Amber Heard is in talks to star opposite Nicolas Cage in director Patrick Lussier’s Drive Angry 3-D. The 23-year-old Texas stunner was last seen in Screen Gem’s The Stepfather remake and Columbia Pictures surprise monster hit Zombieland.

The Drive Angry 3-D synopsis reads:

The story centers on a man (Cage) driven by rage who is chasing the people who killed his daughter and kidnapped her baby. The vendetta/rescue spins out of control as the chase gets bloodier by the mile, leaving bodies strewn along the highway.

The film is written by Lussier and Toff Farmer, the team behind last year’s slasher hit My Bloody Valentine 3-D, and produced by Mike De Luca (Priest, GhostRider).

De Luca tells Collider:

It’s a hard R. Car parts and body parts flying at you in 3-D. These are the writers and the same directors of My Bloody Valentine, so it’s designed to … we’re not the high minded 3D of James Cameron. We’re the low 5, very fun, in your face kind of exploitation 3D.

Wow, they had me at Amber Heard, but this could be everything Death Race promised to be, but wussed out on.

Drive Angry 3-D is set to shoot in Shreveport, Louisiana come March. The Summit Entertainment release is slated to be in theaters on Feb. 11, 2011.

Jessica Lowndes (Autopsy) and Julianna Guill (My Super Psycho Sweet 16) headline director Kaare Andrews’ in-flight frightener Altitude. Ryan Donowho, Landon Liboiron, and Jake Weary costar in the Darclight release.

(Click here to see Guill’s topless Friday the 13th sex scene)

The synopsis reads:

Lost in a mysterious cloudbank, a rookie pilot and her four teenage friends must contend with a freak mechanical failure that first sends their small plane climbing to an impossible height, and then plummeting through endless mist.

After regaining control, the survivors are confronted with a horrifying realization – the very ground beneath them has vanished and a malevolent force lurking in the clouds wants them dead.

A promo trailer for the film was revealed at last year’s American Film Market.

Take a peek:

Writer/director/carb-lover Kevin Smith is soliciting money from fans to fund his next box office failure. The man who once managed to give us one of the greatest comedies of all time—Clerks—by maxing out his own credit cards is currently setting up a website to accept donations for his pet horror project Red State.

Smith tells Cinssu:

We’re kind of creating this website. We’re seeing if it works to set up and collect donations. It becomes a weird tax nightmare, though…It sounded like such an easy thing online…but now there’s lots of checks and balances to make sure we can do it, but if that’s the case, I would be into it, and I’ll match it. Whatever you raise on line, like fuck it, you put it up, I’ll put it up.

We’re gonna make it. It’s gonna happen. By hook or by crook, with my pennies or the pennies of the audience. God bless them. Motherfuckers want to see the movie so badly that they’re willing to pay for it with their own money? Absolutely, put their name in the credits and that movie will be a reality.

OK, Smith, tell ya what. The way I see it, you owe me $40 for Zack & Miri, Jersey Girl, Dogma, and Mallrats. Keep it. Consider it my donation to Red State, you cheap rich bastard.

Hollywood may be rekindling their love affair with director Kathryn Bigelow now that her war-drama The Hurt Locker is a bona fide Best Picture contender at this year’s Oscars, but horror fans have always held a special place in their black little hearts for Bigelow ever since her 1987 hillbilly-bloodsucker classic Near Dark hit theaters.

Asswipe director James Cameron also had mad love for Bigelow back in the eighties (she’s his ex-wife) and cast her as the sexy leader of an all-girl bounty hunter gang in a god awful music video for shitty ’80s outfit Martini Ranch’s “Reach.”  The video reunited Bigelow with her Near Dark actors Bill Paxton, Adrian Pasdar, and Lance Henrikson. And, yes, that is Judge Reinhold in the bar.

Take a look:

Bigelow’s Near Dark is part of Clatto’s 15 Vampire Movies That Won’t Make You Gay.

There’s something in the water that makes people pretty damn hungry in Josh Reed’s upcoming survival-horror flick Primal. Set in Australia, the story centers on a group of friends who become infected by an evil of aboriginal origin (see Mel in above pic).

In an interview with Fearnet, Reed sums up the plot:

The basic set-up is that six sexy young people go out into the middle of nowhere and die horribly, but the way that that occurs is that one of them becomes infected by this thing while they’re on this trip, and she sort of descends into a primal state where her teeth fall out and she grows these incisors and becomes predatory.

But she’s also in service of this tunnel that penetrates through the mountain that they’re at, which has some sort of ancient, creature-ish entity that they don’t realize is there until the climax. They think she’s just hunting them; she’s actually trying to kill all the men and put the women into this tunnel for various nefarious reasons.

Check out the new official trailer:

British director Philip Ridley’s psychological frightener Heartless arrives in U.K. theaters on May 21 and on DVD and Blu-ray disc on May 24, from Lionsgate. Jim Sturgess stars.

The synopsis reads:

The story follows Jamie, a troubled young man with a birthmark on his face, which has left him feeling isolated and fearful, hiding from the world outside. He lives in the East End of London, an area notorious for its violent hooded gangs. According to news reports, the gangs are now wearing demon masks. But, one night, Jamie discovers the terrifying truth: the gangs are not wearing masks. They are real demons. And when Jamie’s mother is killed by them in a brutal attack, he realizes he can no longer hide away. Jamie vows vengeance and turns vigilante. But the world outside is more of a nightmare than he ever imagined. As Jamie himself says:  “I open up the window and madness flies in.

Ridley is a supposed wunderkind who never really lived up to his hype, but whom American actors get a huge boner working for. Heartless marks his return to directing since 1995’s The Passion of Darkly Noon.

During last year’s Frightfest Film Festival, Sturgess said:

I was aware of Philip’s name because of his plays. So I read the screenplay and knew instantly it was exactly what I was looking for. If you are an actor with any degree of success in America you get offered piles of crap. And the reaction of my US agent to Heartless went something along the lines of, ‘You want to play a guy with a what on his face?’ But I never wanted to be a major Hollywood movie star anyway, doing good work is what it’s all about to me. And there was no doubt in my mind Philip’s singular fantasy vision was great work.

The pact Jamie makes with the Master Demon is such a small part of the unique package really. It’s more about the madness of modern society, how difficult living in these times is and the general chaotic structure of life today. Is there anyone out there who doesn’t think the current crisis we’re going through is anything but apocalyptic insanity? The pointless wars, the random violence on our streets, the financial meltdowns, Heartless is the story of one boy’s struggle to make sense of it all. While based on a heightened reality, and layered with a frightening sense of unease, there are some incredibly shocking moments in the narrative. Moments I expect the genre audience especially to go, ‘Whoa, I can’t believe he’s doing that’. All you need to say though is that it’s a Philip Ridley film and that explains everything.

Jeez, I wonder how hard it is to get the smell of British cock and balls off your breath. I’m kidding! The flick is probably worth checking out. The whole demons are gang members thing seems cheesy to me, but the trailer looks cool (see below) and I liked Sturgess in 21 and … hmm … well, did I say 21?

This is Hollywood icon and notorious womanizer Jack Nicholson’s 19-year-old daughter Lorraine on the set of her first major feature Soul Surfer. I’m not sure if the movie qualifies as horror, but it does revolve around teenage shark attack victim Bethany Hamilton, who lost an arm at the jaws of a 14-foot tiger shark in Hawaii.

Hamilton was 13 when the attack occurred. She recovered quickly and was back in the water just a few months after the ordeal. The news spun the story as an inspirational tale of courage and yada-yada, but I’m hoping the filmmakers will go for a more Jaws 4 “this-time-it’s-personal” vibe.

But, I digress. This post is to show photos of Jack’s slightly chubby daughter in a bikini. Word has it, however, that country music sensation Carrie Underwood has been cast in the film as well. Here’s hoping she plays a hard-bodied, topless lifeguard who has to rescue Hamilton from the shark and then give her mouth-to-mouth for about 10 minutes.

Until those pics are available, here’s a gallery featuring Lorraine Nicholson:

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Columbia Pictures has hired Steven Knight (Eastern Promises) to adapt author Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code sequel The Lost Symbol for the big screen. The Lost Symbol, which sold 1.6 million copies on its first day of release, was 2009’s best-selling book, according to Nielsen Bookscan.

In case you missed a book club meeting or two, here’s the synopsis:

Set within the hidden chambers, tunnels, and temples of Washington, D.C., The Lost Symbol accelerates through a startling landscape toward an unthinkable finale.

As the story opens, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned unexpectedly to deliver an evening lecture in the U.S. Capitol Building. Within minutes of his arrival, however, the night takes a bizarre turn. A disturbing object–artfully encoded with five symbols–is discovered in the Capitol Building. Langdon recognizes the object as an ancient invitation . . . one meant to usher its recipient into a long-lost world of esoteric wisdom.

When Langdon’s beloved mentor, Peter Solomon–a prominent Mason and philanthropist–is brutally kidnapped, Langdon realizes his only hope of saving Peter is to accept this mystical invitation and follow wherever it leads him. Langdon is instantly plunged into a clandestine world of Masonic secrets, hidden history, and never-before-seen locations–all of which seem to be dragging him toward a single, inconceivable truth.

Columbia Pictures’ adaptations of Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons have earned over $1.24 billion in worldwide gross. No word yet on whether director Ron Howard and actor Tom Hanks will return to the franchise.

Personally, I’m looking forward to a Lost Symbol movie. I’ve enjoyed Brown’s books and Howard’s film adaptations. And, I especially enjoyed Hustler Video’s The Da Vinci Load and its sequel The Da Vinci Load 2: Angels & Semen (hey, don’t hate me cause I’m an intellectual).

It’s hard to know if in this picture Amanda Seyfried is threatening Julianne Moore with a dangerous instrument or simply looking to pull out an ingrown hair from one of Moore’s freckles. Regardless, one thing is certain in director Atom Egoyan erotically-charged, psychological thriller Chloe: Seyfried and Moore will engage in some raw and naked cougar/cub lesbo action!

An American adaptation of the French film Nathalie, Chloe is penned by Erin Cressida Wilson (Secretary, The Resident) and stars Seyfried as a prostitute hired by an emotionally unstable woman (Moore) to seduce her husband (Liam Neeson) and report back with the sordid details of the affair.

As your cock the plot thickens, Seyfried, 24, and Moore, 49, strike up a heated relationship of their own, leading to intense older woman/younger girl type kink. To see an interview with Moore, click here. To see Seyfried parade around nude in the film’s trailer, go here.

Chloe is slated for release in early 2010. Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions Group holds the film’s North American rights.

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Mr. Plinkett over at Red Letter Media has shot an 18-minute video review of James Cameron’s record-breaking blockbuster Avatar. Now, if you’re like me, watching something for 18-minutes on the web, usually ends with a sticky keyboard, an overdrawn credit card, and a tremendous amount of shame (I’m sorry, Nana, I know you’re watching me from heaven).

Thankfully, there aren’t any young, petite Asian schoolgirls bathing with giant squids to be found in Plinkett’s review. What you will find is a brutally insightful, spot-on criticism of Avatar that will save you a few bucks and three hours of your time.

If you must see Avatar, do the right thing. Pass on the whole theater/Imax crap and, instead, help out your local bootlegger.

Avatar has now surpassed Titanic in domestic gross, earning $601.2 million in 47 days. Titanic docked at $600.8 million during its theatrical run over a decade ago. James Cameron has remained an asshole.