Back in December, Steve spoke with director Baltasar Kormakur (Contraband) about his upcoming project, Everest.  “It’s a very, very big movie with a medium budget,” said Kormakur.  He also said that they wanted to try and get as high up the mountain as possible, and also spend three months shooting on a glacier.  According to Deadline, Christian Bale should get his crampons ready.  The film is based on the disastrous 1996 expedition that left eight climbers dead, and Bale is in talks to play the lead role.  Jon Krakauer chronicled the event in his must-read first-hand account of the tragedy, Into Thin Air. However, Everest will not be an adaptation on that book, and instead draw from multiple sources including interviews with survivors.   Kormakur’s film is not to be confused with Doug Liman‘s project of the same name, which is set to star Tom Hardy as Sir George Mallory, the first person to reach the peak of the world’s tallest mountain.

Kormakur is currently up for an Oscar for Best Foreign Film for his survival picture, The Deep.  He also directed the upcoming action flick 2 Guns starring Mark Wahlberg and Denzel Washington.  Bale will be seen later this year in Out of the Furnace.

Now playing is director Tom Hooper’s fantastic adaptation of Les Miserables.  Loaded with great performances and top notch filmmaking, Les Mis is absolutely a contender for all the year end awards and it would shock me if Anne Hathaway doesn’t win the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her incredible work as Fantine.  Her one take rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” was incredible and it’s the type of performance that’s unforgettable.  For more on the film, here are five clips, Matt’s review, and all our previous coverage.

At the recent NYC press day for the film I did an exclusive interview with producer Eric Fellner (who runs Working Title with Tim Bevan).  Since Sid and Nacy in 1986, Fellner has produced 100 movies and he shows no signs of slowing down.  During the interview we talked about how Les Mis came together, the way the industry has changed over the past decade, whether VOD and online streaming become a real revenue stream, if we could eventually get an extended cut of Les Mis (the first assembly cut was four hours!), and more.  In addition, with Fellner producing so many other projects, I got updates on the Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy sequel, Edgar Wright’s The World’s End, Ron Howard’s Rush, Richard Curtis‘ About Time, Everest and more.  Hit the jump to either listen to the audio or read the transcript.

While director Baltasar Kormákur (The Deep, Contraband) is busy in post production on next summer’s 2 Guns starring Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg, that doesn’t mean he’s not planning future projects.  As we’ve previously reported, Kormakur is going to direct the HBO pilot for The Missionary, which would take place during the 1960s and center on an American missionary (Benjamin Walker) who gets caught up in Cold War intrigue while helping a young woman escape East Berlin.   He told me the plan is to film this April in Hungary and a few days in East Berlin, and after the project wraps, he hopes to make Everest (which is a working title).

According to Kormakur, the film recounts the story of an accident on Mount Everest in 1996.  When I asked him the size and scope of the project, he said, “It’s a very, very big movie with a medium budget.”  To make it look as real as possible, he plans on filming on Mount Everest, traveling as far up the mountain as he can with actors.  They will also film on a glacier for three months.  For more on the project hit the jump.

Tom Hardy is one of the most intense actors in the game today; he’ll need that fire in his attempt to summit Mt. Everest in director Doug Liman’s (The Bourne Identity) new picture about the indomitable peak. Everest, adapted from Jeffrey Archer’s book, Paths Of Glory, Everest, by Sheldon Turner (Up in the Air), centers on George Mallory and his three attempts in the early 1920s to become the first man to climb the world’s highest mountain.  Two guesses on who Hardy is in talks to play.  Hit the jump for more.

On February 2^nd, the dramedy series I Just Want My Pants Back, executive produced by Doug Liman (Mr. & Mrs. Smith, The Bourne Identity, Go, Swingers), premieres on MTV. A funny, honest portrayal of friendships and relationships among a group of 20-something friends in Brooklyn, it tells the story of Jason Strider (Peter Vack), his best friend Tina (Kim Shaw), and Eric (Jordan Carlos) and Stacey (Elisabeth Hower). When a one night stand steals Jason’s heart and his pants, he begins a quest to get his beloved jeans back, and hopefully find the girl, while growing up along the way.

During this recent exclusive phone interview with Collider, Doug Liman talked about how and when he got involved with I Just Want My Pants Back, what makes MTV the perfect home for the show, the challenge of finding a talented and attractive cast of actors who was relatively unknown, and that he’s confidant they’ll get a Season 2 because he feels like the audience is going to have the same emotional response to the characters that he does. He also talked about the challenge of balancing producing the TV show with his feature film career as a director, how he’s hoping All You Need Is Kill (starring Tom Cruise) will be his next film, and that he plans to make Everest (about George Mallory and his three attempts in the early 1920′s to become the first man to climb the world’s highest mountain), after that. Check out what he had to say after the jump.

On February 2^nd, the dramedy series I Just Want My Pants Back, executive produced by Doug Liman (Mr. & Mrs. Smith, The Bourne Identity, Go, Swingers), premieres on MTV. It is a funny, honest portrayal of friendships and relationships among a group of 20-something friends in Brooklyn.

While we will run what Liman had to say about the promising new series, during a recent exclusive phone interview with Collider, closer to the premiere date, we did want to share the updates about his future projects. He said that he hopes his next project will be All You Need is Kill (about a solider fighting in a war with aliens who finds himself caught in a time loop of his last day in the battle, and becoming better skilled along the way), for Warner Bros. with Tom Cruise, and that the script is really cool and unlike anything he’s ever read. He also still hopes to make Everest (about George Mallory and his three attempts in the early 1920′s to become the first man to climb the world’s highest mountain), and is preparing to climb Mt. Washington again, as part of his research for the film. Check out what he had to say after the jump:

Director Doug Liman (Mr. & Mrs. Smith) recently had his sci-fi heist flick Luna put on hold, and he turned his attention to the sci-fi action movie All You Need Is Kill, but now he’s got a non sci-fi project on the horizon.  Deadline reports that Liman is on board to direct Everest based on Jeffrey Archer’s book Paths of Glory with the screenplay written by Sheldon Turner (Up in the Air). The non-fiction novel chronicles British mountain-climber George Mallory’s three attempts to reach the top of Mount Everest.  Mallory was a devoted family man and his attempts to climb Everest made him a hero to Great Britain, but he fell short of his attempts to reach the top without oxygen tanks in 1921 and 1922.  Mallory and his climbing partner Sandy Irvine changed their tactics for their final 1924 climb, but they disappeared into the clouds as they made their final approach and were never heard from again.  Debate continues to this day as to whether or not they actually made it to the peak.

Liman, who is an avid climber and a fan of Mallory’s story, still has Luna and All You Need Is Kill in addition to Everest, and there’s no word on which of these three projects will go before cameras first, although Deadline says Everest “is a priority at Sony.”  Hit the jump for a synopsis of Paths of Glory.