Just yesterday we learned of a possible March U.K. release date for director Danny Boyle’s upcoming thriller Trance, and today the first official images from the film have landed online.  The story centers on an art heist that goes sideways when its mastermind (James McAvoy) gets amnesia and can’t remember where he stashed the loot.  Vincent Cassel co-stars as mob boss leading the heist gang, and Rosario Dawson plays a hypnotist who tries to get the memories out of McAvoy’s character.  Boyle notes that the film isn’t a straightforward thriller, and describes it as an “updated noir” that’s more emotionally charged than previous entries in the genre.  There also appears to be a love triangle aspect involving the three lead characters.

Hit the jump to check out the images and to read a few quotes from Boyle regarding the pic.  The film is reportedly set for release on March 27, 2013 in the U.K. [Update: The folks at Pathe Productions Limited have reached out to us to confirm the U.K. release date.]

We haven’t heard much about Danny Boyle‘s Trance this year, but that’s not too surprising since he was busy taking every British thing ever and putting it into the opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics.  The movie centers on an art heist that goes sideways when its mastermind (James McAvoy) gets amnesia and can’t remember where he stashed the loot.  Vincent Cassell co-stars as mob boss leading the heist gang, and Rosario Dawson plays a hypnotist who tries to get the memories out of McAvoy’s character.  Boyle shot the film back in 2011, but he held off on post-production until he was done with the Olympics. Now that those are finished, work on Trance has resumed, and a U.K. release may have been announced.  Trance is reportedly set to open in the United Kingdom on March 27, 2013.

Hit the jump for more.

The first trailer for the British crime thriller Welcome to the Punch has landed online.  Directed by Eran Creevy (Shifty), the film stars James McAvoy as a cop whose nemesis, played by Mark Strong, suddenly reappears after having eluded capture years earlier.  The trailer plays like a mash-up between Heat and Snatch, with less comedy and 1000% more bullets and explosions.  I’m not exactly sure how everything comes together plotwise, but I’m sufficiently intrigued by the talented ensemble and Creevy’s impressive visuals.  This is a British thriller through and through, which is something we’ve seen far too little of lately.  Fans of The Walking Dead will also be happy to spot one David Morrissey in the cast, who plays The Governor on the AMC series.

Hit the jump to watch the trailer.  The film also stars Andrea Riseborough, Daniel Mays, Elyes Gabel, and Peter Mullan.  Welcome to the Punch opens on March 15, 2013.

Well here’s an interesting twist.  Bryan Singer has tweeted that Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart have joined X-Men: Days of Future Past, which is supposedly a sequel not to X-Men: The Last Stand, but X-Men: First Class.  So how will they be used?  There are a couple of possibilities I can think of off the top of my head.  First, they’ll just be a couple of cameos used as a framing device, so that Professor X and Magneto are looking back at the events of the new movie.  When these remembrances would occur in terms of the original trilogy is a bit fuzzy since Last Stand ends on the borderline of the status quo [spoilers] (Magneto loses his powers, but not really; Professor X dies, but not really).

Hit the jump for more speculation.  Singer also tweeted that James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, and Nicholas Hoult will all return.  No mention on First Class‘ other cast members.  Filming on the upcoming sequel is set to begin early next year.

One of many films about the WikiLeaks scandal and/or founder Julian Assange currently in development is now moving forward.  We previously knew that Benedict Cumberbatch was set to play Assange in DreamWorks’ adaptation of Daniel Domscheit-Berg’s book Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange At The World’s Most Dangerous Website with Bill Condon (Dreamgirls, Twilight: Breaking Dawn) looking to direct, and now it appears that the second lead role has been filled.  Variety reports that James McAvoy will star alongside Cumberbatch as Domscheit-Berg, Assange’s right hand man.  Hit the jump for more on the film.

Director Matthew Vaughn (X-Men: First Class) has reportedly decided not to direct the sequel, X-Men: Days of Future Past.  At this time, there is no explanation for Vaughn’s departure, but this doesn’t mark the first change of heart in the director’s history.  He previously toyed with the notion of dropping out of helming 2010′s Kick-Ass before changing his mind and returning. He then opted out of directing the sequel, which is currently being directed by Jeff Wadlow (Never Back Down).  Fox wants to keep their July 18th, 2014 release date and will have to move on landing a new director soon, especially since the original cast, including Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy, are all expected to return.  Tops on their list is Bryan Singer (X-Men, X2).  Hit the jump for more. 

Johnny Depp is in negotiations to lead Transcendence, the directorial debut from The Dark Knight Rises cinematographer Wally Pfister.  When the project was announced back in March, details were being kept under wraps.  The plot is still being kept under wraps other than the film now having a title.  So what does “Transcendence” refer to and why keep the logline secret?  Perhaps it could be too confusing or difficult to distill into a single sentence, although when Inception was announced, all we knew was it was a thriller “set in the architecture of the mind.”  It was intriguing even though it explained absolutely nothing.

Depp will next be seen in Gore Verbinski‘s The Lone Ranger, which opens July 3, 2013.  Hit the jump for the press release regarding Transcendence, which is scheduled to begin shooting early next year.  [Update: Hit the jump for more details about the project.]

For anyone who was clamoring for Wanted 2, it’s been a disappointing past four years.  After listening to Mark Millar talk out of his ass about how far the sequel is coming along, Angelina Jolie dropped out, but then there was a glimmer of progress when original writers Derek Haas and Michael Brandt signed on last fall.  Since then, word has been quiet, but director Timur Bekmambetov provided an update on the project this past weekend at the press junket for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

Hit the jump for more.

James McAvoy has signed on to star opposite Jessica Chastain in one of the most intriguing projects in development right now, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby.  It is a double feature that explores “how a married couple in New York City deals with an emotional, life-altering experience, from two different perspectives.”  The perspective of the husband (McAvoy) is seen in The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him, while the story of the wife (Chastain) is told in The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her.  (It used to be His and Hers, back when Joel Edgerton was attached to play the husband.)  This ambitious project is the feature debut of writer/director Ned Benson.  Hit the jump for the full press release.

Gnomeo & Juliet, the most gnome-filled Shakespeare adaptation to date, was a bit of lively if ultimately unsatisfying fun buoyed by a soundtrack of Elton John hits. As it did solid bank at the global box office, John (who was an exec producer on the film) and his production company Rocket Pictures are gearing up for a sequel called Gnomeo & Juliet: Sherlock Gnomes (hey, you try coming up with a concept that rhymes with “gnomes.” It’s hard!).

Per Deadline, John is back in the studio composing new music for the film (the first one having featured only two new tunes mixed in with the classics), while Gnomeo writers Andy Riley and Kevin Cecil are working on the script. Original director Kelly Asbury (Shrek 2), meanwhile, will be sliding into a “creative consultant” role. This time around, the plot will see the titular protagonists (originally voiced by James McAvoy and Emily Blunt) seeking out the renowned (but inept) gnome detective to solve a rash of gnome disappearances. Like its predecessor, this one will be available in gnome-tacular 3D.

In this edition of “Photos from the Set,” we have:

• Neighborhood Watch – Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill, and Richard Ayoade star as a group of neighbors who form a local watch group and end up stumbling onto an alien plot to destroy the world.
• Lovelace – Amanda Seyfried and Peter Sarsgard star as Linda Lovelace and her abusive husband Chuck Traynor in the biopic about the star at the center of the porn phenomenon Deep Throat.
• Dog Fight – Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis star as rival politicians running for a congressional seat in a small North Carolina district.
• Filth – James McAvoy, Jamie Bell and Alan Cumming star in the adaptation of the Irvine Welsh novel about a malicious Scottish police officer.

Hit the jump for the set photos and more info on each movie.

I’ve always been slightly perplexed when people ask “How does Santa deliver all his presents in a single night?”  It’s as if the possibility of a fat and jolly gentleman who lives in a hostile climate and has consumer goods made by an army of elves is completely plausible, but there’s no getting around the physics of the delivery.  And if that’s the hang-up, then why not simply answer back, “Magic,”?  Aardman Animation’s Arthur Christmas has fun indulging the question of “How?” but knows that it can be funny and heartwarming if you let Christmas night be magical.

In the animated family film Arthur Christmas, hitting theaters on November 23^rd, actor James McAvoy voices Arthur, the awkward but enthusiastic youngest son to Santa Claus (Jim Broadbent). When the ultra-high-tech Christmas gift delivery system fails, missing one child out of hundreds of millions, Arthur embarks on a rogue mission, with the help of his rather naughty Grandsanta (Bill Nighy) and a giftwrapping-obsessed elf (Ashley Jensen), to deliver the last present before Christmas morning.

During this exclusive phone interview with Collider, James McAvoy talked about his desire to want to do more films for kids because they’re the best audience around, that he responded to the integrity and humor in the story, the challenge of voicing a character that is always so enthusiastic and nice, and that, if given the choice, he would likely go with the simple and classic ways of doing things versus the high-tech ones. He also talked about how freaky it was to watch even 10 minutes of the Showtime remake of Shameless (he starred in the original), his hopes for the X-Men: First Class sequel, which has not been greenlit yet, the amazing experience he’s had working with director Danny Boyle on Trance, for which he has one day left of shooting, how good the action-thriller Welcome to the Punch turned out, and shooting the fantastic but twisted script for Irvine Welsh’s Filth, starting in January 2012. Check out what he had to say after the jump:

With A Dangerous Method hitting theaters on November 23^rd and the NC-17 rated Shame opening on December 2^nd, Michael Fassbender is busy promoting both films and his truly excellent performances in each. Although very different films, they each explore themes of sex and sexuality, and what is culturally accepted behavior in the bedroom.

While Collider got to sit down with the ultra-busy actor to talk about those films, we’ll run the video interview closer to their release dates. However, in the meantime, we did want to share what he had to say about his return to the role of Magneto for the eventual sequel to X-Men: First Class, how he’s looking forward to working on ideas with James McAvoy and hopefully Matthew Vaughn, and that he’s interested to see how Charles Xavier turns into Professor X. Check out what he had to say after the jump.

Aardman Animation—the studio behind Chicken Run and the charming adventures of Wallace and Gromit—has sent over 5 clips from their latest effort, Arthur Christmas.  The film reveals the answer to the age-old question: “So how does Santa deliver all those presents in one night?”

For more on Arthur Christmas, check out Steve’s thoughts on the first 30 minutes and interview with director Sarah Smith.  James McAvoy, Hugh Laurie, Jim Broadbent, Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton, and Ashley Jensen comprise the voice cast in the November 23 release. Watch the clips after the jump.