CBS Films has released the first trailer for director Jon Turtletaub’s (National Treasure) upcoming comedy Last Vegas.  The film stars Michael Douglas, Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman, and Kevin Kline as four old friends who decide to throw a Las Vegas bachelor party for the only one of them who has remained single (Douglas).  This teaser trailer sells the film hard as “The Hangover with old guys,” but despite the forced premise, Last Vegas actually looks like it could be kind of fun.  All four of the lead actors are Academy Award winners, and it’s interesting to see someone like Freeman just completely let loose and go full-on comedy.

Hit the jump to watch the trailer.  The film also stars Mary Steenburgen, Jerry Ferrara, Romany Malco, and Roger Bart.  Last Vegas opens on November 1st.

Here’s today’s casting news:

• Maggie Smith (Downton Abbey) and Kevin Kline (Dave) are set to star in My Old Lady, directorial debut of playwright and screenwriter Israel Horovitz.
• Benjamin Walker (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) is in talks to join Chris Hemsworth in Ron Howard’s In the Heart of the Sea.
• Lance Reddick (Fringe) has been cast in his first comedic lead for debut director Scot Armstrong’s Search Party.

Hit the jump for more on each casting announcement. 

New images have been released for the comedies The Incredible Burt Wonderstone and Last Vegas.  Wonderstone stars Steve Carell as the eponymous magician whose relationship with his partner (Steve Buscemi) becomes strained after the arrival of a hipper illusionist (Jim Carrey).  The script comes from Horrible Bosses screenwriters John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein so I’ve got high hopes.  As for Last Vegas (a.k.a. “The Hangover with old guys”), the movie centers on four old friends (played by Michael Douglas, Robert De Niro, Kevin Kline, and Morgan Freeman) who decide to throw a Las Vegas bachelor party for the only one of them who has remained single.

Hit the jump to check out the images.  The Incredible Burt Wonderstone opens March 15, 2013.  Last Vegas opens December 20, 2013.

The first image from the “The Hangover with old guys” comedy Last Vegas has been released on the heels of the official start of production.  The story centers on four old friends who decide to throw a Las Vegas bachelor party for the only one of them who has remained single.  Jon Turtletaub (National Treasure) directs the rather impressive cast that includes Michael Douglas, Robert De Niro, Kevin Kline, and Morgan Freeman.  Filming has now begun in Las Vegas (though this first image is horribly photoshopped) and will continue in Atlanta.  The cast will be doing location shooting in Vegas on the strip and at Aria Resort & Casino.

Hit the jump to check out the first image and to read the full press release.  The film also stars Mary Steenburgen, Jerry Ferrara (Entourage), Romany Malco (The 40-Year-Old Virgin), and Roger Bart (Political Animals).  Last Vegas opens on December 20th, 2013.

A few big names in today’s casting round-up:

• Matt Damon (Good Will Hunting) is set to re-team with The Brothers Grimm director, Terry Gilliam, for a small role in his upcoming film, The Zero Theorem.
• Kevin Kline (The Ice Storm) is set as the lead of Errol Flynn in Quinceañera directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland’s indie, The Last of Robin Hood.  Susan Sarandon (Thelma & Louise) will co-star.

Hit the jump for much more on both films. 

Just in time for the presidential election, the hit romantic comedy Dave, from director Ivan Reitman and screenwriter Gary Ross, debuts on Blu-ray on September 25^th, for the first time since its 1993 theatrical release.  The film tells the story about what happens when the U.S. President goes into a coma and a mild-mannered office manager, named Dave Kovic (Kevin Kline), with an uncanny resemblance is hired to impersonate him and fool not only an entire country, but also an increasingly suspicious First Lady (Sigourney Weaver).

At a press day for the Blu-ray release, director Ivan Reitman and producer Lauren Shuler Donner talked about how Gary Ross came to write the film, how the script was developed, what made Kevin Kline the right actor to pull off the dual role, why Sigourney Weaver was the perfect First Lady, and how they think young audiences will react to the film today.  Reitman also talked about the huge interest in sequels these days, the status of another Ghostbusters film and the Twins sequel, Triplets, and how he thinks audiences will be knocked out by the story they’re telling in Hitchcock (due out November 23^rd and starring Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren), which he’s producing, and Shuler Donner talked about the importance of focusing on character when you’re making superhero movies, like she’s done with the X-Men films.  Check out what they had to say after the jump.

We’ve got a few new release dates for you this evening.  Check them out at a glance:

• Last Vegas, directed by Jon Turteltaub and starring Michael Douglas, Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman and Kevin Kline will open December 20th, 2013.
• Stand Up Guys, the Fisher Stevens comedy starring Al Pacino, Christopher Walken, Julianna Margulies and Alan Arkin, opens January 11th, 2013.
• Quartet, Dustin Hoffman’s directorial debut starring Maggie Smith, Billy Connolly, Pauline Collins, Tom Courtenay, and Michael Gambon opens domestically December 28th of this year and in the U.K. January 4th 2013.

Hit the jump for more on each film, including synopses.

The cast for director Jon Turtletaub’s (National Treasure) upcoming comedy Last Vegas is firming up.  Described as “The Hangover with old guys,” the film centers on four old friends who decide to throw a Las Vegas bachelor party for the only one of them who has remained single.  Michael Douglas is set as the aging bachelor, Robert De Niro plays the wet blanket of the group, and Morgan Freeman also stars.  Now Deadline reports that Kevin Kline is joining the cast as the fourth and final member of this rag-tag team of AARP members.

Though Kline’s excellent comedic skills will no doubt be put to good use in Last Vegas, this news puts a bit of a damper on the prospect of Charlie Kaufman’s Frank or Francis getting off the ground soon.  The star-studded musical was to go before cameras this year, but was recently postponed due to financing issues.

Rumors flew earlier in the week that Charlie Kaufman‘s (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) ambitious project Frank or Francis might, sadly, never come together at all – though Kaufman’s reps are not ready to say any more than it has merely been postponed. The project is a “musical satire” about Hollywood and the internet, and has Steve Carell, Jack Black, Nicolas Cage, Kevin Kline and Elizabeth Banks all set to star, though questions about it ever coming to fruition have been numerous of late.

Kaufman has been busy with quite a few other projects (including writing his first novel, writing and directing an HBO series staring Catherine Keener, and adapting the YA novel Chaos Walking: The Knife Of Never Letting Go, so it’s not difficult to fathom that Frank or Francis may have unfortunately dropped from the top of his priority list. For more on the troubled project and what some of the film’s stars have said about its prospects, hit the jump.

In the drama Darling Companion, from director/co-writer/producer Lawrence Kasdan (Body Heat, The Big Chill, Silverado), Beth (Diane Keaton) and her daughter (Elisabeth Moss) take home a dog that they find on the side of the freeway, much to the ire of her husband, Joseph (Kevin Kline).  Before long, the dog, aptly named Freeway, becomes a beloved member of the family.  But, when the dog bounds away into the woods after a deer, everything is thrown into crisis mode and a search party forms that ultimately ends up bringing the entire family closer together.

At the film’s press day, actor Kevin Kline talked about what keeps him coming back to work with filmmaker Lawrence Kasdan (they’ve done six films together now), working for scale to get the movie made, why a film like this is a tough sell to a Hollywood studio, how much improvisation went on, why people seem to love their dogs more than each other, and what it was like to work with Diane Keaton.  He also talked about how he likes to have fun when he’s working, that he’ll be doing some Shakespeare this summer, and that he’s hoping to do the Charlie Kaufman film Frank or Francis next, in which he will play three characters.  Check out what he had to say after the jump:

We’re happy to debut the first poster for the drama Darling Companion.  The film stars Diane Keaton as woman who saves a lost dog and quickly forms a bond with the debraggled animal.  When her self-involved husband, played by Kevin Kline, loses the dog, they form a search party with a few remaining guests at their house and set out to find the animal.  The crux of the plot comes from how the members of the search party are affected by the rescue adventure, and the impressive cast includes Mark Duplass, Richard Jenkins, Elizabeth Moss, Dianne Wiest, and Sam Shepard.  Given that The Big Chill director Lawrence Kasdan is behind the pic, I think we can safely assume we’re in for an ensemble film that’s equal parts drama and comedy.

Hit the jump to check out the poster debut.  Darling Companion opens in limited release on April 20th.

The first trailer for director Lawrence Kasdan’s (The Big Chill) latest feature Darling Companion has gone online. The story centers on a woman (Diane Keaton) who saves an abandoned dog on the side of the highway. She brings the dog back to her home, where her husband (Kevin Kline) proceeds to lose it. The two round up a few remaining guests staying at their home and set out on a search. This is one of the strangest and most perplexing trailers I’ve come across in quite some time. The tone is all over the place, and I can’t pin down what the story is really about. Is it more in the vein of Marley and Me, Something’s Gotta Give, or Homeward Bound? I genuinely don’t know. The cast is fantastic, which gives me hope, but I’m a bit baffled by this trailer.

Hit the jump to check it out for yourself. The film also stars Mark Duplass, Richard Jenkins, Elizabeth Moss, Dianne Wiest, and Sam Shepard. Darling Companion opens in limited release April 20th.

The fact that Charlie Kaufman is making a new film is, in and of itself, incredibly enticing. The fact that Kafuman’s new film will focus on the back-and-forth between an online movie blogger and a filmmaker ups the interest level even more. Now Kevin Kline has joined the cast of Frank or Francis and will be playing two supporting roles, bringing my excitement level into the “dangerous to your health” category. Variety reports that Kline has joined the Hollywood satire that features Jack Black, Steve Carell, and Nicolas Cage. Black plays an Internet troll who writes movie reviews for a living, while Carell is playing a somewhat pretentious filmmaker who happens to be cheating on his wife. As for Cage? He’s playing a character called The Emcee, an actor famous for big-budget commercial fare whose last hit was the movie Fat Dad. Obviously.

Hit the jump for more, including details on Kline’s incredibly strange roles.

Bio-pics are the scourge of modern filmmaking. Most lives don’t fit into an easy narrative, and putting lives into a two to three hour narrative often means compromising the truths of the people involved. Great artists are even more difficult as many are total shits, and often terrible human beings. For Sir Richard Attenborough’s biography of Charlie Chaplin – titled Chaplin – the rough edges are unavoidable, but the filmmakers attempt to sand them down. Chaplin (as played by Robert Downey Jr.) is a pedophile and a terrible father, and the film makes excuses for him. Perhaps audiences don’t want to see that artists they love are sometimes terrible human beings. It may ruin the illusion of great art, but it does no favors to the truth. Attenborough wants to print the legend, and that’s entertaining enough if you accept the format and the inherent dishonesty – which the narrative  hope to at least game a little by suggesting that the narrator is dishonest. With an all star cast (including Kevin Kline, Dan Aykroyd, Milla Jovovich, Diane Lane, Nancy Travis, Anthony Hopkins, Moira Kelly, Marisa Tomei, and more) it’s at least diverting. My review of the Blu-ray of Chaplin follows after the jump.

Focus Features recently moved One Day up to July 8, which I quickly marked on my calendar.  As directed by Lone Scherfig (An Education), Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess are sure to charm in this high-concept romance: two friends who meet on the night of their college graduation and proceed to meet exactly once each year on July 15 for the next two decades.  It sounds very Blue Valentine, and this washed-out One Day poster does not seem concerned with such comparison.

The Conspirator perhaps boasts an even greater pedigree: Robert Redford directs Robin Wright, James McAvoy, Evan Rachel Wood, Tom Wilkinson, and Kevin Kline in the tale of Mary Surratt, the woman who was charged as a co-conspirator in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.  View the first posters for both One Day and The Conspirator after the jump.