"Robin Hood" may be a big-budget action movie that Universal hopes will generate blockbuster numbers. But star Russell Crowe also sees it as something else: an allegory for ... Rupert Murdoch?

Asked at the Cannes Film Festival opening-day press-conference about interpreting Robin Hood for a modern audience, Crowe wondered aloud how the character would operate if he were alive today. "Would Robin Hood's aim be political? Would it be economic?" he asked reporters. "Or would he look at what you guys are doing?"

Crowe's conclusion is that Robin Hood would target -- of course -- the forces behind newspaper and television consolidation. "My theory is that if Robin Hood was alive today he'd be looking at the monopolization of media" as a villain, Crowe said, though he didn't elaborate on just what the justice seeker might do about it.

In a swaggering and entertaining performance, Crowe explained that the new movie, which was to open the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday night, junks the familiar inconography of flashy green tights and witty repartee to showcase a freedom fighter who helped give rise to the Magna Carta.

In a similarly serious vein, Crowe hopes that filmgoers hit the books after coming out to see his new action movie: "We're just doing a version of the history, and hopefully people's own curiosity is piqued and they discover things for themselves afterward." Among the history lessons he hopes audiences seek out: "An indolent egoist [King John] ends up signing the first version of the Magna Carta. What brought an indolent egoist to be the man who champions the rights of people?"

Crowe also said he wanted to put Robin Hood on the couch. "There wasn't a [previous] Robin Hood which game me a satisfactory feeling that I knew his motivation or backstory. " (The new version focuses on the events leading up to the character becoming an outlaw.) Crowe added later, "Whatever you think you know about Robin Hood is a previously understandable mistake. "

Crowe, costar Cate Blanchett and producer Brian Grazer (director Ridley Scott didn't make it to Cannes as he recovers from knee surgery), were also all asked about the elephant in the room: the unsavory depiction of the French for a movie opening a French film festival. (France's King Philip schemes to take over Britain, among other distasteful details.)

Grazer cautiously allowed that the portrayal could trouble some in the audience but thought the film's particular focus should mute criticism.  "We're somewhat aware there's a political nature, but really this is a story of Robin," he said.

Crowe mused that, for the Cannes selection committee, historical accuracy may have trumped national identity: "Richard de Lyon didn't make it home to England," Crowe said. "He was shot by a French cook. ... I think that's an important piece of history, and I think that's why we're opening the Cannes Film Festival." (A few in the room laughed at this, but Crowe appeared to be serious.)

But Blanchett may have had the most slyly honest response to the question. Said the actress of the movie: "I think the English come off worse than the French."

-- Steven Zeitchik and Rachel Abramowitz

twitter.com/ZeitchikLAT

Photos: Top, Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett at a "Robin Hood" press conference in Cannes, France. Credit: Ian Langsdon / EPA. Second, a "Robin Hood" advertisement adorns the pier in the city. Credit: Steven Zeitchik

Even those with only a casual knowledge of Cannes (a film festival we finally reached Tuesday evening after two planes, two trains and a bus, as though in a European version of a John Hughes movie) probably know about one of its most venerable traditions: an audience expressing its, er, opinion of a movie it doesn't like with post-screening boos and catcalls. (No, it's not just an "Entourage" myth.)

When it happens, the experience can be weird and even a little thrilling: Even though I'm at a film festival, one might think, people are actually sufficiently displeased with what they've seen that they care to vocalize it, almost as though they're personally defending the medium from perceived barbarians.. That it all goes down with men in tuxedos and women in evening gowns adds to the hilarity/surrealness.

But the truth is these booing incidents happen much less frequently than you'd think -- and in very specific circumstances. Middling films generally don't get boos -- they simply get shorter ovations (forget tracking -- at Cannes, audience satisfaction can be measured by the length of ovations. It's approval ratings by way of the stopwatch.)

And controversial films or movies in questionable taste -- Lars von Trier's genital-mutilating "Antichrist" comes to mind --might get some boos, but those sounds are usually drowned out by polite or occasionally even hearty contrarian applause. (One of the few films that couldn't manage this was Vincent Gallo's "The Brown Bunny" -- even contrarians have their standards.)

The movies that do reliably tend to draw the jeers are those that show France or French figures in a revisionist light. Sofia Coppola's stylized, at times sympathetic portrait of "Marie Antoinette" four years ago is an instructive example. The audience didn't like how Coppola represented the period, and they didn't like how the last French queen came off, so they let Coppola know it. (Incidentally, a movie that fits more with the French's notion of their own identity, as last year's "Inglourious Basterds" did -- the movie portrays them as victims and heroes -- tends to draw more generosity, at least as a very general rule.)

Which brings us to this year's opening-night film, "Robin Hood." On the surface, this is a movie that should draw nothing but applause, and the lengthy kind at that. It's a big popcorn adventure with an arty gloss, exactly the kind of film that plays to the refined but spectacle-hungry opening-night crowds, as "Up" did last year. And with Cate Blanchett and Russell Crowe starring, "Robin Hood" has the kind of actors -- glamorous but heady -- that Cannes audiences usually eat up.

Except for one problem: The movie doesn't exactly show France in the most flattering light. Many who've seen early screenings have noted the movie's rank portrayal of the French, who are shown to be villainous and bloodthirsty, a sharp contrast to the film's English warrior heroes.
 
As Kirk Honeycutt notes in the Hollywood Reporter. "The French are seen in an unsavory light at every turn. Mind you, these are not the French of the late 12th century – the film’s time period – but very much George W. Bush’s French: untrustworthy, cowardly and entirely self-interested."

Granted, the 12th century period of the film is not one that is necessarily close to many French citizens' hearts. But when it comes to their own kind, any country would be carefully attuned to how it's portrayed. And the French audience  in Cannes can be especially ... protective.

Director Ridley Scott has opted not to come to the festival this year. He's recovering from knee surgery and couldn't make the trip. We wish him well and hope for a speedy recovery. As for the French audience, it remains to be seen whether they, well, cry out with a different sort of pain.

--Steven Zeitchik (follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/ZeitchikLAT).

Photo: The  "Inglourious Basterds" premiere at Cannes 2009. Credit: Festival de Cannes

The Telluride Film Festival has always drawn distinctive films and filmmakers--recent world premieres at the annual Labor Day weekend gathering include Danny Boyle's "Slumdog Millionaire," Jason Reitman's "Up in the Air" and Sofia Coppola's "Lost in Translation."

Less well-known, though, is the Colorado festival's penchant for recruiting interesting artists to design its posters--a tally that includes Ed Ruscha, Julian Schnabel, Jim Dine, Francesco Clemente, Laurie Anderson and William Wegman.

On Tuesday, Telluride unveiled the artwork for this year's 37th annual festival, a distinctive design from Pixar Animation Studios' Ralph Eggleston. The "Toy Story" art director has credits on "Up" (art director, lighting), "Wall-E" (production design), "The Incredibles" (art direction) and "Finding Nemo" (production design). Eggleston also directed Pixar's Oscar-winning short "For the Birds."

“I was given complete creative license by the festival in this process and was further inspired by the famous hitchhiking scene from ‘It Happened One Night,' " Eggleston said in a statement. Said festival co-directors Tom Luddy, Gary Meyer and Julie Huntsinger: “The same thought and creativity that Ralph brings to his films is what he has brought to the design of this year’s festival poster."

While the festival is eager to announce its posters early, it never releases its film lineup until the day the festival opens. But there's already one high-profile film that might be in the Telluride mix if it can be completed in time: Boyle's "127 Hours," a drama about hiker Aron Ralston (played in the film by James Franco), who amputated his own right hand after being pinned by a rock in a 2003 Utah back country accident.

--John Horn

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Expectations are a funny thing in the movie business. Generate too few and your film comes and goes quietly. Generate too many and you're in an even tougher spot --  basking in the limelight but also fielding the hard questions and the second-guessing.

It's impossible to call the $128.1 million that "Iron Man 2" raked in this weekend anything less than a smashing success. That number is enviable for any sequel, let alone a movie that was handcrafted on set by its director and lead star, as so many of the reports had Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr. doing.

But the movie fell notably short of the opening-weekend numbers yielded by several other superhero sequels, including of course "The Dark Knight" and "Spider-Man 3." That inevitably has raised the Monday-morning quarterback question of whether "Iron Man 2" might have gone the "Dark Knight" distance if it had gotten a "Clash of the Titans"-style 3-D conversion, boosting grosses with higher ticket prices. At a time when every movie's gross is being vaulted by a surf in the 3-D world, the argument goes, "Iron Man 2" could have ridden the wave and met those (admittedly very high) box-office expectations.

In an interview with Ben Fritz on The Times' Hero Complex blog, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige said that the company had considered a conversion but, among other things, didn't feel it had enough time before the May 7 release date to do that conversion justice.

Like all studios, Marvel is at the center of some strong cross-currents, with so many competitors rushing headlong into 3-D. So it's understandable that Feige and his company would have explored the option. But the point Feige's own movie makes is that if studios are rushing forward, audiences aren't rushing with them, While it's impossible to know exactly how fans would have felt about a 3-D version of "Iron Man 2," they certainly embraced this version, giving it an A on the all-important word-of-mouth measurement tool CinemaScore. Certainly showing the movie in 2-D didn't hurt. One could even make the case that it might have helped, with audiences liking it as much as they could because they didn't feel a new technology was being waved in their face (literally).

The argument from the top of studios' corporate ladders has been that their business needs 3-D to to eliminate risk and stay solidly profitable. But "Iron Man 2" did all that, earning not just an eye-popping amount -- a 30% gain over the first picture, up there with the best of the second installments -- but doing it in the most generous way possible. The movie's distribution plan, and revenue splits, allowed it to spread the love to distributor Paramount, to its own coffers and to new owner Disney, who all will come out well in the black. And that's not even getting into the international numbers.

Marvel is looking at 3-D for its other films -- "We will be doing it at some point," Feige said -- and we have a nagging feeling that "Iron Man 3" will add a third dimension as well. Let's hope that any 3-D treatment at least applies only to movies that haven't begun shooting, like said "Iron Man" sequel and "Captain America," not "Thor," which has (and which Marvel would be forced to convert).

And here's hoping that maybe the studio chooses to avoid the whole craze and opts to rake in the cash the old-fashioned way, or at least the old-fashioned tentpole way: with a movie people want to see. A $128.1-million weekend has a way of making a strong case, in any dimension.

--Steven Zeitchik (follow me on Twitter at @ZeitchikLAT)

Photo: Mickey Rourke as Vanko in "Iron Man 2." Credit: Marvel.com

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Just days before the Cannes Film Festival opens with Russell Crowe in "Robin Hood," festival organizers announced that they have invited director Ken Loach's Iraq war drama "Route Irish" into the competition. But one person who won't be in the French Riviera to see the British filmmaker's new film: fellow countryman and "Robin Hood" director Ridley Scott.

The 72-year-old Scott, who teamed with Crowe in the Oscar-winning "Gladiator," recently underwent knee replacement surgery. "My recovery has been slower than I'd hoped," Scott said in a statement. "Truly, doctor's orders are the only thing that could keep me from being there."

He said the Universal film's lead actors, including Cate Blanchett, and producer Brian Grazer will be able to attend the Wednesday night premiere.

"My disappointment is tempered by the fact that Brian, Russell, Cate and the rest of the cast will be on hand to represent the film. I send them all my best wishes in opening this year's festival with our film," Scott said.

The historical epic opens theatrically in many European territories after its Cannes premiere and in the United States on Friday.

The 73-year-old Loach only recently completed "Route Irish," which focuses on a private contractor looking into a friend's wartime death and was written by frequent screenwriting collaborator Paul Laverty.

He's a fixture at Cannes, having won the festival's top prize with 2006's "The Wind That Shakes  the Barley." 

A year ago, Loach brought "Looking for Eric" to the festival; that IFC Films release premieres in New York on Friday -- opposite "Robin Hood."

 -- John Horn

Photo (top): Russell Crowe in "Robin Hood."  Credit: David Appleby / Universal Pictures

Photo (bottom): Ken Loach. Credit: Pierre-Philippe Marcou

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If there's one filmmaker who truly knows how to shape and gauge film-goer interest, it's Guillermo del Toro, who with genre crossbreeds such as "Hellboy" and "Pan's Labyrinth" has found a sizable audience where few would have dreamed one could exist.

So we take it to heart when Del Toro says, as he did in an e-mail to us, that a few viral-video shorts making the rounds these past few months could form the basis of some pretty solid and successful movies. "I think that a short film is a perfect nugget of a film. A seed. The perfect pitch that a producer can promote and push for people to 'get a glimpse' of the film that lies there." he wrote.

Certainly some big Hollywood types are taking chances on shorts -- and not just as a way to discover a filmmaker, but as the basis for full-on features.

As we discovered in reporting a story for Sunday's Calendar section, shorts have become all the rage in Hollywood, as top producers like Sam Raimi seek and pursue shorts from people with little more name recognition, or financial backing, than most of us. There's the gem of a horror movie "Mama" (shown below), which Del Toro is producing as a feature at Universal, and the au courant hot material "The Raven" (the second film below) and the likely soon-to-be-buzzed dark animated film "Alma" (the film above), a personal favorite because of its ominous suggestiveness.

There's already been talk of a backlash, as some wonder if the vogue for these shorts is evidence not of a new creativity but of the old hysteria, the kind where a semi-interesting idea is pursued and ridden into the ground like a beleaguered groundhog.

But those who lament a creative bankruptcy in the feature world might want to take note. Whether these movies sprout into full-blown films of matching quality -- and whether filmmakers are allowed to help them grow into that -- one can't really say at this point. But in a remake-thick landscape often lamented as depressingly barren and lacking in new ideas, it's encouraging when one can find some little vibrant green shoots.

-- Steven Zeitchik (follow me on Twitter at @ZeitchikLAT)

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Will Russell Crowe and Sean Penn need to board a steamship?

With the Cannes Film Festival just three days away, the volcanic ash that has played havoc with European flight for the last month threatens to swirl up some trouble for the venerable film festival -- prompting delays, cancellations and creative means of alternative travel.

As of Sunday, France's Nice airport, which serves Cannes and the surrounding area, remained open, but a number of flights scheduled to arrive there had been canceled. The moves follow cancellations over the last several days of flights originating in countries including Ireland and Italy as Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano spews a fresh round of ash into the atmosphere.

Canceled flights could mean that participants in the world's largest film festival would arrive days late, or scrap their plans altogether, leading to a potential dearth of media and stars in a festival typically littered with them. (Crowe and Penn, for instance, are supposed to arrive in the festival's early days to promote their films "Robin Hood" and "Fair Game," respectively.)

There's little chance major events would be canceled outright, but media and screening schedules could be substantially juggled as talent, executives, media and the general public scramble to arrive in the South of France.

Even flights that have reached their destination successfully have taken much longer than usual. On Friday, a flight from New York to Nice -- a primary way by which Angelenos reach the Cannes Film Festival -- took 10 hours instead of the usual seven as pilots made a circuitous mid-air detour to avoid the ash cloud.

If those types of delays continue, they could cascade through the system and create numerous headaches in the tightly timed world of the Cannes Film Festival, where screenings and media opportunities are carefully packed together. 

Because they draw a diverse group of international attendees, film festivals are particularly vulnerable to airline delays prompted by global calamities. In 2001, the Toronto Film Festival was thrown into disarray when the Sept. 11 attacks occurred just days before the festival was scheduled to start.

And last year, a global swine-flu outbreak threatened to disrupt Cannes before the fears settled down and the festival came off without a hitch.

This year, the Icelandic volcano appears poised to do its own damage, potentially causing a fall-off in the number of attendees. But at least one veteran we spoke to was looking at the bright side: "Maybe this means you'll actually be able to move on the Croisette."

-- Steven Zeitchik (follow me on Twitter @zeitchiklat)

Photo: Ash from the Icelandic volcano. Credit: Associated Press

Can "Iron Man 2" beat "The Dark Knight" this weekend? Did Joaquin Phoenix intend to make a documentary or a mockumentary? Why isn't the smoke monster allowed to kill the Oceanic Six? The Times' John Horn and Steven Zeitchik answer the tough questions in the newest edition of This Week in Hollywood.

RECENT AND RELATED:

Joaquin Phoenix documentary: Even buyers aren't sure if it's a prank

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Can 'Iron Man 2' beat 'The Dark Knight?'

Movie Projector: 'Iron Man 2' has 'The Dark Knight' in its sights

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When did trailers for action movies get good? And when did they go behind the velvet rope? Two new trailers for two secretive projects come attached to "Iron Man 2": for Christopher Nolan's "Inception" and J.J. Abrams' "Super 8." (Is there a movie on Earth that wouldn't want to be in that pre-Robert Downey Jr. slot? The rich indeed get richer.)

The "Inception" piece, featured above, is the better of the two, not least because it finally casts light on what the movie is about (dream policing and subconscious thievery, it turns out). You can watch it here, though it's meant to be discovered and watched only after one plays this online game. Movie marketers might wonder why in the name of Catwoman a studio would cut a trailer and then hide it inside a video game. But when your name is Chris Nolan, less is often more, and a velvet rope may be the best invitation of all.

The other trailer, for Abrams' "Super 8," is less persuasive. Little is given away in this initial teaser about this recently announced 2011 creature movie that may or may not be a follow-up to "Cloverfield" (it probably isn't); it basically lets you know that someone or something scary once escaped after a train crash near Area 51. But we don't see much beyond the train crash, except for said something trying to bust its way out of a crate, which makes the "It Arrives" pronouncement that accompanies it feel a little overblown, or even cliche (though the "Super 8" closing is intriguing enough).

The trailer's popped up on YouTube, but Paramount has done its best to remove it, or at least not to offer it online yet. (The versions that do exist were clearly pirated with a hand-held camera from inside a movie theater, so we won't link to it). But the strategy is a little perplexing.

Unless you're trying to get people into theaters to see "Iron Man 2" because of the trailer, why not make it available? From the looks of it, it's more gritty than cinematic, and doesn't absolutely need to be seen on a big screen. And a trailer isn't a piece of content you're trying to get people to pay for, like a "Daily Show" episode. It's a piece of marketing. What's the point of withholding it?

In any event, the marketing for the closely watched film has begun. Or not begun.

-- Steven Zeitchik

(Follow me on Twitter.)

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It’s far from the Joaquin Phoenix you’re used to seeing onscreen: snorting cocaine, ordering call girls, having oral sex with a publicist, treating his assistants abusively and rapping badly. And not, apparently, playing a role — or was he?

Even after seeing the documentary “I’m Still Here: The Lost Year of Joaquin Phoenix” in a private screening earlier this week, film buyers still aren’t sure of its genuineness. Was the “Walk the Line” and “Gladiator” star, who said more than a year ago that he was quitting acting to become a musician, playing a sophisticated prank, or did he really ditch his Oscar-nominated career to become a disheveled rapper?

Agents at William Morris Endeavor, the sellers of the Casey Affleck-directed film, have started showing the movie to potential distributors, and while some were apparently interested in bidding for “I’m Still Here’s” distribution rights, the shoppers left the screening perhaps even more mystified by Phoenix’s behavior than when they walked in.

Several buyers said the film overflowed with Hollywood debauchery, including more male frontal nudity than you’d find in some gay porn films and a stomach-turning sequence in which someone feuding with Phoenix defecates on the actor while he’s asleep.

The documentary — or is it a mockumentary? — also includes Phoenix’s infamous appearance on “The Late Show With David Letterman,” in which the bearded and bloated actor barely spoke, leaving Letterman bewildered if not infuriated and people wondering about Phoenix’s mental health.

The buyers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Phoenix comes off unsympathetically and shows very little talent for music in the movie, directed by his brother-in-law (Affleck is married to Summer Phoenix). Sales agent WME declined to comment.

In some scenes in the film, the 35-year-old Phoenix is trying to get Sean “Diddy” Combs to produce Phoenix’s rap album, but the hip-hop impresario is not terribly interested. Another sequence shows Ben Stiller approaching Phoenix about starring in writer-director Noah Baumbach’s “Greenberg,” but Phoenix is barely interested.

Two buyers who saw the movie were unsure if Phoenix had turned out an elaborate piece of performance art, where the joke was really on the audience. While they were debating the film’s commercial prospects, the buyers did agree on one thing: They’d never seen anything like it.

-- John Horn

Photo: Joaquin Phoenix. Credit: Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times

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Brit-pop’s most iconic supergroup, Oasis has never been shy about its moist-eyed worship of the Beatles.

Brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher – respectively, Oasis’ frontman and chief songwriter -- have been widely panned for cribbing the Fab Four’s guitar solos, bass lines and piano parts in their songs; composing lyrics like “I’ll ride with you in your BMW/You can sail with me in my Yellow Submarine”; and they’ve been needled by no less than Paul McCartney for being so blatantly "derivative."  Liam even went so far as to name his son Lennon. (It's worth noting that Noel is, as of last year, no longer part of the band...for now.)

So when the "Champagne Supernova" singer decided to take a stab at making movies, his first project (touted Friday in an exclusive in London’s Daily Mail) came as a surprise to precisely no one. Gallagher will announce at the Cannes Film Festival later this month that his first film as a producer is a biopic chronicling the Beatles’  1967 to 1970 heyday, culminating in the group’s break-up.

The source material: Richard DiLello’s 1972 rock history, “The Longest Cocktail Party: An Insider’s Diary of the Beatles, Their Million Dollar Apple Empire and Its Wild Rise and Fall,” written by a self-described “house hippie” and former publicist for the group’s Apple Corps record label. DiLello was privy to all the stoned conversations and insane behavior surrounding the Beatles’ penultimate years together and the book is said to be a Gallagher brothers favorite, once described with characteristic Cockney brio by Noel as “[expletive] brilliant.”

Produced in conjunction with Revolution Films (prolific British filmmaker Michael Winterbottom’s U.K. production company), the announcement of Gallagher’s as-yet untitled movie arrives on the heels of first-time filmmaker Sam Taylor Wood’s John Lennon biopic “Nowhere Boy,” which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival but never landed Stateside distribution and faded from global cineplex screens having earned a meager $2.5 million.

Of course, to make a proper Beatles biopic, it stands to reason that Gallagher will need no small amount of Fab Four music -- the licensing for which is controlled by the Sony/ATV catalog, a massive trove of hit music co-owned by the estate of Michael Jackson. The King of Pop famously outbid McCartney to acquire the publishing rights to the Beatles’ music in 1985 for $47.5 million.

It might all seem, as McCartney says, "derivative," but if Liam could bring some of the same showmanship and energy to his filmic imitations of the Beatles that he does in his musical efforts, we could be in for an entertaining, um, magical mystery tour.

In the meantime, let the parlor games about future casting begin! Sam Worthington as Paul? Cillian Murphy as John? James Franco as Ringo?

-- Chris Lee

Photos: The Beatles. Credit: Apple Corps; Liam Gallagher. Credit: David Fitzgerald

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We thought Lindsay Lohan's life was full of drama--but it turns out that the people behind her new movie "Inferno" are creating some commotion of their own.

On Tuesday, we reported that Lohan has signed on to play Linda Lovelace in a new movie about the troubled life of the late '70s porn star. The word came from Wali Razaqi, who says he is a producer on the film. Razaqi also told us that Bill Pullman was attached to the project to star as Hugh Hefner, but now says he was "misinformed" and that the actor will not be in the movie after all, which Pullman's manager confirmed.

Ever since our story was published, we've also been bombarded by messages from two other filmmakers, Chris Hanley and Jordan Gertner, who say they've never heard of Razaqi and that they are the rightful producers on the project. Razaqi maintains he is a producer on the film and says his company's name has been on the "Inferno" script that's been sent around town for months.

The film's director, Matthew Wilder, says Razaqi is an old friend who has been involved with the movie, but says Hanley and Gertner are the "bona fide" producers.

This all sounds like a messy producer squabble to us -- one which we'll leave up to the Producers Guild of America to arbitrate down the road -- although it does highlight the chaos of the indie-film world, where even a seemingly innocuous word like producer can be a relative (and loaded) term.

The important point in all of this is that Lohan will star in the project. Perhaps ironically, for once it's her movie -- and not the actress herself -- that's creating a stir.

--Amy Kaufman 

Photo: (From left) "Deep Throat" star Linda Lovelace and Lindsay Lohan. Credit: AP Photo/File.

A decade after they returned in Tim Burton's remake, the apes are getting another fresh start.

Fox announced Thursday that "Rise of the Apes," a reprise of the studio's "Planet of the Apes" franchise, is coming next summer.

The studio had been known to be developing a new version of the oft-told tale, this time with Peter Chernin's production company and Rupert Wyatt, director of the Sundance prison drama "The Escapist." Now, the studio says it will move forward, with a notion to push production and release the Wyatt film next June 24.

It's the second big-budget 2011 movie that Fox has scheduled in the last week, after its announcement several days ago of "X-Men: First Class," and it ensures that a six-week period next spring and summer is going to be rife with sequels and franchises, including "Mission: Impossible," "Pirates of the Caribbean" and "Green Lantern."

June 24 is also the release date for "Cars 2," suggesting that Fox won't be pursuing family or kiddie audiences with this one, lest you thought they would.

The selling point here is that the production will use Weta, the company that did a lot of effects work for Fox's "Avatar." Not many details yet on the plot, though the studio said it would be set in present-day San Francisco (maybe at the end they’ll discover they were on a distant planet the whole time).

The studio also said it would be "a reality-based cautionary tale, a science fiction/science fact blend, where man’s own experiments with genetic engineering lead to the development of intelligence in apes and the onset of war." Sounds good from this distance, though let's hope the apes aren't blue.

-- Steven Zeitchik

(Follow me on Twitter.)

Photo: Charlton Heston in the original "Planet of the Apes." Credit: 20th Century Fox

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EXCLUSIVE: Few things gets women filmgoers going like watching Jason Statham tear it up on the big screen.

Now it looks like they'll have yet another chance -- with a twist.  In a project that has to be one of the more unusual marriages in the history of film collaborations, Statham is joining with producer Lawrence Bender and the  auteur Boaz Yakin for a new thriller called "Safe."

Yakin has been responsible for a number of commercial movies -- like "Remember the Titans," which he directed, and the upcoming Jake Gyllenhaal action epic "The Prince of Persia," which he co-wrote. But he's also dabbled in artier fare, like an edgy Sundance movie called "Death in Love" from a few years back.

Bender is best known as the longtime producer of Quentin Tarantino, most recently producing his "Inglourious Basterds." All of which makes a collaboration with Statham, who again plays the action card in the upcoming "The Expendables" all the more notable, weird and interesting.

Statham has to be the hardest-working actor, action or otherwise, out there right now -- it the last few years alone he's starred in movies in the Crank and Transporter franchises and one-offs like "Death Race" and "The Bank Job." He'll also be in upcoming action tales "Blitz" and "The Killer Elite."

"Safe" is one of the projects that international film sales and financing company IM Global, which announced this morning that it is receiving a significant investment from Reliance Big Entertainment, will be taking to the Cannes market. It will be a busy time for IM Global, which will also sell John Cusack's thriller "The Factory" and a Kevin Costner passion project with echoes of "Inglourious Basterds" at the festival. The company should see plenty of interest on those, as well as on "Safe." Foreign distributors go almost as crazy for Statham as the women do.

--Steven Zeitchik

(Follow me on Twitter.)

Photo: Jason Statham at "The Bank Job" premiere in Sydney. Credit: Rick Rycroft / AP

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As Lindsay Lohan's tabloid troubles continue to create a vortex of disaster, there's one type of personality dragged into Lohan's troubles that doesn't get much ink: the directors who've had to work with (or around) her.

Perhaps no one better embodies an instance of Lohan collateral damage  than Chris Sivertson. A young genre director who showed nothing but promise after his gritty thriller "The Lost" drew a slew of accolades a few years ago, Sivertson found himself in movie jail after the release of his next film, "I Know Who Killed Me," which starred Lohan.

You can't blame studios for not wanting to give Sivertson another shot after "Killed Me," a muddled mush of a mystery about dark secrets, brutal beatings and identical twin sisters.

But you can't blame Sivertson for the mush, either. Lohan, who actually played the two lead roles, built a veritable skyscraper of trouble on the set, with numerous stints in rehab and other breakdowns. A shoot that was supposed to take a little more than a month lasted four months. "Most days we wouldn't know what happened [with her]," Sivertson recalls. "We just found out that day." Forget quality cinema -- it was a Herculean challenge just to get the film made. "At some point it became 'how can I complete the movie.' That was my one and only goal: not to have it fall apart." (Sivertson's general tenor, it should be noted, was that he sincerely liked Lohan and working with her and doesn't want to point fingers at anyone but himself for the final product.)

For his climactic scene, in which Lohan's characters figure prominently, Sivertson didn't have the star on set. He tried to postpone the shoot but finally couldn't delay it anymore. So he located his inner MacGyver: He shot the scene with a body double and then grafted on Lohan's face in post-production.

Actor and Sivertson collaborator Marc Senter, who planned to spend just a weekend on set but got drawn into the drama, noted dryly: "It was an interesting experience" (though he, too, says he genuinely likes Lohan and was touched one day when he walked into her trailer and found the actress watching Sivertson's "The Lost".

The director indeed got through it, but the movie, a mid-budget thriller, flopped, drawing poor reviews and grossing only $7 million.

Now Sivertson is trying to get back in the game. He's written and is getting set to direct an independent drama called "Brawler," about the underground culture of fighting on shipping boats off the coast of New Orleans. Senter will star, as will a fighter-cum-actor named Nathan Grubbs. The story concerns two brothers, both fighters, of different temperaments and styles. Sivertson crafted the story out of the raw material of real-life fighters whom he's spent months hanging out with on the Mississippi.

But after a Lohan-class disaster, it's a twisty road to respectability. Unable to find a studio who was willing to make the movie or the money from an already strapped financing world, Sivertson, Senter and Grubbs rustled up money for the microbudget (it will cost less than $1 million) by going to some wealthy individuals in and around New Orleans.

The movie does seem to have the requisite commercial elements, with mixed martial arts and other types of stylized fighting only gaining in popularity with young audiences. And one gets a genuine sense of enthusiasm from everyone involved with the project. They're getting to make a movie, and on their own terms. Still, had Lohan's life taken a different turn, Sivertson's career might have too.

So would the director have handled the Lohan situation differently, perhaps by not casting a potential source of trouble in the first place?

"I look at an actor who's had a difficult past on a case-by-case basis. A filmmaker just needs to sit down with them more than once and  get to know what their goals and priorities are." One only hopes producers on Lohan's new film make a similar calculus.

--Steven Zeitchik

(Follow me on Twitter.)

Photos: Lindsay Lohan. Credit: Julien M. Hekimian / Getty Images. "The Lost." Credit: Anchor Bay

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Just when we thought we'd gotten our fix after a George Clooney-filled awards season, the actor pops up in yet another new movie.

This time, he's starring in a thriller called "The American," the Anton Corbijn movie that's based on the 1990 Martin Booth novel "A Very Private Gentleman." Clooney plays Jack, a professional assassin who heads to the Italian countryside after a recent job in Sweden that went badly. In Italy, he decides he's going to get out of the business after -- of course -- one last gig. All this is complicated by  his friendship with a local priest and romance with a beautiful but suspicious Italian woman.

Physically, it's a different look for Clooney than we've seen of late in films like "Up In the Air." He's clearly meant to look older and tougher, with his gray hair cut short and a tattooed chest. It's also a return to a more serious role for the actor -- there's not a whole lot of easy banter delivered with that winning grin .

While the plot itself seems vaguely predictable -- hard-edged, closed-off guy opens his heart for sexy temptress, potentially causing his downfall -- the trailer still intrigues us. Director Corbijn seems to have made a movie that's visually appealing, with its cobblestone streets contrasting nicely with its frozen forests. There also seems to be a nice balance struck between the probing dramatic scenes and those with sleek guns and action.

-- Amy Kaufman

Photo: George Clooney stars in "The American." Credit: Focus Features.

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By now it's becoming a ritual as familiar as chilly weather and early turkey shopping. Summit announced late Tuesday that it would follow a pattern with "Breaking Dawn" that worked well for two other movies in its "Twilight" franchise: It would bring out the film the week before Thanksgiving, announcing the date of Nov. 18, 2011, for its release of the Bill Condon-directed film.

The surprising news here is that the movie, which will likely shoot in the fall, won't be accelerated to come out next summer (as the third film, "Eclipse," will when it's released in June). Instead, Summit will wait another five months to bring out "Dawn" -- which means it will be nearly 18 months between the release of the third and fourth movies in the franchise, the longest layoff since "Twilight" began. (While Summit said in the announcement that it wouldn't confirm a fifth film carved out of the latter part of the "Breaking Dawn" novel -- which furthers the mythology of Bella, Edward, Jacob and everyone else you've either devoured or struggled to avoid lo these many months -- it would be almost shocking if they didn't do just that.)

It's hard to know what's motivating the 17-month lag. Talent schedules would seem to be a factor, but almost as likely, especially given the fifth-movie talk, is that the fourth and fifth films would need to be shot back-to-back -- which, depending on how it's shot and edited, could require more time.

Will fans tolerate the long hiatus? The logic until now has been to push the movies forward at an accelerated clip to generate and play off fan interest. By the time June rolls around, three movies will have come out over a 19-month period. But for reasons either creative or financial, it will be another 17 months before the next one hits. That lag could further stoke anticipation among Twihards -- or it could cool interest.

--Steven Zeitchik

(Follow me on Twitter.)

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EXCLUSIVE: As negotiations between The Weinstein Co. and Disney continue to wear on over the Miramax slate and library, the New York-based film company is forging ahead with the business of developing and making movies.

Dimension Films, the genre label run by Bob Weinstein, is making a deal to develop "The Mummy Archives," described as a more artful and modestly budgeted version of "The Mummy," the insanely lucrative Brendan Fraser franchise.

The film will focus on several young people who are haunted by a mummy curse, with the action playing out very much in the unseen realm, as both the audience and the characters frequently experience the effects of the curse without seeing it explicitly.

The project comes with some appealing names: Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego, a young Spanish genre director who attracted quite a bit of heat a couple years back for his Spanish-language thriller "The King of the Hill" ("El Rey de la Montana," which the Weinstein Co. released in the U.S.), is in final negotiations to write the screenplay and direct the film. Douglas Wick, the veteran producer behind mega-hits such as "Gladiator," generated the idea and is in final negotiations to produce the film through his Red Wagon Entertainment banner.

In its 11 years of existence, Universal's "Mummy" franchise has generated more than $1.2 billion in global box office across three films. But those movies are CG-dependent and pricey to make, and in the wake of "Paranormal Activity," studios are looking for the big breakout that doesn't cost big money (including companies like Dimension that have always been budget-conscious). The budget for "Mummy Archives" is expected to be in the $5-million range, a number that allows for some lean and mean storytelling but isn't high enough to spook anyone.

--Steven Zeitchik

(Follow me on Twitter.)

Photo: El Rey de la Montana. Credit: The Weinstein Company

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After all the back and forth between Matthew Vaughn and "X-Men: First Class," the director is not only in, but Fox is moving quickly on the project. So quickly, in fact, that the movie will be in theaters in just over a year.

Fox confirmed Vaughn's attachment today and said that the film will begin shooting this summer (!) in time for a June 3, 2011, release. The movie basically hits reset on the franchise by going back to the twentysomethings who became the superheroes we later knew, "Star Trek" for the spandex set. So casting for said twentysomethings is likely to go into overdrive; if you're a fan of an up-and-comer (or represent one) these will be good and busy times.

All that is positive news for fans, but it really fills up the late spring release calendar for next year. "Mission: Impossible IV" comes out just one week prior to the "X-Men" release date, and the new "Pirates of the Caribbean" is set for release just two weeks before.

As for the Hollywood back story, apparently all of Vaughn's hesitations and the studio's gyrations are resolved; no quote from Vaughn in the statement, but Bryan Singer, who is one of the producers, says  that Vaughn has "a deft hand with multiple characters and storylines, and a great love of the X-Men universe."

From not having a director to starting production on a big-budget action movie in a matter of months-- it's almost like the anti-"Moneyball."

--Steven Zeitchik

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Photo: "X-Men." Credit: 20th Century Fox

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And they say film criticism is losing its relevance. The Village Voice reviews Thomas Balmes' upcoming "Babies" -- the documentary that tracks infants in different regions of the world -- in a kind of Dadaist (or maybe it should be Gagaist) high-concept piece that kind of says nothing and everything at the same time.

"Babies," the Voice writes. "[B]abies babies babies babies-babies Babies, Babies babies babies babies babies babies babies babies babies. (Babies, babies babies babies babies, babies Babies Babies babies babies babies babies babies babies, babies babies babies babies babies babies babies babies babies babies babies.) Babies babies babies Babies babies Babies babies babies babies Babies babies babies Babies Babies, Babies babies babies babies Babies, Babies, Babies, babies Babies babies babies babies, babies, babies, babies, babies, babies babies."

It's a brilliant marketing move, releasing a movie virtually everyone in the world can relate to in some way and doing so on Mother's Day, no less. But the Voice review has its truth, as the trailer below shows. Or, as this astute review on Huffington Post puts it -- in slightly more adult language -- "Sure, they're cute. But what's the point?"

-- Steven Zeitchik

(Follow me on Twitter.)