James Franco, with, perhaps a co-star from “127 Hours.” 

When the Toronto International Film Festival announced its first group of films, many people were disappointed that Danny Boyle’s “127 Hours” wasn’t on the list. The good news is that Toronto will still add to its list. The even better news is that the film has an official release date from Fox Searchlight Pictures: November 5th. Mark your calendars accordingly–well, as best as you can, as I guess this is probably going to be a slow rollout beginning in major cities.

Here’s the synopsis from Fox Searchlight:

127 HOURS is the true story of mountain climber Aron Ralston’s (James Franco) remarkable adventure to save himself after a fallen boulder crashes on his arm and traps him in an isolated canyon in Utah. Over the next five days Ralston examines his life and survives the elements to finally discover he has the courage and the wherewithal to extricate himself by any means necessary, scale a 65 foot wall and hike over eight miles before he is finally rescued. Throughout his journey, Ralston recalls friends, lovers (Clemence Poesy), family, and the two hikers (Amber Tamblyn and Kate Mara) he met before his accident. Will they be the last two people he ever had the chance to meet? A visceral, thrilling story that will take an audience on a never before experienced journey and prove what we can do when we choose life.

Personally, I am always up for a good expedition disaster story, so this one is on my list. You know what would be great, though? If James Franco won an Oscar for this, because I can’t even imagine what his Oscar speech would be like. Would he give the speech he was supposed to give at USC (or was it UCLA) before some killjoys decided he wasn’t a serious enough person? Would he read poetry? Would he do a scene from “General Hospital”? Would he give thanks in mime? Franco is one of the few people in Hollywood these days who is interesting and unpredictable, but not in an “he just got arrested again” kind of way. He’s fun and not PR-managed to death.

Boyle, of course, has an Oscar for directing from “Slumdog Millionaire.” Nice guy, but not as entertaining as James Franco.

Josh Hutcherson, teen star, production kingpin.

Variety reports that teen actor Josh Hutcherson will star in and executive produce “Detention,” a teen-horror comedy. Joseph Kahn and Mark Palermo wrote the script; Kahn will direct. Kahn’s other directing credit is “Torque.”

“Detention” is about “teens who must survive their final year of high school. Standing in their way is a slasher-movie killer who has seemingly come to life.” Dane Cook is also set to star. I’m not sure whether he is playing the slasher who kills movies, a teacher, or a student who has had a little trouble nailing down that diploma. Hutcherson presumably will play a teen.

Hutcherson is currently in theaters in “The Kids Are All Right.” He’ll begin work on “Detention” in the next few weeks, squeezing it in before doing the “Journey to the Center of the Earth” sequel. I’m not sure what he is doing to earn his exec producer credit on “Detention.” Probably analyzing budgets, perhaps making some deals for foreign rights and distribution overseas. Intervening in casting sessions to find a girlfriend. You know, the usual. 

We’ve known a Total Recall remake is on the cards since February 2009. Why is there a need for such a project? There isn’t, let’s face it. But it’s happening nevertheless.

In June 2009 we found out Kurt Wimmer was writing the screenplay for this new adaptation of Phillip K. Dick’s We Can Remember It for You Wholesale. And now it looks as though we’ve also found our director.

According to the Heat Vision blog, Len Wiseman is currently in negotiations to direct the Total Recall remake. Wiseman is best known for Live Free or Die Hard and Underworld, which is a mixed bag to say the least.

I expect Wiseman to do a good job with this, but that doesn’t mean the whole Goddamn project isn’t potty in the first place. A remake of a film from 1990? A remake of a film that still stands up to scrutiny today? A remake of a film regarded as one of the best in its genre? No thanks.

Disney has sold Miramax, but not to Bob and Harvey Weinstein as many had hoped. Instead, a group of investors led by construction executive Ronald N. Tutor and CEO of Colony Capital Thomas J. Barrack Jr. have bought Miramax through a company called Filmyard Holdings.

Disney was thought to have killed Miramax off in January, making it a sub-division of Walt Disney Studios. In fact, Disney began looking for a buyer for the art house studio, and the Weinsteins were in the hunt.

The Weinsteins founded Miramax in 1979 and turned it into a highly-successful studio before selling up to Disney for $80 million in 1993. The brothers moved on to form The Weinstein Company, but still held a place for Miramax in their hearts.

The Weinsteins didn’t feel the $600 million plus Disney wanted for Miramax was a fair price, but someone else clearly did. I guess we now need to wait and see what the future holds for Miramax in the hands of its new owners.

Vince Vaughn will enter Cub enemy territory with “Old St. Louis.”

Deadline reports that Vince Vaughn is close to signing on to star in “Old St. Louis,” a film to be directed by David O. Russell, who also wrote the script. Universal will put up some money and distribute and Vaughn and his sister Victoria Vaughn will produce via their Universal-based Wild West Picture Show Productions.

“Old St. Louis” is about “a traveling salesman who has been an absentee father, and how his life changes when his daughter becomes part of his life.” Wow, hasn’t this story been done a million times before? “The Game Plan” comes to mine. There’s even a little bit of this tired old storyline in “Despicable Me.” Be that as it may, Vaughn will play the salesman and Chloe Moretz has been rumored for the daughter role. So have other actresses in her age range; Deadline didn’t specify who else. So I guess that means we’re dealing with a young teen here, as opposed to a little girl?

Russell would do this film as his follow up to ”The Fighter” with Christian Bale and Mark Wahlberg. Vaughn is currently working on “What You Don’t Know,” an infidelity comedy (come on honey, can’t we just laugh about this and forget it?) with Kevin James, directed by Ron Howard.

My only question in regards to “Old St. Louis” is about the title: why is it old? Should we assume it is a period piece? If so, would that be a first for Vaughn and Russell? If it is, that makes it a lot more interesting to me, but also makes it a harder sell, so I’m not getting my hopes up.

If the movie is scarier than this book cover, than del Toro will have done well.

Deadline writes that Guillermo del Toro’s next project will be an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s scifi/horror classic “At the Mountains of Madness.” The movie will be made in 3D for Universal Pictures. James Cameron is producing.

Lovecraft’s 1931 novella is about a geologist who finds an unknown chain of mountains during an expedition ot Antarctica. On the other side of the mountain, they find remains of life forms that show that humans may have come from a society of elder gods on another planet. Things get scary when the life forms regain life.

Del Toro’s plans for “Mountains” started out at DreamWorks in 2004, where del Toro brought the script he wrote with Matthew Robbins (which they are now rewriting). When del Toro signed an exclusive deal with Universal in 2007, he brought the project there. That was put on hold when he agreed to make “The Hobbit” movies…which he no longer is doing, of course.

Cameron’s involvement, though, is apparently what helped push Universal into taking the big step. Cameron has said that he’s not planning on tossing his name onto every 3D movie out there, aside from his already planned remake of “Fantastic Voyage,” but he made an exception for del Toro, who probably stunned him into participation with his un-Hollywood-like tendency to speak honestly, openly, and at great length.

Cameron’s participation is a big deal not just because of his name, but because of his experience working on large, epic, 3D movies. This is not intended to be a low-budget horror movie run through a 3D conversion process in postproduction. Au contraire, my friends. Del Toro thinks that people have gotten a little too comfortable with the idea of cheap horror movies. In an exclusive interview with ComingSoon at Comic-Con, the director said:

What ‘Mountains of Madness’ is is a throwback to something nobody does anymore, it’s tentpole horror,” he told us. “Everybody now understands horror as minimum investment, maximum return, and most of the time, they go at it, as production entities, with great cynicism, like ‘Let’s make it really gory or extreme’ and for a very low budget, and recuperate our investment, make money, all that. If you make a horror movie for half a million and it makes 4, they’re very happy. The studio sees horror movies as something they will not invest more than $30-40 million. ‘Mountains of Madness’ needs to be tentpole in the way that the tentpole movies of the past were, about $130 million.”

“I remember when I saw ‘Alien’ and I was absolutely blown away by it,” he continued. “I saw John Carpenter’s ‘The Thing,’ I saw Kubrick’s ‘The Shining.’ These were massive movies in a genre that normally doesn’t get massive movies. (With) ‘Mountains of Madness,’ there are two things that I’ve been battling all these years: period and R-rated, and a very very tough ending, so the studio is very scared of period obviously, he’s very scared of the budget and an R-rating, and the first conversation I always have is, ‘Does it have to be R?’ and I go, ‘Yes.’ ‘Does it have to be period? Does it have to be Antarctica?’ ‘Yes.’”

“‘Mountains’ is my dream and we’ve been pursuing it for thirteen years and I hope it happens.”

You can see the whole video of the interview with del Toro here, by the way. I’m sure he’ll have more to say.

ComingSoon says they are trying to get everything signed and agreed upon so pre-production can start, with plans to film next summer.

I know some people liked it but I really wasn’t keen on Superman Returns, the 2006 attempt to reboot the Superman franchise. And I wasn’t alone, with a lot of people seeing it as a fairly shallow and insipid movie.

One of the biggest criticisms was Brandon Routh’s performance as Superman himself. It was OK, but OK doesn’t cut it when Christopher Reeve’s take on the same character was so spot on 25 years previously. Wooden is the word most often used to describe Routh’s performance.

Superman is making a comeback, with Man Of Steel due to be released in 2012. And Brandon Routh is making a play for once again being cast as the titular hero.

According to Blastr, Routh was taking part in a round-table interview for Scott Pilgrim vs. The World when he said:

“I certainly would [love to play Superman again]. As much as I say I’m working to shake that off or shake it up, I certainly don’t want to extinguish or get rid of it because it was a great honor and I would love to be able to return as that character.”

Please God, no. It didn’t work, so why would anyone repeat the same mistakes again? Thankfully I can’t see David S. Goyer and Christopher Nolan, writing and producing respectively, would do so. Fingers crossed.

Sex and The City 2 really didn’t work. The critics weren’t keen, and box office takings weren’t exactly stellar, especially in the U.S. Which means the chances of a third film in the series, closing out a trilogy, is unlikely ever to happen.

Although the first Sex and The City film wasn’t for me, me being a heterosexual male and all, a lot of people did like it. Sure, the audience was a little narrow, mainly comprising of women between the ages of 20 and 40, but that didn’t matter.

However, the second one just didn’t seem to fly. The box office results suggest that a great many of the people who went to see the first one weren’t driven enough to go and see the follow-up. For shame.

Kirsten Davis, who plays Charlotte in the films, recently spoke to E! Online about the chances of Sex and The City 3 making an appearance. She said:

“I don’t think so, not that I know of. I wish it was so that we were continuing but I don’t know. We made [about] 300 million internationally. There was so much hype, not coming from us, but the media hyped it up and then they tore it down.”

“I could be wrong. Obviously there was a time when we thought there was no movie happening so you never know. But it is not looking great.”

Yeah, let’s blame the hype conjured up by the media. Hype which then failed to be sated because the film sucked. That’s clearly the media’s fault.

Having said that, though the likely end of the Sex and The City movies doesn’t bother me in the slightest, I’m sure many will be upset by the news.

Howlingly funny.

Risky Business reports that DreamWorks has bought a comedy pitch from Les Firestein called “Raised by Wolfs.” Steve Carell’s Carousel Productions will produce and Carell will star.

No wonder DreamWorks bought it. The pitch meeting probably went like, “Well, I have this comedy that Steve Carell has agreed to star in–” “Okay, we’ll take it.” “It’s about–” “Whatever, fine.”

Risky Business informs us (or at least me) that the spelling “Wolfs” is correct. It is not supposed to be “Wolves,” though one might read it that way if one glances very quickly at the title and one gets ones hopes up at the prospect of Carell playing an unmannerly feral manchild thrown into suburban life. It may still be about that, or it could just be a dysfunctional family comedy with Carell playing someone with the last name “Wolf.” Or it could be about both. DreamWorks is keeping it under wraps for now.

Carell’s Carousel (the name of the company was no doubt chosen so you could say/write those words together) has ”Missing Links,” “Hi-T,” and “Mail Order Groom” in development, as Carell lines up projects for his post-”Office” life (please, NBC, just cancel it…). He also has a a number of other projects connected with him outside of his own production company including “Get Smart 2″ (not looking forward to it), and two I’m really hopeful about–the “Untitled Civil War Comedy” and “Brigadier Gerard.” Can someone get those two going?

Cillian Murphy will have psychological fun and games in “The Retreat.”

Deadline reports that Cillian Murphy will star in “The Retreat,” a thriller that will mark the writer/director debut of editor Carl Tibbetts. Thandie Newton will play Murphy’s wife.

Well, there I go, I already gave away half the plot: Murphy and Newton are married. But wait! Their marriage is in trouble, so they rent a “remote island cottage to try to repair their marriage.

(At this point, you would not be wrong to say, “Rent a remote island cottage to repair their marriage? Do they think that guaranteeing they will be in a horror movie is the best way to save their marriage?”)

Back to the synopsis: “Then one day they find a biohazard-suited soldier washed up on the beach, who warns them that everybody on the mainland has been killed by an airborne virus. That’s when the psychological fun-and-games begin…”

Oh, psychological fun and games…that’s why this gets called a thriller instead of a horror movie. So the monkey in the wrench here is that we don’t know whether to believe what this soldier is saying, right? Well, I guess early in the movie they’re going to dispense with all power, internet, cell phones (this, by the way, seems like a recipe for ending a marriage; even the happiest couple can drive each other crazy if left with each other for a period of time).

Murphy’s got solid thriller cred from “Red Eye.” I always like him. That’s a nifty little movie, by the way, that you should see if you haven’t.  

The movie will film in Wales in September. Interestingly, David Frost, as in “Frost/Nixon,” is one of the producers. File that under “Who’d a thunk it.”