Third Harold & Kumar Starts Production

Earlier today, "Harold & Kumar" co-creator Jon Hurwitz, who directed the first two movies Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle and its sequel Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay announced on his Twitter account that the third movie A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas has started filming:

Harold & Kumar 3 has officially started shooting. That is all.

John Cho and Kal Penn are back in the lead roles, and the movie is filming somewhere in Michigan, which has recently become a hotbed for film productions going by the recent announcement of projects. Directing this time around is Todd Strauss-Schulson, who has previously directed various MTV programs and a couple shorts. When it was originally announced, the movie was slated for a November 5, 2010 release, but it seems that a June/July shoot might be cutting it tight for a holiday release this year, so one can probably assume it will get a release late next year.

Hurwitz is also currently developing American Pie 4 to co-direct with his regular collaborator Hayden Schlossberg, which is why they aren't directing the third installment. No word on when that might start shooting or get a release just yet.

USA Orders Two Pilots

USA has ordered two pilots to be shot this summer, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

A Legal Mind focuses on a brilliant young man who lands a job at a corporate law firm despite lacking a college degree. The project will be executive-produced by Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity).

USA sets premiere Covert Affairs, return date for White Collar

Necessary Roughness revolves around a divorced female sports therapist whose consulting gig with a pro football team leads to more opportunities.

Neither pilot has been cast yet.

Men in Black III Set for May 25, 2012

Remember a couple weeks ago when we told you that Barry Sonnenfeld had confirmed Will Smith for Men in Black III and that the film would be in 3D? Well, now those two facts are double-confirmed (slow news week) but Deadline offers a new tidbit of info: Sony has set the film for May 25, 2012. That’ll be a crowded summer: The Avengers hits May 4, Battleship also lands May 25, then Star Trek 2, Spider-Man and Batman 3 are all set for the weeks following.

Deadline says that Smith is the only one who has signed (again, repeating what we knew) and that Sony is in talks with Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin to get their contracts sealed. Deadline also offers that this one is getting into gear quickly, with Rick Baker already designing and building creatures, Bo Welch designing sets and David Koepp doing a last polish on Etan Cohen’s script. I’m always eager to see any new creature work from Rick Baker, but the 3D thing definitely lessens the appeal.

Stallone on the Future of Rambo: “I Don’t Think There’ll Be Any More”

Ever since Sylvester Stallone turned most of the adult male population of Burma to bloody gibs in his return to the Rambo character, there has been talk of a fifth Rambo film. Just what the story might be has been subject to speculation. Rumors abounded of a homecoming tale, a film tinged with sci-fi, and, based on one of Stallone’s last updates, a south of the border tale in which Rambo finds or avenges missing women.

Now, however, it seems like there are no possibilities for Rambo any longer. Stallone says he’s “99% sure” the fifth film won’t happen.

Empire talked to Stallone about the film while putting together a feature on The Expendables. “I think Rambo’s pretty well done. I don’t think there’ll be any more,” Stallone says.

I was going to do it…I said I’d never talk about this, but with I feel that with Rocky Balboa, that character came complete circle. He went home. But for Rambo to go on another adventure might be, I think, misinterpreted as a mercenary gesture and not necessary. I don’t want that to happen…I’m very happy with the last Burmese episode, because I didn’t pull any punches on it.

But there is a small future for Rambo, as Stallone says he’s working on a director’s cut that will reinstate twelve minutes to the fourth film. As long as ten of those minutes involve guys exploding, I am so in. Blu-ray, please!

Actually, there will probably be much less than ten minutes of exploding dudes, as Stallone says part of what he’s putting back in is an opening speech where Rambo tells the Julie Benz character why his life has been a disappointment and a waste, and war is natural. So it’s a comedy!

(That crack is mostly in jest; as popcorn movies about post-traumatic stress go, the original First Blood is actually a pretty damn good treatment. Maybe he can bring that full circle now.)

Stallone will be making a sequel to another movie, however. He says he’s hard at work putting together another Expendables film.

Rumor: Will Smith On Board for Two Independence Day Sequels?

Back in November 2009, Roland Emmerich told MTV that not only are they developing an Independence Day sequel, but he hopes to film it as two-back-to-back movies. At the time I just thought he was throwing outrageous claims into the wind, seeing how far they may travel. Since the first film was realized in 1996, Will Smith has become one of Hollywood’s biggest and most bankable movie stars (and now producer). What that means is that he costs big bucks, over $20 million plus a percentage of the first dollar gross. 20th Century Fox is notoriously cheap (except when James Cameron is somehow able to trick the studio into spending hundreds of millions to make billions). Emmerich even said as much in an interview with LatinoReview.

Well it appears like the situation has changed, Will Smith is aboard for two sequels, and the films will be shot back-to-back. This according to IESB, who has a notoriously good track record when it comes to Fox rumors, so its very possible. According to the report, Emmerich would go into production on ID4-2 / ID4-3 after his William Shakespeare thriller Anonymous when Smith is finished with either The City That Sailed or Men in Black 3 (whichever project the star chooses to tackle next).

Emmerich previously said that the reason for two movies is that he wants “to do a bigger [story] arc” which will “continue the story” and begin “twelve, thirteen, fourteen years” after the first one ended. Emmerich even floated a possible title for the new films: “ID4-Ever” followed by “Part I” and “Part II” Lets hope that much changes. The story would again be set on planet Earth, presumably mostly rebuilt since the last time we saw it, when a new invasion again threatens the world.

No other story details have been revealed, but I would assume that it wouldn’t be an Independence Day sequel if most of the original characters didn’t return. I wonder where Bill Pullman’s President Thomas J. Whitmore might be a decade and a half later. Is he still in office? Who knows, America might’ve changed the law to extend the President’s term of office. I’m sure a lot of things will be very different than the world we knew before. This would be an alien invasion movie set in a changed world, post 7-04 (remember, this is a world in which 9/11 never happened, and ID-4 is remembered as “THAT DAY”).

I’m interested to see if this rumor takes off, and Fox greenlights the back-to-back productions. A couple Independence Day sequels could be fun, especially in 3D. For me, ID4 is the only one of Emmerich’s disaster movies in which we actually care about the characters. I’m actually interested to see where they have been, and how they handle the next alien war.

Reynolds and Bateman Ready for a Change Up

Ryan Reynolds (upcoming Green Lantern) and Jason Bateman will star in the Universal comedy Change Up, to be directed by David Dobkin.

The film centers on a responsible family man (Bateman) who switches bodies with his best friend, a lazy man-child (Reynolds).

The Hangover writers Jon Lucas and Scott Moore wrote the script.