Zach Galifianakis adds another film to his slate

By Sarah Sluis

Since The Hangover became a runaway success, its stars have been busily lining up projects. Zach Galifianakis, the misfit in the movie, has become the rising star of the group. He has queued up an impressive array of projects, including Dinner for Schmucks and Due Date, and is currently considering a role in It's Kind of a Funny Story.

Based on a teen novel, the story centers on a depressed 15-year-old who is sent to a mental institution for five days, where he turns around thanks to his interactions with the other patients. Galifianakis will play a patient, which sounds like a perfect role for his unhinged style of humor. Focus Features is producing the picture, and it's rumored to offer Galifianakis a meatier performance than straight comedy. So far, his only co-star is Emma Roberts, who will play a patient and love interest. Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden, who directed/wrote Half Nelson and Sugar, are re-teaming for the movie. There's a long history of great mental institution/hospital films in Hollywood--One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Girl, Interrupted among them--so It's Kind of a Funny Story will have good company. The announcement also comes as Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch, an action film taking place in a mental institution, has started filming in Vancouver.

Galifianakis is on the cusp, as he transitions from smaller roles to bigger ones, so you can catch a glimpse of him as a homeless man in Gigantic (recently released on video, and you can read my interview with the director), a man in a suit in G-Force, and a trailer-trash boyfriend in upcoming Youth in Revolt. He's also appearing in HBO Brooklyn-set crime show "Bored to Death." Whew.

In the meantime, he's wrapped Due Date, a road trip film he stars in with Robert Downey, Jr., who must endure the man in order to make it to the hospital in time for his wife's birth. He's set to play another pitiable/annoying appendage in Dinner for Schmucks, where he will play an assistant manager in a mattress store who is dating Steve Carell's ex-wfe. Then there's The Hangover 2, which will start shooting this year. Galifianakis' career is going straight up--let's hope he can hang on and enjoy the ride.

May & June releases to watch: the ones that already have sequels

By Sarah Sluis

A comedy to watch for this summer will be The Hangover. Apparently it's funny enough that Warner Bros. asked the director to write the sequel before the first film even comes out. The trailer brought down

the house at ShoWest, and reports are, the movie's been testing off the charts. It has a bit of a Dude, Where's My Car? premise: men on a bachelor party in Vegas wake up with no memory of the night before, mayhem around them, and a missing groom. They go around reconstructing the night's events, which, from the trailer alone, seem to involve hospitals, weddings, Siegfried & Roy tigers, police officer impersonation, a baby, and a run-in with Mike Tyson. What seems fresh about the movie's snowball of implausible events is that the characters approach them from the standpoint of the past. They've already done all these things and suffered the immediate consequences. The movie seems as though it will focus on the men trying (and failing) to put things back together, and periodically marveling at how they got into the mess. Todd Phillips wrote/directed/produced the first film, but only participated in the re-write stage. For the sequel, he'll be scripting from the beginning. Stars Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, and Bradley Cooper have also committed to return, with production starting this fall. The first movie had an incredibly quick start-to-finish, with production starting just weeks after the news hit the press (SAG uncertainties cited as a reason for the scheduling), so it seems that Phillips, who has helmed Starsky & Hutch, Old School, and Road Trip, may be the studio comedy craftsman to beat in terms of efficiency and speed.

Another upcoming release that's already been green-lit is a second Star Trek. The trailer for the first (which comes out May 8) wowed me by featuring a dusty, desert car chase, enough of a change from the

space station set to catch my non-Trekkie attention. As a fan of "Lost," a television show with one of the most complicated story universes I've ever encountered, I expect that director (and "Lost" creator) J.J. Abrams nailed the ensemble cast and extensive backstory needed to make the movie appealing to Trek fans as well as those just interested in a good space story. Abrams has committed to produce, but not necessarily direct, the sequel. Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman are returning to write along with Damon Lindelof, who produced the first film.

The last remake worth mentioning (since according to this THR article, remakes or films based on existing properties are particularly in vogue right now) is A Nightmare on Elm Street. Jackie Earle Haley will star as Freddy Krueger, the killer who stalks and kills teenagers in their sleep. The actor

earned raves for his performance as Rorschach in Watchmen. With his face covered in an ink blot sack most of the movie, his performance was primarily vocal (always good for a horror film), and the few minutes he spent unmasked were considered the high points of an otherwise lackluster film. Haley will also appear in Martin Scorsese's October 2 release Shutter Island, a thriller about a criminally insane escaped woman who is hiding out on an island, and set in 1954. Michael Bay-led Platinum Dunes productions has revived franchises including Friday the 13th and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and remade The Amityville Horror and The Hitcher, with plans to revive many more--including Hitchcock's The Birds. As the article notes, even the 1990s will soon be fair game for remakes, as teen horror fans may not be familiar with the originals, so get ready as Hollywood works through the 1980s and 1990s.