• Variety says Tropic Thunder “has a good shot at staying number one through the weekend,” knocking The Dark Knight out of first place. It should “at least match the overall five-day take of last week’s Pineapple Express at $41.3 million,” but on a $90 million budget, it’ll take a lot longer for the Ben Stiller comedy to eke its way towards profitability.
• This story on Lionsgate’s revival of the Conan franchise makes no mention of Robert Rodriguez, who told a crowd at Comic-Con last month that he was personally shepherding the project and planned to direct the film. Curious..
• Willem DaFoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg will star in Antichrist, a “psychological thriller that evolves into a horror film” in the works from Lars Von Trier.
• Hillary Swank, who seems like an unrealistic candidate for a role that would require her to pretend to be French or to know something about getting fat, will produce and star in a film based on the diet book, French Women Don’t Get Fat.

Robert Rodriguez and Rose McGowan answer questions on upcoming Red Sonja with director, Doug Aarniokoski.

Highlights:

• Rodriguez is planning to restart the Conan franchise.
• RR apparently fell for Rose after she called him “Count Fuckula”
• Machete will be made starring Danny Trejo and it will be the first “Mexploitation” flick
• Sin City 2 & 3 have scripts
• Red Sonja will be so bloody, it will introduce the “Double R”

Read the liveblogging transcript after the jump.

…Read more

• For all the Sex and the City promotional madness and media hype, says Diane Garrett at Variety, “there’s no escaping the fact that the movie is a chick flick with strong appeal among an older femme demo but questionable interest among others. All the magazine coverage in the world — 63 pages in the May 23 edition of Entertainment Weekly alone — and Sex and the City TV marathons haven’t really moved the needle among men, many of whom suggest they’d rather be shot than sit through the movie.”
• Seemingly determined to try to recreate the relationship of Roger Vadim and Jane Fonda whether or not the Barbarella remake works out, Robert Rodriguez is apparently “shopping around Women in Chains!, a violent drama set at a woman’s prison starring his fiancee, Rose McGowan.” Oh, right––it’s camp, so it’s neither misogynist nor creepy
• IFC continues their Cannes buying spree days after the end of the festival, picking up Grand Prix winner Gomorrah. The Italian mafia flick has done solid business in its homeland since opening last week.
• The CineVegas film festival will honor Anjelica Huston. Don Cheadle, Rosario Dawson, Viggo Mortensen and Sam Rockwell with their Half Life award, while James Caan will be declared a Vegas Icon.
  

The NY Observer says Robert Rodriguez has lost Universal’s backing for his Barbarella remake, over the filmmaker’s insistence that his fiancee, Rose McGowan, play the title role. Rodriguez and McGowan “fell in love” on the set of Planet Terror, which led to the end of Rodriguez’s 16-year marriage to his producer, Elizabeth Avellan. According to the story, when the studio was first informed that Rodriguez intended to cast McGowan over “more famous names [like] Nicole Kidman, Halle Berry and Jessica Alba”, they re-calibrated Barbarella’s budget from $100 million to something “in the double-digit millions.” Rodriguez denies this; he says Universal will give him $60 million to make the film, no questions asked, but he thinks he needs $82 million, so he’s shopping the project around to other studios.

Of note: McGowan face was injured in a car accident earlier this year, leading to actress to obtain major plastic surgery. It’s possible that the studio is worried the 17 Cherry Darling obsessives that might pay to see McGowan in a Barbarella outfit may not even be able to recognize her (see this related rumor about the actress’ reported post-surgery trouble landing work). Also of note: not one of the three “more famous” actresses listed above has proven that she can actually open a movie.