According to Thompson on Hollywood Gerard Butler, Sam Worthington, and Matthew McConaughey have signed on to appear in Iraq war movie Thunder Run, which is based on David Zucchino’s novel Thunder Run – The Armored Strike to Capture Baghdad.

This won’t be your typical war movie however, as it has apparently been in development for five years and will be the “first ever conventional war film made to utilize this revolutionary facial and motion capture technology and state of the art CG and 3D.”

Here’s a synopsis of the story:

Thunder Run is the untold story of the dangerous and bloody capture of Baghdad by American Forces at the onset of the Iraq War. In April 2003, three battalions and fewer than a thousand men launched a violent thrust of tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles into the heart of a city of five million, igniting a three-day blitzkrieg, which military professionals often refer to as a lightning strike, or “thunder run.” In telling the story of the surprise assault on Baghdad- one of the most decisive battles in recent American combat history—this movie paints the harrowing picture of the soldiers on the front lines and the realities of modern warfare.

Simon West (Con Air, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider) will direct from a script by Black Hawk Down writers Robert Port and Ken Nolan. No word on when filming will begin, but the director is currently shooting The Expendables 2 so maybe sometime next year. The only setting we’ve seen an all CG war environment is in video games such as Call of Duty, so it’ll be interesting to see how this works out.

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300: Battle of Artemisia edged closer to production in July when Noam Murro, director of 2008 rom-com Smart People and the recent Halo video game campaign, was hired by Warner Bros. to direct.

The next stage (presumably) will be to get a cast together, and producer Bernie Goldmann revealed that we may see some familiar faces return. They’re in the script, anyway.

From Movies.com:

“It’s a different story,” he said. “[However] there’s a small part for Lena [Headey]. There’s a small part for Gerry [Butler].”

Would Gerard be willing to endure the famous ’300 workout’ again just for a small part? I suppose that will depend on his availability (or how much they pay him), but seeing King Leonidas and Queen Gorgo again would be cool.

Goldmann didn’t say anything about who would be joining the film, but said he prefers casting unknowns.

When you make a period movie like that, it’s great not to know the actors,” Goldmann explained. “For me, as an audience, it always brings me into the movie more. You can’t see Tom Cruise in a historical movie. You go, ‘That’s Tom Cruise!’”

As for snagging actors like Butler and Headey for the original, Goldmann recalled, “That was everybody not believing that the movie would be successful that allowed us to cast those actors.” He added, “We went and tried to get all these stars in it and nobody believed in the movie, we didn’t have all the money to pay anybody so we had to cast all these unknowns.”

While unknowns at the time, Gerard Butler, Lena Headey and Michael Fassbender have all gone on to great things post-300 (if you ignore Butler’s rom-coms). The success of 300 will probably attract some names for the prequel, but I wouldn’t have a problem if they cast a bunch of unknowns again.

300: Battle of Artemisia is based on Frank Miller’s upcoming graphic novel that takes Xerxes, the Persian leader who is an antagonist in 300, and turns him into more of a pivotal figure. He’s a man in search of godhood after the death of his father, battling an Athenian warlord named Themistocles. The story takes place over the course of several years, but the focal point is the battle of Artemisium, which occured in 480 BC.

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Relativity Media have released our first look at Machine Gun Preacher, the next movie from director Marc Forster (The Kite Runner, Quantum of Solace).

The film, based on a true story, follows Sam Childers (Gerard Butler), a former drug-dealing criminal who undergoes an astonishing transformation and finds an unexpected calling as the savior of hundreds of kidnapped and orphaned children in Sudan.

Watch the trailer below:

This looks quite good. It’s reminds me of those Oscar-bait films where a character sees the error of his/her ways and makes changes for the better. Only this film involves rocket launchers and machine guns.

Along with Butler the film also stars Michelle Monaghan, Michael Shannon, Madeline Carroll, Kathy Baker, Inga R. Wilson and Souleymane Sy Savane. Machine Gun Preacher will premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival next month and opens on September 23rd.

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Over the years Ralph Fiennes has worked with directors such as Steven Spielberg, Stephen Daldry and Kathryn Bigelow, so there’s no wonder the actor got an urge to direct himself.

Last March Fiennes begin shooting his directorial debut Coriolanus, a contemporary adaptation of Shakespeare’s play which was written between 1605 and 1608, and is based on the life of the legendary Roman leader, Gaius Marcius Coriolanus.

For a first time director Fiennes has managed to pull together an impressive cast, which includes Gerard Butler, Vanessa Redgrave, Jessica Chastain, Brian Cox and James Nesbitt. Now the first UK trailer has appeared online, and it looks intense.

Watch below:

Coriolanus (Ralph Fiennes), a hero of Rome, is a great soldier but despises the people. His extreme views ignite a mass riot and he is banished from Rome. Coriolanus allies with a sworn enemy (Gerard Butler) to take his revenge on the city. As director and star, Ralph Fiennes brings William Shakespeare’s visceral history play to the big screen for the first time. Coriolanus is a drama for the ages, a commentary on the precarious draw of war and an auspicious directorial debut from one of the world’s great classical actors.

Coriolanus opens in the US on December 2nd and in the UK on January 20, 2012. It has an Oscar-friendly release, so we could see an awards push from The Weinstein Company.

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Frank Miller has been working on a prequel to 300 called Xerxes over the past few years which Zack Snyder intends to make into a movie just like he did with 300. In March Snyder said that Miller would be showing him the graphic novel soon, and the movie may be the next thing he begins work on.

Well Miller spoke to The L.A Times recently and along with releasing the first bit of artwork (which you can see here), he spoke about what Xerxes will involve:

On the story:

“The story will be the same heft as ’300′ but it cover a much, much greater span of time — it’s 10 years, not three days,” Miller said. “This is a more complex story. The story is so much larger. The Spartans in ’300′ were being enclosed by the page as the world got smaller. This story has truly vast subjects. The Athenian naval fleet, for instance, is a massive artistic undertaking and it dwarfed by the Persian fleet, which is also shown in this story. The story has elements of espionage, too, and it’s a sweeping tale with gods and warriors.”

On the characters:

The time frame begins 10 years before ‘300? and the story starts with the Battle of Marathon” … “The lead character is Themistocles, who became warlord of Greece and built their navy. The story is very different than ‘300′ in that it involves Xerxes search for godhood. The existence of gods are presupposed in this story and the idea is that he is well on his way to godhood by the end of the story. With Themistocles I have a character who is almost the dead opposite of Leonidas in that Themistocles was a lying, conniving, brilliant, heroic figure. He was nicknamed ‘The Subtle Serpent’ and he always manages to do the exact right things that will result in him benefiting greatly.”

Miller also said two other characters from 300 will make appearances in Xerxes: Ephialtes, the Spartan traitor, plays a part in the tale and there is “a brief appearance by Leonidis,” the Spartan king portrayed by Gerard Butler. I wonder in Butler would be interest in returning if his character is only in it briefly? There is also a possibility that Rodrigo Santoro could return as Xerxes.

Xerxes will be a six-part tale with each individual installment being released next year. Are you interested in seeing this 300 prequel on the big screen? I’m sure Warner Bros. will be eager to get it into development following the success of 300 ($456 million worldwide + $261 million on DVD sales from a budget of $65 million).

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When I saw the first trailer for How To Train Your Dragon, I must admit it didn’t pique my interest. A non-Pixar film is automatically fighting an uphill battle in the animation industry, and Dragon just didn’t seem that interesting to me. So I practically surprised myself when I decided to check out an advanced screening (in 3D, no less) at the Mann’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood on Thursday night. I was also surprised with how much I ended up enjoying the film.

How To Train Your Dragon shares plot elements with a lot of stories we’ve seen recently. The plot follows Hiccup, a young Viking living in a culture that thrives on fighting dragons. His dad is the chief of the village and wants nothing more than for his son to grow up to be a hard-nosed Viking like the rest of the tribe. That’s what Hiccup wants, too – but the problem is he’s kind of clumsy and seems to be more of an inventor than a warrior (he’s the apprentice to a blacksmith). When Hiccup uses one of his inventions to take down a Night Fury (the most mysterious and rare of all dragon classifications), he finds he doesn’t have it in him to kill the beast and instead befriends it. As the rest of the story unfolds, Hiccup attempts to convince his tribe that dragons may not be as bad as they thought.

So why did I like this film? First off, aside from the overly-cartoonish characters (admittedly a Dreamworks style that I don’t particularly care for), the animation was phenomenal. There were a few sequences in which Viking ships were travelling over water where I literally whispered “wow” in the theater because of how beautifully the water was rendered. I know it’s a small detail, but it was some of the best CG water I’ve ever seen. More than the water, though, I loved the actual “dragon training” sequences. Remember the scene in Avatar where Jake Sully’s Na’vi flies through Pandora on the back of a dragon? This film does that same sequence, but better (and about half an hour longer). You can practically feel the wind on your face as Hiccup and his dragon soar through the air, coast above the water, and dodge through rock formations. It’s genuinely thrilling filmmaking, and I had an insane amount of fun with those scenes.

I mentioned before the film shares plot elements with a few other films. Besides the Avatar similarities (which are too blatant to ignore), How To Train Your Dragon also borrows a bit from Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, one of my favorite animated films of the past decade. The protagonists in both films are “different” from societal norms; they are outcast inventors trying to impress their fathers and score their first girlfriend at the same time. They both get in over their heads, but eventually prove that not only is it OK to be different, but it’s ultimately necessary for the well-being of their respective towns. Oh, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the (slight spoiler alert) huge monster dragon that appears near the end of the film bears a striking resemblance to the Kraken from the upcoming Clash of the Titans. The animators must have been pissed when they saw that Titans trailer.

Rising above the shuffle of filmic references and breathtaking visuals is a solid cast featuring Jay Baruchel (She’s Out of My League, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice) as Hiccup, Gerard Butler (300, Gamer) as Stoic, Hiccup’s father and village chief, and late night talk show personality Craig Ferguson as Stoic’s right hand man, Gobber. Butler and Ferguson relish in their Scottish accents, while Baruchel mercifully plays it straight and avoids any annoying vocal tricks. America Ferrera, Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, and Kristen Wiig round out the cast in supporting roles, all to fine effect. (Hill plays a character clearly based on Jack Black.)

The film tries to introduce a romance that didn’t work for me, partly because Astrid’s (Ferrera) transformation from “badass alpha-female” who wants nothing to do with Hiccup to “instant girlfriend” was rushed and didn’t feel natural. There’s even a scene reminiscent of Aladdin‘s famous “A Whole New World” montage where Hiccup and Astrid fly for the first time together, but it isn’t enough to make their relationship believable. With that said, the visuals during that sequence were spectacular. There’s one shot in particular that stood out as something I’ve never seen before. The camera stays locked in a side profile view of the pair flying atop a dragon as the dragon goes into a flying flip, with the background around the camera rotating but the trio staying right-side-up for the duration of the shot. It’s a cool little touch; add that to the training sequences I talked about earlier and I think we have one of the most gorgeous films of the year so far. It’s no surprise that Academy-Award winning cinematographer Roger Deakins was a visual advisor on the film.

Speaking of visuals, I haven’t mentioned the 3D yet. Like Pixar’s Up, this movie uses 3D as a means of adding depth instead of bringing things out into the face of the audience. I’m generally not a fan of 3D, but this felt totally organic and didn’t distract from the story at all. However, if you’re not willing to part with the extra cash for the more expensive 3D ticket, I’m confident the film will look just as dazzling in the standard two dimensions.

My last point comes with a brief disclaimer: I’m fully aware some people are going to accuse me of reading too far into a “kid’s movie,” but I figured I’d bring this up anyway. At one point, Astrid disgustedly looks at Hiccup (who has just failed a training mission in Viking Camp) and says “our parents’ war is about to become ours. You better figure out whose side you’re on.” Poignant words from a movie geared towards kids, especially today. Later on, Hiccup and his father argue over the merits of saving the dragons or fighting them. “They’ve killed hundreds of us!” Stoic yells at his son. “But we’ve killed thousands of them!” Hiccup replies. “They’re just defending themselves.” I’m not going to use this review as a platform for my own political beliefs, but it would appear someone was trying to slide a little current affairs into this movie. For those who would argue with me on this, let me offer a bit of defense: I think the aforementioned points are just as relevant as the political references in The Dark Knight. How To Train Your Dragon was based on a book written in 2003, so it’s probable that if those specific bits of dialogue were in the text, they were written with the War on Terror consciously or subconsciously in the author’s mind.

Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois co-wrote (with a few others) and co-directed, and overall I had a really fun time with this movie. The characters aren’t as fully rounded as I’d like, but the breathtaking visuals and fun tone of the film more than made up for any missteps along the way. While I haven’t seen many of Dreamworks Animation’s films outside of the Shrek series, How To Train Your Dragon definitely ranks up there next to the first Shrek film as my favorite of their work so far. Unlike the Shrek sequels (and, from what I hear, other Dreamworks Animation films since), this movie does not rely on pop culture gags AT ALL and instead chooses to focus completely on the story and the characters. Obviously this was a great decision on their part, one I hope they repeat in the future. I’d recommend this movie to anyone of any age. How To Train Your Dragon hits theaters on March 26th in the United States and March 31st in the United Kingdom. Until next time…

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The full trailer for DreamWork’s How to Train Your Dragon has just been unleashed over at Yahoo! and can be watching using the player below:

It’s common for DreamWork’s to hire well known actors to fill the voice cast, and they’ve done the same with this film. While it will help during the marketing it doesn’t always work on-screen, and I think that may be the case this time. The main guy’s voice doesn’t really ‘fit’ for me.

How to Train Your Dragon, which will be released next March, is co-directed by Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders who both worked on Lilo and Stitch, and features the voice talents of Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler, Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse and America Ferrera.

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Earlier this year 300 and Watchmen director Zack Synder said that Frank Miller was busy writing and drawing the graphic novel that the sequel to 300 will be based on, and that it would take place between the Battle of Thermopylae and the Battle of Plataea (the big battle we got a taste of at the end of 300). Unless things have changed this means Gerard Butler won’t be returning as King Leonidas, as he was getting impaled by quite a few spears the last time we saw him. However, Butler recently told MTV that he would be up for returning, if they need him.

“I had an incredible time doing the first one, and I think that if the first one was a stand-alone, as a one-off, there’s no bad thing in that,” explained Gerard Butler when we caught up with him recently, saying he’d be willing to bring his character back to life—even if it meant re-animating arguably the most dead person in movie history (remember all those spears?). “But, you know, let’s see what it might bring forward with a second one.”

Butler also dropped a small nugget of info about possibly appearing in Sin City 3:

“I could see myself working with Frank again,” explained the “Law Abiding Citizen” star. “But, I don’t know. Graphic novels are things that I wouldn’t do a lot of, so I would have to really choose carefully before I did.”

“At one point, he talked to me about one of the ‘Sin City’ [movies],” explained the actor, possibly revealing some casting details for whenever Miller and Robert Rodriguez get around to filming their supposed sequels to the gritty 2005 graphic novel-turned-blockbuster. “And we discussed that.” Although Butler didn’t reveal his character’s name, he reported that Miller wanted him not for this next film, but likely for the one after that.

“There’s a kind of cool character I think in the third one,” Butler revealed, “But it was all very kind of soft talk.”

Gerard Butler appearing in Sin City 3 would be quite cool, although they need to make the second movie first. The latest we’ve heard is that it could start filming next year, however nothing is official yet.

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It looks like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen has some new competition in the explosion department! The first trailer for Gerard Butler’s Gamer is now online (we got the poster 2 days ago) and it kicks a variety of asses.

Set in a future-world where humans can control other humans in mass-scale, multi-player online gaming environments, a star player (Butler) from a game called “Slayers” looks to regain his independence while taking down the game’s mastermind (Hall).

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Three new posters have appeared online today. One is for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, another is for District 9 and the third is for Gerard Butler’s Gamer.

A cool flash version of the Gamer poster can be seen over at UGO. Gamer was originally called ‘Game’ and is set in a future-world where humans can control other humans in mass-scale, multi-player online gaming environments.

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