The Twilight Saga: New Moon scored a whopping 5.8 million views in the 24 hours since its release — 4.2 million views on MySpace and 1.6 on MTV.

Since then, a couple of YouTube copies have scored another 5.4 million views combined.  Add up the subsequent views from MySpace and MTV, all the other YouTube copies, and all the other copies around the net, and I’m pretty sure everyone in the world has seen it at least eighty times.

It’s a decent trailer (basically just two early scenes from the movie awkwardly cut together), although I agree that the werewolf CGI looks a little Golden Compass-ish and not very frightening.  Read our first article (and watch the trailer) here.

Day-Lewis plays a famous film director struggling through his relationships with a ton of different women, including Marion Cotillard (his wife), Nicole Kidman (his muse), Penelope Cruz (his mistress), Judi Dench (his confidant), Kate Hudson (a journalist), Stacy Ferguson, a.k.a. Fergie (a whore), and Sophia Loren (his mother).

It’s based on a successful stage musical that was itself based on a different play that was inspired by Fredrico Fellini’s classic 1963 film 8 1/2.  Javier Bardem was set to star, but when he had to drop out thanks to too much on his plate, the production somehow landed the notoriously choosy and reluctant Day-Lewis.

All this is a lead up to say: watch the trailer.  It looks great.

Beastly, a re-telling of Beauty and the Beast, will star Hudgens in the Beauty role, who falls for an egocentric young man (Alex Pettyfer of Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker) who gets a curse placed on him by Olsen’s character that transforms him into “everything he despises.”  Like, a nerd?  Fat?  Could be funny.  Especially the thought of Olsen as the witch.

Hudgens also stars in another upcoming teen movie, Bandslam, which doesn’t exactly look like a stretch from High School Musical.  See the trailer here.

Stone plays a high school student who gets ostracized thanks to a rumor that she’s, uh, promiscuous.  She turns the tables by (somehow) using her status to start a war between the puritanical and the liberal sects of the school.

Of the adults, I’m guessing Lisa Kudrow and Stanley Tucci are on the liberal side and Patricia Clarkson and Malcolm McDowell are on the puritanical side, but it would be amusing if that was switched around.

Hopefully, the 26-year-old Gigandet and the 22-year-old Badgley won’t be cast as high school students opposite the almost-age-appropriate Stone (20 years old), but this is Hollywood, so they probably will.

As the title suggests, the movie also thematically ties in with The Scarlet Letter, that book that everybody hated in high school.

Carradine was found in a Bangkok hotel room; he was in Thailand shooting the movie.  Early reports claim the actor hanged himself.

Carradine appeared in well over 100 movies and at least 50 TV shows; in fact, his IMDb profile lists a whopping 222 acting credits.  Try finding an actor with more.

After reaching fame with Kung Fu, Carradine also starred in the cult hit Death Race 2000, but spent much of the ’80s and ’90s in TV roles and B movies.  That put him on Quentin Tarantino’s radar for Kill Bill, which temporarily returned him to the mainstream in 2003 and 2004.  Since then, if possible, he’d been even more prolific, alternating between B movies, supporting roles in theatrical releases (Crank: High Voltage), and TV show guest spots (Medium, Alias).

The Hollywood Reporter article that broke the news doesn’t have much info about the plot of the new movie, because the producers who want to make it — Roy Lee and Doug Davison of Vertigo Entertainment, and the original movie’s director, Fran Rubel Kuzui — aren’t quite sure either.

They know it won’t involve any of the supporting cast from the TV show: no Xander, Willow, Spike, or the rest.  They like the idea that “each generation has its own vampire slayer to protect it,” but they say it will be a remake/reboot, not a sequel or prequel.

Frankly, beyond “let’s make a Buffy movie again,” it sounds like they have no clue what they want to do.

Whedon has been known as the creative mind behind Buffy for so long that it’s hard to imagine it without him, even though Kuzui’s the one who retains the rights.  Of course, he has such a large fanbase (not just from Buffy but also from Firefly/Serenity) that his lack of involvement might spark more than a little outrage.  It’ll be very interesting to see where this goes.

This year’s movie, Whatever Works, got some good and some bad reviews when it premiered last month at the Tribeca Film Festival.  You can now check out the trailer to decide for yourself.  It has some legitimately funny moments, but it remains to be seen how well everything will tie together:

-The screenplay is currently still being written by Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky, two staff writers on The Office.

-All four original Ghostbusters: Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Ernie Hudson, and even Bill Murray — the main hold-out when Aykroyd was trying to get a third movie out in the ’90s — are on board for the movie, as is Sigourney Weaver, who appeared in the first two movies.  No concrete word on Rick Moranis yet, who also appeared in the original two.  (Apparently the four originals all had their interest renewed after recently voicing the Ghostbusters video game.)

-The story will place the original four Ghostbusters in a “mentor” capacity which will allow a new generation of Ghostbusters to be introduced.  Everybody’s saying, though no decisions have been made, that the new generation will be of the Seth Rogen/Paul Rudd/that-whole-gang variety.  Rogen said in an interview last year that he hadn’t been approached but was open to the idea.

-”There’ll be a whole new generation that has to be trained and a leader that you’ll all love when you meet her,” Aykroyd told the Guardian. “There’ll be lots of cadets, boys and girls who’ll be learning how to use the neuron splitter and the inter-planet interceptor - new tools to enable them to slip from dimension to dimension.”

-The other major rumor is that Harold Ramis (who directs this summer’s Year One) will step into the director’s chair once inhabited by Ivan Reitman.

The Ridley Scott production is filming in Bourne Wood in England, where they’ve built a couple of villages and a neat-looking fort.  Here are some choice photos; click each one for a bigger look:

MarketSaw just landed a spy photo of some heavy equipment from the set.  What you’re seeing is a mech that humans can climb inside and operate — at least, I think.  The script has been leaked here and there, but in general they’ve done a great job keeping plot details under wraps.

Three pics from The Twilight Saga: New Moon were just released via Entertainment Weekly.  The above shot features the director, Chris Weitz, while the other two are a typical shot of Bella and Edward (Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson) and a creepy shot of Bella and Laurent (Edi Gathegi).  Click on each one for a bigger look:

That’s somewhat better than Fox was expecting for Night at the Museum and a lot worse than Warner Bros. was hoping for Terminator Salvation, which some box office watchers had predicted would make upwards of $80 million over five days.

The reviews didn’t help: though buzz had actually been very good heading up to the film’s release, top critics and the Internet community both trashed Terminator Salvation.  The director of the film, McG, has got to be feeling queasy right now: he’s spent the past six months talking up the movie as though it would be his breakthrough film on the level of James Cameron’s original Terminator in 1984.

For Fox and Warner Bros., it’s quite a reversal over last summer, when Fox couldn’t get anything to hit — its lineup included D.O.A. flicks like The Rocker, Space Chimps, and The X-Files: I Want to Believe — and Warner Bros., which was riding high with The Dark Knight and Sex in the City.

At least Warner Bros. has the surefire Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince coming up.

Gives off a very Matrix/eXistenz/I, Robot vibe.  Which is to say, it looks pretty cool.  Check it out:

Unlike the recent Dragonball Evolution, though, it actually seems here that the look is working.  Check out the two stills, plus a photo from the set:

Universal, which split the costs of the film with the Weinstein Company, is apparently asking Tarantino to do another edit of the film before it’s released in theaters this August.

Conventional wisdom says we’ll be getting a shorter version than the two hours and twenty-seven minute cut that just premiered.  But according to Variety, Tarantino himself said he might add a scene, since his contract guarantees that he can deliver a film up to twenty minutes longer.

So, more of Brad Pitt talking in a ridiculously cartoonish accent: good or bad?

As you’ll see, the movie also stars Rachel McAdams as apparently the only non-maid woman in the movie, and Body of Lies‘ Mark Strong as the bad guy.  It opens this Christmas.

There will only be one winner at the box office this weekend, and it ain’t gonna be Dance Flick.

Terminator Salvation — made by Warner Bros. — comes onto the scene with a lot of good buzz and some great trailers.  Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian — made by Fox — is the sequel to a wildly ultra-successful family adventure extravaganza.

Warner Bros. and Fox are mortal enemies this year thanks to that whole Watchmen lawsuit.  And since Watchmen underperformed, both of them are still pretty sore about it.  So “a fight to the death” is not necessarily an overexaggeration of the stakes this weekend.

Salvation has gotten a lot of surprisingly negative reviews, but at last night’s debut midnight showings it scored an estimated three million bucks.  Battle of the Smithsonian’s title still is way too much of a mouthful — I had to look it up to make sure Night of the Museum, Battle at the Smithsonian, and Battle for the Smithsonian were all incorrect — and it might have fared better if it was released next month, when kids are safely out of school.

The box office predictors who are far smarter than I am are predicting a $90 million-ish five-day opening (today through Memorial Day) for Salvation and a $60 million-ish four-day weekend (tomorrow through Memorial Day) for Museum.  So in other words, they both win big, but Salvation gets the bragging rights.  Next week, we’ll see if that holds up.

Make sure to watch TEN clips of Terminator Salvation and one from Battle of the Smithsonian, hosted right here at Clevver.

I see someone finally figured out that Jacob might be more of a viable love interest if he cuts his hair.  With all you Team Edward crazies out there, though, he still never stood a chance, did he?

It’ll be his first writing/directing job on a full-length movie since Garden State.

The movie, in which Cameron Diaz is already set to star, follows a guy who loses his wingman and instead teams up with the “sharp-tongued woman he can’t stand,” played by Diaz, in order to (somehow) meet singles.

I wonder if they fall in love?

Diaz also has the thriller The Box, directed by Richard Kelly, coming up later this year.

What a lucky guy.

The Zookeeper, Kevin James’ follow-up to his surprise smash hit Paul Blart: Mall Cop, just added Rosario Dawson and Iron Man’s Leslie Bibb to its cast.

The Happy Madison production follows James as a schlubby zookeeper who gets dating advice from the animals he works with.

Yes, that plot description does sound just as stupid as Rob Schneider’s The Stapler, but on the plus side, it gives me a really good excuse to post pictures of Dawson and Bibb.

And despite rumors that Josh Hartnett would play Thor’s nemesis Loki, the role has gone to another unknown, Tom Hiddleston.  Hiddleston, who initially screen-tested for Thor, is a British actor who has yet to make one American movie.

The comic books followed mild-mannered med student named Donald Blake, who discovered that he was actually the titular Norse god, complete with the Viking helmet and giant hammer.

Aside from the stand-alone movie, which recently pushed its release date back from July 2010 to May 2011, Thor will also be part of the superhero team in The Avengers (along with Iron Man, Captain America, and possibly the Incredible Hulk), which is scheduled to open in May 2012.

Last week, X-Men Origins: Wolverine fell 69% from its opening weekend, but this week it leveled out nicely and dropped only 44% to $15 million.  It’ll end up with about $175 million, which is less than X2 and X3 but still more than the first X-Men.

Overall, the box office was up 5% from last year, laughing in the face of the economy.  It isn’t likely to slow down next weekend, when both Terminator Salvation and the Night at the Museum sequel rake in zillions of dollars.

It’s not a bad move, considering this is Disney’s first attempt at a hand-drawn cartoon since 2004’s blink-and-you-missed-it Home on the Range.  And it’s also not a bad move for them to go back to hand-drawn cartoons, since their non-Pixar computer-animated movies, Chicken Little, Meet the Robinsons, and Bolt, have struggled to make half the amount of money that the smallest Pixar movies make.

But it doesn’t look that great.  At least based on the one scene from the film we get in this trailer.  Take a look and judge for yourselves:

We already featured one Depp-only poster, but here’s a new set featuring all three.  The film, directed by Collateral’s Michael Mann and starring Depp as infamous gangster John Dillinger, comes out this July 4th weekend.

Hey, tweens who are skimming this article before jumping to the Robert Pattinson article below: I know you don’t know who Frank Sinatra is, but you need to trust me: this is a pretty big deal.

Martin Scorsese — who you might remember directed The Departed, the best movie of 2006 — will direct Sinatra, a big-budget biopic about singer and actor Frank Sinatra.

Think Ray and Walk the Line, only, thanks to Scorsese’s involvement, much bigger than either.  Universal Pictures will make the film, which is being written by Field of Dreams‘ Phil Alden Robinson.

No word yet on casting, but as MTV notes, Scorsese has got to be seriously considering Leonardo DiCaprio.  His last four big screen movies — including the upcoming period crime drama Shutter Island — have all starred DiCaprio.

In Unbound Captives, he will star as Rachel Weisz’s son in the 1859 American frontier.  After his father is murdered, he gets kidnapped, and a frontiersman (Hugh Jackman) comes to Weisz’s aid to help stage a rescue.

In other words, it sounds like it could be a really well-done adventure flick starring three extremely attractive people.

The screenplay is a pet project of actress Madeline Stowe (12 Monkeys), who wrote it and will direct.  In order to retain creative control, she reportedly turned down a five million dollar offer that would’ve had Ridley Scott directing and Russell Crowe starring.

He’ll play a father who reunites with his twentysomething son and discovers the son has the (apparently non-supernatural) ability to size people and situations up immediately.  Naturally, the father tries to use his talents in the stock market, or something.  The plot’s a little fuzzy, but hey, it sounds better than 88 Minutes.

Stephen Gaghan (Traffic) wrote the screenplay, and according to Reuters the production is seeking “younger actors, some with tween appeal” to star as the son.  Al Pacino and Adam Brody?  Al Pacino and Zac Efron?  It could happen.  Al Pacino and Joe Jonas?  I hope not.

Prior to its opening last Thursday, the cut-off point that was being whispered around Hollywood was $50 million.  If Star Trek made less than that in its opening weekend, it would fail to pull in anyone except hard-core Trekkies.  If it made more, it was in the clear.

The official opening weekend numbers? $79.2 million.  Mission accomplished.

Since then, J.J. Abrams flick has held up well and is currently about to hit the $100 million mark — less than a week after its release.  It’s also made instant stars of Chris Pine, who plays Kirk, and Zachary Quinto, who plays Spock.  The two — along with Leonard Nimoy — popped up on SNL last week, while Nimoy and Quinto also showed up on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

It’s like we’ve suddenly entered an alternate universe where “Live long and prosper” is no longer what someone says right before you steal their lunch money.

Slade directed the 2007 vampire flick 30 Days of Night, as well as the mega-disturbing Ellen Page/Patrick Wilson indie Hard Candy.

Summit looks to be going with a one-director-per-film rule, which is reasonable given the planned release schedule: New Moon, directed by Chris Weitz, comes out this November, and then Eclipse comes out the following summer, only seven months later.

By the way, if you haven’t seen it yet, check out the official photo and our video feature on New Moon’s Wolf Pack.

Mirage also produced 2007’s computer-animated TMNT movie.  It was a relative success, making more than $50 million, but it left them wondering whether they should make a direct sequel or go for a different type of reboot.

Producer Scott Mednick says the movie will draw from the original set of Ninja Turtle comic books by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, and that it may use “face replacement technology” — hinting that the turtles would be guys in costumes (as in the three 1990-1993 movies) but with CGI faces.  (I believe a similar thing was done with the upcoming Where the Wild Things Are).

What do you think the chances are that all five happen within the next few years?

Rodriguez’s line-up:

Predators
A re-boot of the Predator series that he will apparently both direct and produce.

Machete
A full-length version of the fake trailer included in Grindhouse’s theatrical release, which starred Danny Trejo as the title character and Cheech Marin as a gun-toting priest and sported the tagline “This time, they f***ed with the wrong Mexican.”

Nerverackers
An original sci-fi movie Rodriguez has had in mind for a few years, that’s currently set up at Dimension Films with an expected 2010 release date.

The Jetsons
Not much is known other than his name is attached.

Sin City 2
Supposedly, it will be based on Frank Miller’s Sin City story “A Dame to Kill For”, which sees Marv (Mickey Rourke) and Hartigan (Bruce Willis) team up.  But Rourke’s schedule has gotten pretty busy and recently said “I don’t know, nor do I care” with regards to Sin City 2’s status.

Frankly, I’m most curious about Nerverackers, if only because the title is so cool.

The new version stars Nip/Tuck’s Dylan Walsh, with the standard array of TV actors in the supporting cast: Gossip Girl’s Penn Badgley, Law & Order: SVU’s Christopher Meloni, and Once and Again’s Sela Ward.  You can check out the reasonably cool new teaser poster below:

The story finds Bella (Kristen Stewart) growing closer to Jacob (Taylor Lautner) after her beloved Edward (Robert Pattinson) takes off abruptly.  (Of course, since Pattinson became an international heartthrob after Twilight came out, his role has been beefed up a little from the book.)

If you haven’t read New Moon or didn’t catch the eight hundred not-so-subtle clues in Twilight, Jacob is actually a werewolf.  And he has a lot of werewolf associates, including the four young shirtless actors you see below: Alex Meraz, Chaske Spencer, Bronson Pelletier, and Kiowa Gordon.

Teen girls, start arguing about who the hot one is…now.

Update: Check out ClevverTV’s Meet the Wolf Pack - Final New Moon Cast video!

The Hurt Locker, directed by Point Break‘ Kathryn Bigelow, is about an army bomb squad unit that difuses bombs.  That makes for a lot of really tense scenarios built-in, and if you add a dash of humor from its two likable leads Jeremy Renner (who also stars in the ABC show The Unusuals, which is actually a very cool show, which you should check out) and Anthony Mackie (Half Nelson), that all might add up to a good time in the theater.

Bigelow also directed Strange Days, a very underrated sci-fi movie from 1995, but saw her career stall after K-19: The Widowmaker flopped.  An Iraq movie likely isn’t to perform any miracles at the box office, but maybe you’ll decide you want to give it a shot after checking out the trailer:

And nope, I have no idea why “500″ is parenthesized.

Author Dan Brown announced that the book will be called The Lost Symbol (could that be a blander title?), and it will be published in the U.S. on September 15th of this year, at which point screenwriter Akiva Goldsman will take his first crack at a screenplay version.

Tom Hanks and Ron Howard are currently still on board for the potential trilogy-capper.

The project has been in the pipeline for a few years under the direction of Darren Aronofsky, and was originally set to star Brad Pitt in Bale’s role of Ward’s half-brother, Dicky Eklund.  After Pitt dropped out, Aronofsky went off to make The Wrestler, and somewhere in the meantime the project was picked up by director David O. Russell (I Heart Huckabees).

The question is, who is the title referring to?  On screen, it’s Mark Wahlberg.  But behind the scenes could be a very different story, given the histories of the talent involved: Bale was recently the target of Internet ridicule after an audiotape of him ranting at a director of photography on the set of Terminator Salvation was leaked online.  But two years ago, the same thing happened to Russell: a video was leaked online of him throwing a hissy fit at Lily Tomlin on the set of Huckabees.

Wahlberg has worked with Russell twice already, on Huckabees and Three Kings, and he’s not known as someone to cause trouble on sets.  But as for the other two, internet rumor-mongers are no doubt hoping an epic showdown finds its way online during filming.

Despite featuring a plot that didn’t involve large choreographed dance numbers or anyone breaking into song, 17 Again easily topped the box office with $24 million.  (As I predicted last week, that’s just about exactly what another surprise teen hit, Mean Girls, also made.)

Coming in at a distant second was the journalism thriller State of Play, which despite a solid cast made a mediocre $14 million.  That’s roughly what the last mature-adult-skewing drama, Duplicity, also made.  These types of dramas typically have better staying power than average, so with solid reviews, expect State of Play to climb slightly past $40 million.

Both of last week’s films, Hannah Montana: The Movie and Observe and Report fell by over 60% (largely thanks to inflated grosses from last week’s Good Friday holiday).  That’s fine for Hannah but bad news for Report, which got off to a weak start to begin with.

On the one hand, he’s back to his Gladiator haircut and he’s in reasonably good shape (neither of which could be said for him in State of Play).

But on the other hand…this project seemed so much cooler when it was called Nottingham and was about a sympathetic Sheriff and a slimy Robin Hood.  Now it’s a straightforward Robin Hood story — only in this case, Robin Hood is way too old.

But I sound like a broken record.  Why don’t you decide for yourself by checking out the photo below?

The eye-catcher features main character Susie Salmon (Atonement’s Saoirse Ronan) in Heaven — or, more accurately as it turns out, somewhere in between Heaven and Earth.

The second features an obscured look at Stanley Tucci’s George Harvey: the man who murdered 14-year-old Susie.  (Jackson swears the movie is uplifting.)  Check them both out below.

The weird thing is, as of today, the footage has been pulled from there and most other places online, so perhaps Bay jumped the gun and Paramount didn’t want the footage to get out quite yet.  By the time you read this, the YouTube embed might be disabled, but people are uploading it like wildfire so it shouldn’t be too hard to find.

The first two thirds is a full scene from the flick featuring Bumblebee, Shia LaBeouf, and Megan Fox undressing, which is then followed up with lots of rapid-fire cutting of Transformer battles — including some choice screencaps of Megatron, who Michael Bay originally claimed wouldn’t be in the film.

"I Love You, Beth Cooper"

Fox Atomic, the comedy/genre arm of Fox’s film divisions, is shutting down after only two years.

It’s not too surprising given the box office performance of the films Atomic produced: of Turistas, The Hills Have Eyes 2, 28 Weeks Later, The Comebacks, Miss March, and 12 Rounds, only a few even made back their budget, let alone being considered hits.

Three films on Atomic’s slate have yet to be released: I Love You, Beth Cooper and Jennifer’s Body will now be released under the 20th Century Fox banner, while Post-Grad will be released under Fox Searchlight.

Cameron Bright

Summit Entertainment announced the full cast of New Moon (or, excuse me, The Twilight Saga: New Moon) as soon as it was finalized yesterday, as filming currently gets underway with new director Chris Weitz.  (They better hurry — the movie opens this November.)

New arrivals we didn’t know about already include Cameron Bright (X-Men: The Last Stand), who will play Alec, the brother of Dakota Fanning’s Volturi member Jane, and Graham Greene (Dances with Wolves), who will play Charlie Clearwater, a Quileute tribal leader.

The other high-profile cast addition (already reported) is Michael Sheen, recently of Frost/Nixon, who will play Volturi leader Aro.

The complete list of Volturi members:

Michael Sheen as Aro
Jamie Campbell Bower as Caius
Dakota Fanning as Jane
Charlie Bewley as Demetri
Daniel Cudmore as Felix
Christopher Heyerdahl as Marcus
Cameron Bright as Alec
Noot Seer as Heidi

And the werewolf pack:

Chaske Spencer
Bronson Pelletier
Alex Meraz
Kiowa Gordon
Tyson Houseman

A lot of bloggers thought that was a big deal, but they didn’t understand the process: you can resubmit to the MPAA as much as you want, so naturally you start off with most of your really “adult” material kept in, and then whittle it down until the MPAA is satisfied.  (That’s been Kevin Smith’s process on nearly every one of his movies.)

The latest word is that the newest cut of Bruno has finally landed on its R rating.  The flick, which is aiming for Borat-like success, gets a high-profile summer release this year on July 10th.

The Adventures of Tintin are a series of Belgian comic strips about a young Belgian reporter named Tintin who goes on lots of adventures.  They first appeared in 1929, and I guess everybody in Europe loves them.

That means that all of this “who cares?” attitude that we have about the property in the U.S. sounds like heresy to Europeans.  But imagine if it was an original story: Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg are teaming up for a big-budget movie trilogy!  About…a plucky young Belgian reporter?  Who does…stuff?  Uh, what?  Why?

To those of you who are excited — or simply curious — about Tintin, Empire Online came out with a first look behind the scenes of the first movie (full title: The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn) with Jackson, Spielberg, Andy Serkis (a.k.a. Gollum, who here is playing Captain Haddock) and Jamie Bell (who’s playing Tintin himself).

Empire apparently feels overly protective of the photo, as evidenced by the largest watermark I’ve ever seen, but you’ll get the idea:

By Rotten Tomatoes‘ count, 17 Again has gotten 66% positive reviews — 53 good and 27 bad.  Efron himself is also getting good reviews — Roger Ebert said the acting was “a little better than I expected,” the New York Daily News says Efron easily “carries the movie,” and Salon.com says the movie is entertaining thanks to Efron (who “certainly knows how to be cute”).

The question is, how many boys are willingly go to the theater to see this.  And the answer?  Probably the same amount that went to Mean Girls, which turned into a surprise hit (directly before Lindsay Lohan self-destructed).