Today's Film News: It's Muppet Mania!

By Katey Rich

First of all, don't miss Kevin Lally's dispatches from ShoWest, all of them below this post. He's seen 21 and Journey to the Center of the Earth 3-D, chatted with the high-powered Hollywood execs, and, I have it on good authority, has not let the indoor smoking of Vegas keep him from his reporting duties. Way to take one for the team, Kevin!

Now for the most exciting film news, well, ever. When I interviewed Jason Segel and Nick Stoller a few weeks ago for Film Journal's cover story on Forgetting Sarah Marshall (more on that later today), they told me about two upcoming projects that I was absolutely not allowed to write about. One of them was The Five-Year Engagement, a Judd Apatow-produced romantic comedy that was announced a few weeks ago. And the other was officially announced today: a full-scale, Jim Henson Creature Shop-approved Muppet movie. Variety has scant details, just that Segel will write the script and Stoller will direct, as they did with Marshall, which also featured puppets from the Creature Shop (you really have to see the movie to understand it). This project gets an official, hearty, don't-you-dare-criticize thumbs up from the Screener blog.

Here's an angle on the Eliot Spitzer sex scandal I never thought I'd see. The governor of New York, before resigning yesterday, had been working on a proposal that would increase tax credits for film and TV production in the state, from 10% to 15%. The New York State Senate and Assembly, though, have vastly different ideas on how they want these tax credits to go forward. It's unclear how David Paterson, recently promoted from Lt. Governor to Governor in the wake of Spitzer's resignation, will go about handling this new legislation. Surely the New York City Film and Television Commission will be holding its breath, given that they have the most to win or lose.

We here at Film Journal are pretty much Pixar lunatics, and my editor Kevin is especially nuts for Brad Bird. So I hope that in Vegas he's heard the news that Bird will be making his live-action directing debut with 1906, a mystery story set around the massive San Francisco earthquake. The Hollywood Reporter tells us that Bird is also writing the script, which is great news; Bird as a director is excellent, but Bird as a screenwriter is phenomenal. Now that he's moving into "legit" live-action, will this finally be Bird's opportunity for a much-deserved screenwriting Oscar?

Over at Warner Bros., the execs are still trying to figure out how to shape New Line into whatever shape it will become. Variety reports that they're courting Toby Emmerich, formerly New Line's executive VP of production, to take over the whole outfit. The plan would be to have New Line produce about six films a year, all of them with a budget under $50. This much more closely resembles New Line's origins as a kind of off-the-wall distributor, not so much the Lord of the Rings era. Of course, New Line still has the massive The Hobbit adaptation to work wtih, which will certainly have a budget perhaps quadruple the $50 million cap. In other words: It's all still up in the air.