• Paula Wagner, Tom Cruise’s long-time producing partner, is leaving her post at the top of United Artists. Though Wagner will hold on to a share of UA––which has barely made use of their $500 million credit line, due to some friction with parent studio MGM over which movies to greenlight––apparently “it’s possible that the studio will once again go into hibernation and that the UA coin will go to MGM.”
• Totally coincidentally, the release date on UA’s next big production, the bad buzz-plagued Tom Cruise-in-an-eye patch vehicle Valkyrie, has been moved to Dec. 26 from Feb. 13, allegedly to capitalize on holiday audiences.
• In news that has to do with Cruise but is totally unrelated to Paula Wagner, he might star in The Tourist, a remake of a 2005 French film called Anthony Zimmer, with an adaptation by Julian Fellowes.
• Magnolia is funneling a few of genre-arm Magnet’s recent acquisitions into a theatrical release label called the Six Shooter Film Series. The Series will start with the Tribeca-lauded Swedish vampire flick Let the Right One In, and will also showcase Sundance picks Special and Timecrimes.

Will Smith’s new superhero movie, Hancock, may be receiving terrible reviews, but it’s sure to make a lot of money. It is a Will Smith movie, after all. The fact that it’s an original superhero title (meaning not adapted from a comic book or other source material), however, means that if it is a success, it will be the rare movie of its kind to be such. Superhero movies may be huge right now, but really only the pre-sold properties, those with a build-in audience, make the big bucks.

A number of original superhero movies are just as worthy of your attention as the Spider-Mans, the Iron Mans, the Batmans and the X-Mens. Sure, much of the time, non-adapted superheroes are lame, as in the cases of Blankman and My Super Ex-Girlfriend. But just check out any of the following ten titles and see why it sometimes pays off to put your trust in an unfamiliar hero.

1. The Incredibles - This one did it all: won an Oscar; received favorable reviews across the board; did blockbuster business in theaters and ancillaries (its the sole original superhero movie to break $100 million, domestically, a feat it far surpassed by actually grossing more than $260 million); and featured the single greatest superhero gag (above) ever seen. So there’s proof that a superhero movie can be good and do well without being based on another property. …Read more

While the San Diego Comic Con has been for some time a significant part of Hollywood’s marketing calendar — and it only continues to grow, as was shown with last year’s very heavily covered event — there hasn’t been as much emphasis put on the New York Comic Con, despite its logical opportunity and its more pertinent proximity to the opening of the blockbuster movie season. Compared to San Diego’s convention, which takes place in July, too late to really showcase the present year’s releases, New York’s is in April, right before the first of the big summer release dates.

But Hollywood’s presence seems to be more noticeable at this year’s event. Looking at a list of some of the previews and attractions, located at Super Hero Hype, there’s promotions going on for movies like X-Files 2, Hellboy 2 and The Incredible Hulk, all of which could use the extra buzz from its core demographic of comic book and movie geeks. There’s also the world premiere of the new teaser trailer for Frank Miller’s adaptation of Will Eisner’s The Spirit, a jump on San Diego’s usual tradition of being the place to introduce such way-in-advance materials (the film doesn’t come out until 2009).

…Read more

This Hollywood Reporter story about Magnolia/Magnet’s acquistition of the Michael Rappaport psycho-pharma superhero comedy Special has a major inaccuracy: Gregg Goldstein says the film “premiered last month at Sundance,” but actually, it premiered two years ago at Sundance, where alongside Wristcutters: A Love Story, it was the subject of much “WTF? If THAT sold, why didn’t THIS sell?” buzz in the wake of the massive Little Miss Sunshine deal. The fan boy sites were, predictably, all over it, but it also earned glowing praise from international publications, and from director Jason Reitman, who was at the festival with his own Thank You For Smoking.

So what made Magnolia suddenly interested now? Goldstein says it’s finally getting picked up because Rappaport has a TV show and co-star Josh Peck is expected to break out via a film that *did* premiere at Sundance 2008, The Wackness. I’d say the latter probably has more to do with it than the former, but then, I thought The War at Home had been canceled like five years ago. But I guess this means we can expect a Special release somewhere on the calendar near Peck’s other film, in order to capitalize on The Wackness‘ Sony Classics-footed publicity budget.

You can watch Special’s circa-Sundance 2006 trailer here.