Movie news round-up: James Bond, Johnny Depp, and Furious Nick

Hi. We're tweaking our format a little bit this week, exploding apart our news to make it more accessible for google you our exalted readers! What this really means is our trailer and poster round-ups will be appearing in their very own articles, so look out for those soon. For now, though, here's our round-up of movie news previously unreported by . Enjoy!
This week sees two memorable actors ascending to the great movie lot in the sky: George Baker and Charles Napier. Baker enjoyed an illustrious career spanning six decades, making time for stints in Doctor Who and The Ruth Rendell Mysteries, and appeared in supporting roles opposite 3 different James Bonds - but only because other commitments prevented him accepting the main role, as he was reportedly Ian Fleming's personal choice to replace George Lazenby. Napier starred in DinoCroc, which is a fact I didn't even have to look up.
No, Morgan Spurlock's phone hasn't been hacked Scarlett Johansson-style. Now that he's solved obesity and found Bin Laden, Spurlock is setting his sights on product placement in the media - ironically funding documentary The Greatest Movie Ever Sold using that very concept. Which explains this publicity still of him sitting in a bath with a child and a horse. I forget what product it's for.


Johnny Depp is to produce and star in a live-action biopic of the life of Dr. Seuss (real name Theodor Geisel, and no he wasn't actually a doctor). Depp is no stranger to biopics, having played Peter Pan author J.M. Barrie in Finding Neverland, and his quirky performances fit well with what could be a suitably lively account of the cartoonist and author's life.
The more depraved among you will be pleased to hear that Human Centipede 2 has been granted an 18 certificate from the BBFC, following 32 cuts amounting to 2 minutes and 37 seconds of chopped footage. So basically all this means is you can wait a few weeks for the cut footage to appear on the internet, and not bother watching the rest. I demand to be disgusted (but efficiently!).
In more actors-as-characters news, Robert Downey Jr. could be starring in a big screen version of Perry Mason, that sees the law-talking guy travelling back to his 1930s roots. Not literally - as far as I can recall they never had a time travel plot in the show - but with 3000+ radio episodes, books, movies and the TV series to pick from, who's to say they didn't sneak in a 'cause and effect' story somewhere. Let's hope they keep that kickass theme tune:

Rumours are rife that James Bond's next outing is to be titled 'Skyfall', if the recent registration of website domains named 'skyfallthemovie.com', 'skyfallfilm.com' and 'jamesbondskyfall.com' by Sony are to be believed. Well, it's undeniable really, Sony did buy those domain names. Well done, nerds - feel free to add +1 to your enchanted Whois lookup amulets.
Danish director Lars von Trier has thrown a bit of a strop and announced he'll no longer be attending press conferences. All because of some silly comments he made sympathising with Hitler, which got him kicked out the Cannes festival. Here's his statement:

I give it a month.
Official stills from Tarsem Singh's Snow White (one of so many versions in production it doesn't even have a catchy title yet) have been popping up all over the web. Here are all the best ones, or you can head over to People Magazine or Entertainment Weekly for more.










Jason Statham is rumoured to be joining the cast of the next two Fast & Furious movies, which director Justin Lin will be shooting back to back. Presumably Vin Diesel was becoming too expensive for the franchise, so they turned to England's finest (and gruffest) hardman. If they really wanted to cut back on the budget, surely they could have given Ross Kemp a call?

Horses are so hip right now. So it should come as no surprise that the original horse, Mister Ed, is being hosed down and saddled up for another gallop around the racetrack, er, movie studio parking lot, er, hmm. Anyway, you know the default position on horses here at Shiznit Towers:

Blake Lively becomes the latest in a long line of actresses to pass on Pride And Prejudice And Zombies. It seems that not a week goes by without yet another name being dropped, which begs the question: what's taking so long? Clearly whoever is casting the film is picking from a list - just email them all at once and see who replies! #efficiency
The internet collectively made this face when an adaption of Jack Reacher graphic novel One Shot was announced:

:D
Then it did this when they found out their 6' 5" hero was to be played by 5' 8" Tom Cruise:

:(
And now it's doing this after news broke this week that documentary maker Werner Herzog has been cast as the villain of the piece:

:S David Cronenberg has revealed a script for has been written for a sequel to The Fly, but whether it'll get made is another matter, with go-to evil corporation Fox apparently holding the cards. What is a more definite development is news that a sequel to Eastern Promises is already on a second draft. Hopefully in this one Viggo Mortensen will remember to pull his trousers up before getting into knife fights.
Here are some stills fresh from the set of Joss Whedon's The Avengers, showing Chris Hemsworth and Chris Evans as Thor and Captain America respectively, Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, Tom Hiddleston as the villainous Loki, Samuel L. Jackson as S.H.I.E.L.D. leader Nick Fury:











Great vengeance, furious anger, etc.