Cop Out clip and court case

Looking more '80s than the oddly coiffured scallywags who lurk in the corner of east London from which Indie Movies extends its cyber-tendrils around the globe, the green band trailer for Kevin Smith's Cop Out was a pretty weak affair. We now have a red band trailer and how amusing you find it will really depend on your answer to one question: is a 10-year-old boy being punched in the balls funny?

 First known as A Couple of Dicks, then rechristened A Couple of Cops, before going back to the A Couple of Dicks moniker, and now definitely, definitively, indubitably and forever entitled Cop Out, the action buddy comedy stars Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan as Jimmy and Paul respectively, a Big Apple detective duo. The plot revolves around Jimmy losing a highly valuable baseball card, with the cops being consequently pitted against what the official synopsis refers to as 'a merciless, memorabilia-obsessed gangster' (new game: what's the oddest character tic an action movie villain has been saddled with in lieu of any actual attempt at characterisation? My vote goes to Christopher Ecclestone's obsession with wooden furniture in Gone in Sixty Seconds). Story seems a secondary consideration in the footage glimpsed thus far though, with the emphasis firmly on the needling banter between Willis (seemingly going deadpan) and Morgan (all guns blazing). The new trailer first surfaced on MySpace (yup, it's still there, even if you never visit, call or write anymore. Heartbreaker!), and it can be viewed below.

The movie is the first offering from Kevin Smith which he did not also write; the Couple of Dicks/Cop Out screenplay having instead been penned by Robb and Mark Cullen, with it going on to gain attention with an appearance on the 2008 Black List of the best unproduced scripts in Hollywood. The supporting cast also includes Rashida Jones, Seann William Scott, and Ana de la Reguera, as well as Kevin Pollak and Adam Brody, who are entrusted with the time-honoured duty of playing the rival, jerk detective pairing. The presence of these latter characters ensures that those attending Cop Out from its 26 February opening date onward will be subject to scenes of the mutually-antagonistic cop couples razzing each other, as seen in, ooh, about three-million previous movies. But then you know what they say, the more cop movies they make, the more they stay the same. Or words to that effect.

The new red band trailer is not the only item of Cop Out movie news today, with the half-man, half-wolf answer to the question “What is the one thing most likely to foul up a movie for you?” Robin Williams having lost out in a court case with Gold Circle Films over an alleged earlier agreement for him to star in the film. The Hollywood Reporter reports that Williams' lawyers were arguing that the Fisher King actor had agreed a $6m pay-or-play deal with Gold Circle to star in Cop Out, back when that company were setting up the movie in its Couple of Dicks form (pay-or-play essentially meaning that even if no film gets made, the signed-up party still receives the agreed fee). Gold Circle eventually put the project into turnaround (from where it was picked up by Warners, who are the studio behind Smith's Cop Out), but Williams believed they still owed him his money. And indeed, why shouldn't Mork get $6m for doing diddly-squat? The man gave us Father's Day, Toys, Flubber, Bicentennial Man and Hook. Has he not earned the right to be given large sums of free money?

“No”, was the opinion of the presiding judge in this case. Possibly influenced by having sat through Patch Adams, Judge Joanne O'Donnell put a halt to the case by granting Gold Circle's motion for summary judgement. What does that mean? Basically that Mrs. Doubtfire isn't getting his six mill and that Gold Circle will be sending him the bill for their lawyers. You can surely only be relieved that a Williams-starring Cop Out never surfaced though, and if you disagree with that, then just watch the trailer again, but imagining Morgan replaced by the motor-mouthed fur-ball. And afterwards thank God, Jesus, Satan and the Easter Bunny for their tender mercy.