Unbreakable 2 may never see the light of day according to M. Night Shyamalan – because he’s “cannibalised” ideas he had for the super sequel and used them in the next instalment of his Night Chronicles movies.

The first movie he’s produced under the banner The Night Chronicles, Devil, opens on 17 September. And while out on the publicity trail, Shyamalan revealed that he’ll be using a villain he originally dreamed up for Unbreakable 2 in one of the Chronicles movies instead.

“I cannibalised the idea for the sequel to Unbreakable for one of the Night Chronicles,” he says. “It was such a cool idea for a villain, and it was actually originally in the script for Unbreakable, and it was too much.

“There were too many villains, so I pulled this villain out and was like, ‘I’ll make this the second flick.’”

This villain will apparently be used in the film Twelve Strangers instead, which will be the second movie in the Night Chronicles.

Considering Night’s track record of late (The Last Airbender is the worst-reviewed film of the year thus far), fans of the brilliant first Unbreakable are surely sighing with relief that their favourite movie won’t be dragged down by a sequel.

Check out a video of Shyamalan’s interview below…

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Jamie Bell and Anthony Mackie are both in talks to star alongside Sam Worthington in cop drama Man On A Ledge.

Directed by Asger Leth, whose sole previous credit is documentary Ghosts Of Cité Soleil, the plot follows a former NYPD officer (Worthington) who threatens to throw himself off the top of a building.

It’s based on a script by TV movie writer Pablo Fenjves, and Transformers producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura is backing the production.

No word on which roles Bell and Mackie are in negotiation to play, though we imagine they might be new NYPD recruits.

Mackie has recently finished up work on sci-fis The Adjustment Bureau and Real Steel, while Bell will next be seen in Jane Eyre, and has been working on The Adventures Of Tintin.

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Angelina Jolie has officially turned down Alfonso Cuaron’s new sci-flick Gravity, which could see the film’s production spiralling into limbo.

The film, which is about a female astronaut who is literally lost in space when her satellite crashes, has been courting Jolie for its lead role. But after months of deliberation, she has finally passed on the project.

Warner Brothers are wasting no time looking for a replacement, though, and have already tested or approached a massive range of A-list actresses.

The full list reported by Deadline includes: Sandra Bullock, Natalie Portman, Naomi Watts, Marion Cotillard, Carey Mulligan, Scarlett Johansson, Sienna Miller, Abbie Cornish, Rebecca Hall, Olivia Wilde, and Blake Lively.

Previous rumours had it that Scarlett Johansson had already “verbally agreed” to star in the film alongside her Iron Man 2 co-star Robert Downey Jr, though a verbal agreement really means Jack in the cast-iron-clad-contract world of Hollywood.

With Gravity’s proposed 2012 release date drawing ever closer, the WB and Alfonso Cuaron will have to think fast about how they’re going to get the flick onto the production line. And considering its ambitious scale and relatively modest $80m budget, they’ve got a heck of a challenge ahead of them.

Jolie, meanwhile, is currently writing her own Bosnian war story, and is attached to a Salt sequel, Tim Burton’s Sleeping Beauty update Maleficent and a Cleopatra biopic.
 

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Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is still shooting over in the glorious surrounds of Hawaii (grumble, grumble), which means a few on-set photos have sprung up online.

Most interesting is our first glimpse of Brit bloke Ian McShane in full pirate regalia as legendary crook Blackbeard.

The actor was on set shooting a scene with Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz for the fourquel, and looks mighty impressive from what we can tell.

Check out the image below…

Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides opens in cinemas on 20 May, 2011.
 

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Clash Of The Titans 2 has landed itself a director in the form of Battle: Los Angeles helmer Jonathan Liebesman.

Taking the monster-sized reins from Louis Leterrier, who directed this year’s Clash remake, rumours have linked Liebesman to the fantasy follow-up for some time, but only now has his deal been confirmed.

Leterrier himself announced back in April that he would not be directing the sequel – and considering all the hoo-ha surrounding his flick’s rush-job post-conversion into 3D, it’s not hard to understand why he’d want to distance himself from the series.

This time around, Liebesman will be shooting all the mythic action in 3D, and is aiming to film early in 2011. Original stars Sam Worthington and Gemma Arterton will reprise their roles as Perseus and Io, who will no doubt be sucked into another plot involving giant beasts of myth and legend.

As for Liebesman’s District 9-alike alien invasion film Battle: Los Angeles, that’s opening in March 2011, and stars Michelle Rodriguez and Aaron Eckhart.

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The Total Film iPhone App launched last night on iTunes stores in the UK and Ireland.

Giving users the ability to find their nearest cinema, watch trailers and read the latest film news, the TF app also includes all the latest film news and features from TotalFilm.com.

Plus, users can live search our huge database of over 8,000 cinema reviews, and share their favourite content via email, Twitter an Facebook.

A walkthrough of all the great features on the TF App is available here.

The Total Film iPhone App is available to buy on iTunes, priced £1.79 (UK & Ireland only)

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Sex, death, mugs of tea. The Brits have hit FrightFest with Isle Of Dogs, a lurid thriller that grows ever more Guignol.

Or maybe ‘giallo’ is the G-word to chuck around, given its preoccupation with bloodshed, beautiful women and musical bombast.

Directed by Tammi Sutton (Suture), it centres on a twisted love triangle involving a thief, his wife and her lover.

No cooks, though there are a couple of bumbling cops who arrive halfway to momentarily lighten the noir-y mood.

“She dies tonight,” is the ominous opening line, a reference to Nadia (Monica Bellucci lookalike Barbara Nedeljakova), young Russian bride of gang boss Darius (Andrew Howard).

Racist, misogynist and even capable of putting a bullet in a labrador, Darius is not a very nice man.

When he discovers that small-time hood Riley (Ed Hogg) is sleeping with Nadia, he issues a grisly ultimatum. Soon, the walls of Darius’ country pile are redecorated with a fresh coat of crimson.

A somewhat portentous first half gives way to enjoyable excess. Howard’s rasping, bawling performance makes Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast look like Miley Cyrus.

Still, it’s all the actors can do to compete with the OTT score, which goes above and beyond the call of duty in amping up the action.

Subtlety may be at a low premium, but so is dullness: gorehounds in the audience were able to hang their hats on a protracted face-mashing, a driveway head-crushing and a scene of self-cauterisation.

Value for money, then – and reason to look forward to what gruesomeness Sutton will rain on Danny Trejo and Vinnie Jones in her next film, Welcome To Graveland.

To hear from Dogs’ stars Edward Hogg and Barbara Nedeljakova, and director Tammi Sutton, check out the videos below…

 Edward Hogg and Barbara Nedeljakova Interview

Tammi Sutton Interview

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Meir Zarchi’s 1978 original I Spit On Your Grave (aka Day Of The Woman) is arguably the most notorious horror title in the genre’s history.

It depicts an excruciatingly extended gang rape – and then another one – before its heroine (played by Camille Keaton, Buster’s granddaughter) exacts bloody revenge on her tormentors, using her sexuality to lure them in.

The controversy surrounding Steven R Monroe’s remake began long before it screened at FrightFest last night.

In America it can’t get past the MPAA, even after the filmmakers have made every cut requested – it’s the stick-of-rock scenario, the violence (usually sexualised) running all the way through, impossible to excise.
 
And in the UK, the BBFC have also got themselves all hot and bothered – alerted by the red flag title, they requested to see the film before FrightFest and insisted on 36 cuts totalling approximately 20 seconds.
 
The 109 minutes that remain are brutal and troubling, making I Spit On Your Grave a film that needs to be seen and debated by everyone, not just four censors sat in Soho Square.
 
The plot remains the same: a city-girl writer, Jennifer Hills (Sarah Butler), arrives at a secluded lakeside cabin to work on her new novel; a band of rednecks humiliate her, rape her, rape her again; she comes back to kill them all, mercilessly.
 
Also like the original, the production values are high, both I Spit… movies perhaps made harder to dismiss – and therefore, to the BBFC, more of a threat – because they aren’t tatty, technically inept exploitation flicks that few people will ever muster the patience to sit through.
 
I Spit 2010 is convincingly acted by victim and tormentors alike, and Monroe brings a tight, claustrophobic control to the narrative and bleached, desolate visuals.
 
The first half is hard to watch, so protracted is the torment. Like the rape in Wes Craven’s The Last House On The Left, it is as much about the verbal and psychological build-up as the act of physical violence itself, the group forcefully examining Jennifer’s teeth (“Whinny!” one of them yells, again and again, before threatening to “break her in”) and making her fellate the barrel of a gun.
 
The rapes, when they inevitably happen, are sustained and agonising, the camera refusing to cut away.

And the long, long shot of Jennifer climbing to her feet, naked, bruised, bloodied, and shambling dazedly away, her entire body jerking, is as hard to view as anything in Irreversible or Funny Games.

Of course, questions will be asked of Monroe: does the camera need to linger; and does Jennifer – and the audience – really need to suffer two rapes?

The answers, as the first time around, aren’t easy. Carol J Clover, author of Men, Women And Chainsaws, agreed with director Zarchi that I Spit On Your Grave is deeply feminist, and insisted that only by showing the full horrific nature of the rapes and by making the pain so real can such a subject be responsibly approached.

Better this than fast Hollywood cutting – glamourised violence with no consequences.

The remake has the advantage that the first half of it also feels genuine in its intentions, that Monroe is showing all this because he feels he has to, not because it’s shocking and will break boundaries and stoke attention for his film.

Zarchi might have talked a good game but you couldn’t help feeling he liked showing the set-up as much as the revenge – that he was, at heart, an exploitation merchant.
 
Where I Spit 2010 is problematic is in its second half, with the meting out of the vengeance.

Here it becomes a movie, not an ordeal, the tone shifting to make the super-violent, super inventive payback scenes the stuff of cheering, whooping entertainment.

Steely, hard-assed, Jennifer flits around town like a ghost, chilling her tormentors with omens and skilfully realised stalk n slash sequences before plunging them in acid baths and chopping off a penis with a pair of shears and shoving the barrel of a shotgun deep up a guy’s arse (“I thought you were an ass man…”).

On the one hand, it works, the gleefully sadistic schemes ensuring everyone is firmly on Jennifer’s side and cheering her on – and hell, who doesn’t want a bit of ‘oohing’ and ‘aahing’ after what we’ve endured?

But it also let’s everyone off the hook – not least the filmmakers – by simplifying all that’s gone before. Instead of squirming in our seats for the full 109 minutes, we’re allowed to bounce in them.

And while it makes for fantastic entertainment (the FrightFest crowd were going nuts) it means no-one is questioning the nature of vilgilante vengeance, and all the interesting themes that have been raised (city vs country, wealth vs poverty, men vs women, the pack mentality) have been forgotten.
 
And in a film as grave as I Spit, there really is no place for in-jokes. Having the petrol pump stop at $19.78 (the year of the original) and having one of the rapists forever playing his harmonica, a la Deliverance, is out of place.
 
Shame, because there’s so much here that is good. Just be sure to see it and make your own opinion…

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After a solid, splattery start with Hatchet 2, FrightFest ’10 has maintained momentum with Ozploitation gnash-‘em-up Primal.

True to its title, Josh Reed’s film is visceral, uncomplicated and, in certain aspects, a little bit primitive.

A kind of Picked-Off At Hanging Rock, it opens eerily 12,000 years ago with a caveman attempting to paint a message that There’s Something Out There.

Alas, he ends up decorating the rock face in his own vein juice.

Cut to the present day, and six friends on a road trip that’ll take them to the scene of the ancient crime.

Cleaving to teen horror tradition, it’s the most over-sexed member of the group who’s the first to suffer.

After an unwise dip in infected waters, Mel (Krew Boylan) turns feverish, develops some alarming dental work and discovers a taste for human flesh.

The ensuing carnage plays like a mash-up between The Ruins and Cabin Fever, braiding the moral agonies of the former (what do you do when your mates become possessed by primeval forces?) with the latter’s knowing humour.

Downsizing the fear factor, Krew Boylan is sadly no Andy Serkis when it comes to apeing feral physicality.

But she and the rest of the cast go at their roles with gusto. Standouts are angry alpha male Wil Traval and Rebekah Foord as the sensible one who ends up drawing on hidden reserves of pluck.

Only in the end stretch does the grue lose its grip, the film attempting some slithery FX unfortunately beyond its pay grade.

Producer/director/co-writer Josh Reed is clearly one to watch, though – what’s not to like about a guy who titled an earlier short Ratticus Pistofficus?
 

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Fresh controversy landed on FrightFest today, with Srdjan Spasojevic’s A Serbian Film the latest flick to get the censors’ knickers in a twist.

The unsettling tale of a retired porn star returning to the industry for one last shoot, A Serbian Film has been met with widespread disbelief by a wealth of stunned reviewers on account of its graphic scenes of sexual violence.

Naturally, this notoriety had whipped horror fans into a frenzy over what was set to be one of the festival’s hottest tickets. However, the BBFC were less impressed, requesting 79 cuts (equating to four minutes of footage) be made before clearing the film for screening.

And rather than show the film in its newly butchered state, FrightFest organisers have taken the decision to pull the film altogether.

“Film4 FrightFest has decided not to show A Serbian Film in a heavily cut version” said the festival’s co-director Alan Jones in a statement made earlier today. “As a festival with a global integrity, we think a film of this nature should be shown in its entirety as per the director’s intention.

“Several film festivals across the world have already done so,” he continued. “Unlike the I Spit on Your Grave remake, where we are showing the BBFC certified print, as requested by Westminster Council, the issues and time-line complexities surrounding A Serbian Film make it impossible for us to screen it.’”

Meanwhile, BBFC director David Cooke explained the move in his own statement.

“The cuts to A Serbian Film do not detract from the message of the film but remove the most problematic images of sexual and sexualised violence,” he said. “The section in the Board’s guidelines which lists the possible grounds for compulsory cuts, also includes material which portrays children in a sexualised or abusive context.

“Whilst the Board understands that these images are intended to make a political point, that does not remove the genuine harm risks to which they give rise.”

It’s a blow for the festival, the filmmakers and the audience, although they will get their chance to speak out soon enough, as the BBFC’s  David Hyman will be participating in a FrightFest panel discussion on Monday. Good luck with that one mate…

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