IFC Films has released the first trailer for Why Stop Now, previously titled Predisposed.  The trailer presents a likeable farce about a piano prodigy (Jesse Eisenberg) who needs to check his drug-addict mother (Melissa Leo) into rehab on the day of his audition for a prestigious music program.  Things go awry, which draws her drug dealer, Sprinkles (Tracy Morgan), into the quest.  Mixed reviews out of Sundance suggest directors Phil Dorling and Ron Nyswaner fail to keep the plot under control throughout the runtime.  But I’m intrigued by what I see here, even if the movie only manages to coast on the charms of its eclectic cast.

Sarah Ramos and Isiah Whitlock Jr. co-star in Why Stop Now, set for release on August 17.  Watch the trailer after the break.

While earlier this month the line-up for the 2012 Sundance Film Festival was announced, the fest has added four more films to the fest. Predisposed, starring Jesse Eisenberg, Melissa Leo, and Tracy Morgan will screen as part of the Premieres line-up and John Dies at the End starring Paul Giamatti, Chase Williamson, and Rob Mayes has been added to the Park City at Midnight line-up. Additionally, This Must Be the Place starring Sean Penn, Frances McDormand, and Judd Hirsch and Oslo, August 31st starring Anders Danielsen Lie, Hans Olav Brenner, and Ingrid Olava will screen as part of the Spotlight line-up.

Hit the jump to check out the first images from the films as well as a brief synopsis for each. The 2012 Sundance Film Festival runs from January 19 – 29th. Click here for all our coverage.

In Great American novel-adaptation news today, producer Scott Rudin (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) has purchased feature rights to Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot. The coming-of-age story focuses on a love triangle involving three graduates of Brown in the 1980s. Eugenides previously penned “The Virgin Suicides” and won the Pulitzer for “Middlesex.”

Adapting the best-selling Curtis Sittenfeld novel, American Wife, will be Ron Nyswaner, best known for scripting Philadelphia and The Painted Veil. The novel tracks the First Lady as she struggles with a scandal that threatens to derail her husband’s presidency and their marriage. When it was published in 2009, American Wife drew speculation that its central characters resembled President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush. Hit the jump for more on both projects.

Oscar nominee Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network), Oscar winner Melissa Leo (The Fighter), and 30 Rock star Tracy Morgan have reportedly signed on to star in the indie comedy Predisposed. According to Vulture, the trio will play a Julliard-hopeful, his drug-addicted mother, and said mother’s drug dealer, Sprinkles, respectively. Predisposed will be directed by Oscar nominated scribe/co-writer Ron Nyswaner (Philadelphia) with Philip Dorling sharing co-writing credit as well. Briefly, the comedy will center on the dysfunctional relationship between Eisenberg and Leo’s mother and son pair. The story is set on a day in which the son is interviewing for Julliard while his mother is busy feuding with her drug-dealer/checking herself into rehab while intoxicated so as to overcome her lack of health insurance.

Leo should be well prepared for her role as Eisenberg’s junkie mom as she made the same turn when Predisposed screened at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival as a short directed by the aforementioned Philip Dorling. Shooting on this promising feature length version of Predisposed is set to begin this summer.

Ellen Page will star in the drama Freeheld, which is based on Cynthia Wade’s Oscar-winning short documentary of the same name.  According to THR, the documentary “centered on the true story of New Jersey car mechanic Stacie Andree and her police detective girlfriend Laurel Hester, who both battled to secure Hester’s pension benefits after she was diagnosed with a terminal illness.”  Page will play Andree.  Oscar-nominated screenwriter Ron Nyswaner (Philadelphia) will pen the script.

Hit the jump to see a brief news piece on the film.  Page will next be seen this summer in Christopher Nolan’s Inception.

Emile Hirsch is one of the great young actors of his generation but I fear that the Oscar-snub for his work in “Into the Wild” (I can’t stress enough how much the Academy messed up that year for ignoring that film while jacking-off the excruciating “Atonement”) followed by the disappointing box office of the genuinely fun “Speed Racer” may have cooled his career.  But you can’t keep a good man down and that’s why he’s going to re-imagine Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” which, as we all know, is about an insane prince whose attempts to avenge his father’s death ends up with pretty much everyone dying at the end.  Count of Monte Cristo, he ain’t.

Hirsch conceived his modern re-imagining with “Twilight” director Catherine Hardwicke and that, as the Bard would say, is the rub.  I think Hardwicke is acclaimed for making youth movies that in no way reflect the genuine emotions or actions of young people.  Furthermore, while she may be acclaimed as one of the few successful female directors, “Twilight”, her most successful film, made no attempt to distance itself from Stephanie Meyer’s repulsive lesson of women relying on men for protection and definition.  Instead, she just washed the film in a blue filter and had laughably bad special effects.

Hirsh and Hardwicke have tapped “Philadelphia” screenwriter Ron Nyswaner for the script which will take place in contemporary America.  Producers Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen (“Milk”) tell The Hollywood Reporter that their goal is “to present the story as a suspense thriller. We want to make it exciting and accessible for an audience today.”  You know, I think “Hamlet” is exciting and accessible on its own.  That’s why it’s fucking Shakespeare.