Welcome back to AP’s Comic-Con coverage. Here’s the highlights from Day Two of the San Diego Comic-Con.

Nicholas Cage made an appearance for his new film Drive Angry 3D. Patrick Lussier directed the movie, which looks to be a classic, violent revenge tale. Cage is one of my favorite actors and always looks for slightly different roles and this looks no different. Check out this short trailer:

Firstshowing.net has a great write-up of the awesome Tron: Legacy viral that took place over the past couple days in San Diego.

Robert Rodriguez’s Machete has had a big presence at this year’s Comic-Con. A new red-band trailer debuted, but even better was the Taco Truck. Stars Danny Trejo and Michelle Rodriguez were on the streets of San Diego handing out taco’s from a branded trailer. Now that’s a good marketing ploy.

Jackass 3D premiered some footage that apparently was ridiculously disgusting. If you are a fan of the series, you should stay tuned for more information, but this doesn’t interest me at all.

Another interesting film also debuted a trailer yesterday. Goon, produced by David Fincher and starring Clancy Brown and Paul Giamatti, looks like a pretty awesome animated film. Based on a comic series by Eric Powell, the story follows The Goon and his sidekick Franky as they battle the supernatural. I had never heard of this before, but check out this great clip/trailer:

During the Burn Notice panel, USA Network head Jeff Watchel announced that they were moving forward with a prequel movie starring Bruce Campbell. The film will focus on Sam Axe’s last mission as a Navy SEAL and is a very interesting move for the series. I didn’t expect such great news from this panel. In response Campbell said, “USA finally got their shit together.”

Frank Darabont showed off a first glimpse at his television series The Walking Dead. Produced for AMC, the series reportedly has an extremely high production value and should look amazing. I don’t know about you, but I think a zombie TV show should be one of the coolest things on TV. Make sure you watch this coming fall when the series debuts in October.

In contrast to the great reaction to The Walking Dead, Steven Spielberg’s new TV series, Falling Skies, was not as well-received. The series follows Noah Wyle and Moon Bloodgood as everyday people who are affected by an alien invasion. There are always high expectations for any project Spielberg is involved with, but the reaction has been lukewarm. Devindra Hardawar from /Film was not impressed. The footage isn’t available online so I can’t judge that, but this show looks to me like same-old, same-old. There’s nothing really new about it and I’m not looking forward to it.

Guillermo Del Toro is a very busy man nowadays. After day one’s surprise announcement that he would be writing and producing Disney’s The Haunted Mansion, the filmmaker debuted footage from another one of his horror projects, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark. Based on the 1973 TV movie, the film follows a young girl as she encounters various creatures after moving into a haunted house with her family. The footage screened at the panel got a great reaction, and we should be able to see the trailer in the next few weeks. And for those of you worried about the film being watered down, Del Toro had this to say, “We are not taking anything away from the original, and we are not fucking chickening out… we wrote and originally shot the movie for PG-13, and could do that without compromising the scares…But we were given a badge of honor. The MPAA came back and gave it a non-negotiable R for ‘pervasive scariness’.” So there you go, horror fans.

MTV Movies Blog was able to talk to Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman who are now writing the sequel to J.J. Abrams’ fantastic Star Trek reboot. While they were very quiet about plot details, they stated that each and every crewmember would get more screentime in the sequel, saying, “Now the whole family is there and you want to focus on them first. Before you worry too much about new characters, make sure you have them taken care of.”

Last but definitely not least is James Gunn’s Super. The movie stars Rainn Wilson as a man who dons a superhero costume in order to avenge his wife’s (Liv Tyler) murder. Ellen Page and Nathan Fillon co-star. I can’t wait to see this movie, which sounds like a low-budget, rawer version of Kick Ass with Dwight from The Office.

So that’s it for Day Two. The Marvel panel is starting in just a few minutes, so stay tuned for some big news.

It has been a long and tiresome hunting season for the Predator; two films and two rotten-to-the core crossovers later, and the titular alien menace is still being called up by Hollywood to don the ol’ metal faceplate and perm the dreadlocks. The good news for our alien trophy-seekers is that Nimrod Antal’s Predators is as close as they have come to a worthwhile fight since the original. Not as perfectly paced or creatively charged as John McTiernan’s 1987 action classic, Predators is still up for giving die-hard audience members a chase worth getting in line for.

Producer Robert Rodriguez has long talked up his concept for a third Predator film, with the humans being beamed directly to an alien game preserve where they could be hunted at leisure by faster, shinier, more menacing variations of the same sinister species that provoked Schwarzenneger all those years ago. As it turns out, this idea works well for rebooting the franchise and wiping away the sting of Predator 2 and the dual tragedy of Alien Vs. Predator and AVP: Requiem (cue snickering). The script even remembers those events from Predator 87, but mercifully it seems amnesiac on the rest of the lot.

Falling one by one out of the sky, a varied and mysterious team of death-mongers—Yakuza, death-row inmates, mercs, and a wayward scientist—find themselves in a place that looks similar to a jungle on Earth. Adjusting to their surroundings and each other, it isn’t long before the revelation of multiple moons and vicious, other-worldly fauna cause them to question exactly where in the universe they are.

When they start getting gruesomely picked off by shadowy creatures in the dark of the jungle, the movie ramps up and delivers the thrills and kills the faithful have been waiting for. Those looking forward to intergalactic bloodshed won’t be disappointed; spinal cords are ripped, green blood runs as freely as red, and there’s even time for some predator on predator violence. When it comes to full-bore mayhem, the contained hunt of Predators easily bests the near apocalyptic onslaught of other blockbusters.

The cast pulled together here does a commendable job of portraying individual grit and together as a team, begrudging endurance as a fighting unit. Danny Trejo, Alice Braga, and Topher Grace sound like an unlikely group, and that in many ways is the point. With Brody’s loner mercenary at the forefront, this eclectic assembly isn’t by accident.

The predators have rigged the jungle, rallied their alien bloodhounds, and even remembered to internally snag their prey by hand-picking not just for battle aptitude but for disparity that might detonate them from within. When Laurence Fishburne’s crazed survivor, too long hiding out in the jungle shows up, Antal and company explore another dimension to the picture that focuses on the predators themselves and the curious tribalism that defines their species.

As an action director I really dig the style of Nimrod Antal, but I’d much prefer to see him tackling films in his own country again, since his debut, Kontroll, is far more powerful and hard-hitting than anything he’s done over here. Antal is the very definition of a journeyman director, taking big gigs and doing a solid but often unremarkable job of them. He gets the pacing, the special effects, and the character interaction down perfectly, but he’s also not bringing anything extra or inspiring to the table. This is less his fault and more the work of the scripters who came before him and decided to write Predators so closely to the original film that almost any legitimate suspense or ingenuity has been wiped away.

The monsters are well designed, and the alien critters who run down the survivors for their Predator masters are believable and threatening. Breaking the predators into two camps, one an older, more worn down caste (the dude who fought Arnold was one of these) and the other a virile and more aggressive contingent, is pure fan boy pandering all the way. Here’s the thing, though. It works.

Adrien Brody, who seems miscast at first, gives his mercenary a welcome sense of cold humanity. Physically, he’s not as imposing as the big Austrian who tussled with these guys the first go-round, but he’s toned up not just his body but also his adrift nice-guy persona to give a turn as a man who doesn’t need to fight the predators with brawn if he can utilize his wits and the predators own cultural hang-ups against them. It’s never going to come down to a one on one fight this time, so Brody stacks the deck in another way, and it leads to the goofy fun third act that betrays the slow build of the earlier sections at the same time it’s giving us just what we want from a movie about alien game hunters tracking hapless human prey.

Rating: ★★★½☆ 

Last weekend Robert Rodriguez debuted a new poster and footage for his highly anticipated Predators, the latest addition to a sci-fi film franchise that began with Schwarzenegger in 80s.

Today, we have a full blown trailer for the movie, and it looks amazingly faithful to the spirit and sense of adventure of the original. In fact, this looks like the sequel we wanted all along.

Adrien Brody, Laurence Fishburne and Topher Grace may not initially sound like they belong in the arena with the galaxy’s most fearsome hunters, but once you get a look at Brody, grime-covered and sweat stained, battling it out with the titular beasties, any thought of improper casting goes out the window. Throw in the always welcome Danny Trejo as a gnarly warrior and it’s gonna be a good time for sure.

I’m personally digging Fishburne in the hardened survivor role. The plot isn’t anything amazing, and the Predator home world looks surprisingly like the jungles of the first film, but there’s an old school feel to the fx, the cinematography and even the acting style that suggests a return to the basics.

I’m guessing Nimrod Antal, the director, is more responsible for this than Rodriquez. Antal, the foreign filmmaker who gave us the exquisite Kontrol, and the serviceable American thrillers Armored and Vacancy, has an artist’s touch for gritty and believable settings.

Personally, this has just jumped to the very top of my summer must-see list.

What do you think? Adding an s  to the title worked wonders for Alien back in 79. What will it do here?

On Friday night fans at the South By Southwest festival in Austin, TX were treated to two trailers and one scene from the upcoming film, Predators. Produced by Robert Rodriguez, the film is a sequel to the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger film and stars Adrien Brody as Royce, a mercenary and leader of a group of warriors who come to realize that they have been brought to an alien planet as prey. The hunters become the hunted.

After the screening, Rodriguez hosted a live Q&A. While shying away from revealing any more plot details, concept art from the film was shown, as well as a working Predator head prop. During the discussion, Rodriguez said that he has no intention to release the film in 3D and he also promised that, “This would be the real sequel.”

On Saturday, Rodriguez, director Nimród Antal, and star Adrien Brody, sat down with the press for a short interview. Antal said that he wants focus on “the hunt” — the element that made the original work so well. He also said he put “a lot of thought into mood and tone” and vowed to keep the monster in the shadows for as long as possible.

Hopefully, Predators proves to be a return to the suspense of the original. There is a good chance it will, too, as the movie seems to be heavily influenced by “The Most Dangerous Game,” the famous 1924 short story by Richard Connell in which a hunter is hunted on a mysterious island.

Missed the footage at SXSW? Watch the sneak peek over at the official Predators site and keep an eye out for the trailer, which drops March 18th.

Predators hits theaters July 9th.

Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller’s Sin City truly felt like a breath of fresh air. It was visceral and fun, and stylistically true to the graphic novel source material in ways that no other adaptation had ever been before.

Then came The Spirit, which sort of put a damper on things. Frank Miller shot himself in the foot in a big way, and so he’s been talking up a sequel to Sin City in order to raise his own spirits, it seems. There have been rumors of the involvement of Johnny Depp, which can mostly be chalked up to fan outcry. However, no big steps toward actually beginning production have been taken.

Things are starting to get a little more concrete, though: producer Stephen L’Heureux says that not only will Sin City 2 start shooting toward the end of next year, but also Frank Miller will follow it by writing and directing an adaptation of his graphic novel Hard Boiled.

In case you’re unfamiliar, Hard Boiled is tonally very similar to Sin City, which deals with the rampage of a robotic tax collector. The series only spans three issues, so it’s likely we wont have to sit around and wait as long for Hard Boiled 2. Hopefully, Miller learned from his mistakes on The Spirit, because by all accounts, that film was supposedly garbage.

Says L’Heureux on Sin City 2:

“We got the project in turnaround from Warner Bros and Frank. It’s such a pleasure to work with someone like Frank Miller.”

It’s expected that Rodriguez will return to co-direct Sin City 2 with Miller after he finishes work on Spy Kids 4.

The infamous space Rastafarian will soon be setting his three red dot sights not only upon Danny Trejo, but also upon Adrien Brody (King Kong) and Topher Grace (Spiderman 3).

That’s right, director Nimrod Antal’s Predators, scripted and produced by Robert Rodriguez for Troublemaker Studios, seems to have gone off the deep end as far as casting decisions go — alongside Trejo, Brody, and Grace, we’ll also have Mahershalalhashbaz Ali, I Am Legend‘s Alice Braga and the UFC’s Oleg Taktarov.

The film will deal with a group of manly warriors (of which Brody is inexplicably a part) as they fight off a group of Predators, while the plot is thickened by Grace’s role as “an accountant-type whose unassuming facade masks a dangerous serial killer.”

This is definitely shaping up to be a project more akin to Rodriguez’s catalog than anything we’re familiar with in the past Predator series. It sounds like just the shot in the arm the series needs, too, after Alien vs. Predator: Requiem.

Predators starts shooting next month in Hawaii, then will move back to film in Austin, TX at Troublemaker, and will be released on July 9, 2010. More info on the film here at AtomicPopcorn.net as the project further de-cloaks.

Robert Rodriguez’s long-gestating Predator sequel that’s finally underway at his Troublemaker Studios is finally getting some details fleshed out, largely due to a script review by LatinoReview.com.

The sequel, entitled Predators (which seems to be a blatant nod of the head to James Cameron’s one-upping of Alien) not only has a solidified cast member — Danny Trejo of From Dusk Till Dawn and Heat fame playing “Cuchillo” — but the script has been reviewed and said to be “awesome … a bloody, hard-R, violent script reminiscent of the original.”

For a spoiler-filled review of the script, head over to our source and watch their video. Predators will begin shooting in Hawaii soon under the direction of Vacancy director Nimrod Antal, from a script by Robert Rodriguez, Michael Finch, and Alex Litvak. This script has been underway since the Desperado days, so let’s see if Predator finally has a worthy sequel on its hands.

One thing’s for sure — I think we can count on 100% less Danny Glover.

Everyone’s favorite, ultra-sexy science fiction goddess of the sixties is coming back to the big screen. The French comic turned science fiction erotica movie Barbarella is tip-toeing its way over into the remake sector, with writer Joe Gazzam penning the script. In addition, director Robert Luketic (The Ugly Truth) will hold the reigns on the picture. Originally, Robert Rodriguez was supposed to direct the flick, with Rose McGowan starring, but though that plan eventually fell apart it’s now back on the remake trail.

Dino and Martha De Laurentiis are both attached to produce, with no definite studio attached to the film just yet. They are still on the hunt to find someone to play the seducing female lead, at this point it could be anyone. The story is set in the 40th century, where we follow the adventures of the title character Barbarella. In the original film, Barbarella is tasked by the President of Earth with the retrieval of captive Doctor Durand Durand from the planet SoGo so he can, in turn, save the Earth.