Those looking forward to the train wreck that is The Canyons will get their chance to see the film this summer.  IFC Films has announced that it has acquired director Paul Schreader’s erotic drama for release sometime this summer.  The controversial film was written by Bret Easton Ellis and picked up considerable notice for its troubled production, mostly due to star Lindsay Lohan.  The actress appears opposite porn star James Deen in the pic, which centers on the relationship between a scheming and wealthy movie producer (Deen) and his girlfriend (Lohan), who’s having an affair with an actor from her past.  IFC will release the film day-and-date sometime this summer on digital platforms and in theaters.  Hit the jump to read the press release.

If you’ve ever been frustrated with Lindsay Lohan (Mean Girls) to the point that you just wished someone would scare some sense into her, James Deen is about to become your hero (if he wasn’t already).  We’d previously seen a series of parody trailers for director Paul Schrader’s erotic LA drama The Canyons, but now the first clip is available. In it, Lohan wanders about the apartment for a few minutes while Deen is sleeping peacefully.  Two guesses on who acts their part the best.  Hit the jump to watch the clip.

I was willing to give indie sexual thriller The Canyons after its first trailer promised a gritty, grindhouse feel, but the follow-up trailer for director Paul Schrader’s picture takes a whole new spin on things by playing up a 1950s melodramatic tone. Both trailers are clearly poking fun at the film itself with the first being more successful because it didn’t show any actual scenes of dialogue. They should have stuck with that plan. Principal actors Lindsay Lohan and porn star James Deen are unbearable for even this ninety-second trailer, so I can just imagine what sort of torture is in store for audiences when the indie film debuts “on an internet server of your choice.” Hit the jump to see for yourself.

The first trailer has gone online for director Paul Schrader’s sexualized indie thriller, The Canyons.  Starring Lindsay Lohan, porn star James Deen and Gus Van Sant (really), The Canyons spins a tale on the dangers of sexual obsession and ambition among a group of twenty-somethings and a chance event that unravels all of their lives.  The trailer, presented in a grindhouse aesthetic with appropriate music and filters applied, introduces us to the characters and a sense of danger in the film, but gives little in the way of plot.  The Canyons, written by Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho) also stars Nolan Funk and Amanda Brooks.  Hit the jump to check out the trailer.

Josh Schwartz, creator of The O.C., and the CW’s golden child (he currently has four series running or about to premiere on the network: Gossip Girl, Hart of Dixie, the Carrie Diaries and Cult) is teaming up with Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho) and Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight) for yet another hour-long CW teen drama, Copeland Prep. Ellis is said to be writing the script and acting as executive producer alongside Fake Empire’s Schwartz and Stephanie Savage.  Hardwicke will act as an executive consultant on the project (look at her IMDB page and you’ll see why.  Essentially, if the CW made movies …).  For what Copeland Prep is all about, hit the jump.

This may be the strangest casting article ever written, but here it goes:

• Lance Reddick (Fringe) is in talks to star in Roland Emmerich’s White House Down, starring Channing Tatum as a Secret Service agent.
• Director Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting) appears to be starring in The Canyons, from director Paul Schrader and writer Bret Easton Ellis.
• Dolph Lundgren (The Expendables), who starred as the hero He-Man in the 1987 film Masters of the Universe has expressed interest in returning for a different role in the remake.

Hit the jump to get this sorted out.

This weekend, Collider got to participate in the press junket for Savages, the new film from three-time Oscar-winning filmmaker Oliver Stone.  Based on Don Winslow’s best-selling novel, the story follows two Laguna Beach entrepreneurs, Ben (Aaron Johnson) and Chon (Taylor Kitsch), and their shared girlfriend O (Blake Lively), who run a very lucrative business selling some of the best marijuana ever developed, which attracts the unwanted interest of the Mexican Baja Cartel.  For more on the film, you can watch six clips here.

While we will run the interviews about the film closer to its July 6^th release in theaters, we did want to share what actor Aaron Johnson had to say to us about finally going into production on the Kick-Ass sequel, which is set to shoot in the Fall.  He said that he has gotten to see a script, that it keeps the standard hard R feel of the first film, and that he’s excited to get back in the suit.  He also addressed the recent statement that American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis made on Twitter about how he would be a good choice for the male lead in the film adaptation of the much-talked-about erotic novel, 50 Shades of Grey.  Check out what he had to say after the jump.

Taxi Driver scribe Paul Schrader has signed on to direct the indie thriller Bait. Variety reports that Schrader will direct the film, and is currently polishing the script written by American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis. The story centers on a group of students who are trapped in shark-infested waters by a lunatic. In case the name doesn’t ring a bell, Schrader’s most noted films came out of his collaboration with Martin Scorsese, as he wrote the scripts for Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ and Bringing Out the Dead.

Schrader has also directed a number of films on his own, and has most recently been developing The Jesuit with Willem Dafoe and Oscar Issac attached to star. Bait is definitely an unexpected project, but with Ellis writing the initial draft it’s safe to assume that this isn’t your typical “teens in peril” gorefest.

Jonas Pate (Caprica) will direct the Bret Easton Ellis-scripted thriller Bait for Picture Machine and Galavis Films.  For those who don’t know, Ellis is the writer behind such novels as American Psycho, Less Than Zero, and The Rules of Attraction.  According to Variety, his script for Bait “centers on a disturbed woman who holds a group of American students hostage in shark-infested waters.”  I’m interested to see this movie so I can watch how the students get into that situation.

The film is set in Spain so I assume the students are on a break of some kind and carelessly backpacking through Europe without realize that most Europeans don’t see us as “exotic” as much as “eventually-murdered”.  But even if you remove European disdain, how does the hostage situation play out?  Does one of the students say, “Man!  How can this spring break get any worse?”  “We’re in shark-infested waters.”  “Oh.  That’s how.” (I used the image above because it features a shark and an explosion, and hopefully Bait will have both. Surprisingly enough, I couldn’t find an image of hostages in shark-infested waters.  Click over to TopatoCo to buy the shirt).

Hayden Panettiere (Heroes), and Nikki Reed (Twilight), have agreed to star in the Bret Easton Ellis scripted Downers Grove. Based on a novel by Michael Hornberg, the story, per the Hollywood Reporter, is about a high school student (Pannetierre) who fears she may be the next victim in a series of murders targeted at graduating seniors. The film, to be directed by Nelson McCormick (who helmed the remake of Prom Night and somehow made it worse than the original), will more than likely feature teenagers in various stages of existential crises who, in an attempt to suppress and quell the emptiness inside, turn to drugs and drinks and sex and extravagant spending and sports and makeup and pills and commercial entertainments and well, anything and everything – as is par for the course with all of Ellis’s writings (see: Less than Zero or The Informers or The Rules of Attraction or Imperial Bedrooms for proof on said matter; and by see – I mean read, as the books are all of superior quality to the movies).

In 2007, two artists who were hot in the California scene committed suicide, one after the other, following fits of paranoia the two suffered, fearing the government and religious organizations were conspiring against them. Theresa Duncan, a video game designer for girls, killed herself in her bedroom. Jeremy Blake, a popular “digital painter,” found her there and ended his life by walking into the ocean a week later. And Nancy Jo Sales wrote an article for “Vanity Fair” about it. Now, two years later, perhaps the worst combination of writers imaginable are teaming up to pen the film. Find out more about the project, and why Gus Van Sant and Bret Easton Ellis spell disaster, after the jump.