roach’s Game Change and Recount. Production will begin this July and one can check out a newly released clip from The Paperboy below, featuring Kidman.

In the first official poster for The Dark Knight Rises we saw buildings crumble as the bat symbol emerged through the stark skylight. Following it up, WB have released another official poster which lights the skyline with fire and adds our hero in the center of things. Also added is the tagline of “A Fire Will Rise,” an anthem from our villain Bane. It’s no surprise that for what is likely a final theatrical poster has Batman front and center. Check it out below via the official Facebook page.

Scripted by Jonathan Nolan, the film stars Christian Bale, Anne Hathaway, Tom Hardy, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Anne Hathaway, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Juno Temple, Josh Pence, Daniel Sunjata, Nestor Carbonell, Matthew Modine, Tom Conti, Joey King, Brett Cullen, Chris Ellis, and Josh Stewart.

The Dark Knight Rises hits theaters July 20th, 2012 in IMAX.