The Slate: Another Sucker, McConaughey Innuendo

• Recently the New York Observer wondered out loud why Warner Bros. was giving Zack Snyder another $100 mill to burn on his Watchmen follow-up. Now it looks like his budget for Sucker Punch might have been shaved a few nickels. The departing Amanda Seyfried (schedule conflicts!) is being replaced by Emily Browning as the lead in what’s been described as “Through the Looking Glass with child soldiers.” Let’s pause for the collective cry of “Who?” to stop echoing. She was in The Uninvited, where Roger Ebert described her as “ready for a Jane Austen role.” Whoops. (Entertainment Weekly)
• Squally’s favorite collection of animated muscles, Matthew McConaughey, is getting back into briefs. He’s set to play Mickey Haller, a penny-ante criminal defense attorney in legal thriller based on Michael Connelly’s The Lincoln Lawyer. Haller gets desperate when his wealthy “franchise client” may not be as innocent of murder as he appears. How far will he go? Will it be another Time to Kill? Answers on a postcard. (Variety)
• Tony Scott used to be your go-to guy for lesbian vampires. Then he became your go-to guy for gay flyboys. Then he became the go-to guy for lesbian bounty hunters. In-between he made movies with Denzel Washington. Now he’s keeping up the phallic symbolism and jumping trains. Scott will follow The Taking of Pelham 123 remake with Unstoppable, about an toxin-laden express headed for a CBD and Speed-like situations. If anyone can bring out the latent inversion to this tale, Scott can. (Hollywood Reporter)
• Queen Latifah is headed back into the plus-size rom-com zone, and as fans of Last Holiday, we couldn’t be happier. In Just Wright, she’ll play a physical therapist who falls in love love with an incapacitated basketball star. (We just typed that in as “psychic-al therapist,” which would make an even more interesting pitch.) The thought of Latifah’s hands stroking someone else’s abs is a little too much for our tiny brain to handle. Particularly if the basketball player is played by Sanaa Lathan. (MTV Blog)
• The Scarlet Letter hasn’t had the best luck at the pictures … please don’t click this. Can Emma Stone top Demi Moore? [That’s enough innuendo – Ed.] Easy A will, as the title implies, take Hawthorne’s tale and place it in a loose high school setting. The Superbad squeeze plays a girl whose alleged promiscuity leads to her being branded a slut. The big question: what teen actor could possibly essay Chillingworth? (Variety)

Your Questions Answered: Sucker Punch

Is Warner Brothers Really Giving Zack Snyder Another $100 Million?

The Slate: Reese Plays Ball, Amanda Doesn’t

• Reese Witherspoon let slip some info on the latest James L. Brooks film. She will play a “professional softball player” who is fought over by a white-collar executive and a pro ballplayer, who will be played by Paul Rudd and Owen Wilson (although not necessarily respectively!). Witherspoon said the improv-friendly writer/director had been working on the film “for about two years now and one day we’ll start filming!” Bill Murray is also due to make an appearance. (WENN)
• To lose one actress is unfortunate. To lose two looks like carelessness. So far, Sucker Punch is just unfortunate. Amanda Seyfried, she of Mamma Mia! “fame,” has decided there are better places to be then Zack Snyder’s “Alice in Wonderland with machine guns.” “Schedule conflicts” are being blamed, but maybe Seyfried got a whiff of Malin Ackerman’s Watchmen perf and decided Snyder’s feminine touch was best avoided. (Entertainment Weekly)
• Multi-hyphenate Andy Garcia unveiled his latest dream project Hemingway & Fuentes by noting that Anthony Hopkins was “loosely attached” to star as Ernest Hemingway. The film would look at the last years of the writer’s life and his relationship with Cuban fishing boat cap’n Gregorio Fuentes. Also navigating the ocean of booze mightbe Annette Bening as Hemingway’s wife, Mary. Garcia will co-write and direct. (Hollywood Reporter)
• In a small act of decency, Twilight sequel New Moon has staffed its Wolf Pack entirely with Native Americans. Smouldering alongside the Pattinson/Stewart axis will be Chaske Spencer, Bronson Pelletier, Alex Meraz, Kiowa Gordon and Tyson Houseman. The actors are of Lakota, Cree-Metis, Purepecha, Hulapai and Cree descent. Somewhere Jay Silverheels (Mohawk) is smiling. (Stepheniemeyer.com)
• Bryan Singer (X-2) has spent the week getting his ducks in a row. First it was reported that he was thinking of making a “hot revenge thriller project” with Mark Wahlberg. Now Fox has purchased the rights to comic book Freedom Formula: Ghost of the Wasteland. The futuristic graphic novel has jet-packs, genetic engineering and what sounds like a Matrix-style transformation of the world. Singer is producing and could direct. (EW/Variety)

Watchmen Post Mortem

Now that the weekend is over and we’ve had a chance to try and wash this glowing blue paint off (ammonia?), the accountants are sifting through the $55 million that Watchmen has taken in. Everybody else is trying to read the film’s future in the entrails. The quick take is that even that many sheckles is still considered a disappointment.

Why? Well, the movie opened up with a massive publicity blitz on a whopping 3600 screens. And there literally wasn’t anything else to watch that weekend. (Even the Los Bros Jonas movie tumbled 80%). Plus, there is the fear that any audience for an adaptation of the 1985 Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons graphic novel will have seen it on Friday and, sated, will be waiting for the upcoming DVD release, the rumored four-hour cut, and the opportunity to sit around naked in their glowing blue paint in the comfort of their own home. Did Alan Moore’s curse work? Will heads roll at Warner Bros.? The pundits have their say after the jump.