The acclaim of Breaking Bad and The Wire over the last decade have demonstrated that there is a devoted following that wants to see the inner workings of illegal drug trade.  So of course it is Wire creator David Simon who concisely explains the allure of dealing in the new trailer for the documentary How to Make Money Selling Drugs:

“Look around, this is the environment of post-industrial America.  The work has gone away… The only factory that remains is the drug trade.  And they’re hiring!  They’re the only people hiring.”

If that’s too heady for you, director Matthew Cooke also interviews rappers 50 Cent and Eminem as well as actors Woody Harrelson and Susan Sarandon.  However, Cooke’s best talking heads are the folks who actually earned their living in the drug market, including “Freeway” Rick Ross, who ran a drug empire in Los Angeles in the 1980s. How to Make Money Selling Drugs looks to be a slickly produced examination of a fascinating subject, so check out the trailer after the jump.

For such an intimidating presence, Curtis Jackson (otherwise known as 50 Cent) has a rather shy and unassuming demeanor.  His soft voice and friendly smile serves as a nice counterbalance to the villainous thugs or hard-knocks anti-heroes, he is wont to play.  In Freelancers, Jackson stars as Malo – a former street thug turned police officer – torn between the criminal underworld and ‘the law’ he’s sworn to protect.  In the bleak nihilistic view of the film – there may not be much of a difference between the two: the cops just as corrupt, if not more so, than the criminals they’re sworn to catch.  Jackson’s two-sided demeanor serves him well here – as for pretty much the entirety of the film, you’re unsure if he’s the hero or the villain of his very own film.

In the following interview with Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, he discusses the difficulty in playing both hero and villain, his screenwriting career and his role in the upcoming Schwarzenegger/Stallone film The Tomb, among many other topics of conversation. For the full interview, hit the jump.  Freelancers is now out on DVD and Blu-ray.

A rough trailer for Frozen Ground has leaked online.  The crime thriller stars Nicolas Cage as an Alaskan detective who sets out to end the murderous rampage of Robert Hansen (John Cusack), a serial killer who has gone unnoticed for 13 years after one of his victims (Vanessa Hudgens) escapes.  It looks like another low-budget Cage thriller, and in this one he’ll get to have a glower-off with Cusack while Hudgens tries to make everyone forget that she was in the High School Musical movies.

Hit the jump to check out the trailer.  The film also stars Dean Norris and 50 Cent.   Frozen Ground is currently set to hit theaters on November 30th.

The first images and official synopsis for Frozen Ground have gone online.  The crime thriller stars Nicolas Cage as an Alaskan detective who “sets out to end the murderous rampage of Robert Hansen (John Cusack), a serial killer who has gone unnoticed for 13 years.”  The film also stars 50 Cent, Radha Mitchell, and Vanessa Hudgens.

Hit the jump to check out the images and synopsis.

Director Mikael Hafstrom just rounded out a great deal of his cast for the Arnold Schwarzenegger/Sylvester Stallone team-up actioner The Tomb.  Stallone stars as a structural security expert who is framed and locked up in a high-security prison that he designed, and Schwarzenegger is onboard as one of the prison’s inmates and a potential ally to Stallone.  Jim Caviezel also stars, and now Variety has added four more names to the cast: Amy Ryan, Vincent D’Onofrio, Vinnie Jones and 50 Cent.  Hit the jump for details concerning who these new additions to the cast will be playing.

New images have been released for the likely-direct-to-DVD movie Fire with Fire.  The film stars Josh Duhamel as a fireman who has to take matters into his own hands when he’s threatened by a man he’s going to testify against.  So how do I know this movie is going direct-to-DVD?  For starters, the movie stars Bruce Willis and lately his small-budget thrillers are going to stores instead of theaters (Setup and Catch .44).  Second, it co-stars 50 Cent whose last seven movies haven’t made it into theaters (as well they shouldn’t).

But hey, maybe the movie will make it to the big screen, in which case the world can once again be reminded that 50 Cent should never be in movies.  Hit the jump to check out the images.  Fire with Fire also stars Rosario Dawson, Richard Schiff, and Vincent D’Onofrio.

As Cannes roles on, more deals are being made, and that means there’s new casting new announce.  First up, Variety reports that Maggie Gyllenhaal will star in the supernatural thriller Voice from the Stone.  Directed by Eric Howell and based off the Italian novel, Le Voce Della Pietra, the story has Gyllenhaal playing “a nurse drawn to the aid of a young boy who is haunted by malevolent forces within the walls of an old house in the Italian countryside. As she develops a relationship with the father of the boy, she also becomes haunted by the same evil presence and must fight to save herself and the boy.”  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Don’t help haunted children.  Gyllenhaal is currently filming the drama Still I Rise with Viola Davis and she’s attached to star in Hysteria opposite Hugh Dancy, and a biopic of musician Bill Monroe.

Hit the jump for awful casting news regarding Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson.

Hey, remember that trailer we showed you in March for the awful-looking Bruce Willis/50 Cent thriller Setup?  It may have looked laughably-bad to all of us, but apparently Willis and Fiddy had a fun time working together because they’re re-teaming for another indie crime flick.  Variety reports that Willis and 50 Cent (I was going to simply say “actors”, but then I realized that would only be half-true) along with Josh Duhamel will star in Fire with Fire.  The story “centers on a fireman in the witness protection program. When he’s threatened by the man he plans to testify against, he takes matters into his own hands to save the love of his life.”  There’s no justice quite like fireman justice.  Just ask Howie Long.  David Barrett will direct from a script by Tom Conner.

Voltage Films will be selling the rights to the film at Cannes next week.  Filming is expected to begin on June 27th with an almost-inevitable-direct-to-DVD release date to be announced at a later date.

[Things Fall Apart screened at this year's Atlanta Film Festival.]

Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson can’t act.  It’s not a slam against his character; it’s just something he can’t do.  But his lack of acting ability is an absolute killer in the Mario Van Peebles drama Things Fall Apart where Jackson takes on the role of a football player who gets cancer.  Jackson seriously committed to making a full-on physical transformation for the role, but he apparently couldn’t be bothered to take an acting lesson, which makes all of his hard work seem like a waste.  Even if the film didn’t hinge on Jackson’s performance, it would still be beset by maudlin clichés, irritating supporting characters, and poor direction.

If you thought 50 Cent couldn’t scoop up any more great actors in his cinematic wave of destruction, you were dead, dead wrong. We’ve seen the comical trailer for the trying-too-hard drama Things Fall Apart; the trailer for Setup showed the likes of Bruce Willis and Ryan Phillippe somehow drawn into its cast. NOLA reports that Curtis Jackson’s next movie, Freelancers, locked in Robert De Niro; Deadline adds that Forest Whitaker is in negotiations to join the cast. Jessy Terrero (who brought us the forgettable Soul Plane) will helm Freelancers, the story of the son of a murdered NYPD cop who joins the police academy, graduates, and gets recruited by a group of rogue cops led by his father’s old partner (De Niro). Freelancers is scheduled to shoot four weeks in New Orleans starting in April.

Sounds interesting? Well, let’s not count our chickens before the trailer hatches.

A couple weeks ago, we showed you the hilariously-awful trailer for Things Fall Apart starring Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson.  While some rappers have shown they can excel at music and acting, 50 Cent is not one of those rappers.  Any on-stage charisma he has vanishes when he’s on camera, and his gigantic teeth seem to get in the way of him intelligibly delivering dialogue.

But if you saw the trailer for Things Fall Apart and were left thinking, “Man, I wish there was more where that came from,” then you’re in luck.  The trailer for future direct-to-DVD movie Setup has gone online and it will leave you wondering, “Seriously, Bruce Willis?  You’re in this? Did you forget you’re an A-Lister?”  I can understand when Val Kilmer co-stars with 50 Cent in Gun, but this just baffles me to pieces.

Hit the jump to see Willis making a toast to “crime” and informing a hapless thug that “God has left Detroit.”

I have to give Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson credit for pursuing dramatic work.  Unfortunately, that’s about all the credit I can give him because he’s not a very good actor.  While I admire his dedication and physical transformation to play a cancer-stricken football player in Things Fall Apart, the trailer makes it look like a Lifetime movie (I was about to write “A bad Lifetime movie”, but realized that was redundant).  I like how the trailer kicks off with a big football game and a crowd cheering in an almost-empty stadium.

I don’t want to spoil the rest of the hilarity, so check out the trailer after the jump.  Things Fall Apart also stars Ray Liotta wondering how his career got to this point.

Magnet Media has released the first trailer for the upcoming remake of the 2006 cult French thriller, 13 Tzameti.  The film, now just going by the title 13, stars Sam Riley (Control) as a man who “unwittingly becomes involved in a degenerate, clandestine world of mental chaos behind closed doors.”  The film also stars Jason Statham, Mickey Rourke, Michael Shannon, Ray Winstone, and 50 Cent.  Géla Babluani, who directed and wrote the original film, will be remaking his own film for English audiences.  Even though 13 premiered at this year’s SXSW Film Festival, the film still doesn’t have a release date.  You can hit the jump to check out the trailer, poster, and to read a plot synopsis for the film.

Bruce Willis and Paul Walker are in talks to star opposite Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson in Set Up, the feature debut of writer/director Mike Gunther.  According to Variety, the action thriller centers on “a group of friends who are catapulted into the middle of a diamond heist that turns deadly.”  A pretty generic logline, so the value of this one is up to the cast.  Given the range of filmic effect (Willis: positive; 50 Cent: negative; Walker: none), we could end up with something wonderfully mediocre.

Willis is currently working on The Cold Light of Day, with Rian Johnson’s Looper and the drama Ten up next on his schedule.  Walker will next be seen in Fast Five, the fifth film in the Fast & Furious series, starting June 10, 2011.

It’s not everyday that a film releases a trailer before becoming an entry on Wikipedia, but leave it to 50 Cent to do something special.  The trailer for his new film, Gun, co-starring Val Kilmer, dropped recently and boy is it a doozy.  Featuring an appropriately buffed-out Fiddy (who wrote the script himself) Gun seems less like a movie and more like a video game with Freudian issues.

The plot is simple.  Kilmer, looking like he’s a valued customer at Old Country Buffet, is a convict given a chance at freedom if he can successfully help the police bring down the arms dealer played by 50 Cent.  Violence, sex and enough guns to satisfy even Yosemite Sam are all prominently featured.  Hit the jump to see what the phrase “high caliber stakes” really means.