The audience in Hall H was ramped up for Iron Man 2. They booed moderator Scott Mantz of Access Hollywood, who plowed on. (I had read some Tweets complaining about him earlier today.) Sure enough, he was flustered and not in tune with the Hall H crowd, which is fairly sophisticated.

Jon Favreau knows how to play to the room. So does Robert Downey, Jr., who broke onto the panel in supposed protest of the cheesy Marvel promo piece (conceived by Favreau as just that). Downey got some 6500 people to sing Happy Birthday to Favreau's son Max. "No one cared before you guys," Favreau told the hall. "Roll the other footage. Let's go."

The clip starts with Iron Man, helmet off, lounging inside the Randy's Donut sign. He confesses to not being in touch with reality during a diner scene with a threatening Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. At a Senate hearing, Tony Stark takes on a nasty Senator (Gary Shandling) who wants to confiscate the Iron Man weapon. It's great fun watching them go after each other as Pepper (Gwenyth Paltrow) tut tuts behind Stark.

Mickey Rourke as Ivan Venko aka Whiplash (two characters from the comics combined) threatens Downey at a race track, whirling his nasty fired up lariat. When Rourke heard that his character was a refugee from a Russian prison, he checked out a Russian prison, Favreau learned from TMZ.

At the panel, Sam Rockwell (who plays arms monger and Tony Stark wannabe Justin Hammer) had no clue how to charm the crowd. (That's one reason he's a great actor and not a movie star.) The crowd roared for Scarlett Johannson as Natasha Romonov, or Black Widow. She dyed her hair red before she took the role, took her training seriously, ate egg white omelettes and insisted on doing her own stunts so that her action scenes would look authentic. For his part, Cheadle had never worked on a movie with this level of scope and effects, he said. The War Machine costume was "heavy." When Rhodes makes his first appearance in the Senate scene, the movie deals with Cheadle replacing Terrence Howard by having him say, "I'm here, deal with it, let's move on." Cheadle asked Favreau to screen the footage again because he had missed it.

The movie wrapped last week, as those following Favreau on Twitter are well aware. He was tweeting and shooting photos from his iPhone from the Hall H stage too. With the sequel, "we wanted to add characters but not too many," said Favreau, "to maintain the same tone and dynamic, adding people to further move us toward the eventual Avengers film still coming."

The story was assembled through an elaborate collaborative process among Favreau, Downey, Marvel's Kevin Feige and writer Justin Theroux (who worked with Downey on Tropic Thunder), with much further improvisation on set. Set six months after the first film, Tony Stark is dealing with the pressures of having declared himself as Iron Man. He's a wealthy industrialist playboy operating on the world stage, but there's more to deal with--like his relationship with assistant Pepper and his old military pal Rhodes. He meets Natasha at his bacchanalia of a birthday party. "I wanted to deal with how he struggles with his own id in the face of being a larger than life character who is in fact saving the world," said Favreau.

The director has another year to go; he hopes to be involved in Marvel's upcoming The Avengers in some way, but that will depend on timing. Zak Penn is outlining the film now. After the panel, Marvel production chief Feige said that Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Nick Fury, Black Widow and the Shields Organization will all be in The Avengers--the characters interacting with each other is key. But they're taking it slow to make it right.

We'll see the final product May 7, 2010. Paramount and Marvel have nothing to worry about.

As I head to San Diego for my umpteenth Comic-Con, I feel equal parts anticipation and dread. It's fun and I'll learn a lot that I want to know--but it's exhausting, large-crowd, insane circus fun.

USA Today looks at Iron Man 2, as does Coming Attractions. (Director Jon Favreau has been keeping his 113,000 Twitter followers up-to-date all along.)

The big fan sites are King at Comic-Con: AICN is getting many scoops, as is IGN, which debuted the new poster for Nightmare on Elm Street, starring Jackie Earl Haley, and the trailer for Whiteout. Matt Dentler rounds up the usual suspects.

Showing the growing power of frank blog-talk, Movie Mom is a movie reviewer with a huge following.

New Line was looking for a new unknown to cast as Freddie in their relaunch of the Nightmare on Elm Street series, until they found Jackie Earle Haley. Twitter has a Friday thing where you confess movies you haven't seen. I've never seen a Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Texas Chainsaw , Saw or Hostel movie. I do love John Carpenter's Halloween, George Romero's Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, Robert Wise's The Haunting, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and Brian DePalma's Carrie. It's about style for me.

As LA's Outfest draws crowds and TV's Neil Patrick Harris is confirmed to host The Emmys, The LA Weekly prints a controversial story about why gay talent should stay in the closet.

In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, when Potter isn't whisking through space on Dumbledore's arm (this is really a father-son fromance) or dipping his face into other people's creepy memories, he and pals Ron and Hermione are entangled in various teen love intrigues--one even involves a powerful love potion. Movieline goes to the source (Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson) to get the skinny on who hearts who.

Are Tom Clancy movies out of date? Too 80s? Am I the only one who still adores The Hunt for Red October? (It boasts a dreamy cast: Sean Connery, Scott Glenn, Sam Neill, Stellan Sarsgaard, and the young Alec Baldwin.) Well, it turns out Paramount and producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura are awaiting the first draft of an original screenplay currently called the "Untitled Tom Clancy Project" from screenwriter Hossein Amini (Jude, Killshot). Yes, Clooney has been discussed for Jack Ryan. But he would have to see script, director, etc. And the studio could choose to go with an older, or a younger Ryan.

Still, a robust franchise would buy Clooney plenty of weighty moral dramas like Good Night, and Good Luck and Syriana. Come to think of it, the hawkish Clancy isn't exactly inside Clooney's wheelhouse, politically speaking.

At one point Paramount was developing an alternative Clancy series, starting with the 1993 novel Without Remorse, a Vietnam era thriller that doesn't feature Jack Ryan (he makes a brief appearance, as does his father) but explores the character of the young John Clark/John Kelly played by Willem Dafoe in Clear and Present Danger. (Superman Returns star Brandon Routh was briefly mentioned for the CIA operative, while Clancy told Premiere in 2001 he preferred Matt Damon.) The studio announced John Singleton as director, but the movie never got anywhere. Another Clancy novel featuring Clark/Kelly, Rainbow Six, never got off the ground, even with Zack Snyder attached to write and direct.

Here's the Jack Ryan Special Edition DVD Collection.

What is your fave Tom Clancy movie?

Here's what I learned on my rounds at the Transformers: ROTF premiere Monday night:

Transformers 2 cost north of $200 million, plus $150 million in global marketing. That's $350 million going in. It could outgross the last one ($708 million worldwide) and score $1 billion around the world. There's no question it will open. (The record to beat for a five day weekend is Spider-Man 2's $152.4 million, reports Variety.) The anxiety is about what the second weekend drop-off will be--will it play, in other words. I think so.

The movie is critic-proof, and needs to be, the reviews will suck. (The NYT uses the word "cretinous.") It's a nonsensical, eye-rolling macho fantasy--it's about Megan Fox running in slow motion, and artillery fire, and giant roiling robots desecrating ancient pyramids, and rows of pointy-nosed fighter planes taking off in formation. But there are sequences--one where the Decepticons attack and sink an aircraft carrier comes to mind-- that are stunningly beautiful. Bay has the gift of visual poetry--as well as chaotic pixel excess.

The problem is, when movies like this do so well, it encourages the studios to keep thinking in terms of big-scale brand-names. At the after-party, Paramount chairman Brad Grey admitted that the studio will keep chasing these movies. It's where the money is. (And they'll probably keep passing on iffy ventures like Steven Soderbergh's resolutely uncommercial Moneyball--even with Grey pal Brad Pitt attached. The back end was still a problem, even with Pitt's upfront price slashed. The movie would have had to make $100 million. And that wasn't likely to happen.)

What made the Transformers sequel so expensive was ILM's robots, which are ingenious. (So is the sound design, which helps to make the characters more distinctive and cut through the clutter.) I prefer the little gremlin-like robot characters, partly because my brain can comprehend them. Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura (who came out clean in Michael Cieply's NYT profile) says there are about three times more transformers in this one--the last one had about 13--and they're best viewed in big-screen IMAX. Here's an interview with ILM genius Scott Farrar. And EW runs a Megan Fox layout and interview.

Pay boosts are another added sequel expense. Shia LaBeouf, who hung with Emile Hirsch at the Transformers street party as Linkin Park rocked out, almost didn't make the sequel when his manager demanded $20 million. LaBeouf had made a deal for $750,000 for the first two films. After the first one scored, Paramount offered $3 million for the next two. They wound up settling for $5 million each. LaBeouf talks to Kim Masters about his wild, wild life.

Michael Bay wishes he had one more week to edit the picture, which everyone, including him, agrees is too long. It could use a trim. Paramount's new production chief Adam Goodman, who supervised the movie, asked Bay to cut it, but he wouldn't, partly because they ran out of time. Paramount wants another installment to go real soon, on a slightly smaller-scale. Bay has other plans. He says he wants to do something else first. Clear his head a little.

I was wondering why Variety's Peter Bart hadn't blogged since May 21. Turns out he's soft-launched a new Variety blog, BF Deal Memo, enlisting the aid of New York Variety newshound Michael Fleming. That's where all Bart's posts have been going.

What Bart writes is choice, but he doesn't post that often. (He's a busy man.) Fleming breaks big news in the trade all the time; even if he only posts a short version of those stories--see this item about Tom Cruise and J.J. Abrams reuniting for Mission: Impossible IV--it will beef up the blog's content and traffic. But I want to read all the juicy stuff that none of Fleming's sources want him to put in the print edition.

What a difference two years makes. The picture on left of Shia LaBeouf ran in Parade Magazine when Disturbia made him into a star. The photo on the right ran this week in Parade in advance of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. (Here's Variety's review.) We all know that talent is only one component of a long and happy career. Stability is another. Or to put it another way, sometimes the sensitive tuning rod that is essential to a working actor's skill set isn't screwed on tight enough. LaBeouf speaks frankly about his demons. I wish him well in dealing with them.

The young star also let slip the fact that Indiana Jones 5 is in the offing. Surprise.

UPDATE: More LaBeouf true confessions.

Nobody likes Michael Bay. Give the media a big fat target like a Forbes "who is richer" entry, and they will not resist piling on. New York's Vulture even calls him "the mogul of mindlessness." Lest we feel sorry for him, the guy owns Digital Domain and gets 10% of the gross on the Transformers movies (and 8% on the toys). And don't get your hopes up. By all accounts, this summer's installment, as over-pixellated as it looks, will not be a boxoffice disappointment when it opens June 24.

Here's the trailer:

You can look at tracking all you want, and listen to studio marketers downplaying expectations. But truth is, if a movie plays as well as Star Trek does, the word gets out. The movie opened to an estimated $31 million on Friday (including Thursday night numbers), and we know that the WOM will be strong. So it's going to do a lot better than those $50-65 million estimates. UPDATE: It grossed an estimated $76.5 million for the weekend but scored only 35% under 25. Of course the core demo skewed older. Paramount has been spending the big bucks on luring the younger demo--which will likely expand on upbeat WOM.

When I sat down with the writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci at their DreamWorks bungalow on opening day, they were grinning because the reviews are the best of the year so far, an 84 on Metacritic and 91 among the top critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Here's my take. There's even Oscar talk. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Here's my Flip Cam interview about how they reinvented the five key Star Trek characters, the bromance between Kirk and Spock, how they couldn't even start writing the script for producer/director J.J. Abrams without some kind of go ahead from Leonard Nimoy, why they left out William Shatner, how they approached writing Transformers 1 and 2 and Cowboys and Aliens, and how they came to exec produce the Sandra Bullock rom-com The Proposal. The Star Trek sequel is already starting to keep them up at night.

Star Trek will open huge, and some prognosticators are heralding the year's first $100 million weekend. That's not what the advance tracking shows, which is trending toward older males, or what Paramount wants anyone to believe. But word travels fast. And I will bet that the movie will outpace expectations. Even if the "brand"--everyone's favorite word these days--is damaged. Admittedly, my own daughter-of-a-Trekkie, Nora, 19, is not the slightest bit interested in plunking down her ten bucks.

Early raves suggest that the film could disappoint hardcore Trekkies, reports The Onion:

Running against the pack, NY Press's Armond White has posted a critical pan entitled "Where Young Boys Have Gone Before." And Philadelphia critic Carrie Rickey talks to the original Lieutenant Uhura, Nichelle Nichols.

As of noon E.T. Wednesday, MovieTickets.com reported that Star Trek accounted for 83 percent of their ticket sales, and had sold out 387 performances. Here's their pre-release poll:

STAR TREK PRE-RELEASE POLLING According to female ticket buyers polled at MovieTickets.com Apr. 21 to May 3:

· 52 percent are aware of the film “Star Trek” · 63 percent of those aware of the film intend to see “Star Trek” opening weekend. These are the highest pre-release polling numbers at MovieTickets.com in 2009 amongst female ticket buyers polled the week before a film’s release. “Star Trek” is tracking well across all age groups at MovieTickets.com, save 60-plus. According to the same Apr. 21 – May 3 poll at MovieTickets.com, over 70 percent of three different age groups aware of “Star Trek” say they intend to see the film opening weekend. Here’s a breakdown: · 58 percent of Under-25s · 70 percent of 25-34s · 76 percent of 35-44s · 78 percent of 45-59s · 11 percent of 60-plus

Most studio movies aim at your pleasure center; they're not trying to challenge your brain. But Ron Howard, like Steven Spielberg, is that rare studio hybrid--the quality/commercial filmmaker who likes to turn out both mass-audience blockbusters and Oscar contenders.

Rarely the twain shall meet, as Howard learned the hard way three years ago when, seeking film fest validation, he and his producing partner Brian Grazer made the mistake of opening Cannes with The Da Vinci Code, adapted from Dan Brown's bestseller. The Sony brass took the train down from Paris, only to see the global press corps take a dump on the movie--before it went on to earn $757 million worldwide. Clearly the follow-up Angels & Demons doesn't need a festival boost before it hits theaters May 15. (Here's Todd McCarthy's review.)

Howard promised me that this one was more fun than the first. They were hampered in that case by having to step gingerly around some of the book's serious Christian subject matter. (Figuring out how to dress Hanks' virginal sidekick Audrey Tautou was a nightmare.) This time, Howard and his writers, David Koepp and Akiva Goldsman, pull out the stops for a rollicking, over-scale, implausibly good time.

Don't get me wrong. Angels & Demons is in many ways a terrible movie. Tom Hanks deserves every dollar he got paid for keeping a straight face as he spews out reams of clunky expository dialogue, often at top speed on the run. But I was expertly manipulated, first by the scary possibilities of explosive anti-matter created before our eyes by super-colliders--and then stolen. Next, there's a dead Pope. Was he killed? And four kidnapped and threatened preferiti. Is it the Illuminati? The mystery must be solved before the anti-matter explodes. And the race against time is on.

Going behind the scenes of the Vatican during Conclave is cool, like movies about presidents in the Oval Office, or The Queen. These are secret places where great decisions are made--requiring scads of computer graphics. As Stellan Skarsgard and Armin Mueller-Stahl try to impede stalwart academic sleuth Robert Langdon (Hanks), Ewan McGregor is more helpful as the Vatican's Camerlengo (at one point that word made people in my screening giggle).

When my date and I tried to piece the plot together afterwards we gave up. This entertaining summer popcorn movie is so bad it's good. Or at least a guilty pleasure.

Here's the trailer:

Iron Man was a huge winner. So while Marvel is still in charge of the sequel--and didn't hand the reins back to director Jon Favreau until he jumped through some hoops--I can't wait to see what he does to "deepen the chroma," as they say in Hollywood. In other words, a blockbuster brings the leeway to go even further in the right direction. Take it too far and you can get in trouble. Three weeks into production, USA Today's Scott Bowles talks to Favreau.

Tony Stark is out of the superhero closet, and it's no picnic.

The sequel to last summer's blockbuster, which began shooting three weeks ago and opens May 7, 2010, takes place six months after Stark revealed his identity as Iron Man, says director Jon Favreau. And the development is playing out with unexpected results. "How many superheroes are open about their true identities?" he asks. "We wanted to play with that idea. But it obviously has consequences — in his relationships, on the team. There are a lot of areas we can explore."

Variety has unrolled its long-planned site redesign, signaling the change with a new, red logo (I always thought The Hollywood Reporter was red to Variety's green), more charts, and a fancy "Big Daddy" widget with more windows. Variety is trying to make easier navigating and finding pieces to read on the site--the more people find individual stories, the better.

Kim Masters revisits her old Hit and Run subject, ex-Columbia co-head Jon Peters, as he publishes a dishy new memoir.

Todd McCarthy lays out the likely Cannes lineup. Already confirmed is Pete Docter's Up as the fest opener May 13 and Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. Also expected are Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock and Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell:

Other English-language fare will include Campion's U.K. production "Bright Star," a drama about the romance of 19th-century poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne, starring Ben Wishaw and Abbie Cornish; Cannes regular von Trier's "Antichrist," a horror drama with Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg as a couple who retreat to a secluded forest cabin after the death of their son; Loach's "Looking for Eric," about a troubled adolescent soccer fan who's counseled by former star Eric Cantona; prolific helmer To's French-financed "Vengeance," starring Johnny Hallyday as a hitman-turned-chef who heads to Hong Kong to avenge his daughter's death; and possibly English director Andrea Arnold's "Fish Tank," toplining Michael Fassbender in a tale of a 15-year-old whose life is turned upside down by her mother's new boyfriend. Pic looks to be in the Official Selection, although in which category remains uncertain.

Director Michael Bay says he is totally committed to messing up his next project, Thundercats.

Inevitably, in advance of Warner Bros.' May 21 release of the tentpole sequel Terminator Salvation, the two neophyte financeers at Halcyon, Derek Anderson and Victor Kubicek (above) reached an "amicable" settlement with producer Moritz Borman, who sued to get the remaining $2.5 million payment of his fee. The suit was dismissed. Meanwhile, McG is already talking about a follow-up.

IAC mogul Barry Diller is rubbing his hands in gleeful anticipation of going on a low-ball acquisition spree:

Call it rookie producer syndrome. New kids on the block raise money and enter the entertainment business. They buy up a hot property. They think they will make a killing. They bring in experienced people to help them. And something goes terribly wrong. Veteran producer Moritz Borman (W.) doesn't just go and sue someone, long before a movie gets close to its opening date. But he is suing young producers Derek Anderson and Victor Kubicek of Halycon for fraud to the tune of $160 million, reports Variety.

I interviewed Anderson and Kubicek when production was just starting on Terminator Salvation. They were clearly excited newbies--who didn't understand why rating a Terminator movie PG-13 might be big news.

The Terminator rights are complicated. This will be interesting. The economy is putting extreme stress on movie financing structures. Borman is an industry insider with a long relationship with Warner Bros. (Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Alexander). The Halcyon guys are outsiders. And Warners will do what it must to protect this May 21 tentpole release. Judging from the early materials, filmmaker McG (who's trying to prove himself here) looks like he has knocked this dystopian actioner out of the park: Terminator Salvation could be huge. And its star, Christian Bale, is still playing Batman, one of Warners' essential franchises.

Peter Morgan is parlaying his current status as the hottest screenwriter in Hollywood into his first directing gig, the third installment of his Tony Blair trilogy, starring Frost/Nixon's Michael Sheen as the British prime minister. Kathy Kennedy, who set up Morgan's script Hereafter at DreamWorks for director Clint Eastwood, will produce.

The question is, who should play Bill Clinton? John Travolta played him in Mike Nichols' Primary Colors. Got any suggestions?

While Summit has wasted no time moving ahead with the next installment in the Twilight series, New Moon, Catherine Hardwicke will not direct the picture. This is unusual when a director has successfully launched a franchise of this magnitude. The problem that stalled negotiations was that Hardwicke had strong opinions about what to do with the next installment, and so did Summit. The debate was how to focus the adaptation of the second book, which deals more with werewolves than vampires, as well as Bella's long depression after her vampire lover leaves her. One issue will be how to get more of teen heartthrob Rob Pattinson into the film. UPDATE: There's more in my Variety story.

Last week reports surfaced that Summit was checking out other directors for the Twilight franchise while they insisted they were still negotiating with the director, who delivered them the highest-grossing movie opening ever for a woman. The movie is still going strong as the director and cast promote it overseas; it came in second this weekend with $13.2 million, grossing a total $138.6 million. Was Hardwicke fired or did she fail to get her way? There will be spinning now to protect her reputation. But the damage is done.

As Frost/Nixon played well to the Academy crowd last week, producer Brian Grazer and director Ron Howard have started their award season rounds.

Here's their chat with Peter Bart both in print and on Shootout:

As Patrick Goldstein rightly points out, Frost/Nixon is first and foremost the creation of writer Peter Morgan, who adapted his own play. Morgan tells Goldstein why he's attracted to these power duels between younger and older, more powerful figures--as in The Queen and The Last King of Scotland. Morgan is well on his way to his second Oscar nomination.

At the Frost/Nixon premiere, we asked Morgan if he plans to complete the trilogy begun by The Deal (Tony Blair vs. Gordon Brown) and continued by The Queen (Blair vs. Queen Elizabeth). Next he was supposed to write The Special Relationship (Blair vs. George W. Bush). But he's writing about Blair and Bill Clinton, Morgan says. Michael Sheen, who plays David Frost to Frank Langella's Nixon both on stage and screen, is set to return as Blair. In the meantime Sheen stars in Morgan's very British story about a famed soccer coach in The Damned United, directed by Tom Hooper (John Adams). UPDATE: Morgan is also writing the thriller Hereafter for DreamWorks, with Clint Eastwood in talks to direct.

At the Frost/Nixon premiere after-party, Howard was in good spirits. Not only is he in the Oscar hunt for this movie (along with Morgan and Langella), but he's pleased with how the sequel turned out to The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons, which he recently screened for Sony. He admits that he had more freedom on Angels and Demons, and was less constrained by the religious material that had to be handled so somberly on the first one. Hanks could have more attitude. This one is more of a rollicking fun adventure, Howard says.

Here's the Angels and Demons trailer:

After everybody had checked their cameras and phones, J.J. Abrams stood in front of the packed Paramount Studio Theatre Wednesday to unspool four scenes from Star Trek, about twenty minutes. With the movie not opening until May and the first trailer out this week, it felt a tad early for a show-and-tell. Underwire posted their reaction.

Right at the top, Abrams admitted he's not a Trekkie. But when he read Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman's script, he said, "it was adventure and funny and romantic and sexy and epic yet intimate -- everything you'd want." He had to do it.

Casting the role of Captain Kirk that was originated by William Shatner back in 1966 was tough. "He had massive shoes to fill," he said. Unlike Spock, "you couldn't fall back on pointed ears. It had to be him."

The first clip introduced Chris Pine as Kirk, trying to pick up language expert Uhura (Zoe Saldana) in a bar. She's initially dismissive, then sees how smart he is. He's drunk and gets into a bar brawl with some Star Fleet Academy cadets. Bruce Greenwood's Captain Pike breaks it up and tries to recruit Kirk, because he knew and respected his late father, who died the day he was born. "We want you if you are half the man your father was," he tells him. Kirk is hooked and turns up at the Star Fleet recruiting call the next day (on a very cool motorcycle). "I wanted the movie to feel fresh and earthbound, as well," said Abrams.

Kirk is a troublemaker at the Academy, natch, and has to sneak onto the U.S.S. Kelvin as it takes off to deal with an emergency on Planet Vulcan. Physician Bones (Karl Urban, who feels the right age, while Pine and Heroes star Zachary Quinto seem a tad young) infects him with a virus to get him on the ship; Kirk figures out that the mission is a Romulan trap (their leader is played by Eric Bana) and warns Pike and Spock on the bridge. "Bana is oddly relatable even though he is mostly evil," said Abrams.

Arch-rivals Kirk and Spock don't get along. In the third clip, acting Captain Spock dumps Kirk on a snowy planet, where he meets a much older Spock, played by Leonard Nimoy, as well as the irrepressible engineer Scotty (Simon Pegg). "Coming back from the future to change history is cheating," Kirk tells Spock. "It's a trick I learned from an old friend," Spock says. "Live long and prosper." Abrams admitted that he was abashed at giving notes to Nimoy.

The big action footage in the fourth clip was stunning, involving Kirk and a sword-wielding Sulu (John Cho) parachuting down from a shuttle to shut down signals that are being sent from a bore platform far above Vulcan. It's very scary. So is the Russian accent used by Anton Yelchin as Chekhov. All in all, I was more impressed by the footage than the trailer below:

We've been teased. But here's the first full trailer for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. It was originally supposed to be opening this weekend, but was pushed back to July 17, 2009. (Twilight took its slot.)

Paramount has launched its first trailer for Star Trek, which opens May 8, 2009:

As someone who actually grew up with the first Star Trek TV series and faithfully watched all of its subsequent incarnations, I confess that this origin story feels a tad young to me. I'm hearing that Chris Pine is terrific as Kirk--you see how he becomes the Captain of the Starship Enterprise--and Simon Pegg got a laugh out of me in this fast-moving trailer. This feels sort of like the new Bond movie Quantum of Solace--at what point do you leave out so much of the original DNA that you've gone too far to reinvent something? Of course the point is to create a new movie out of the old so that a younger generation can appreciate it. I get it. I will keep an open mind. (BTW, the excellent opening for Quantum is based on the success of Casino Royale. Next weekend will tell the tale of how it actually plays.)

But I have to say that while I admired the Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman script for Transformers (their rep insists that any claims on the Internet to have read the Star Trek script are bogus) and adore the TV work of J.J. Abrams (his Mission Impossible installment played like an episode of Alias on steroids), if this movie leaves generations of Star Trek fans feeling left out, that could be a problem. UPDATE: Here's Sci-Fi Wire's interview with Chris Pine. And EW's Trek cover story. The trailer played well to younger folks in my office. Wired is worried about early reaction to Trek footage in Europe. New York has seen some material and L.A. has its preview Wednesday.

UPDATE: Star Trek will be a test for Brad Grey's Paramount. Launched under the aegis of Grey and ousted production chief Gail Berman, the movie is now being shepherded into the marketplace by Grey's lieutenants Rob Moore, John Lesher, and Brad Weston. 2009 will be a year when Paramount will live or die on its own slate, with tentpoles Star Trek, Transformers 2 and G.I. Joe, plus fall films from Peter Jackson (The Lovely Bones, developed and produced by DreamWorks), and Martin Scorsese (Ashecliffe, based on Dennis Lehane's Shutter Island, stars Leonardo DiCaprio). There's only one 2009 DreamWorks Animation movie (Monsters and Aliens) and no Marvel films until 2010. Paramount will start shooting Nickelodeon's M. Night Shyamalan family adventure The Last Airbender in March, but the pic isn't scheduled for release until 2010.

USA Today has a first look at Tom Hanks in the Da Vinci Code sequel, Angels & Demons. They got rid of Hanks' hairstyle, thankfully. The filmmakers are promising that all around, this movie is better than the first one. It better be.

This weekend's High School Musical 3 (63% Tomatometer) scored even bigger than expected with teen girls, and Saw 5, which was not screened, played to the guys. (True confession: I have never seen a Saw movie. Not my idea of a good time.)

For grown-ups, Changeling delivered a strong per screen average on its opening weekend, while Gina Prince-Blythewood's The Secret Life of Bees pulled ahead of Oliver Stone's W. on their second weekend. Here's Variety's weekend b.o. wrap:

“W.” dropped 49% to $5.3. Cume for the George Bush pic is $18.8 million, with a gross in the $25 million range likely after a post-Election Day exit.

This is a classic case of too much competition on the second weekend after a strong opening supported by a big ad spend and Oliver Stone's ubiquitous media presence. After I had just seen him on Charlie Rose, CNN's Larry King Live and Shootout and heard him on NPR, I did a phoner with him at NY's Four Seasons Hotel. Stone had just spotted one of the characters in his movie, ex-CIA chief George Tenet, in the restaurant. "Did you go over to him?" I asked. "Oh, no," Stone said.

Did he feel that he had to open the $30 million movie before the election? Was the timing right for this? He could have pushed it back if he wanted to, Stone says: "Let's be clear about this. I had the right to hold. It was a good faith effort to try and make the October 17 date. I had final cut, I could have delivered in December for a January release." But he was into the rhythm of finishing it in time, opening it this fall before the election.

Stone knows the downside of being rushed into opening a picture too soon--Alexander was not finished when it opened; the sober re-edited DVD version is far superior. Stone left thousands of feet of film on the edit-room floor on Alexander. By contrast, W. was shot fast on a tight budget; there was no waste. He shot on 26 locations in 46 days and edited in seven weeks. "There were no reshoots," he says. "We rehearsed with a great repertory company, nobody was making mistakes. We got what we needed." Only a few deleted fantasy scenes will make it to the DVD.

It's hard to calibrate timing with a topical movie like this, Stone admits. He had no idea George W. Bush would be so down and out when the movie opened. He had thought the White House might come after them, fighting, but "Bush is defeated," he says. "He is weakened now. We could not have foreseen that then. He's hated now. Will people be interested?"

Would waiting until after the inauguration have been better, as "he's leaving office, and we're exorcising the ghost?" he asks. Stone would have taken that course "if it had not fallen in, if we needed reshoots." Finally, the momentum was moving fast toward an October opening and he was ready to open the movie on schedule.

The Secret Life of Bees did better than W. on its second weekend on fewer screens (1630) with a higher $5.9 million weekend gross and a total of $19.2 to date. Searchlight worked hard to achieve these results, chasing not only fans of the bestseller--which is hugely popular--but literate women in general, and African-American audiences. They're building buzz on an $11 million movie.

"We were judicious in our spend," says Fox Searchlight COO Nancy Utley. "We were scared to death of reviews." That's because older women tend to take reviews more seriously, and sure enough, they were mixed (58% on Rotten Tomatoes). But some key critics were fans, including Roger Ebert, USA Today and People. And Oprah Winfrey devoted a show to the film.

Utley comforted herself with the fact that some movies hit without reviews, like Ya-Ya Sisterhood. On the other hand, Denzel Washington's Antoine Fisher had not scored with African American audiences, but it was less of a known title. Bees was a "faithful straight-on adaptation" of an "extraordinary book," Utley says.

And Bees had no ordinary ensemble either--Queen Latifah, Alicia Keyes, Jennifer Hudson, Dakota Fanning, Sophie Okonedo. Searchlight targeted book clubs and the morning talk shows, bought TV spots on BET and Desperate Housewives, and took advantage of some faith-based endeavors. The distrib booked the movie in areas where not only African-American pics had scored but literary films like Atonement.

Definite recommends in the exit polls were A or A+ across every demo. Searchlight's own poll was 90%. Among African Americans, it was 91% and non-African Americans, 86%. "It's a color-blind movie," says Utley. 'We're hopeful."

[Photo of Oliver Stone by Jeffrey Wells]

When I talked to director Marc Forster on Monday morning, he admitted that trying to top Martin Campbell's Casino Royale was the thing that gave him the most pause. But he plowed ahead and delivered a Bond that is long on action and short on sex and dialogue.

Variety's Derek Elley, reviewing from London, writes that this shorter, Bourne-influenced Bond film does not improve on the last one, and begs producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson to return to form. (Daniel Craig worries that there won't be enough money around to make another one anytime soon.) I recognize that Forster's Bond takes chances by straying from the formula. But I think his is the most modern, stylish and elegant Bond in years. Here's my interview.

Here's the trailer:

I confess that I had a great time at Quantum of Solace last night. Sure it's glitzy and glam and jammed with heart-stopping violent action. But it's also arty and elegant and beautiful. One of the main sequences is a lyrical homage to Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much, set during a performance of Tosca.

It's both a James Bond movie and a Marc Forster movie. It moves the standard Bond-with-gun opener to the end, the Bond song honors are done by Jack White and Alicia Keyes, and the standard Bond crew is gone. The key crew members on this one were all Team Forster, except the composer John Barry David Arnold. But even there, the score pulls back on too much use of the classic Bond theme.

There are six Vesper martinis instead of the usual one, which isn't specifically "shaken not stirred." There is no "Bond, James Bond." Will audiences miss this? Or is this just the kind of modernization that the series requires to stay vital?

Craig is as strong and dangerous and fearless and rebellious as ever--and in this case, grieving and vengeful as he chases down the man who killed his beloved Vesper Lynd. (It is unusual for a Bond film to function as a sequel.) In this case, the Bond villain played by The Diving Bell and the Butterfly star Mathieu Amalric is bone-chilling-- without relying on any of the usual tics.

The movie already had a major press launch in London, who love their own Gemma Arterton as a modern Brit Bond Girl. Here's a sampling of early reviews.

Here's the trailer:

Weekend Edition's Scott Simon is in love with Terrence Howard. He does a major gush job on his show this weekend, but clearly Howard was putting a spell on him.

It's a great interview. Here's some video. Howard is a bit raw from the recent death of his mother, and the loss of the role of War Machine in Iron Man 2. "It was the surprise of my life," he says, confessing that he read about it in the trades, and wasn't expecting Marvel and his friend --is he referring to Jon Favreau?--to go back on their contract and their promises to him. He indicated that it wasn't about the money.

I admire Don Cheadle, who is replacing Howard in the role. But I thought Howard was fine, and I am still confused. What happened here? What was he promised? And what went wrong here?

Latinoreview cornered a DC Comics exec and tried to advance the status of the next Superman installment, but we still don't know where Bryan Singer and Brandon Routh and the writers are...

Meanwhile, how are Brandon Routh/Superman fans going to feel about their boy's role in Kevin Smith's potty-mouthed Zack and Miri make A Porno as a one-time high school jock star returning to his high school reunion with his gay porn star boyfriend Justin Long?

Not one to miss the opportunity to play with a cool new toy--especially if Chris Nolan did it on The Dark Knight--Michael Bay will wield jumbo IMAX cameras to film select scenes in his currently shooting The Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. The giant robot sequel starring Shia LaBeouf will hit IMAX theatres at the same time as the movie’s wide June 26 release.

The IMAX version of the film will run digitally remastered 35 mm letterbox sequences alongside scenes shot with IMAX’s cameras, which will expand vertically to fill the entire IMAX screen. Count me out. I preferred seeing The Dark Knight in good old-fashioned 35 mm. The IMAX stuff, while gorgeous, overwhelmed me with pixels. And Transformers did the same when I saw it in 35. My brain can only absorb so much info.

[Posted by David S. Cohen]
In a front page story in this Sunday’s Weekly Variety, Marc Graser explores Warner Bros.’ plans to get its classic DC characters onto the bigscreen. Or rather, its plans to make plans.

Batman is soaring, but the future of Superman on film is uncertain. The Justice League movie has been pushed back and it’s hard to imagine this Batman team being too enthusiastic about seeing their gritty, realistic take on the character alongside Superman and Wonder Woman. Greg Berlanti’s Green Lantern script has been well-received at the studio, but not yet greenlit.

Meanwhile, rival Marvel has launched its own studio, had a smash with Iron Man and a successful reboot of The Incredible Hulk, and announced four more pictures, introducing film versions of at least two more of their star characters, Thor and Captain America.

This begs the question: Why has Marvel been able to move so decisively to put its properties on film while Warner Bros seems to be stuck in a perpetual ponder? The answers are sometimes paradoxical.

[Posted by David S. Cohen]
Entertainment Weekly is making no secret of their unhappiness with corporate cousin Warner Bros. for letting them put Harry Potter on the Fall Preview cover and then moving the film to July '09.

"EW and Warner Bros. share a parent company, but they clearly do not share, you know, important friggin’ information," blogs Jeff Giles.

But that works both ways.

Earlier this summer, when I set out to write my preview article on The Dark Knight, Warner publicists put one condition on the interviews: No one would talk about the death of Heath Ledger. Since that angle didn't interest me, I readily agreed. There seemed to be jitters in Burbank that the story would seem ghoulish and scare people away.

Then the EW cover story on The Dark Knight came out all about, you guessed it, Heath Ledger's death. So I call the Warner publicists to complain that they were just trying to feed their corporate cousin an exclusive. But they were as unhappy about that cover story as EW is about Warner moving Harry Potter, and in fact said basically the same thing Giles said: Warner is Warner, EW is EW, EW does what it does like any other media outlet. They insisted that they hadn't signed off on or collaborated with EW on the Heath-Ledger-is-dead TDK cover story, and that EW had assembled the story from snippets of interviews conducted under other pretenses.

The bright side, I guess, is that this proves EW has some editorial independence.

Judging from Comic-Con, vampires and werewolves of all shapes and sizes are on the rise.

Besides the romantic vampire phenom Twilight and the sexy HBO-targeted True Blood, a host of other vampire movies were on display at the Con.

Greek production designer and creature maven Patrick Tatopoulos has taken over the Underworld franchise, heading into prequel territory to provide equal time for the werewolves in Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, starring a well-buffed, long-maned Michael Sheen (The Queen) as a werewolf in love with a sword-wielding, horse-riding, warrior vampire, Rhona Mitra (Doomsday), the daughter of vampire overlord Bill Nighy. "The last two stories were through the eyes of the vampires, in the air," said Tatopoulos. "This is about earth, a love story and quest for freedom."

"I'm a vampire, I'm a zombie and a squid," said Nighy. "How many people do you know can make that claim?"

Some of the fans actually booed a trailer showing Noah Wyle as a gentle librarian who falls for a sexy vampire in Jonathan Frake's The Librarian: The Curse of the Judas Chalice, basically a Something Wildish romantic comedy for TNT. The sequel Lost Boys: The Tribe looked pretty warmed over, too. “You’ll never grow old, you’ll never die and you’ll never know fear again,” one vampire tells a new recruit. Also not something I will ever see is Quarantine, a 2009 Screen Gems horror flick that traps a bunch of terrified people inside a tenement which has been infected by rabid vampire/werewolf attackers. It's done Cloverfield-style, and we're looking at the videotape. Or not.

X-Men's Wolverine is a kind of mutant superhero werewolf, right?

Hugh Jackman brought down the house when he popped into the Con, surprising the denizens of Hall H with a remarkable amount of energy for someone who had been on a plane from Australia, having just wrapped the X-Men spin-off, Origins Wolverine. It's his first visit with an X-Men movie, he said. Impulsively, Jackman jumped into the audience and greeted Wolverine comics creator Len Wein. "I have to shake your hand, buddy," he said. Without your pen I wouldn't have a career."

The movie is due May 1, 2009, based on a script by David Benioff. "The movie is big, it's action packed," Jackman said. "If I can describe the Wolverine movie in two words: It's badass." He added, "You're going to see a lot of berserker rage."

Fox co-chairman Tom Rothman and Jim Gianapulos were in the house as they screened some footage of Jackman and Liev Schreiber pitted against one another in training as they learn to control their powers. Gambit (Friday Night Light's Taylor Kitsch) was also unveiled. After the panel, Jackman flew off across the Pacific again, this time to Japan, for a vacation.

Yes, having Rick Baker (American Werewolf in London) do prosthetic make-up for The Wolfman is a good thing. CG will be used for the transitions, Baker admitted at the Hall H panel: “Something magical happens when you get an actor in good makeup, when he sees himself in the mirror, and says, ‘I’m the Wolfman.' This is an old-school gothic horror movie.”

“Everybody talks about how boring the makeup process is,” said Benicio del Toro, whose manager Rick Yorn sold Universal on this period remake of the Lon Chaney, Jr. classic, a fave of his client. “I loved watching him build the makeup for four hours. It’s about becoming. It’s exciting. The tough part is taking it off. That gets desperate.”

Even if del Toro is a genuine fan who argued for staying true to the original, the actor (as directed by last-minute helmer Joe Johnston) looks uncomfortable in 19th century tweeds as the estranged American son of Brit noble Anthony Hopkins and pursuer of corseted beauty Emily Blunt.

“I was running and screaming,” Blunt said. “I liked the whole idea of being a damsel in distress.”

“And I was chasing her,” said del Toro.

[Photo Jackman and Len Wein courtesy LA Times]

Click here for more photos from Comic-con

The franchise reboot of Terminator looks pretty strong under McG's direction. (It comes out May 22, 2009.) That the filmmaker is eager to prove himself with this picture can only be a good thing. His career is an odd one: many TV series and music videos led to his first film, Charlie's Angels, and its sequel, followed by the male weepie We Are Marshall. So McG (nicknamed after his mother's maiden name, because there were too many Joes in the house) is ready to rock.

He ran the panel like a paratrooper/cheerleader, even calling Christian Bale in Japan, and frequently asking the crowd to roar its approval. (It's become a sign of success to manipulate the audience into playing footage twice.) McG is in mid-shoot in New Mexico, where he likes the bleak desert, he told me later when I asked him about the film's Road Warrior influence. Playing to the fans, he said, "the whole thing began by listening, everyone wanted to look at the future, not T4. It's post-Judgement Day."

McG surrounded himself with credible talent, from Dark Knight's Jonah Nolan, who did a rewrite, to the dark Knight himself, Bale, ILM and the late animatronics wizard Stan Winston, whose designs "are all over this picture," McG said. "We have a lot of hardware," he said, displaying the bare-bones Cro-Magnon model T-600 Terminator, and plans to dedicate the film to Winston.

The trick with Terminator Salvation is that the setting has moved from contemporary L.A. into the post-apocalyptic future, when the adult John Connor (Christian Bale) is battling to save humans from extinction. So Charlie's Angels director McG, who many film buffs have questioned as the appropriate choice for this project, has been able to reinvent the look of the series, make it "darker and grittier," says production designer Martin Laing, who also designed City of Ember. He says James Cameron spent three hours with McG, and was "very supportive," as was one-time Terminator Arnold Schwarzenegger, now California's governor.

And the rating? "McG will make the best movie," he says. "He's not constrained. It will be PG-13 or R; we're trying for PG-13."

BTW, re: Terminator and Dark Knight star Christian Bale: He will not be at The Con. He's still travelling for Dark Knight, in Japan. And he probably doesn't want to answer questions anyway. Someone from Warners who was in his Hotel Dorchester Room when he had his altercation with his mother said it was not a big deal. He has not gotten along with his family for some time. And he has not been charged with anything by the London police.

UPDATE: Look for my report on the panel and talk with McG.

It will be interesting to see how much interest there is today in the remake of Robert Wise's 1951 sci-fi classic The Day The Earth Stood Still. One trend at Comic-Con is star managers pushing clients who are fans of a remakeable brand-name project. Erwin Stoff pitched Keanu Reeves for this one 15 years ago, and Rick Yorn pitched Benicio del Toro for Wolfman after seeing the poster in his house.

Stars always need tentpole movies. And Reeves seems to be a good fit for the alien Klaatu; he has an ethereal stillness to him that works in the footage we saw in Hall H Thursday. "'That guy can play the alien,'" Reeves joked to Stoff, who liked the idea of a movie that looks at the denizens of earth from an alien POV, Stoff said.

Director Scott Derrickson was also a fan of the original and actually met Wise when he was still a film student. Wise told him to do a horror film to show his stuff. And so he did, with The Exorcism of Emily Rose. "The original film was such a product of its time," said Derrickson. "The idea of updating it made sense. We're not dealing with a nuclear threat. The U.N. exists. The issues are different. The idea of an alien coming to earth who looks at human nature from an outsider perspective is an interesting take. In some ways it's about what it mean to be human."

"There was an objectifying and containment to him," said Reeves, who says this interpretation of the character is less "warm and fuzzy and human. I'm not that guy. He goes on a journey of seeing and looking and being affected by humans."

The relationship of Jennifer Connelly and her stepson (Happyness star Jaden Smith) shows Klaatu what humans are all about.

Derrickson completely reimagined the look of the alien technology as more organic and "ecological," he said. Wellywood's Weta Digital is beavering away on the elaborate VFX.

Comic-Con Photo Gallery: FOX (Includes The Day The Earth Stood Still)

It's a strange high-low time, as industry folks batten down the hatches in the face of tighter credit and an unresolved de facto SAG strike. There's unemployment, fewer movies being made, agency attrition, layoffs across many companies, and yet the summer b.o. is going strong, and breaking records.

Despite its grim take on the world and two and a half hour running time, The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan's follow-up to Batman Begins, broke b.o. records: its estimated $155 million gross was the best three-day opening ever, beating Spider-Man 3's $151 million in 2007. (It scored 94% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, narrowly beating Iron Man's 93%.) Another funny thing happened at the summer boxoffice: movies that nabbed good reviews lasted longer in theaters than the ones that got creamed. There is hope for us yet.

The Top Ten boxoffice cumes to date this summer, with Rotten Tomatoes scores, are:

1. Iron Man $314.4M 93%

2 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull $312.5M 76%

3. Kung Fu Panda $206.5M 88%

4. Hancock $191.5M 38%

5. Wall-E $182.5M 96%

6. Dark Knight $155.3M 94%

7. Sex and the City: The Movie $149.8M 51%

8. Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian $139.3M 66%

9. Incredible Hulk $131.7M 67%

10. Wanted $123.3M 73%

Clearly, Hancock, starring fluke zone star Will Smith, is the 2008 exception that proves the rule.

Meanwhile women and Abba fans gave the musical Mamma Mia! a respectable $27.6 million opening estimate. Thanks to strong holdover business from Journey to the Center of the Earth, Wall-E and others, the weekend broke the record for a non-holiday gross with a total $250 million. Hellboy took a hit from direct fanboy competitor Dark Knight, declining 71%.

Here are weekend b.o. reports from Variety and Fantasy Moguls, which argues the case for a best picture Oscar for The Dark Knight:

Everyone seems to lament the ever-eroding ratings for Hollywood's biggest night. They blame the host and the length of acceptance speeches, but the real reason, in my opinion, is the obscurity of some of the selections. One role of the Oscars is certainly to champion smaller films, but the awards should also recognize the year's best popular entertainment. The Dark Knight and Wall-E are both Oscar caliber movies in my mind. Last year, there should have been a Best Picture slot for The Bourne Ultimatum (Universal). If the industry wants a return to its rating glory, voters should not narrow their list of nominees exclusively to small, well-reviewed art films.

I suspect The Dark Knight will wind up with many Oscar nominations, mainly in the technical categories, as well as Heath Ledger's supporting actor slot. Best picture? I don't know about that. As for Pixar's lauded Wall-E, here's why the animated film will find tough sledding en route to a best picture Oscar.

I'm not going out on a limb to say that the most anticipated presentation at Comic-Con will be Zack Snyder's panel on Warner Bros.' The Watchmen. Remember, 300 exploded out of Comic-Con two years ago.

The trailer hit the Web this week, and the HD version is stunning. I love trailers where you don't know what the hell is going on. Of course afficionados of the Alan Moore comics can identify the origin story of Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) and the shadowy bipolar Rorshact Rorschach, among others.

Snyder himself explains some of his secrets here. UPDATE: And here's EW's Snyder and Alan Moore interviews. And Comic-Con preview. Stay tuned to Variety's ongoing Comic-Con coverage.

Today I talked to someone who has seen the movie, Legendary Pictures producer Thomas Tull, who goes 50/50 with Warner Bros. on such films as Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, Superman Returns, 300 and The Lady in the Water (the only film he didn't actually produce). An old Watchmen comics fan, Tull wanted in on the film as soon as Snyder pitched it, even though many people have regarded the complex, layered sci-fi narrative about superheroes who are real as unfilmable. After Tull saw a cut of the movie he told Snyder, "You got it. You nailed it the spirit of it and made it come alive."

"It's a smart visually stunning movie," he told me. Of course he's vested.

He's also vested in making the next Superman installment, which is still years away, come to life. While Bryan Singer has been working on Valkyrie, Tull and the folks at Warners have been listening to various screenwriters pitch their solutions to how to make the next Superman work. "It's an iconic character," says Tull. "After everything that went into the first film, it's important to make sure that nothing is rushed and we come out with a fantastic second film." One thing they all agree on: Superman needs a powerful antagonist, a "worthy opponent," he says.

Coming sooner is Louis Leterrier's follow-up to Incredible Hulk, Clash of the Titans. And no, Leterrier is not being talked about to direct Superman. "He's laser-focused on Titans," says Tull.

Time's Richard Corliss loves the latest Chris Nolan Batman.

In its rethinking and transcending of a schlock source, The Dark Knight is up there with David Cronenberg's 1986 version of The Fly. It turns pulp into dark poetry. Just as that movie found metaphors of cancer, AIDS and death in the story of a man devolving into an insect, so this one plumbs the nature of identity. Who are we? Has Bruce lost himself in the myth of the hero? Is his Batman persona a mission or an affliction? Can crusading Dent live down the nickname (Two-Face) some rancorous cops have pinned on him? Only the Joker seems unconflicted. He knows what he is: an "agent of chaos." Your worst nightmare.

Universal threw yet another Westwood block party premiere Saturday night, this time for $100-million summer sequel Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, the closer of the Los Angeles Film Fest, which lured some 100,000 attendees, up from last year. Hellboy 2 director Guillermo del Toro handed out two jury prizes worth $50,000 each to documentary filmmaker Darius Marder (Loot) and feature director Sean Baker (Prince of Broadway).

His "insanely ambitious movie" Hellboy 2, Del Toro said, "comes from an exotic country inside my brain and my gonads. People think I do two types of movies: strange little Spanish films and big studio movies. This movie comes from a different place. It's the first of those big movies that belongs to the same world as Pan's Labyrinth. The imagination in it is unbridled."

True enough. Hellboy 2 is a hybrid of those two things. And thus some moviegoers, especially the core fanboys who loved the Dark Horse comics and the first installment, will embrace Hellboy 2's fantastic eccentricities, while others will be left behind, scratching their heads. I doubt the visually sumptuous pic will break out into wide acceptance, especially given the stiff summer competition. The first Hellboy was not a global hit in 2004 (it topped out at $98 million worldwide) but sold well over the years on DVD.

At the party, Del Toro admitted that the film's war between the ancient magical underground universe and modern humans is far from black-and-white. Like Del Toro himself, red-skinned warrior Hellboy (Ron Perlman) is ambivalent, caught between the rich primal forces that spawned him and his powerful human masters. Here's the trailer:

No matter how well this movie does, Del Toro is about to enter a new fantasy portal that will take four years of his life: J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. Working closely with producers Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, phase one will involve writing for three weeks in L.A., one week in Wellywood, phase two will reverse that (one week in L.A., three weeks in Wellywood) and then the directing and post-production phases will take Del Toro to New Zealand full time.

Here's the filmmaker's two-part Q & A at LAFF.

For his part, critic John Anderson likes Hellboy 2 a lot:

But the reason the movie plays so well has nothing to do with the leading man's paternal instincts; rather, it's rooted in del Toro's rococo instincts for the stylishly creepy and crawlingly macabre, his clockmaker's preoccupation with detail, and a flair for combining state-of-the-art technology with his taste for the antique, the gothic, the Catholic. Not to disparage the f/x guys, but what's onscreen in "Hellboy II" is all about the seismic eruptions in del Toro's head. Comparing his work to most fantasy cinema is like comparing cave drawings to the Cathedral of Cologne.

The folks at Wired have posted a nice juicy Dark Knight production story/Chris Nolan interview. I'm working on seeing the movie--there's an L.A. junket this weekend--where they will be screening the pic in IMAX for folks who are doing interviews at the junket. I tend to stay away from junkets, roundtables etc. But I want in!

UPDATE: They're overbooked for the screening, actually turning people who thought they were coming away. The IMAX rooms are smaller than usual, it seems. :-(

They'll let us into their trade screening next week, they say. And meanwhile Rolling Stone has what Richard Roeper would call an "early review." It's a rave.

Paramount sent out a press release today (it's on the jump) proclaiming their billion dollar international gross at the the b.o., after only six months, which is a studio speed record.

But Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was a Lucasfilm production; Iron Man was Marvel; and Kung Fu Panda was DreamWorks Animation. Paramount did a great job distributing and marketing these pics, but did not make them. They will share a sliver of the rewards.

And while Nickelodeon's The Spiderwick Chronicles, Cloverfield and No Country for Old Men generated some modest returns overseas, most of the Brad Grey management team's other biggest hits have come from the DreamWorks side of the ledger--Michael Bay's Transformers and its follow-up, currently filming, are co-productions. And Mike Myers' Love Guru is not likely to be a huge overseas performer.

What happens when Spielberg and Geffen raise their big bucks (I'm hearing they're courting global funds as we speak) and split? Then it will be up to John Lesher and Brad Weston to soldier on.

Michael Bay's Transformers 2 has a title: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

The DreamWorks/Paramount sequel began shooting last week in Pennsylvania, mostly exteriors. Bethel, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. are doubling for different countries. From the start, the filmmakers planned a hiatus into the Transformers sequel, whether or not there was an actor's strike. The movie shoots on location for a month and then returns to L.A. If there's a strike, they'll work on FX stuff and won't start up photography right away.

According to New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, later on this fall, NM will be the location of more filming of the pic, which hits theaters next summer. The first pic, starring Shia LaBeouf, Tyrese Gibson, Josh Duhamel, Megan Fox and John Turturro, grossed more than $700 million worldwide.

The new story, which Bay worked on himself during the writers' strike, will also be a simple emotional tale surrounded by amazing F/X. This time, instead of boy-gets-car-gets-girl, our young hero grows up and comes of age in college--they're shooting in Princeton! He has a long-distance relationship, becomes more independent and responsible. This time there's not only a female transformer, but geriatric transformers.

This billboard installation was reportedly put up in Auckland to promote a local TV screening of Kill Bill. Seems elaborate, if it's even real. But it's cool nonetheless.

[Hat Tip: slashfilm]

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull had its world premiere at Cannes at 1 PM May 18; the press anxiously streamed into the Lumiere early, afraid they would be shut out--and many were. Spielberg insisted on holding off so he could show the movie to the world's press all at once, which created additional pressure. Here's Tim Gray in video and in print.

But unlike The Da Vinci Code two years ago, the Cannes press were psyched to see it, whooping and whistling before the screening started. The movie unspooled without the usual Cannes logo. The first hour plays like gangbusters and is really fun. Harrison Ford has Indy down, even as a grizzled "gramps" dealing affectionately with Shia LaBeouf as a 50s greaser with a pompadour.

The answer to the question of whether Indy and Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) spawned a son is answered pretty early on and is just what you'd expect. As a femme viewer, I'd have liked more of the bicker-banter from the first installment. And the movie goes pretty much where you expect it to go--the ending is bombastic and pixilated, even if most of the fast-moving stunts are as live as Spielberg could make them. The film is directed with expert, Spielbergian precision and panache. All of the cast were fine, but I particularly enjoyed Ford and his fearsome nemesis, Cate Blanchett as a Elsa Klench Rosa Klebb-style Russian Colonel.

UPDATE: Many press left the movie early so that they could get into the press conference, where Spielberg said he was happy to come back to Cannes for the first time since E.T. in 1982, and that E.T. and Indy were the only films the fans kept asking him to do sequels to. He was the last one in, he admitted, after George Lucas and Harrison Ford, but only after the last script came in and made him see the movie that could be.

Indy 4 movie will do blockbuster boxoffice, and whatever critical brickbats are still to come, the media clapped and was polite at the press conference, which I live-streamed with a qik phone and should be somewhere on variety.com/cannes:

View As Web Page

Here's Todd McCarthy's review and Greencine's early reactions. UPDATE: Here's A.P. and Reuters.

After mounting a full day of press on the 7th floor of the Carlton, Paramount threw a small press cocktail party at the Cote for Indy 4 and brought the "talent" through to meet and greet. (There will be no press at the official dinner Sunday night.) Shia LaBeouf was in no mood to share, having given non-stop round table interviews all day, up since 6 AM, he said. He did Access Hollywood on a boat, but hadn't had a chance to experience his first Cannes, really. His work wasn't over either: he was steeling himself for the Vanity Fair dinner.

Paramount took full advantage of this turbo-junket opportunity. Harrison Ford did Access Hollywood on the beach. And they got E.T., Extra and GMA, too. Karen Allen said she'd been inside rooms all day, too, except for a little walk around. Her last Cannes was for The Glass Menagerie in 1987. Here's some video.

Producer Kathleen Kennedy explained why Spielberg wanted to do all the press before they had seen the film. He really wants to try to preserve the experience for the audience, so they don't know everything before they see the movie, like it was on the first three Raiders pics. "If you learn everything, no one can get surprised anymore," said Kennedy. "You can't discover this movie until we let them discover it."

Later I took a break by going to see Technicolor's stunning digital restoration of Max Ophuls' Lola Montes as he originally intended it to be seen. His cut was restored in 1968, but Technicolor used modern technology and the help of Marcel Ophuls to bring it back to vivid, rich, saturated life. It was a delicious escape from all the Cannes madness.

On the way out the door it was pouring rain so I looked like a bedraggled mess by the time I arrived at the Weinsteins' Vicky Cristina Barcelona party on the soggy 3.14 plage, as Woody Allen and Penelope Cruz and Rebecca Hall and Bono huddled in a corner banquette. Harvey was in good spirits; this movie might catch the zeigeist right, as it delivers a light divertissement during dark times.

I saw it coming. Ever since Paramount announced that Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom Kingdom of the Crystal Skull would not screen for anyone before its May 18 unveiling at Cannes (in advance of its worldwide launch May 22), I felt that Spielberg and Co. might be setting themselves up. The anticipation of this film is too great, the pressure for information is wrecking havoc on the internet. As the NYT reports, several exhibitor screenings have added to the din surrounding this film. So far the PR strategy has been to dole out interviews to press who have not yet seen it; Vanity Fair, EW, the LAT and others have played ball.

And at Cannes, select press are being invited to do interviews before the official press screening at 1 PM on May 18. This will add more pressure to the press conference that day. UPDATE: Paramount is also not throwing a party, instead sticking to a small exclusive film dinner. That's not winning them any popularity contests.

Sony learned the hard way the power of a roomful of 4000 critics waiting to find a movie wanting at Cannes with the Da Vinci Code. Moviegoers ignored their complaints and made the film a worldwide blockbuster. But the filmmakers had hoped to score a prestige win at Cannes. Ron Howard and Brian Grazer left Cannes with their egos badly bruised.

Spielberg, who is staying in one of the big yachts in the harbor, may be hoping to return to the site of his early career triumphs with Sugarland Express and E.T., which was such a huge smash at Cannes that it burnished Spielberg's profile as a star director with a special place in filmgoers' hearts. Indiana Jones is a favorite franchise returning after 18 years. It may fulfill all that is hoped for; it will certainly score a huge global opening. That's not the issue. It will be fascinating to see if Cannes gives back to Spielberg what he may be hoping to get from it.

If the audience skews older, as I suspect it will, I wonder if Paramount might not have lured more of the key younger demo by waiting to open the film after they get out of school. It's early summer days yet.

The official schedule for the Cannes Film Festival will be available online as of May 10. Here's the sked for Indy 4:

INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL Out of Competition (USA)

Press screening: Sunday 18 May / 1.00pm / Grand Théâtre Lumière

Photo-call: Sunday 18 May / 3.00pm / Palais des Festivals

Press conference: Sunday 18 May / 3.30pm / Palais des Festivals

Official screening: Sunday 18 May / 7.30pm / Grand Théâtre Lumière

Film-team:
Steven Spielberg / director
Harrison Ford / actor
Shia LeBeouf / actor
Karen Allen / actor
Cate Blanchett / actor
Ray Winstone / actor
John Hurt / actor
Jim Broadbent / actor
George Lucas / producer
Frank Marshall / producer
Kathleen Kennedy / producer

Running time: 125 minutes

INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL will be released worldwide by Paramount Pictures.

Cannes has announced its classics program, including Richard Schickel's tribute to Warner Bros., narrated by in-house star/director/producer Clint Eastwood. Early buzz on Cannes competition entry Changeling (Universal), a mystery Eastwood directed from TV writer-turned-screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski's script based on real events unfolding in the 20s, is quite good.

Neophyte producers Halcyon started shooting the $200-million fourth Terminator movie Monday in Albuquerque, New Mexico, starring Dark Knight's Christian Bale and Avatar star Sam Worthington under the direction of McG. Set in post-apocalyptic 2029, Terminator Salvation pits a Messianic John Connor (Bale) and humankind against the rage of the machines. Halcyon hopes to deliver distrib Warners an intense, action-packed adventure with a PG-13 rating.

Don't believe anything you read about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull based on people who have actually seen it because as far as I know, Steven Spielberg has only shown it to the Cannes Film Festival (read Todd McCarthy's story here). Yes, the movie will show in Cannes, as we initially reported, on May 18. It will screen in the states that same day, just before its global opening May 22. There will be no junket. (Jeffrey Katzenberg will also debut Kung Fu Panda in Cannes, on May 15, in the traditional DreamWorks Animation slot.)

Jeffrey Wells' source for Indiana Jones being 140 minutes is impeccable, he says: composer John Williams. Besides, Spielberg's films have been running long lately. Terminal ran over two hours at 128 minutes; Catch Me If You Can was 141 minutes; and Munich was 164 minutes long. So at least he's going backwards! Slashfilm reports the running times on the Indy films-- "Previous installments ran 115, 118, 127 minutes respectively (and in order from Raiders to Last Crusade)." UPDATE: Wells has run a correction. Producer Frank Marshall has informed Paramount that the movie is just over two hours, including credits.

This amazingly speculative Indy 4 blog post from New York's Vulture fancifully cobbles together the mere suggestion that George Lucas is downplaying the movie, so it must be as bad as Star Wars: Episode 1--The Phantom Menace. This inspires the idea that Shia LaBeouf will prove to be Indy's Jar Jar Binks! Jesus. A headline in search of a story.

By comparison, this item at CHUD is based on actual reporting. The advance buzz on Indy is getting damaging enough that Lucas and Spielberg may want to reconsider the current strategy of waiting until May 18 to show the film to everyone at once. That's a long way off.

Remember, all the controlling behavior on Munich PR only backfired. Spielberg has an old-fashioned view of marketing. He doesn't like how fast-moving everything is now. Saving up for the big reveal can backfire in a huge way, as last year's The Da Vinci Code proved at Cannes. (At least Indy 4 is not slated for opening night.) In other words, you better have the goods. UPDATE: EW talks to Lucas and Spielberg about their take on all things Indy.