text: Is Will Smith looking to make up for balking at starring in Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained by starring in a remake of one of the biggest landmarks in the Western canon? Smith has signed to produce and star in the remake of Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch, which Warner Bros. has been trying to kickstart for a few years. That’s a piece of news that sounds pretty ridiculous, as the family-friendly guy who shied away fro Django is just about the last guy I’d expect to remake a film famous for its violence and adult themes.
  
  (And yeah, let’s just get it out of the way: The Wild Wild Bunch. There, now we can move on.)
  
  It’s a strange world. Nicolas Winding Refn‘s film Pusher was released in 1996 and didn’t make a big splash. Years later, when Refn was in dire financial straights he made two sequels, and the attention given to those films helped establish Refn in a much bigger way. Now he’s an internationally famous director and there are two remakes of Pusher out in the world.
  
  The more recent one, the US release for which is yet to be determined, is actually produced by Refn, directed by Luis Prieto and stars Richard Coyle as a guy who finds himself on the wrong end of a bad drug deal and has to make some questionable decisions to survive.
  
  A trailer has just landed for Prieto’s remake, and you can check it out below. Read More »
  
  Piranha 3DD has one more potential victim: Katrina Bowden, who plays the equally tiny, hot and self-absorbed assistant Cerie on 30 Rock, is now part of the cast. I don’t think I need to run down all the obvious potential perks of this casting for fans of her character on that show. I mean, we don’t need to get all lascivious here. But yes, she’ll be better to look at than David Koechner. The film also features Gary Busey, Danielle Panabaker, Matt Bush, Chris Zylka, Meagan Tandy, Paul James Jordan, Jean-Luc Bilodeau, Hector Jimenez, Adrian Martinez, and Clu Gulager, and is shooting now in North Carolina. Still waiting to hear about the porn starlets that will be cast; Piranha has a reputation to maintain, after all.
  
  After the break, the rather inexplicable remake of Nicolas Winding Refn’s great crime movie Pusher gets a remake cast, and an endorsement from Mr Refn. Read More »
  
  Earlier this week while perusing the IMDB listing for Nicolas Winding Refn, I noticed that he’s credited as writer on a Pusher film with a release date of 2010. The third and final Pusher film, I Am the Angel of Death, was released in 2005. Confused, I checked out some info on the film… turns out it’s a UK-based, Hindi remake of Refn’s original Pusher. And now there’s a trailer, which should prove entertaining if you’re a fan of the existing trilogy. Read More »
  
  In this episode of the /Filmcast, Dave Chen, Devindra Hardawar and Adam Quigley geek out about the new Terminator Salvation trailer, ponder the fate of the Green Hornet project under Gondry’s direction, and get pessimistic about a Total Recall remake. Dave also chats with Watchmen illustrator Dave Gibbons about his inspirations behind the original graphic novel. Special guest Russ Fischer joins us from CHUD.
  
  You can always e-mail us at slashfilmcast(AT)gmail(DOT)com or call and leave a voicemail at 781-583-1993. Join us next Monday night at 9 PM EST / 6 PM PST on Slashfilm’s live page as we review Watchmen.