Ryan Phillippe, the actor who scored a breakout role in 1997′s I Know What You Did Last Summer, is set to write, direct and star in the indie thriller, Shreveport.  The picture centers on Phillippe as a has-been actor who is kidnapped while filming on the set of a low-budget movie in the titular city in Louisiana.  Variety reports that Phillippe’s character is also held hostage and tortured, but few other plot details are available.  Phillippe co-wrote Shreveport with Joe Gossett and has worked with directors Clint Eastwood (Flags of Our Fathers), Paul Haggis (Crash) and the late Robert Altman (Gosford Park), so we’ll see if he’s picked up any of their skills when production on Shreveport starts in Louisiana this summer.

In the pantheon of feature films born out of SNL skits, there’s a big hit-and-miss factor; for every Wayne’s World, there’s three It’s Pat’s.  A film version of MacGruber hit theaters in 2010 and any way you slice it, the movie was a disaster at the box office.  Against a budget of $10 million, the film grossed a total of $9.2 million worldwide.  I wasn’t a huge fan of Will Forte’s MacGruber sketch to begin with, so I wasn’t about to go sit through a 90-minute version in theaters.  However, the film hit DVD and I started hearing from trustworthy friends that it was actually good.

After being commanded to watch it multiple times, I finally relented and watched MacGruber myself.  It turns out that the film is actually pretty fantastic.  The jokes are ridiculously out-there, and Forte and director Jorme Taccone got away with making an insane comedy within the studio system.  So it’s with great enthusiasm that I greeted the news today that Taccone and Forte are working on a follow-up to MacGruber that may or may not come to fruition.  Hit the jump for more.

Atlas Independent is new to the filmmaking game, but they’re off to a good start with the supporting cast for their first feature Revenge for Jolly!.  Brian Petsos stars as the owner of a dog who died under suspicious circumstances.  He and his cousin “follow a series of clues in an attempt to track down the dog’s murderer, leaving a path of destruction in their wake.”  Oscar Isaac plays the cousin; Elijah Wood, Adam Brody, Ryan Phillippe, Kristen Wiig, David Rasche, Kevin Corrigan, Garret Dillahunt, Bobby Moynihan, and Gillian Jacobs also star.  That’s a cast I trust with this absurdist premise.

Director Chadd Harbold wrapped the sub-$10 million production in August.  For more info on Revenge for Jolly! and Atlas Independent’s mission statement, read the full press release after the jump.

Anna Paquin and Ryan Phillipe have signed on to star in the indie comedy Straight A’s for Nu Image/Millenium Films.  According to Variety, “Phillippe portrays a man who’s been in and out of rehab for 10 years and is haunted by the ghost of his dead mother pressing him to return home to the family he turned his back on years ago. Outfitted with nothing more than a bag of pills and a sack of weed, he trots back to Shreveport, only to be faced with his brother’s wife, who’s still pining for him, her first love.”  Presumably Paquin plays the brother’s wife.  Also, if a drug addict being haunted by his dead mother and pining to screw his sister-in-law isn’t comedy, then I don’t know what is.

James Cox (Wonderland) will direct from a script by David Cole.  Production began today on location in Shreveport, Louisiana.  Paquin will next be seen in Kenneth Lonergan’s Margaret co-starring Matt Damon and Mark Ruffalo.  Phillippe will next be seen in your local gas station’s $5 DVD bin in Set Up co-starring 50 Cent and Bruce Willis.

[Update: Variety reports that Luke Wilson has joined the cast as well. He will play Paquin’s husband and Phillippe’s brother.

Last summer we reported that Eric Bana and Colin Farrell were in talks to co-star in By Virtue Fall, the directorial debut of Up in the Air screenwriter Sheldon Turner.  Farrell eventually dropped off the project but Bana has signed on and according to 24 Frames, he’ll be joined by James Spader, Ryan Phillippe, and Carla Gugino.  The story concerns “two ATF agents who find themselves on opposite sides of the friendship divide after one sells out the other.”

Bana tells 24 Frames that he hopes to make By Virtue Fall his next project after finishing the thriller Blackbird with Olivia Wilde.  He’ll be seen in theaters this week alongside Cate Blanchett and Saoirse Ronan in Joe Wright’s Hanna.

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.”

Tribeca Film has released the first official trailer for The Bang Bang Club, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September of last year.  The political drama is based on the true story of a group of four young combat photographers situated in post-Apartheid South Africa in the early 1990s: “This intense political period brought out their best work (two won Pulitzers during the period) but cost them a heavy price.”

Ryan Phillipe, Malin Akerman, and Taylor Kitsch star in the narrative feature debut of writer/director Steven Silver.  The Bang Bang Club opens on April 22.  Watch the trailer after the jump.

The majority of Matthew McConaughey’s filmography for the last decade could be charitably described as “less-than-good” and uncharitably described as “an abomination”.  Even McConaughey seemed unengaged from the material in a way that seemed to say, “Yeah, these movies are crap, but I’ve got a million-dollar smile and unlike most men, I look even hotter when I’m sweaty so the ladies love me.  Enjoy Fool’s Gold.”  There’s a greasy charm to the majority of his performances and his rom-com “appeal” (I use that term loosely) has overshadowed his genuinely good work in more dramatic films like Lone Star and Frailty.

And yet it’s McConaughey’s smug huckster attitude that elevates The Lincoln Lawyer from a forgettable legal drama to a breezy, exciting thriller that’s ironically only slowed down when McConaughey lessens his bravado to take a swing at the story’s more dramatic beats.

In the mystery thriller The Lincoln Lawyer, actor Ryan Phillippe plays wealthy playboy Louis Roulet, who is charged with attempted rape and murder. After his arrest, he seeks out slick criminal defense attorney Mick Haller (Matthew McConaughey) to take on his case which, on the surface, appears to be very straightforward with a big money pay-off. Things quickly start to turn into a cat-and-mouse game between two masters of manipulation, as Haller begins to wonder what else Roulet might have gotten away with, in his past.

At the press day for the film, Ryan Phillippe talked about how he had to audition and fight for this role, what it took to get into the mind-set to play Louis Roulet, his reasons for keeping his distance from co-star Matthew McConaughey, and how much he enjoyed working with director Brad Furman. He also talked about his next project, Chronicle, about the distribution of marijuana, which he starts filming soon in New York. Check out what he had to say after the jump:

Lionsgate has released a new trailer for The Lincoln Lawyer, an adaptation of the best selling novel by Michael Connelly.  Matthew McConaughey stars as Mickey Haller, “a Los Angeles criminal defense attorney who operates out of the back of his Lincoln sedan.”  Ryan Phillippe, Marisa Tomei, William H. Macy, Josh Lucas, John Leguizamo, Michael Pena, and Bryan Cranston also star.  Brad Furman (The Take) directs from a script by John Romano (Nights in Rodanthe).  Check out the new trailer after the jump.

More Lincoln news! Okay, not really. This one involves the towncar. Lionsgate has released the first teaser trailer for The Lincoln Lawyer, based on the bestselling novel of the same name by Michael Connelly.  The film stars Matthew McConaughey giving off a bit of an A Time to Kill vibe, along with Ryan Phillippe, Marisa Tomei, John Leguizamo, William H. Macy, Josh Lucas, and Michael Peña.  The plot revolves around a successful criminal defense attorney who does business from the back of a Lincoln Towncar.  He gets involved with a high profile case concerning a wealthy realtor from Beverly Hills (Phillippe).  Tommy Lee Jones was previously attached to direct and star in the film but dropped out over creative differences. Brad Furman (The Take) now directs from a script by John Romano (Nights in Rodanthe).  The Lincoln Lawyer will be released on March 18^th, 2011. Hit the jump to check out the trailer.

When it was first announced, MacGruber seemed like the most dubious Saturday Night Live movie since It’s Pat!. Unlike previous films based upon the late night sketch show’s characters, MacGruber could not even carry five minutes of screen time. Instead, it managed only one to two, always punctuated by the exact same Aeon Flux-esque closing gag in which all of the protagonists meet an untimely end.

Expectations rose when Lonely Island member Jorma Taccone was placed in the director’s chair backed by the legitimate A-list talents of Ryan Phillipe and Val Kilmer. Suddenly, what had once sounded like the single worst idea for a movie in a great many years had a chance to be the next Wayne’s World, or at least the next Night at the Roxbury.

Is it? No. Not really. But it is very funny. Sometimes. More after the jump:

One of the many films premiering at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival is writer-director Steven Silver’s The Bang Bang Club – which stars Ryan Phillippe, Malin Akerman, Taylor Kitsch, Neels Van Jaarsveld and Frank Rautenbach.  Here’s the synopsis:

The Bang Bang Club was the name given to four young photographers: Greg Marinovich (Ryan Phillippe), Kevin Carter (Taylor Kitsch), Ken Oosterbroek (Frank Rautenbach) and Joao Silva (Neels Van Jaarsveld), whose photographs captured the final bloody days of white rule in South Africa. The film tells the remarkable and sometimes harrowing story of these young men – and the extraordinary extremes they went to in order to capture their pictures. Robin (Malin Akerman) is their photo-editor, who looked out for them, protected them and made sure their photographs were seen across the world.

While the first thing we normally see is a trailer, we’ve been provided with four movie clips and a number of images.  So if you’re curious about The Bang Bang Club, hit the jump to check everything out:

Without question, MacGruber had an extremely disappointing weekend.  Box office projections of $4.1 million make it the lowest grossing opening ever on a wide release for a film inspired by an SNL skit (It’s Pat and Stuart Saves His Family were both limited releases).  However, two of its stars, Kristen Wiig and Ryan Phillippe, have plenty of other projects on the way that they updated us on this week (Bridesmaids, The Stanford Prison Experiment, Clown Girl,  Nick Swardson’s Pretend Time).  So, it makes sense to bring you that news, along with some funny anecdotes from their MacGruber press day.

Hit the jump for the full audio & highlights.  There are spoilers ahead with those updates, along with Phillippe’s burgeoning comedy career, Wiig’s biggest fear upon joining Saturday Night Live & what The Hurt Locker would have been like if MacGruber was the main character.

When Rogue Pictures first announced they were making a MacGruber movie, I’ll admit to thinking it might not work.  After all, MacGruber is based on a very short Saturday Night Live sketch and I wasn’t sure he could make the transition to the big screen.  But based on the reviews out of SXSW where the film premiered, my nervousness was unfounded, as people loved the film and it’s currently at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes!  What I heard was it’s incredibly stupid but incredibly funny.  With a May 21st release date, we’ll all know if the film is as great as people are saying soon.

But if you’d like to get a look at a few scenes now, we’ve been given 5 clips and you can watch them after the jump.