King of destruction Roland Emmerich will be taking on Shakespeare for an upcoming project.

Turning his back on the CGI laden disaster-fests that he’s used to, Emmerich will turn the life of the bard into a thriller starring Rhys Ifans, Vanessa Redgrave and David Thewlis.

Empire spoke to the director and he explained his take on the life of our most influential literary figure.

“It’s a mix of a lot of things: it’s an historical thriller because it’s about who will succeed Queen Elizabeth and the struggle of the people who want to have a hand in it. It’s the Tudors on one side and the Cecils on the other, and in between [the two] is the Queen. Through that story we tell how the plays written by the Earl of Oxford ended up labelled ‘William Shakespeare’.”

So apparently Shakespeare stole the work of somebody else, rubbed out the name at the top and claimed them as his own. Right.

“We have Vanessa Redgrave as Queen Elizabeth; David Thewlis as William Cecil, old and young; and Rhys Ifans as The Earl Of Oxford. It’s a true English cast and I’m really proud of it. There’s 12 main characters and 20 or 30 other characters, and each of the characters is really good.”

To be honest, I’m not super pleased that Emmerich is the one behind this film but only time will tell.

Goofball filmmakers, the Farrelly brothers, are recruiting cast members left and right for their next feature, Hall Pass.

The There’s Something About Mary directors have cooked up a script in which two guys are given the chance to have an affair by their wives. Things look good until the girls start to play away too.

Previously announced cast members are Amanda Bynes, Owen Wilson, Jenna Fischer and UK funnyman Stephen Merchant. Now The Hollywood Reporter has announced that Anchorman star Christina Applegate and Charmed’s Alyssa Milano will also star in the project in 2011.

Some people believe that Bobby and Peter Farrelly might have lost their touch with their last few movies not quite hitting the mark, but things seem to be shaping up for a comeback with Hall Pass.

Now that all the hoo-ha of the BAFTA’s has died down and while we’re waiting patiently for the Oscars, we can still get a movie award fix with the Jameson Empire Awards.

Aside from the usual prizes being doled out, Empire also like to pick out the best genre films of the season including thriller, comedy and sci-fi/fantasy movies.

They also do something a little different to the BAFTAs and Oscars which is that they look at short movies that the general public have made. Wondered what Jerry Maguire would like if it was only a minute long? Click here and you’ll see last year’s winning entry in the ‘Done In 60 Seconds’ category.

Unlike the bigger award ceremonies, you can vote for the winners over at the official Empire site. Here’s a rundown of the nominees:

BEST NEWCOMER
Carey Mulligan (An Education)
Aaron Johnson (Nowhere Boy)
Sharlto Copley (District 9)
Anna Kendrick (Up In The Air/ New Moon)
Katie Jarvis (Fish Tank)

Do It!

When I hear stories of revamps and re-tellings, I groan like a dying walrus. This is usually because a good movie is being remade just for the money.

What Hollywood should be doing instead is remaking bad films into good ones, and it looks like that’s what’s going to happen with Flash Gordon.

You might be screaming, ‘No, no, Flash Gordon’s awesome!’ but when was the last time you watched it? Exactly. It’s a fun campy classic but let’s admit that it’s not the best interpretation of the original comic strips, something that The Crazies director Breck Eisner plans to rectify.

I’m fairly optimistic about this project as it looks like it’s going to be taking the story in a totally new direction, but is Eisner experienced enough to take on a project this big? His CV is short but includes Sahara starring Matthew McConaughey and and thriller Thoughtcrime, making The Crazies his biggest picture to date. Plus it will be his first foray into 3D filmmaking.

Eisner sat down to have a chat with sci-fi blog io9’s Meredith Woerner and revealed his plans for remaking the adventures of Flash.

“Flash Gordon is a project that I’ve been pursuing for years. I absolutely love that movie, and that strip. It’s at Sony, we have the writers on, we’ve done one draft. I’ve been brainstorming with them over the past couple months, when I finished post [for The Crazies].

“When you re-read Raymond’s strips, which were drawn from ’32 to about the mid-40s you can’t read them as a human being living in today’s world. You have to imagine living in a world pre-space travel, and the world of the 30s. It’s kind of a more naive view of the Universe.”

So will we see the characters we know and love?

“I can tell you there will be Hawkmen, there will be Lionman, [and] Ming will be in the movie. In a version that is going to take place on Mongo. I love the source material, so lots of it is going to be in it. I’m not rediscovering, I’m not recreating a take on his original material.”

Flash Gordon is slated for a 2012 release.

In the meantime, have a look at this trailer for the original. Permtastic!

I love it when stars say things they shouldn’t. Be it about their co-stars or their personal lives, I love a good slip of the tongue *wink wink*.

But I always get the giggles when actors bad mouth their own movies; it’s pure salty goodness.

Matthew Goode, star of Irish rom-com Leap Year, effectively bitch-slapped the movie when he described it as ‘turgid’. Ouch.

According to WENN, Goode said, “(The location) was the main reason I took it – so that I could come home at the weekends. It wasn’t because of the script, trust me. I was told it was going to be like The Quiet Man with a Vaughan Williams soundtrack, but in the end it turned out to have pop music all over it. Do I feel I let myself down? No. Was it a bad job? Yes, it was. But, you know, I had a nice time and I got paid.”

They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity but I think that’s pushing it a bit. I can respect your honesty Goode but you should be careful about getting a reputation as a blabbermouth.

“Because of the way my repartee comes out, people tend to think that I don’t care. Actually, it’s often just a result of my being in a situation where I’m embarrassed about having to talk about a film which I don’t think is that brilliant – but obviously I can’t say that.”

Too late. My review comes out later this week and surprise, surprise, I agree with Goode.

Talking to MTV.com, Helena Bonham Carter dished on what it was like filming her parts on the upcoming Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows.

The actress was doing press interviews for husband Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland but managed to give up a few details about Potter.

“The best bit about being Bellatrix in this one is also because I got to pretend to be Hermione, because Hermione takes polyjuice potion and gets to look like Bellatrix.”

Thank God. This is one of my favourite moments of the book and it sounds as if Helena had a lot of fun playing the scene.

“Rather than put Emma Watson in a helluva load of make-up they just said, ‘Now you go act like Hermione.’ That was fun, because I always wanted to be Hermione. It was great fun. I was looking at Dan and Rupert and they were treating me as if I was 17.”

But if you were getting excited at the prospect of seeing Helena in Deathly Hallows Part I, then you’ll be disappointed. She revealed that because the story is separated into two films, we won’t see Bellatrix until Part II in 2011.

Oscar winner Forest Whitaker is planning to get into the director’s chair for a pet project about the life of Louis Armstrong.

In an interview with BlackFilm.com Forest talked about the biopic he’s planning of the famous jazz musician.

“Next year in April I’m going to direct ‘Satchmo,’ the Louis Armstrong Biopic. I am going to play the character. I won’t play the whole of it, it starts when he’s born. But a couple of people will be performing the character.”

Forest’s had good luck with playing real life dictator Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland, but will he strike it lucky again with another big budget biopic?

It won’t be Forest’s directorial debut but it will his biggest film so far. He was previously in the driver’s seat for Waiting To Exhale and The First Daughter but it seems that nobody really noticed that he was the one directing.

“I haven’t cast the movie. I probably shouldn’t be talking about it because I’m still in the budgeting stages. I have ideas for casting, but I feel that as of now, every person I’ve approached to be on the crew who has read the script has attached themselves to it. I feel as though the same will occur with the actors because the roles are pretty amazing, really great characters. We’ll see.”

I’ve got faith in Forest’s acting abilities but it might come down to whether he can nail Louis’ trademark voice or not.

Rapper turned ‘actor’ Fiddy Cent is said to be going on a rigorous weight loss regime for an upcoming film in order to play a cancer stricken high school teen, according to TheBoombox.

First of all, Fiddy just should leave movies alone, and secondly, what the hell is he doing playing a teenager?

He’s 34, people! He can drop all the weight he wants but unless he can do a Benjamin Button and age backwards, I forsee a fail.

The film’s called Things Fall Apart and will see Fiddy (real name Curtis Jackson) to play a high school football player who gets cancer in his senior year. According to director Mario Van Peebles, Fiddy will have to lose 65lbs in order to get the right look of a cancer patient.

Judging by the other films on the rapper’s slate, he’ll have to bulk up almost immediately after finishing this project. He’s got Gun, The Ski Mask Way and Caught In The Crossfire coming up and I’m guessing a super skinny Fiddy just ain’t gonna cut it.

Anjelica Huston and Philip Baker Hall and have joined an untitled comedy about cancer, according to reports in Variety.

The project’s untitled because for some reason nobody wanted the original title ‘I’m With Cancer’. Can’t think why.

The movie’s going to be helmed by The Wackness director Johnathan Levine and will be the feature debut of screenwriter Will Reiser.

The plot is based on Reiser’s real life experiences of battling cancer over several years in his mid-twenties.

Huston and Baker will be joining James McAvoy, Bryce Dallas Howard, Seth Rogen and Up In The Air’s Anna Kendrick.

Rogen will produce with Superbad co-writer Evan Goldberg with shooting will start in Vancouver later this month.

*Growly voice* Justice never sleeps. Criminals think they’re above the law. Well, I am the law.

*Cough* Yeah OK Batman impressions may not be our forte but I had to give it a go when we heard that someone who tried to film The Dark Knight in a cinema has been prosecuted.

According to DigitalSpy, Robert Henderson from Missouri has been ordered to pay $24,738 (£15,982) in damages for selling a pirated copy of The Dark Knight on DVD. He’s also getting two years jail time. Ouch.

You see kids; crime does pay. It pays the people who got hurt by your crime when they drag your ass to court. Especially when those people are Warner Bros.

Mike Robinson of the MPAA said, “This is an appropriate sentence for a very serious crime, and we hope it will serve as a warning to would-be movie thieves that they will face severe consequences for engaging in these activities.”

Also known as ‘Suck it movie thieves!’