The fairly amazing Amazing Spider-Man trailer

Here’s the first extended look at The Amazing Spider-Man. Marc Webb ((500) Days of Summer 76) directs Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker/Spider-Man in this reboot of the franchise that set box office records. Sony has promised a different take on the origin story involving Peter’s father and his work at Oscorp. The villain this time around is Rhys Ifans’ Dr. Curt Conners (aka The Lizard). Emma Stone plays love interest Gwen Stacy, while Dennis Leary plays her police captain father, and Martin Sheen and Sally Field play Uncle Ben and Aunt May. Check it out in 2D or 3D beginning July 3rd.

Can Jeremy Renner live up to Bourne's legacy?

Sometimes it’s possible to keep a franchise rolling even without its main star, and that’s exactly what Universal is attempting with The Bourne Legacy. They couldn’t work things out with Matt Damon, so in steps Jeremy Renner as Aaron Cross, a new agent in the Treadstone mold. Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton 82, Duplicity 69), who contributed words to all three previous Bourne films, directs this one from his own script. The strong supporting cast includes returning Bourne players Joan Allen, Albert Finney, David Strathairn, and Scott Glenn as well as newcomers Edward Norton, Rachel Weisz, and Oscar Isaac. The Bourne Legacy hits theaters August 3rd.

Steve Carell is Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

Steve Carell stars in this romantic comedy about the end of the world as we know it, thanks to an impending asteroid collision. Screenwriter Lorene Scafaria (Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist 64) makes her feature directing debut with this story of two misfits (Carell and Keira Knightly) who set out together to find his first love and her family while the world goes crazy around them. Supporting players include Patton Oswalt, Connie Britton, T.J. Miller, William Petersen, Rob Corddry, Gillian Jacobs, and Rob Huebel. Seeking a Friend for the End of the World opens June 22nd.

Ridley Scott chooses The Counselor

Deadline reports that Ridley Scott has selected his next film. It will be The Counselor, based on Cormac McCarthy’s first ever spec script. As we reported last week, Scott was linked to the script right away despite his may other pending projects, and now it looks like it has jumped to the front of the line with a possible May start date. Who does Scott want to star in the film? None other than Michael Fassbender, who plays an android in Scott’s upcoming Prometheus. If development stays on this accelerated pace, more casting news should be coming soon. In other Scott news, the rumor of Harrison Ford’s involvement in the planned Blade Runner prequel/sequel was squashed only a few days after it began, with producer Andrew Kosove saying, “It is absolutely patently false that there has been any discussion about Harrison Ford being in Blade Runner. To be clear, what we are trying to do with Ridley now is go through the painstaking process of trying to break the back of the story, figure out the direction we’re going to take the movie and find a writer to work on it. The casting of the movie could not be further from our minds at this moment.” Oh well, it doesn’t mean his name won’t come up later, but if Prometheus is a success, look for the Blade Runner reboot to take the same angle.

Michelle Williams stars in Take this Waltz

Actress Sarah Polley made quite a splash with her directorial debut Away From Her 88, but reviews out of TIFF were a little more mixed for her second feature Take This Waltz, in which Michelle Williams plays a young married woman who finds herself attracted to her next door neighbor. Seth Rogen stars as her husband, and Luke Kirby plays his competition while Sarah Silverman appears as Rogen’s recovering alcoholic sister. Critics praised Williams, but some had issues with the film’s preciousness and level of quirk. Take this Waltz gets a limited release beginning June 29th.

Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, together again

Fans of Wedding Crashers 64 rejoice: Vulture reports that stars Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson will reunite in Interns. The new comedy will be directed by Shawn Levy (Real Steel 56, Date Night 56) from a script by Vaughn. In the film, “Vaughn and Wilson will play forty-ish company guys who both get laid off in a downsizing. Convinced they’ve gone about managing their careers entirely wrong, they resolve to become interns at a Google-like dotcom and start anew. Suddenly, the two old chums are competing against wily, fresh-faced 22 year olds for advancement.” Totally original? Maybe not, but it seems a perfect fit for the two leads. Hopefully they have a role in mind for Will Ferrell as well.

A first look at the Academy Award-nominated Bullhead

This film from Belgium beat the odds and became one of the five foreign-language nominees at this year’s Oscars. Bullhead tells the story of a young cattle farmer and steroid addict named Jacky, played by Matthias Schoenaerts, who makes a shady deal with a mafioso meat trader leading him to confront the traumatic events of his past. It is the debut feature for writer/director Michael R. Roskam. Check it out in theaters beginning February 17th.

More Nymphomaniac news

An official plot synopsis for Lars von Trier’s next film, Nymphomaniac, was released this week, and it goes like this: “NYMPHOMANIAC is the light and poetic story of a woman's erotic journey from birth to the age of 50 as told by the main character, the self-diagnosed nymphomaniac, Joe. On a cold winter's evening Seligman, an old bachelor, finds Joe semi‐unconscious and beaten up in an alleyway. After bringing her to his flat he sees to her wounds while trying to understand how things could have gone so wrong for her. He listens intently as she over the next 8 chapters recounts the lushly branched-‐out and multi faceted story of her life, rich in associations and interjecting incidents.” Charlotte Gainsbourg has already signed on to play Joe, and it can be safely assumed that Stellan Skarsgard will play the role of Seligman. In a recent interview with The Guardian, Gainsbourg admitted, “I haven't read the script; I sort of had to commit to doing the film without reading it.” It is also known that Von Trier plans on shooting softcore and hardcore versions of the film which Gainsbourg addressed as well, “I know he wants to use porn actors as doubles, like we did in Antichrist, so they would do those shots but then we'd do the rest. I don't know up to what point but I know I have limits. I had limits on Antichrist – I remember, he asked me to jerk off the porn actor and that's when I said I couldn't. So we will see what my limit is for the next one.” No need for her to worry; this will be von Trier at his most “light and poetic.”

Extended Super Bowl trailers

Last Sunday the studios tried to entice you with new trailers for some of the year’s biggest releases. Here’s a round-up of what you might have missed, since time limits restricted the trailers from showing all they had to offer.

One film that showed plenty of new footage in a full long version during the Super Bowl was Battleship. The film looks more and more like a Transformers copy and less and less like it has anything to do with the board game (aliens in metal spacesuits?), but that might be exactly what director Peter Berg wants you to think.

Battleship lead Taylor Kitsch also stars in John Carter, the live-action debut of Finding Nemo 89 and WALL-E 94 director Andrew Stanton that's based on stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Here’s an extended look at the alien world of the film, which opens March 9th.

There’s plenty of new footage in the extended trailer for Joss Whedon’s The Avengers including our first major glimpse of The Hulk, which Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man sets up nicely. Check it out when it hits theaters May 4th.

Chow Yun-Fat in Let the Bullets Fly

A red-band teaser and a full trailer (below) have been released for the Chow Yun-fat-starring action comedy Let the Bullets Fly. China’s highest-grossing film is a combination of over-the-top violence and zany comedy based around the rivalry between a crime lord and a con man. Enjoy the craziness below and then check it out on VOD or in limited release beginning March 2nd.

Heat (the Burt Reynolds one) to be remade

Deadline reports that a remake of the 1986 Burt Reynolds action film Heat will be written by William Goldman, directed by Brian De Palma, and star Jason Statham as a gambling addict/bodyguard who seeks revenge after his ex-girlfriend is brutally beaten by a mobster. For the remake, the action will move from Las Vegas to France (Monte Carlo is a possible setting). Goldman, whose last screenplay was for Dreamcatcher 35, also wrote classics like All the President’s Men, Marathon Man, and The Princess Bride 77. He will be adapting his own novel for the second time. De Palma, whose recent work (Redacted 52, The Black Dahlia 49) has been disappointing, will hope to have a late career resurgence with this film as well as Passion, a remake of the French film Love Crime 63 that will star Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace. As for Statham, he just keeps pumping out three to four films a year. Look for Safe, The Expendables 2, and Parker this year.

Iron Sky is a little bit nuts, which could be good

This over-the-top sci-fi action comedy doesn’t have a U.S. release date yet, but it’s sure to play in festivals in the coming year, so keep an eye out for it. It’s currently premiering at the Berlin International Film Festival, so a full trailer was revealed this week, revealing Nazis on the moon invading Earth, a Sarah Palin-esque U.S. president, and Udo Kier. Enjoy.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Justin Long bring the romance

According to Deadline, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is set to direct his first feature. The untitled romantic comedy will star Gordon-Levitt as “a modern-day Don Juan” and tell the story of “his quest to become less of a ‘selfish dick.’” It’s a bit of a change of pace for Gordon-Levitt, who has experience playing the nice guy in the romantic comedy (500) Days of Summer 76, and he admits as much, “I wrote myself a helluva role, one that people wouldn’t necessarily thought of me for.” Scarlett Johansson has been cast as one of the female leads. Meanwhile, Justin Long, the star of another recent romantic comedy (Going the Distance 51), has written a romantic comedy titled A Case of You. He will produce and star in the film with Evan Rachel Wood, Peter Dinklage, and Busy Phillips. The story revolves around “a young writer who tries to impress a girl he meets online with an embellished profile, but finds himself in a real mess when she falls for him and he has to keep up the act.”

Quick notes: Rumors, release dates, casting news and more

• If you’ve got the time and love Raiders of the Lost Ark, check out Raiding the Lost Ark over at Vimeo.
• Alex Cross, Rob Cohen’s (The Fast and The Furious) adaptation of James Patterson’s I, Alex Cross starring Tyler Perry as Cross and Matthew Fox as the serial killer he’s investigating, will be released October 26.
• The Wolverine, the sequel to 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, will be directed by James Mangold (Walk the Line) and released on July 26, 2013.
• Already nominated for this year’s best foreign language film Oscar, Monsieur Lazhar will now get a U.S. release beginning April 13.
• Sorry to those of you planning on seeing This Means War on Valentine’s Day; it has moved back to its original release date of February 17.
• Natalie Portman has joined the cast of both Lawless and Knight of Cups, Terrence Malick’s upcoming films which begin shooting this summer. - Deadline
• Philip Seymour Hoffman will star in Anton Corbijn’s (The American) adaptation of John le Carré’s A Most Wanted Man. - Screen Daily
• John Carney (Once) will direct another romance with music as its focus when Scarlett Johansson plays a singer and Mark Ruffalo plays a record producer in Can a Song Save Your Life? - THR
• Jane Levy (Suburgatory) will star with Shiloh Fernandez in the Evil Dead remake being directed by Fede Alverez. Sam Raimi, director of the original, will produce. Diablo Cody did a pass on the script. - Deadline
• Catherine Hardwicke and Evan Rachel Wood, director and star of 2003’s Thirteen, are looking to team up again on Plush, a “erotic thriller set in the L.A. music world.” - THR
• Machete Kills, the sequel to 2010’s Machete, should start filming in April. - Deadline
• Amy Adams will produce and star in an adaptation of Steve Martin’s novel, An Object of Beauty. - THR
• Denzel Washington is in talks to join Mark Wahlberg in 2 Guns to be directed by Contraband helmer Baltasar Kormakur. - Deadline
• A sequel to 2010‘s Karate Kid remake starring Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan is in the works with writer Zak Penn (2008’s The Incredible Hulk) - Variety
• Billy Connolly will play Dain Ironfoot in Peter Jackson’s upcoming two-part adaptation of The Hobbit. - Deadline
• John Goodman and Scott Eastwood have joined Scott’s father Clint, Amy Adams, and Justin Timberlake in the the cast of Trouble With the Curve. - Variety
• After being rumored for few months, it has been confirmed that Robert Redford will star in J.C. Chandor’s Margin Call follow-up, All is Lost, the story of one man’s struggle to survive at sea. - THR
• Naomi Watts will play Princess Diana in the biopic Caught in Flight to be directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel (Downfall). - THR
• Ralph Fiennes will direct and star in The Invisible Woman, the story of Charles Dickens‘ love affair with his mistress Nelly Ternan. Felicity Jones (Like Crazy) will play Ternan and Kristin Scott Thomas will play her mother. The screenplay is by Abi Morgan (Shame). - Screen Daily
• A sequel to Wet Hot American Summer will happen, if Michael Showalter announcing it on Watch What Happens Live means anything, and according to Michael Ian Black, it doesn’t mean much.
• Chris O’Dowd (Bridesmaids), Aiden Gillen (The Wire, Game of Thrones) and Kelly Reilly (Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows) have joined Brendan Gleeson in John Michael McDonagh’s follow-up to The Guard. Calvary will tell the story of a priest (Gleeson) wrongfully accused of child abuse. - Deadline
• Jean Dujardin will play the villain in everything. - Funny or Die
• Morgan Freeman has joined Tom Cruise, Olga Kurylenko and Andrea Riseborough in Joseph Kosinski’s post-apocalyptic sci-fi pic Oblivion. Freeman will play the leader of the anti-alien resistance force left on Earth. - Deadline & Variety
• Henry Cavill’s first post-Superman gig might be in Ed Zwick’s The Great Wall, a look at the mysteries behind the construction of The Great Wall of China. - Variety
• Alex Proyas’ Paradise Lost adaptation starring Bradley Cooper will not be happening. - Deadline
• A remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca is in development with Steven Knight (Eastern Promises) writing. - Variety
• Junebug director Phil Morrison will return to feature directing with the comedy Lucky Dog, which tells the story of two Canadian con men who scheme to sell Christmas trees in New York City. Not really sure how that works (it seems like it would actually be easier just to sell Christmas trees than set up a con), but Paul Giamatti, Paul Rudd, and Sally Hawkins will star. - Deadline
• Susanne Bier (In a Better World) is attached to direct an adaptation of the bestselling novel Cutting for Stone. - Variety
• George Lucas claims Greedo always shot first? Sorry, not buying it. - THR