With Universal and Illumination Entertainment’s CG/live-action family film Hop opening this weekend, I got to interview Russell Brand for our partners at Omelete.  In the film, James Marsden (Enchanted) stars as a slacker who finds himself taking care of the Easter Bunny (voiced by Brand) after he accidentally injures him.  Hop also stars (or features the voices of) Kaley Cuoco, Gary Cole, Elizabeth Perkins, David Hasselhoff, Chelsea Handler, Hank Azaria and Hugh Laurie.  You can watch some clips here.

During the interview, Brand talked about how Despicable Me got him this part, the recording process, how much was improvised, does he have a preference on where to do interviews, what’s his criteria for following someone on Twitter, does he get nervous before going on stage at Award shows or doing standup, and a lot more.  Hit the jump to watch:

Warner Bros. has released seven clips from the upcoming comedy Arthur.  The film is a remake of the 1981 Dudley Moore comedy and stars Russell Brand as a wealthy playboy who risks losing his inheritance when he falls for a woman that his family does not approve of.  The movie also stars Helen Mirren, Jennifer Garner, Luis Guzman, Greta Gerwig, and Nick Nolte.  Arthur was directed by Jason Winer (he directed a lot of Modern Family‘s first season).

Hit the jump to check out the clips.  Arthur opens April 8th.

Warner Bros. has released a new trailer for Arthur.  It’s not too different from the first trailer with the exception of a few new jokes and another reminder that Greta Gerwig is in the movie.  While I’m glad they’re not giving away all of the humor, the fact that so many of the jokes were in the first trailer has me worried that we’ve already seen the best the movie has to offer.  Hopefully that’s not the case.

Hit the jump to check out the new trailer.  Arthur stars Russell Brand, Helen Mirren, and Jennifer Garner.  It opens April 8th.

The first poster for Arthur was (in addition to being bland) slightly odd in that it didn’t feature Greta Gerwig, who plays the love interest of Russell Brand’s eponymous character.  Warner Bros. has now sent us a new banner for the film brings Gerwig in on the standing-and-sitting action enjoyed by Brand and co-stars Helen Mirren and Jennifer Garner.

Hit the jump to check out the banner.  Arthur opens April 8th.

The poster for Arthur has gone online.  The trailer went online last week and I found it to be surprisingly humorous.  The poster is a bit dull, but posters for comedies usually are.  At least they’re not standing in front of a white background.

Hit the jump to check out the poster.  Arthur stars Russell Brand, Helen Mirren, Greta Gerwig, Nick Nolte, Luis Guzmán, and Jennifer Garner.  It opens April 8th.

The trailer for Jason Winer’s (Modern Family) remake of Arthur has gone online.  The film centers on a drunken playboy (Russell Brand) who risks losing his inheritance when he falls in love with a woman (Greta Gerwig) his parents don’t like.  The movie looks like it could be fun and I hope someone makes an animated gif of Helen Mirren punching Brand in the face.  While the trailer relies too heavily on familiar tunes (“Rebel Rebel”,  “All Right Now”, and “Under Pressure”), that’s a trailer problem, not something that reflects negatively on the movie.  The jokes they feature got a laugh out of me and I hope they’re not just showing the best of the bunch.

Hit the jump to check out the trailer.  Arthur also stars Jennifer Garner, Nick Nolte, and Luis Guzman.  It opens April 8th.  Click here to check out Steve’s interview with Brand where he talks about the film.

If you’re an indie film watcher, you already know Greta Gerwig.  But while many of us are familiar with her great work in such films as The House of the Devil, Baghead and Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg, she’s still not on everyone’s radar.  But that’s about to change.  That’s because Gerwig plays one of Natalie Portman’s friends in No Strings Attached, she stars opposite Russell Brand in the remake of Arthur, and she’s also in Whit Stillman’s (Metropolitan, Barcelona, The Last Days of Disco) new movie Damsels in Distress.  What that means is…she’s right on the verge of being a mainstream star.

Anyhow, I recently got to do an extended interview with Gerwig and we talked about all three of her upcoming projects.  If you’ve been waiting (like me for Whit Stillman to finally make another movie, the great news is she thinks Stillman might not stop with Damsels in Distress.  In addition to spending way too much time talking about Stillman, Gerwig talks about her love of Elizabeth Meriwether and Ivan Reitman, making No Strings Attached, what making Arthur was really like, and so much more.  Hit the jump to either watch, read or listen to the interview:

Warner Bros. has set new release dates for four of the films on its 2011 slate.

• On April 8th, the Russell Brand-led remake of Arthur faces the wide releases Hanna, Rio, Your Highness, plus Ceremony and Meek’s Cutoff in limited release
• Crazy, Stupid, Love. has been pushed from April 22nd to July 29th, where stars Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Julianne Moore, and Emma Stone must battle both Cowboys & Aliens
• Something Borrowed, a promising entry in the romantic comedy genre starring Ginnifer Goodwin, Colin Egglesfield, John Krasinski, and Kate Hudson, will open on June 10th against Super 8, a month after its originally scheduled May 6th release
• Horrible Bosses was once set to bow July 29th; Box Office Mojo has changed its release listing to a more general “Summer 2011″

Hit the jump for more detail on each film.

When you sit down to interview Russell Brand, it’s good to be ready for anything.  That’s because while you might have a few questions ready to go, Brand is the type that can and will talk about anything. I’ve found the secret to talking with Brand is to have some fun questions at first, and then to try and get the conversation onto the subject at hand.  Thankfully, when I recently say down with Brand to talk about his work in Julie Taymor’s The Tempest, he was more than happy to talk about getting cast, what he learned on set, and he even talked about some of the cool props and costumes that he got to wear in his next film, Arthur.  Of course, this was after we talked about my Superman t-shirt.

Hit the jump for more on The Tempest and the interview:

Opening on October 15 is the really fun movie Red. Featuring an all-star cast that’s more impressive than The Expendables, Red stars Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren, John Malkovich, Morgan Freeman, Mary-Louise Parker, Karl Urban, Richard Dreyfuss, Julian McMahon, Brian Cox, and Ernest Borgnine. Based on the graphic novel Red (Retired Extremely Dangerous), the movie is about a group of retired black ops agents that get back together to try and figure out why some former agents are getting killed.

I was recently in NYC for the press junket and I was able to sit down with Helen Mirren.  During the interview we talked about whether or not her fans are ready to watch her fire a 50 caliber machine gun (I think they are), are there any challenges working in different movie genres, what was it like with the rest of the cast, and she gave me an update on how Arthur was going with Russell Brand.  Hit the jump to see what she had to say and make sure to see Red this weekend:

New set photos from X-Men: First Class, Arthur, and Captain America: The First Avenger have leaked online.  The X-Men photos are grainy-as-hell but Bleeding Cool says the images are of James McAvoy (who plays a pre-wheelchair Charles Xavier), Rose Byrne (who plays scientist/love-interest Moira MacTaggert), and Jennifer Lawrence (who plays young Mystique aka Raven Darkholme).  As for Arthur, there are some cool new night shots of the previously-seen Batman Forever Batmobile all lit-up and racing through the streets.  Finally, there are some images of a cool-looking submarine in Captain America: The First Avenger plus a new shot of Chris Evans as well as an image of his stuntman and costar Hayley Atwell’s stuntwoman being thrown to the ground.

Hit the jump for all the images.  X-Men: First Class opens June 3, 2011, Arthur is set for 2011, and Captain America: The First Avenger is slated for July 22, 2011.

The NY Times ran an article on Russell Brand’s Arthur remake the other day and included were the first official images from the production – currently filming in New York City.  While the images are your typical first look photos (nothing like the stuff we’ve already posted of Batman and Robin, the Batmobile, and the DeLorean from Back to the Future) the article was very interesting because it revealed how involved the Modern Family writers were in the script.  It seems that director Jason Winer – who helmed thirteen episodes of Modern Family during it’s first season – had seven of the writers do a line-by-line dialogue tuneup.  As a big fan of Modern Family, trust me when I say, the writers know what they’re doing and I’m sure they helped improve the script.  Some of the other interesting things were:

• Greta Gerwig’s first day of shooting was a largely improvised scene in front of the 42nd Street exit of Grand Central Terminal during Monday-morning rush hour
• Arthur is still very rich and very drunk
• Peter Baynham, the original writer, is on set every day doing rewrites
• Since Russell Brand is now clean and sober, to get into character, he takes a sniff of booze before filming
• Brand watched James Stewart in The Philadelphia Story, Nicolas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas, and the original Arthur before filming began
  

Hit the jump for the images:

If you were a frequently intoxicated billionaire, in which pop culture vehicle of note would you rather be chauferred around New York: the Batmobile from Batman Forever or the DeLorean from Back to the Future?  The answer is, of course, both.  The earliest snapshots from the set of the Russell Brand comedy Arthur featured the former (followed by Brand in full Batman garb), and the most recent pics feature Doc Brown’s iconic set of wheels that happens to double as a time machine.  Hit the jump to check out the photos.

With the sighting of the Batman Forever Batmobile last week on the set of Arthur, we knew that the comedy — helmed by Jason Winer (Modern Family) — would have to show off lead actor Russell Brand in the Batman costume.  What we didn’t know was that Luiz Guzman is not only in the film, but also filling out (over flowing?) a Robin costume of his own to hilarious effect.  Filming on the remake of the 1981 Steve Gordon comedy began in July, and we can expect a few more crazy antics to be spotted in the near future.  Hit the jump to check out the images of Brand and Guzman as the masked crusaders.

Filming is currently underway for Russell Brand’s Arthur remake, and an older model Batmobile was spotted on the set.  According to Cinematical, it’s the Batman Forever model, and it’s one of several cool vintage cars that are being used in the shoot.  The Batmobile sighting kind of makes the Arthur character sound like a man of great insight and decision-making despite the whole “drunken wealthy playboy” issue, because who the hell wouldn’t spend their inheritance on a Batmobile given the chance?  Personally, I’d maybe go in for a street-legal light cycle before I bought the title on a Batmobile.

For those unfamiliar with the plot, Arthur is about a wealthy playboy who may lose his inheritance because his family dislikes his new girlfriend.  Helen Mirren will play the John Gielgud role as Arthur’s caretaker, Jennifer Garner is reportedly playing the woman his parents want him to marry, Greta Gerwig has been cast as the love interest, and Nick Nolte will play her father.  Jason Winer is directing the remake of the classic 1981 comedy, which starred Dudley Moore and Liza Minnelli.  Hit the jump for photos of the Batmobile.