Rocker/director Rob Zombie is collaborating with comic artists Donny Hadiwidjaja and Val Staples to create Whatever Happened to Baron Von Shock, a dark comic series centering on the misadventures of a television horror host.

Zombie explains on his MySpace blog:

This comic venture is very, very different in tone for me. Instead of a crazy over-the-top monster-fest like El Superbeasto, I wanted to create something that works more on a slice of life human level.

Whatever Happened to Baron Von Shock is published by Image Comics and will be made available on May 26.

Warner Bros. head Alan Horn announced at ShoWest this week that a fifth Final Destination film is definitely in the cards for the studio. However, when pressed for details, he simply offered, “We can’t resist.”

But, fear not. The folks at Bloody-Disgusting managed to track down franchise producer Craig Perry to get a little more info.

Perry says:

If we find the right storyline for FD5 – and we’re working on it – then we’ll take the lessons we learned from TFD and make the necessary improvements to deliver what audiences expect from this franchise, going back to the original.

What I know for sure is that it will be in 3D and deliver inventive, suspenseful, fun kills. That I can promise!

The Final Destination series has earned a combined cume of over $500 million worldwide. Last year’s entry The Final Destination 3-D was the fourth top horror earner of 2009, behind The Twilight Saga: New Moon, Paranormal Activity, and Zombieland.

Producer Jerry Bruckheimer has revealed the role that Oscar-winning actress Penelope Cruz will play in next summer’s highly anticipated swashbuckling sequel Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.

He tells MTV:

She plays the daughter of Blackbeard. She’s the daughter of the bad guy. [there will be] a little romance between Captain Jack and the character that Penelope plays. She brings a lot of humor to it … she’s so feisty.

Bay also announced that he is currrently casting for new characters and that “Deadwood’s” Ian McShane will be playing Blackbeard, the “nastiest pirate ever.”

Jack Sparrow’s (Johnny Depp) vessel The Black Pearl was docked on the island of Oahu, Hawaii back in February. Production on Stranger Tides is set to begin in June.

When 72-year-old iconic actor David Carradine was found naked and dead in a Bangkok hotel with a rope tied around his neck and balls, most people assumed that he had accidentally killed himself while chasing the greatest orgasm known to man. It seemed like a reasonable explanation … up until now.

While perusing the internet today in search of a sturdy belt and doorknob, I came across new evidence that would suggest that Carradine’s death was no accident.

Take a look:

It’s my belief that Carradine knowingly offed himself in that seedy hotel after reflecting on the career decisions that led him to star in the upcoming SyFy creature-feature Dinocroc Vs. Supergator.

Am I alone in my reasoning? I don’t think so. Syfy has yet to announce an air date for the movie, leading me to believe that the masters for Dinocroc Vs. Supergator have probably been seized by authorities investigating the case.

I hope this finally lays to rest all misinformed concerns over the practice of auto-erotic asphyxiation. It’s perfectly safe, kids!

Lionsgate has picked up the North American rights to Ghost House Pictures’ Dibbuk Box, a creepy curse story based on an old internet urban legend brought to light by a 2004 Los Angeles Times piece entitled “A Jinx in a Box.”

According to the Times’ story, Oregon antiques collector Kevin Mannis put up an old Jewish wine cabinet box for sale on EBay when he came to realize that it was haunted by a dybbuk spirit (think a Yiddish poltergeist). Mannis claims that he, along with the box’s previous owners, had suffered sudden and inexplicable misfortune, possibly of a paranormal nature.

The box was purchased from Mannis in the summer of 2003 by Missouri college student Iosif Nietzke, who soon experienced some freaky shit of his own, including hair loss and peripheral visions of a lingering blurred figure. He put the box up for sale on EBay a year later.

Ghost House’s adaptation of the Dibbuk Box story will center on a family in possession of the haunted wine box and their attempt to be rid of it. The script is penned by Juliet Snowden and Stiles White, writers of the Nicholas Cage sci-fi thriller Knowing and the upcoming remakes Poltergeist (MGM) and The Birds (Universal).

Ghost House Pictures has produced the horror hits Drag Me to Hell, 30 Days of Night, and The Grudge. Founders Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert are also the producing team behind the Starz network’s sexy swords-&-sandals series “Spartacus: Blood and Sand.”

Michael Bay has got nards!

The uber-producer is looking to tap director Rob Cohen (The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor) to remake Fred Dekker’s beloved 1987 kid horror-comedy The Monster Squad. Cohen, who served as producer on the original film, would do so again with Bay and his Platinum Dunes partners Brad Fuller and Andrew Form.

Will he do it? Chances are good.

In a 2008 interview with New York’s Times Herald-Record, Cohen said:

It’s just one of those beautiful opportunities for a remake because it’s not like the first film was bad, but what was really bad was the marketing. So you’ve got a core fan group and a great property. A great story waiting to be rediscovered.

Written by Shane Black (Last Action Hero, Lethal Weapon), The Monster Squad followed a group of tween horror fans as they attempt to stop Dracula, the Wolfman, Frankenstein’s Monster, the Mummy, and the Gillman from unleashing the forces of evil upon the world. The TriStar release earned just short of $4 million upon its release.

Dekker, the original’s director, had previously poo-pooed on the idea of a remake, calling it tragic and stupid. He appears to have changed his tune a bit (most likely out of respect for Cohen) this morning after hearing the official announcement.

He tells Ain’t it Cool News:

It’d be one thing if another filmmaker wanted to soil my sandbox… but if it weren’t for Rob Cohen, the original movie would never have been made. So I don’t begrudge him wanting to play in his own sandbox. I wish him well, and thank him for the opportunity he gave me in the first place.

I did not discover The Monster Squad until last December when my friend Girard over at Hills of Woodland sat Mrs. Muertos and I down to watch the Blu-ray edition of the film.

We laughed, we cried, and were shocked by the sexual undercurrents in the film and by how big an asshole actor Tom Noonan (Frankenstein’s Monster) proves to be during the BTS interviews. It was also fun to hear Dekker explain his doomed career in depressing detail. If you have the means, I highly recommend you guys pick it up.

The first official full-length trailer for Robert Rodriguez’s Predators has hit the web (courtesy of IGN). The clip introduces the cast and shows some quick shots of the Predators and their wolf-like pets.

Take a look:

Predators is directed by Nimrod Antal and stars Adrien Brody, Laurence Fishburne, Walton Goggins, Topher Grace, Alice Braga, and everyone’s favorite Mexi-can Danny Trejo. To see a BTS clip with producer Robert Rodriguez, go here.

Former porn chick Satine Phoenix (pictured above) and her sex worker friends can be seen playing a dumb-downed version of Dungeons & Dragons on their new web-based reality show “I Hit It with My Axe,” hosted by website The Escapist.

While the idea of watching girls with DD’s playing D&D is geek-genius, the sad reality is these chicks are of the Janeane Garofalo-meets-your-sister’s-tattooed-dyke-cellmate variety. Personally, I’m gonna hold out for a Candyland show featuring the Digital Playground babes.

If funding can be found, indie-director Gorman Bechard’s One Night Stand could join John Wildman’s Stripped and Anchor Bay’s I Spit On Your Grave remake as upcoming girl-on-guy revenge-thrillers guaranteed to make a man’s balls retract in horror.

Peep the trailer:

The film’s synopsis reads:

ONE NIGHT STAND tells the story of Ophelia, a young woman seemingly using sex with strangers to ease the loneliness in her life. But after going home with Jake she finds herself at the wrong end of a one night stand. Discovering that she has been secretly videotaped for a popular voyeuristic porn site, she turns the tables on her pickup, holding him captive in his own bedroom, making him live through the same indignities he’s inflicted on his video subjects, brutalizing him and his friends, as she ultimately decides if he should live or die. And he ultimately discovers he’s brought home the wrong girl.

One Night Stand stars Lynn Mancinelli and Alex Brown. The film is set to begin shooting in the summer. To see the uncensored T&A heavy trailer, visit the film’s website.

If you’d like a chance to trick people into bed by telling them you’re a producer, you can contribute to project’s funding here.

Hollywood’s hardest working Mexi-can Danny Trejo (Predators, From Dusk Till Dawn) plays a double-crossed assassin out to kill the honkies that set him up and left him for dead in Robert Rodriguez’s upcoming grindhouse-actioner Machete.

The 65-year-old actor tells IGN:

It is going to be awesome. We duplicate scenes from the trailer in the movie. What that movie has is the three B’s, what I like to call the three B’s. And what that is is babes, bullets and blood.

And then it’s got machetes, too. The film takes off from the trailer and then it just gets so over the top. I dive out of a window on a guy’s guts. It’s really just unbelievable.

I think the movie really lives up to the trailer. I’m really, really proud of it.

The star-studded film’s cast includes Robert De Niro, Jessica Alba (playing masturbating identical twins), Michelle Rodriguez, Rose McGowen, Cheech Marin, Steven Seagal, Don Johnson, and a topless Lindsay Lohan.

Machete is based on the faux-trailer featured in the 2007 Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino collaboration Grindhouse.