Other than a small role in Inglourious Basterds and completing his vocal duties for the Shrek franchise Mike Myers hasn’t been on-screen a whole lot over recent years.

The Love Guru may have had something to do with that after it bombed in 2008, proving audiences are only interested in wacky Myers characters if they’re British and ‘groovy’. Myers, obviously aware of this, said back in 2008 he was writing a fourth Austin Powers movie, and now it appears it’s actually happening.

Today Hit Fix confirmed that “Mike Myers just closed his deal to return to the role. Yep. “Austin Powers 4″ is coming, officially.”

No word yet on whether Jay Roach (director of the previous Austin Powers films) will be returning, but with Myers signed on it shouldn’t be too long before others come aboard.

Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery was a modest hit back in 1997 making $70m worldwide on a budget of $16m, but it blew up on VHS and The Spy Who Shagged Me soon entered production. The sequel went on to make $312m worldwide in 1999, and Austin Powers in Goldmember had similar success taking $296m in 2002.

A decade after the last film, are you interested in hearing Myers utter yeah, baby, yeah! once more?

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The first trailer for the fourth outing of Shrek, Shrek Forever After, has been released online. We heard last month that this would be the last Shrek film, and DreamWorks are using that as a marketing ploy. “It’s the last film everyone, come and see it!”

Watch below:

After challenging an evil dragon, rescuing a beautiful princess and saving your in-laws’ kingdom, what’s an ogre to do? Well, if you’re Shrek, you suddenly wind up a domesticated family man. Instead of scaring villagers away like he used to, a reluctant Shrek now agrees to autograph pitch forks. What’s happened to this ogre’s roar? Longing for the days when he felt like a “real ogre,” Shrek is duped into signing a pact with the smooth-talking dealmaker, Rumplestiltskin. Shrek suddenly finds himself in a in a twisted, alternate version of Far Far Away, where ogres are hunted, Rumplestiltskin is king and Shrek and Fiona have never met. Now, it’s up to Shrek to undo all he’s done in the hopes of saving his friends, restoring his world and reclaiming his one True Love.

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USA Today got the first official image from Shrek Forever After, which they say will be the last outing for Shrek and the gang. It had to end at some point, and I got the feeling they were running low on creative steam during Shrek the Third. However, they plan to finish on a high:

“All that was loved about Shrek in the first film is brought to the final film,” promises Bill Damaschke, head of creative production at DreamWorks. Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy and Cameron Diaz are back as the voices of Shrek, sidekick Donkey and ogress wife Fiona.

After rescuing a princess, getting hitched and fathering triplets, Shrek is feeling over-domesticated. “He has lost his roar,” says director Mike Mitchell. “It used to send villagers running away in terror. Now they run to him and ask him to sign their pitchforks and torches.”

To regain his ogre mojo, he strikes a deal with Rumpelstiltskin, the wee troublemaker who popped up briefly in Shrek 2 and 3. Of course, the pact goes awry and Shrek must confront what life would be like in Far Far Away if he had never existed. That translates into Donkey being forced into cart-pulling duty, fat and lazy Puss in Boots trading his sword for a pink bow and the underhanded Rumpelstiltskin ruling the kingdom.

Shrek Forever After will be released next May in the US (July in the UK) and we will be getting the first trailer with James Cameron’s Avatar next month.

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Unfortunately, Adam Sandler couldn’t appear in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Bastards, however another comedic actor who goes by the name of Mike Myers can! From The Quentin Tarantino Archives:

Breaking news out of Tarantino land, ladies and gentlemen. Some of you sceptics out there will fume at this news, but I’m getting confirmation that Mike Myers will have a SMALL role in Inglorious Bastards. Myers is the star of Wayne’s World and Austin Powers, and also the recent flop Love Guru. No word yet on what role he might be taking over (maybe Adolf H. himself?), yet the movie seems to have an unlimited supply of cameos and smaller characters.

Myers joins Brad Pitt, Nastassja Kinski, Simon Pegg, David Krumholtz, B.J. Novak and Eli Roth.

In the film, a band of U.S. soldiers facing death by firing squad for their misdeeds are given a chance to redeem themselves by heading into the perilous no-man’s lands of Nazi-occupied France on a suicide mission for the Allies.

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After The Love Guru doing not so well in the ‘good’ department it seems Mike Myers needs to get back on form in some way, and that doesn’t involve voicing an ogre. According to Nikki Finke Myers is teaming up with Mike McCullers again to write a fourth Austin Powers movie.

“It’s very personal with a father and son theme loosely based on his own life,” an insider tells me. As Myers has previously said, this fourth installment of the super spy spoof movie series will focus on Austin’s arch-villain Dr. Evil…”

Nikki Finke also points out that Myers had a character in the original Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery script called The Love Guru but decided not to shoot it and then wrote it out of the series.

There is no deal in place yet, but with the Austin Powers franchise earning more after each movie New Line/Warner Bros. will probably give it the green light.

…yeah, baby, yeah?

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The trailer for Mike Myers’ The Love Guru was released earlier this week and it did not make everyone laugh. A Hindu organization, Universal Society of Hinduism, has demanded that the film be shown to Hindu leaders and organizations prior to its public release. The reason:

Rajan Zed, prominent Indo-American leader and President of the Society, said that from the information available about the movie, it appears to be lampooning Hinduism and Hindus and using Hindu terms frivolously.

There have been issues with religion and movies before, most recently with The Golden Compass, and again with Mel Gibson’s Passion Of The Christ back in 2004. To my knowledge the only thing gained from it was more publicity for the film. I don’t know what the Hindu leaders can do, apart from possibly get a free early screening. The studios have spent millions making the movie and they will release it whether it upsets people or not.

The email I received pointed out that:

Hinduism is the oldest and third largest religion of the world with about one billion followers and a rich philosophical thought, and it should not be taken lightly

Do Paramount want to piss off one billion people? Will those one million people have gone to see The Love Guru anyway? Do you think the Universal Society of Hinduism is over-reacting or do they have a right to be annoyed that a movie is turning their religion into a romantic comedy staring Jessica Alba?

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