We’ve got a little bit of an update this week on the Samurai Jack feature film that was first announced back in 2007. As you may know, Genndy Tartakovsky is on board to write and direct a big screen continuation of his popular animated series for Frederator Films. As far as we know it’s the only project on his plate at the moment since The Power of the Dark Crystal was postponed indefinitely, but apparently the deal for Samurai Jack took quite a while to close. Here’s the good news: things are now moving ahead, and they’ve even got a pretty big name helping them out as a co-producer.

According to a post on the Frederator Films blog from back in September, J.J. Abrams revealed himself to be a huge fan of Samurai Jack and is now co-producing the movie through his company, Bad Robot Productions. Samurai Jack is also being distributed through Paramount Pictures, which helps guarantee that it will actually end up in theatres rather than getting dumped direct to DVD. Just to be clear, the movie is a “2D/stereoscopic 3D production”, which should maintain the look and feel of the original show. The modest budget will be somewhere in the $20 million range. Frederator also now has a deal in place with Sony, so they’ve potentially got a lot of other stuff on the horizon as well. Pretty exciting, right? Sound off in the comments below.

Well I have to admit, I’m a little surprised by the results of last week’s poll. Although Angelina Jolie has probably starred in the most high-profile female action roles over the past few years, I really didn’t think she would top Milla Jovovich as the number 1 female action star currently working today. As it turns out, Film Junk readers voted Jolie #1 and Jovovich #2, although they weren’t all that far apart. The next closest vote-getter was Uma Thurman, followed by Kate Beckinsale and a two-way tie between Summer Glau and Zoe Bell. Asian action stars apparently don’t cut it for FJ readers, but I honestly thought Chocolate star Yanin Vismistananda would get a little more love from the hardcore martial arts fans. Do you agree with these results? Would the addition of any other names have changed the outcome of this poll?

1. Angelina Jolie — 23.6%
2. Milla Jovovich — 20.9%
3. Uma Thurman — 16.0%
4. Kate Beckinsale — 9.7%
5. Summer Glau — 9.2%
5. Zoe Bell — 9.2%
7. Rhona Mitra — 4.5%
8. Michelle Yeoh — 3.9%
9. Lucy Liu — 2.4%
10. Yanin Vismistananda — 0.8%

Every year the folks over at Forbes put together a fun little list of the most overpaid actors in Hollywood. It’s fun because it’s a chance for people to call out some of the big shots who earn a lot of money but fail to deliver massive box office success. Not surprisingly, at the top of the list this year is Will Ferrell, a funny guy experiencing a fair bit of backlash right now, thanks in large part to the dud that was Land of the Lost (hey, I actually liked it).

In order to create this list, they compared actor’s earnings versus the budgets and profits from their most recent films, and looked for the lowest return. Since it might be unfair to penalize actors for doing smaller art house films, they only take into account movies that opened in at least 500 theatres. They also only chose actors who had at least 3 such films in the last 5 years. Despite all of this, I still can’t help but feel that Leonardo DiCaprio ended up on the list because of his choice to do less mainstream projects.

At any rate, it makes for an interesting discussion, particularly since this story comes hot on the heels of yet another headline trumpeting the so-called death of the movie star. Check out the top 10 list after the jump, and for contrast, see also their list of Best Actors for the Buck. Do you think all these A-listers are indeed overrated and overpaid? Are movie stars still necessary in this day and age?

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Ever since it was announced earlier this year, a lot of people have been wondering what the heck is up with Zhang Yimou’s remake of The Coen Brothers’ very first film Blood Simple. It was believed that he would be turning it into a comedy, and with the odd title Amazing Tales: Three Guns, it seems clear that we should probably expect something completely different. And wow… that’s exactly what we’re getting.

The Playlist found the first trailer for the film on YouTube, and if you’re familiar with Hero, House of Flying Daggers and Curse of the Golden Flower, you won’t be too shocked to see plenty of artistic slow-mo, thematic colours, extravagant costumes, and melodramatic acting. It looks like a Zhang Yimou film, except… what the heck does any of this have to do with Blood Simple?? Granted, the trailer is not in English (save for the voiceover) so it’s a bit hard to piece together. It gets weirder though: according to Yahoo!, the movie features “a theme song rapped by the filmmaker himself”! Huh? Something tells me this may be the first Zhang Yimou film that Reed Farrington actually dislikes. Sony Pictures Classics will release the film here in North America sometime next year. Check out the wacky trailer after the jump and see what you think.

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