Mexican director Alejandro Monteverde (Bella) has set up the Little Boy, a small-town family drama set at the onset of World War II, at Metanoia Films.  Kevin James, Ben Chaplin, Emily Watson, and David Henrie form the supporting cast around Jakob Salvati, making his acting debut as the boy in question.  Variety provides the logline:

[Little Boy] revolves around an 8-year-old with developmental problems. His only friend is his father, and with his departure to war, the troubled boy is forced to confront the cruelty of schoolmates and others.

Monteverde co-wrote the script with Pepe Portillo.  Financing on the $24 million production is split between U.S. and Mexican investors.  Filming is scheduled for the end of August in Baja California — plus shoots in Rosarito beach, Ensenada, Tijuana and Tecate — with eyes to a 2012 release.  The cast is lily white, so I’m curious to see what role (if any) the Mexican setting will play in the story.

We’ve raved about the Twixt presentation we saw at Comic-Con and a similar version of the promo trailer we saw has gone online.  During the presentation, the promo trailer was reedited multiple times with different music, and this is yet a new cut, but it still conveys the gist of what we saw.  You can see that the movie looks all over the place but all those places look interesting and it’s one of the many reasons why Twixt has me intrigued.

Hit the jump to check out the trailer.  The film stars Val Kilmer, Bruce Dern, Elle Fanning, and Ben Chaplin.  Twixt will play at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

Every time I write about Twixt, I’m probably going to rave about the film’s presentation at Comic-Con.  I would sit through five Total Recall presentations just to get something as interesting and as fun as Twixt.  I have no idea if the movie will be any good or not or even what the movie will be.  Due to the way it will be “performed”, the version you see of Twixt (which will be partially in 3D) may be different than the version someone else sees.  It’s a fascinating experiment but it also looks like it could be damn entertaining.  If I make it up to Toronto for this year’s film festival, there are plenty of films I want to see and Twixt is near the top of the list.

New images from the film have gone online along with a few new set photos.  Hit the jump to check them out.  Twixt stars Val Kilmer, Bruce Dern, Ben Chaplin, and Elle Fanning.

If you’re a movie fan, today is a great day.  That’s because thanks to the Toronto International Film festival announcing some of their 2011 schedule, we’ve been inundated with a tremendous amount of new movie images for some of the biggest films arriving later this year.  And continuing our coverage, after the jump you can check out the first images from Derick Martini’s Hick (which stars Blake Lively, Chloe Moretz, Alec Baldwin, Juliette Lewis, Eddie Redmayne and Rory Culkin), Jay Duplass and Mark Duplass Jeff, Who Lives at Home (which stars Jason Segel, Ed Helms, Judy Greer and Susan Sarandon) Francis Ford Coppola’s Twixt (starring Val Kilmer, Bruce Dern, Elle Fanning and Ben Chaplin) and the first clip and images from Killer Joe (which stars Matthew McConaughey, Emile Hirsch, Juno Temple, Thomas Haden Church and Gina Gershon).

Francis Ford Coppola hasn’t been to the San Diego Comic-Con since 1991 when he was promoting his adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.  However, this year he’ll be making his return to the festival to promote his upcoming film Twixt.  While we can argue over the quality of Coppola’s output over the last couple of decades, the fact of the matter is that a legend of American cinema will be on the stage of Hall H and I find that prospect as exciting as Amazing Spider-Man footage if not moreso.

Coppola describes Twixt as “one part Gothic romance, one part personal film, and one part the kind of horror film that began my career.”  The film stars Val Kilmer, Bruce Dern, Elle Fanning, and Ben Chaplin.  Hit the jump for the full press release.  The Twixt panel will be on Saturday, July 23rd.

March, 2009. That’s the first time I started talking with William Monahan about doing an interview for his directorial debut London Boulevard.  At the time, he was in prep in London, and we talked about why he wanted to adapt Ken Bruen’s novel and what the experience was like for him.  But for many reasons, the interview fell apart, and we decided to continue talking at a later point.  Of course later became a few months, and then we started and stopped a few more times.  Until last week.  That’s because about a week ago, at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, I finally sat down with the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of The Departed to talk about his directorial debut, which stars Colin Farrell, Keira Knightley, Anna Friel, Jamie Bower, David Thewlis, Ray Winstone, Stephen Graham, Eddie Marsan, and Ben Chaplin. The film is about a man just released from prison (Farrell) who falls in love with a reclusive young movie star (Knightley) and finds himself in a duel with a vicious gangster (Winstone).

During our extended interview, which lasted close to an hour, we covered everything from the genesis of the project to what it was like in the editing room.  Of course we also covered things like his writing process, why it is coming out in the UK before America (it gets released November 26 in the UK), the test screening process, why the British gangster genre is so popular, his other projects like The Gamblers, Becket, what’s up with Tripoli, what got him involved in Joseph Kosinski’s Oblivion, and so much more.

While I hate to compare interviews against one another, I can honestly say this is one of the best conversations I’ve ever had with any filmmaker.  Hit the jump to check it out: