Great news everyone! Sequels and remakes of films you maybe sort of care about in either a positive or negative way still exist! And we have information about several of them! Hurrah for movies!
Grown Ups is Probably Getting a Sequel
In case you weren't angry enough already about the fact that Grown Ups made something like a bajilliondy dollars last year, now you can double your rage and focus it squarely toward Happy Madison as they apparently ready a sequel to the worst comedy of last year. Fred Wolf, who wrote the tattered semblance of a screenplay for the first movie, is already in negotiations to write this new monstrosity. Presumably, much as Grown Ups was to shitty comedy what The Expendables was to action movies, this sequel will simply ramp things up by including even more forgotten SNL cast-offs like Norm MacDonald, Colin Quinn, Kevin Nealon, Chris Kattan, and Joe Piscopo into the mix. Don't worry, I'm sure they'll find a way to shoehorn Nick Swardson in there somewhere too.
Thank God, Michael Bay Still Might Direct Another Transformers Movie
For the shocking high number of people wringing their hands over the fate of the Transformers movie franchise, you may officially set your faces to "cautiously stoked" as we learn that Michael Bay, the master of exploding junkyard porn, may actually return to the franchise for whatever the fourth film ends up being. However, he apparently won't do it unless Paramount agrees to first fund his new pet project, a "black comedy heist film" called Pain and Gain. That film is loosely based on a true story about a group of bodybuilders who decided to rob a Florida business man, and then suddenly found themselves targets after the victim tracked them down.
Oddly, that movie sounds kind of awesome, especially with Bay's "FUCKING EXPLODE EVERYTHING" mentality behind it. Sure, it may result in another mechanical abomination in which this time the Autobots are fighting dinosaurs or some shit, but hey, you take the good with the bad.
Thor 2 Won't Be Directed by a Lady Person After All
Many an eyebrow was raised, and at least a few monocles dropped into their wearer's drinks when news hit that Patty Jenkins, a confirmed "woman" who had somehow found herself working on previous films as a director (most notably for the Academy Award Winning Monster), would be taking on the very manly job of directing Thor 2, the inevitable sequel to Marvel's hit Viking superhero movie. Women, as we all know, are not terribly well-suited to directing things, especially things with action in them, and despite the Academy's attempts to placate the six women in Hollywood who aren't actresses, costume designers, or Diablo Cody, every man knows in his heart that such stories are best left to the men folk, who can properly embody the manliness inherent in such tales. It's science, you see.
Evidently Marvel finally came to their senses and agreed, as Jenkins is now off the project. However, the door has been left open for her to take on another Marvel project in the future, perhaps something better suited to her womanhood, like She Hulk, or Ms. Marvel, or Cathy. Oh, that last one isn't a Marvel property? I must've been mistaken since her power of overeating and sobbing about her dating life seemed so otherworldly. And heroic.
Robin Williams Thinks a Birdcage Sequel is Somehow a Good Idea
Not much to say about this one, except that apparently Robin Williams is going around telling people that the idea for a sequel to his hit 1996 comedy The Birdcage, in which he and Nathan Lane played a gay couple forced to play straight for the sake of not rankling the feathers of their son's conservative soon-to-be in-laws, is being kicked around as a thing that someone might actually make. Evidently, producers are just trying to figure out "which story to write for that," which means they haven't quite settled on a series of hilarious circumstances in which an older gay couple would somehow have to pretend to be straight for a second time. Maybe one of them could try to run for Congress as a Republican, or something. That seems to be the most frequent excuse these days for gay dudes to fake like they enjoy vaginas.
The Threat of an American Psycho Remake is Very Real
Why anyone on the planet would think the notion of remaking American Psycho, otherwise known as the film that brought Christian Bale to the mainstream world, was a good idea I simply cannot fathom. And yet, apparently Lionsgate really wants to do it. Granted, the first film wasn't terribly profitable, and it gained much of its popularity in the home video market, but the very concept of someone else trying to embody the sociopathic and psychotic haircut of Patrick Bateman is utterly senseless to me. Granted, all that's happened yet is that a screenwriter has been hired to give it a shot, and there is still an outside chance that this project may die a gruesome, Huey Lewis-soundtracked death when someone stops to think for a moment and realizes this is a fucking awful idea, but for now, let's just live in constant fear of the specter of this horrible thing. It's what Patrick Bateman would want.
