The latest on Predators, Kane & Lynch, Monster Squad and Final (final?) Destination

It’s a blockbuster news special, with the first trailer for Robert Rodriguez’s Predators, casting news for Kane & Lynch, an announcement on Final Destination – the franchise that won’t die (though its cast always does) and The Monster Squad remake.

After the Predators sneak peek, a brand-new, full-on trailer has arrived courtesy of IGN, who have it exclusively. Now, a trailer is not a film and can be somewhat misleading but this one looks promising (compared to, say, the A-Team trailer with its gravity-defying tank and leaden one-liners).

The prequel seems to have pared the story down to its essentials: a group of ultra-skilled fighters are dropped onto an alien planet where they realize that they’re the prey to be hunted. Presumably, a comprehensive slicing and dicing of the posse will follow. The Predator franchise was always the lunk-headed cousin to other sharper, more imaginative film series, like Terminator or Alien, so our expectations were never sky-high to begin with but this could be a return to its roots after the dumb, cartoony and definitely unscary likes of AVP and AVPR.

Predators stars Adrien Brody, Lawrence Fishburne, Danny Trejo, Alice Braga, Topher Grace, Louis Ozawa Changchien and Oleg Taktarov.

More on the Final Destination franchise, the makers of whose pants are very seriously ablaze right about now. After Warners Bros and New Line positively assured an exhausted planet that the last installment in the Final Destination saga, titled The Final Destination, was meaningfully named in that it would be the last, final and ultimate film in the series, it was yesterday announced that another movie is in the works. If we’re pointing a finger, it would be in the direction of the current 3D obsession, whereby studios can inject their ailing pics with a dose of excitement in the form of projectiles leaping from the screen. The Final Destination, which was the fourth film in the series, grossed a comfortable $180 million worldwide by swapping any fresh ideas for 3D gore. Now they’re at it again. We are not amused.

Casting news for Kane & Lynch, the hit man game that’s en route to becoming a film. Bruce Willis has long been attached to star as Adam ‘Kane’ Marcus and now news has broken (via Twitter) that Jamie Foxx is in talks to star as James Seth Lynch, his partner in crime. The plot sees the pair on Death Row before they are broken out of jail – not by a rescue team but by kidnappers who want them to retrieve a doomsday device, in return for allowing Kane’s wife and daughter to live. This is some odd casting: Bruce Willis looks very much like the psychotic Lynch but is playing good-guy Kane. Jamie Foxx, on the other hand, represents some nice, imaginative casting but we can’t help but fear that the dynamics of this pairing mean we’ll see some lazy buddy-duo screenwriting (like Bruce’s recent Cop-Out, which sought to make fun of such action couples but simply fell into the same dull trap). Hope not, as this is a fanboy favourite and the internet could become one huge angry blogging explosion if they get it wrong.

Never let it be said that we hate all remakes equally. Some films are unappreciated in their time, get the shit end of the marketing stick, or fail in terms of production values – and these languishing lovelies are ripe for the remake treatment. So, it’s with cautious optimism that we report (via Collider) that Platinum Dunes is after Rob Cohen to direct a remake of the 1987 kids’ adventure flick Monster Squad. The first film became a cult hit and its fans are none too thrilled at the idea of it being remade. In its defence, we’d have to say that this is prime remake property as it’s a fun concept that was enjoyed by relatively few people – and kids are unlikely to go back and watch the original as it’s looking pretty dated (though, having said that, references to the likes of Miami Vice will be perfectly understandable by virtue of their remakes). The neat premise sees a group of kids defending their town from a gang of monsters – Dracula, the Mummy, the Wolfman and the Gillman (a creature from the black lagoon type) – who are chasing a McGuffin to take over the world. The original film was directed by Fred Dekker and co-written by Decker and smart scribe Shane Black (the Lethal Weapon movies, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang). Cohen himself was one of the 1987 film’s producers, which may be a comfort to those who fear it’ll ride roughshod over the original.