Every year, I’m angry I don’t get to go to Cannes, but this year has really me pissed off.  The incredible line-up includes Inside Llewyn Davis, Only God Forgives, The Congress, The Bling Ring, As I Lay Dying, Blood Ties, All Is Lost, and more.  Nebraska, the new film from Alexander Payne (The Descendants), will be playing in competition, and the first clip has only added to my jealousy of this year’s festival-goers.  The plot enters on an aging alcoholic father (Bruce Dern) who decides to take a road trip from Montana to Nebraska to collect what he believes to be a million dollar Publisher’s Clearing House prize.  His estranged son (Will Forte) reluctantly agrees to accompany his father in order to keep him out of trouble.  There’s grimness to this clip where one of the father’s “friends” (played by Stacy Keach) tries to extort some money, and the son ends up learning an ugly truth.  Payne’s films have always had humor, but I’m curious to see how much it will factor in to his latest picture.

We’ll find out when the film screens at Cannes and the buzz begins.  Nebraska is slated to open in limited release on November 22nd.

The first official image from director Alexander Payne’s upcoming film Nebraska has landed online.  The film marks Payne’s follow-up to 2011’s The Descendants and centers on an aging alcoholic father who decides to take a road trip from Montana to Nebraska to collect what he believes to be a million dollar Publisher’s Clearing House prize.  His estranged son reluctantly agrees to accompany his father in order to keep him out of trouble.  Bruce Dern and Will Forte star as father and son in the black-and-white road trip film, and Payne shot the entire pic on the road in Nebraska, Montana, Wyoming, and South Dakota—where the film’s story takes place.

Hit the jump to check out the debut image.  Nebraska will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival later this month and is slated to open in limited release on November 22nd.

MacGruber has had an interesting journey from an easily dismissed adaptation to box office flop to cult hit.  It continues to rack up devotees who happily quote it and know what “KFBR392″ means.  But despite these fans, MacGruber 2 looks highly unlikely.  Last June, star and co-writer Will Forte said he didn’t think any sane person would fund it, but he added that they were definitely writing the script within the next six months.  Forte can always look forward to fans asking about a sequel, and he recently provided an update while doing press for his upcoming drama, Run and Jump.

Hit the jump for what Forte had to say about MacGruber 2.  Forte will next be voicing a new character in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, and he’s playing the lead in Nebraska, the new film from Alexander Payne (The Descendants).

Though we previously reported Dennis Quaid and Ty Burrell as starring in Dan Schechter’s untitled adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s novel, The Switch, it looks like they’re out and Will Forte and Tim Robbins are in.  The story occurs 15 years before the events of Jackie Brown, with Yassin Bey and John Hawkes starring as career criminals Ordell Robbie and Louis Gara (the same characters played by Samuel L. Jackson and Robert De Niro).  The picture also stars Jennifer Aniston and Isla Fisher.  Hit the jump to see how Forte and Robbins fit in.

I love Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and I have high expectations for the upcoming sequel, Cloudy 2: Revenge of the Leftovers.  Details on the film have been scarce, but now EW is reporting that the plot revolves around Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader) and Sam Sparks (Anna Faris) returning to Swallow Falls to clean up the mess created by the FLDSMDFR only to find that food is now taking on the form of mutant beasts.  “Magically, every creature is a combination of a food item and an animal that results in just a cringeworthy pun,” says producer Kirk Bodyfelt.  As a fan of cringeworthy puns, this makes me even more excited for the flick.

Hit the jump for more.  Cloudy 2: Revenge of the Leftovers opens in 3D on February 7, 2014.

Following a bit of a bumpy road, director Alexander Payne’s drama Nebraska is now firmly on track and headed towards a production start.  The film centers on an aging alcoholic father who decides to take a road trip from Montana to Nebraska to collect what he believes to be a million dollar Publisher’s Clearing House prize. His estranged son decides to accompany his father in order to keep him out of trouble.  Payne was considering a number of esteemed actors for the lead and tried hard to coax Gene Hackman out of retirement, but we heard in May that Payne had his eye on Bruce Dern for the father role and Will Forte for the son.

Now Deadline reports that deals are being closed with Dern and Forte for the $13 million black-and-white film as Payne finally has the greenlight from Paramount.  The Descendants was a swell entry to Payne’s oeuvre, but I’m highly intrigued by this small-scale yet ambitious drama.  Forte is an immensely talented comedic actor and I have no doubt that he’ll nail Payne’s balance of drama and comedy. With deals closing and the picture a go, production begins this October for an awards season 2013 release.

“Let’s keep it 1950s, kids,” Vince Vaughn‘s character says to his teenage daughter and her prom date in Akiva Schaffer‘s The Watch.  That sentiment could be applied to the film’s cherished values, and the characters’ drive to protect the most boring of places: the suburbs.  The suburbs are where white flew after African-Americans began moving into the cities, and now it’s a safe haven where nothing happens or will ever happen.  The paradox of The Watch is in seeing the heroes (played by Vaughn, Ben Stiller, Jonah Hill, and Richard Ayoade) go on a comic adventure to keep the status quo.  But in the dull trappings of Schaffer’s bland direction, Stiller’s killjoy character, and Ayoade’s wasted talented, there’s no comedy or thrills to be found.  It’s a movie where rocking the suburbs won’t wake the neighbors, and only the chemistry between Vaughn and Hill provides any levity to the tame R-rated comedy.

The raunchy and outrageous comedy That’s My Boy tells the story of Donny Berger (Adam Sandler), an aimless loser who knocked up his smoking hot teacher when he was a teenager, and was left to raise their love child even though he was completely unprepared to be a parent.  Now, 30 years later, Todd (Andy Samberg) is all grown up and a successful Wall Street executive who hasn’t seen his father in years.  But, with Donny owing tens of thousands to the IRS, he figures that tracking down his son will not only give him the chance to ask for the money he needs to stay out of jail, but to also finally bond with his son.

At the film’s press day, writer/director Sean Anders talked to Collider for this exclusive interview about what made Adam Sandler and Andy Samberg the perfect pairing for this film, what he’d like to see on the DVD, and the collaboration he had with Sandler both in reworking the script and on set during filming.  He also talked about signing on to write and direct Three Mississippi (with partner John Morris), about two Philadelphia neighbors whose annual Thanksgiving game of tackle football has become extraordinarily heated, the possibility of a Will Ferrell and Adam Sandler pairing for the film, and the status of the Dumb and Dumber sequel with Jim Carrey.  Check out what he had to say after the jump.

Eight clips from the new comedy That’s My Boy have gone online.   The film stars Adam Sandler as rich party animal who tries to avoid going to jail for tax evasion by getting his estranged and independently-wealthy son (Andy Samberg) to front him the cash to pay back the IRS.  What’s more, the dad decides to make this play during the son’s upcoming nuptials.  The film marks Sandler’s first R-rated film since 1996’s Bulletproof, and features a supporting cast that includes Leighton Meester, James Caan, Milo Ventimiglia, Will Forte and Vanilla Ice.

Hit the jump to watch the clips.  That’s My Boy opens on June 15^th.

Last week, MacGruber director Jorma Taccone had to go and fuck with us by getting our hopes up for a sequel to his cult hit comedy.  Taccone says when he gets together with Will Forte and co-writer John Solomon, they kick around ideas like wanting the film to take place on Christmas (like Die Hard) and even had a title planned.  In all fairness, he didn’t say any studio was interested, but it was still nice to think that the creators hadn’t cast the world’s worst special agent aside.

However, Forte has now provided us with a reality check.  Hit the jump for more. (Update: Forte commented further on MacGruber 2. Hit the jump to see what he had to say.)

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.

Having racked up awards buzz and a rather tidy box office sum with The Descendants, director Alexander Payne is set to ease back into his road-movie wheelhouse with Nebraska. Production on the project has been delayed a couple times in the past months, as Payne worked on the script and searched for the right leads. After names like Robert Duvall, Jack Nicholson and Robert Forster were bandied about, now comes news that the helmer has set his sights on Bruce Dern to play a cantankerous alcoholic and SNL alum Will Forte to occupy the role of his estranged son. The dramedy will see the two taking a car trip to collect on the father’s apparent sweepstakes win. At the moment, offers have not been made to either actor. Hit the jump for more on Nebraska.

We’ve got a couple of television casting stories to share with you today. First up, the incredibly funny Will Forte has been tapped to lead the Fox comedy pilot Rebounding. Deadline reports that Forte will play Danny in the uplifting comedy which centers on “a man recovering from the death of his fiancée with the help of the idiots on his pickup basketball team. It’s not exactly MacGruber: The Series, but I could definitely see Forte having fun with the premise. The single-camera pilot comes from writers/executive producers Joe Port and Joe Wiseman (The IT Crowd), executive producer Steve Levitan (Modern Family), and director Jason Winer. Forte has an excellent recurring role on 30 Rock, and while a part of me would genuinely love to see MacGruber turned into a TV show, I’m glad to see Forte is getting the chance to lead a series of his own.

Hit the jump for casting news concerning USA’s Political Animals.

One of the many films to premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival was Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie (which is now playing on VOD and in theaters March 2).  The pic marks the first feature-length film from the comedy duo of Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim and it stars Zach Galifianakis, John C. Reilly, Will Ferrell, Will Forte and Jeff Goldblum.   It’s pretty much what you’re expecting from the oddball team.  For more on the film, here’s the red band and the green band trailer.

During Sundance I was able to sit down with Heidecker, Wareheim and Forte for an extended interview.  We talked about premiering at Sundance, how the project came together, is the movie more scripted than their TV work, their thoughts on VOD, what will be on the DVD/Blu-ray, financing, what’s coming up for the three of them, and a lot more.  Hit the jump to watch.

A full red band trailer for Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie has gone online. The pic marks the first feature-length film from the comedy duo of Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim. It’s pretty much what you’re expecting from the oddball team. The trailer’s got its fair share of strange moments, and highlights the celebs that pop up throughout the film (Zach Galifianakis, John C. Reilly, Will Ferrell, Will Forte and Jeff Goldblum). If you’re a fan of the show, I’m assuming this trailer will pique your interest. I can appreciate the comedic value of Tim and Eric, but I always feel like I’m on a bad acid trip when watching their stuff (which I guess is the point).

Hit the jump to watch the trailer. The film also stars Robert Loggia and William Atherton. The pic is being featured as part of the “Park City at Midnight” line-up at the Sundance Film Festival and will be available January 27th on VOD. Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie hits theaters March 2nd.