Today's Film News: Two Faces of Ferrell

By Katey Rich

There's the Two Face everyone will be talking about this weekend, and then there's the Two Face who Will Ferrell is apparently aiming to bring us. The star of the upcoming Step Brothers has signed on to star in the comedy Two Face, which Variety says he's been interested in for three years now. It's written by Vince Gilligan, one of the many writers credited with the reportedly messy Hancock. If a movie with an incomprehensible third act is Gilligan's idea of a Two Face, maybe Ferrell would be better off staying away.

CMT: It's not just music videos for people in cowboy hats anymore! The Viacom-owned Country Music Television has been moving into feature production for a few years now, and has lined up a stellar cast for its next project, Crazy Heart. Jeff Bridges will star as an alcoholic country singer who starts the road to recovery thanks to a relationship with a female reporter (Maggie Gyllenhaal). Robert Duvall also stars, says Variety.

Lionsgate is now the first major studio to take anything but a defensive stance with YouTube; it will create its own Lionsgate-branded channel on the video-sharing website, making available clips and whole episodes of its TV shows while reaping ad revenue. The Reporter says the deal also would let users take Lionsgate clips and use them for their own purposes, such as mash-ups or fake trailers. I hope the people at Viacom are looking at this today and wondering why they've been so hard on YouTube all this time, when cooperation is definitely possible.

And finally... man, oh man, all the interesting news today is about television! But I can share the MovieTickets.com poll info that they've sent me, saying The Dark Knight is already the #17 pre-seller of all time for the site. It has also accounted for over 80% of online ticket sales for both Monday and Tuesday. What, no one is expecting lines around the block to see Mamma Mia?