As we whippersnappers start watching movies on our TVs and phones, a desperate Hollywood has turned their attentions to their steadiest and most solid base of theatergoers: the AARP crowd.  In that vein, Fox Searchlight is looking to make a sequel to this year’s surprise hit The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, based on a novel, that starred a host of, well, gray-haired actors: Judi Dench (Casino Royale), Bill Nighy (Love Actually), Maggie Smith (Downton Abbey) and Tom Wilkinson (Batman Begins), and others, including one young gun in Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire).

Ol Parker (who wrote the screenplay for the first film) will send in a treatment to the eager studio soon, the eagerness stemming from the original film having grossed thirteen times its nearly $10 million budget.  The eagerness also rests with the actors, as the principal cast is apparently keen on returning.  For more on the “gray is green” trend, hit the jump.

A new trailer for the porn-centered drama About Cherry has landed online.  The film follows an 18-year-old girl on the verge of finishing high school who ends up in the porn industry.  Ashley Hinshaw stars as the young girl, with James Franco playing a coked-out lawyer who becomes her beau.  The cast is rounded out by Heather Graham, Dev Patel, and Lili Taylor.  The story provides a nice avenue for exploring the ups and downs of the porn industry and whether it plays a role in the objectification of women, but it’s hard to tell if this is the case based on the trailer.  Hopefully something a little deeper than “I make a lot of money but my life is falling apart” is explored in the full feature.

Hit the jump to watch the trailer.  Directed by Stephen Elliott, About Cherry will be available On Demand on August 9th and hits theaters on September 21st.

Hot off the one-two punch of The Social Network and Moneyball, Academy Award-winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin made his return to television last night with the debut of his new HBO series The Newsroom.  The premiere came with lofty expectations from The West Wing creator, and early screener reactions were passionately mixed-to-positive.  I’m an out and out Sorkin fan and, despite the show’s familiarity to the scribe’s other series (specifically the super similar “stock” characters), I really enjoyed the pilot.  Yes, everyone speaks in eloquent soliloquies with insanely profound and accurate statistical arguments rolling off their tongues as if they were reciting a recipe, but Sorkin’s romanticism and wit is just too damned enticing for me to be bothered.

The pilot sparked quite a bit of lively conversation on Twitter last night, and now HBO has put the full 73-minute episode online for free.  Whether you’re a Sorkin fan or not, I highly suggest you give the pilot a whirl and decide for yourself what you think of the show rather than buying into the pre-lash sight unseen.  Hit the jump to watch, then head to the comments with your reaction.

A new trailer for Aaron Sorkin‘s The Newsroom has gone online.  This new trailer hits the point that the show will use real news events as the basis for the episodes.  The audience will know more than the characters, and I’m not sure if that will be an advantage or disadvantage for the show (in a recent interview, Sorkin says it will be “fun” for viewers).

Hit the jump to check out the trailer along with 16 images. The show stars Jeff Daniels, Emily Mortimer, John Gallagher Jr., Thomas Sadoski, Dev Patel, Olivia Munn, and Sam Waterston.  The Newsroom premieres June 24th on HBO at 10/9c.

The first official poster has been released for Aaron Sorkin’s new HBO drama, The Newsroom. The series stars Jeff Daniels as the primary anchor of a failing 24-hour news network who is ready to break the monotony of cable news and go back to the roots of informing his audience. We already saw his character have a fantastic (and much publicized) outburst in the first trailer.  Then, The Newsroom followed up with a series of additional trailers that developed a bit more of the storyline and also introduced us to the rest of the cast:  such as Daniels’ character’s new executive producer (Emily Mortimer), his newsroom staff (John Gallagher, Jr., Alison Pill, Thomas Sadoski, Dev Patel, Olivia Munn) and their boss (Sam Waterston).  Now, we have the first look at the official poster (in addition to some shorter trailers, in case you’ve missed the previous ones).  Hit the jump to check out the slick official poster for HBO’s The Newsroom, which debuts Sunday, June 24th at 10PM.

A new trailer for Oscar-winning screenwriter and The West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin’s latest series, The Newsroom, has gone online.  This builds on the basic set-up introduced in the previous two trailers gets a bit more into what the plot may look like in the first few episodes beyond the pilot.  Jeff Daniels stars as the primary anchor of a floundering 24-hour news network who’s ready to break the monotony of lazy and gutless cable news.  I’m a self-professed Sorkin nut so I may be a bit biased, but I really like what we’ve seen from the series thus far.  My only concern is that the show could become too much of a soapbox for Sorkin’s worldviews a la Studio 60, but hopefully his knack for snappy dialogue and romantic characters reigns the preach-factor in a bit.  Moreover, this new trailer has 100% more David Krumholtz which is almost never a bad thing.

Hit the jump to watch the trailer (complete with Dave Krumholtz cameo!), and count down the days until The Newsroom premieres on June 24th on HBO.  The show also stars Emily Mortimer, Sam Waterston, Jane Fonda, Alison Pill, Olivia Munn and Dev Patel.

A new trailer for Aaron Sorkin‘s upcoming HBO series The Newsroom has gone online.  The first trailer played to the dramatic aspects of the series, but the new one hits on Sorkin’s whip-smart dialogue almost to the point of self-parody (when Alison Pill‘s character talks about mixing up Georgia the state with Georgia the country, I could easily hear the dialogue coming out of Donna Moss’ mouth).  The new trailer also does a better job of laying out the plot and establishing the different characters and their relationships.

Hit the jump to check out the trailer.  The show stars Jeff Daniels, Emily Mortimer, John Gallagher Jr., Thomas Sadoski, Dev Patel, Olivia Munn, and Sam Waterston.  The Newsroom premieres June 24th at 10/9c.

We’ve got a couple of casting stories to share this afternoon.  First up, Toni Collette and Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire) have joined the cast of the thriller Defiant.  The film is based on the true story of a double honor killing in India.  Muslim men are allowed to marry non-Muslim women per Islamic law (in order to “take over the reproductive capabilities of the enemy), but Muslim women are not allowed to marry non-Muslim men.  In May of 2011, two Muslim women allegedly killed their daughters because they had eloped and married migrant Bihari Hindu laborers.

Deadline reports that Patel will play Hari, “a young man who is, along with his girlfriend, trying to escape vengeful parents who want to kill the lovers to stop them marrying.”  Colette will play a journalist covering the story who is drawn into danger.  Bill Bennett is set to direct, and the project will be shopped to buyers at Cannes.  Collette is currently filming Hitchcock and Patel stars in Aaron Sorkin’s new HBO series The Newsroom, which premieres this summer.  Hit the jump for casting news regarding Richard Jenkins.

Right about now, HBO subscribers are probably in a high over the debut of the second season of Game of Thrones or the impending summer return of season five of True Blood. But there is a new series on the premium network you should keep an eye on. It seems that Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing) has a lot of venting to do and he gets everything off his chest in this brilliant first trailer for the new HBO drama, The Newsroom. Starring Jeff Daniels, Sam Waterston and Emily Mortimer, The Newsroom keeps a familiar politico-centric feel to Sorkin’s The West Wing but now features a newsroom setting replacing the White House. In this first trailer, nationally recognized news anchor Will McAvoy (Daniels) loses his objectivity (and possibly his audience) when responding to a question from the crowd at a college panel. Daniels immediately won me over by saying everything a rational and informed human being should say in spite of the political backlash it was bound to incur. Hit the jump to check it out.

The trailer for the drama Cherry has gone online.  Cherry centers on a young woman (Ashley Hinshaw) who goes into porn, and her various relationships with her porn director (Heather Graham), friend (Dev Patel), mother (Lily Taylor), and, according to what we previously reported, James Franco as a coked-up lawyer.  The Playlist caught the film at the Berlin Film Festival a few days ago, and said that the movie “is not very good” and avoids tough questions about whether the porn industry exploits or empowers women.

Hit the jump to check out the trailer.  The film currently does not have U.S. distribution, although I can easily imagine a straight-to-DVD future based on what I’m seeing from the trailer.

In case you haven’t had your fill of trailers today, we’ve got yet another one for you: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Directed by John Madden (Shakespeare in Love), the film centers on a group of retirees who decide to spend their retirement at a luxurious resort in India, only to find that the actual structure isn’t exactly what they were expecting. The trailer actually looks pretty good, bolstered by a stellar ensemble of British actors including Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Maggie Smith, and Dev Patel. Some of the humor is a bit easy, but there’s actually a hint of the balance between drama and comedy that Madden perfected with Shakespeare in Love.

Hit the jump to watch the trailer. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel opens March 9th, 2012.

Allison Janney has signed on to star opposite Chris Colfer (Glee) in the coming-of-age comedy Struck by Lightning.  Colfer also wrote the script which, per Variety, “opens with Colfer’s character being struck and killed by a bolt of lightning; flashbacks will chronicle his exploits as he blackmails his classmates into contributing to a literary magazine he’s publishing.”  The independent production will shoot this July in Los Angeles during Colfer’s summer hiatus from Glee.  Brian Dannelly (Saved!) will direct.

Hit the jump for more Giancarlo Esposito’s role in I, Alex Cross, and the casting of Dev Patel in More As This Story Develops.

A trio of actors are currently in negotiations to star alongside James Franco in the Stephen Elliott-directed Cherry. Variety reports that Heather Graham, Dev Patel and Lili Taylor are in talks to star in the film, which pits Franco as a cocaine-addicted lawyer. The story revolves around an 18-year-old girl who moves to San Francisco and joins the porn industry. She becomes involved with Franco’s character.

Returning to familiar territory, Graham is eyeing the role of a former porn star turned director who takes an interest in the young girl. Patel would play the girl’s best friend who just happens to also be in love with her, while Taylor will play the girl’s alcoholic mother. Elliot and Lorelei Lee co-wrote the script. Production is set to begin next month in San Francisco, after Franco wraps The Stare with Winona Ryder. He’ll begin shooting Sam Raimi’s Oz the Great and Powerful this August, bringing his grand total of movies filmed in 2011 to about 37.

Oh, M. Night Shyamalan. You made The Sixth Sense, and the world was ready to declare you the new Spielberg, the new Hitchcock. And your follow ups had fans. Unbreakable, Signs. People liked these movies, but they didn’t have that Barton Fink feeling. But the next three films (The Village, The Lady in the Water and The Happening) kept getting worse and worse, with star Mark Wahlberg recently decrying The Happening as terrible. But with The Last Airbender writer/director M. Night was finally adapting material, which (one hoped) might get his head back in the game. Based on the Nickelodeon cartoon, there was a great story there and there was hope he might rebound. Noah Ringer stars as Aang, a mythical trained “bender” who can fight using air, water, fire and earth, and is called the last Avatar. He’s joined by water bender Katara (Nicola Peltz) and her brother Sokka (Jackson Rathbone) in protecting him from an evil Fire Lord army (which features Dev Patel, Cliss Curtis and Aasif Mandvi) that are bent on world domination. And my review of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender on Blu-ray follows after the jump.

Fox Searchlight has just announced (via press release) that principal photography for The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel will begin on October 10th in India.  John Madden (Shakespeare in Love) will direct an all star cast featuring Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Tom Wilkinson, Bill Nighy and Dev Patel. When we last reported on the film, Peter O’Toole was rumored for a role and there was no mention of Tom Wilkinson.  It’s pretty clear Wilkinson is going to play O’Toole’s role.   Here’s the official synopsis:

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel follows a group of British retirees who decide to “outsource” their retirement to less expensive and seemingly exotic India.  Enticed by advertisements for the newly restored Marigold Hotel and bolstered with visions of a life of leisure, they arrive to find the palace a shell of its former self. Though the new environment is less luxurious than imagined, they are forever transformed by their shared experiences, discovering that life and love can begin again when you let go of the past.

Hit the jump for the press release.  Fox Searchlight Pictures has worldwide rights.