In 1982, writer-director Steven Lisberger's TRON represented a major step forward in visual effects, but its technical accomplishments didn't make it the commercial success Disney was aiming for.  The film then spent two decades gaining a fervent cult following, prompting Disney to create a big budget sequel in 2010.  The studio made it abundantly clear that TRON: Legacy was meant to kickstart a new franchise, but there's been little movement on another theatrical TRON in the last year.  Now, star Bruce Boxleitner himself has provided an update on the third TRON, as well as this year's animated series TRON: Uprising.

For the better part of a decade, audiences around the world have vehemently demanded a movie following the illusionist exploits of GOB, the imbecilic cad from Arrested Development.  Since a GOB Bluth-based movie won't redefine the image of cinematic magicians for all time, though, we've got to put our hopes in Burt Wonderstone, a comedy centered on a successful Vegas magician who loses his professional partner and must rediscover his flare for the magical.  The production is currently on location in Las Vegas, and a fresh batch of unofficial photos from the set provide our first peek at Steve Carell looking quite different from The Office's Michael Scott as Wonderstone himself, along with a blonde-haired Steve Buscemi and Olivia Wilde sporting a pretty funny little outfit.

In the upcoming ensemble comedy Butter, the titular substance isn't just for clogging your arteries and being generally delicious.  No, instead it's used as the medium in a competitive sculpting contest that consumes a small Iowa town.  The film is meant to be a satirical look at human vanity and the strange obsessions lying just beneath the surface in a seemingly ordinary American suburb.  With butter-carving.  A batch of eight new images from Butter show off the film's remarkably robust ensemble, including peeks at characters played by Jennifer Garner, Hugh Jackman, Ty Burrell, Olivia Wilde, Yara Shahidi, Rob Corddry, and Ashley Greene.  See them all right here.

Opening in theaters on October 28th is the new sci-fi thriller from Gattaca writer/director Andrew Niccol called In Time. The film stars an excellent cast of young actors including Justin Timberlake (The Social Network), Amamda Seyfried (Dear John), Cillian Murphy (Batman Begins), Olivia Wilde (Tron: Legacy), Matt Bomer (TV's White Collar), Alex Pettyfer (I Am Number Four), Johnny Galecki (TV's The Big Bang Theory), and Vincent Kartheiser (TV's Mad Men). 

At Comic-Con International in San Diego earlier this year, IAR's managing editor Jami Philbrick had a chance to speak with director Andrew Niccol, as well actors Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried about their new film In Time. The two actors and the director discuss the new film, it's intricate plot, fast paced chases, Seyfried's natural talent, Timberlake's reasons for making the movie, and its close relationship to Gattaca.   

Fourteen years ago, Andrew Niccol made a class-conscious science fiction allegory with Gattaca, which envisioned a future divided between those who've been genetically modified and those who haven't.  His next class-conscious sci-fi tale is In Time, and it'll be arriving theatrically in less than two weeks.  It's set in a near future where nobody ages past 25, but from that point on, they're living on borrowed time within a system that has replaced money with time.  The poor die young, the rich life forever. 

All this conceptual information is conveyed in one of two new clips from the film.  In the first, Justin Timberlake gambles with Vincent Kartheiser, who spouts a whole lot of on-the-nose information, and in the second, Timberlake kidnaps Amanda Seyfried, punches a bunch of nameless guards, and gets into a car chase.  Basically, the two clips form a comprehensive two-part argument to see the movie, first with the concept and second with the promise of action.

For consumers looking to get the most possible bang for their buck, big summer movies filled with visual effects are the most obvious means of showing off the capabilities of their Blu-ray player.  Overwhelming visuals, subwoofer-straining bass, and window-rattling sound design are the standard for such movies, and this summer's Cowboys & Aliens has all three, so the just-announced Blu-ray and DVD release is an ideal means of showcasing an outrageously big television.  You know what else Cowboys & Aliens has?  Aliens.  And Cowboys, as played by Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, and Sam Rockwell.

Both eponymous figures, from the old west and outer space, respectively, will be present and accounted for when the Jon Favreau-directed, Steven Spielberg-produced spectacle arrives in stores on December 6th.  While the Blu-ray will, of course, feature all the accoutrements that are expected in the format, it will also boast an extended version of the film, a full seventeen minutes longer than the cut seen in theaters.

Horizons, the sophomore feature from Tron: Legacy director Joseph Kosinski, continues to move through pre-production at Universal Pictures, where it wound up after Disney opted to let the PG-13 science-fiction actioner go despite the attachment of Tom Cruise.  With Cruise set to play the lead character, the question became just which two beautiful younger women would play the big female roles in the film.  We know half the answer to that question, as Variety reports that Jessica Chastain has been cast in Horizons, while the second major female role remains uncast.

Horizons, director Joseph Kosinski's follow-up to his debut feature TRON: Legacy, has had a not-uneventful ride so far.  Before the TRON sequel hit theaters, Disney acquired the project, then titled Oblivion, in a heated bidding war.  In the middle of the design stage of pre-production, the studio decided that a big budget PG-13 science fiction actioner did not fit with their current strategy, so Kosinski shopped his would-be movie around and it pretty quickly landed at Universal Pictures.  Through pretty much the whole process, Tom Cruise has been on board to star, and now, with the project on the fast-track, Kosinski is testing actresses for the two lead female roles.  A shortlist of the actresses under consideration has emerged, and it includes no shortage of talented and beautiful women who might just share the screen with Cruise, along with a few salient details on the story and screenwriter.

Since San Diego Comic-Con, a few official trailers have made their way online promoting In Time, the upcoming stylish science fiction action picture starring Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried.  A brand new international trailer debuted today, and it's the best of the bunch, basically rolling the previous trailers, with their differing emphases on concept and action, into one very promising mega-trailer.

The preview nicely conveys the premise of a near future in which money has been replaced by units of time.  Everyone is youthfully good-looking, since they're genetically engineered not to physically age past the age of twenty-five (this is why, just this once, Olivia Wilde can convincingly play Justin Timberlake's mom, despite being several years younger than him), but after they hit that quarter-century mark, everyone is on borrowed time.  The poor earn minutes and hours at a time, while the wealthy live forever with stashes of hundreds of years.

The body-swap comedy is an age-old tradition in Hollywood that dates all the way back to the 1976 Walt Disney film Freaky Friday starring a young Jodi Foster. While that film featured a mother and daughter swapping bodies, since then we’ve seen many different versions of that idea including father and son (Vice Versa, Like Father Like Son), grandfather and grandson (18 Again), and even geek and goddess (The Hot Chick) switching lives. Now a new take on the classic comedic theme is about to hit theaters with The Change-Up, which opens on August 5^th and features two best friends (Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds) trading places in a hard R-Rated movie.

Directed by Wedding Crashers director David Dobkin, the film promises to push the hard R-rating, in a summer of R-rated comedies, and deliver an over-the-top body-swapping movie the likes of which has never been seen before. The film stars Bateman as Dave, a successful married lawyer with three young children, and Reynolds as his best friend Mitch, a part-time actor and full-time ladies man. The two friends have begun to drift apart due to their different lifestyles but after getting together for a night of drinking and catching up, the boys urinate into a “magical fountain” and make a wish to trade lives. The result: they both wake up in the other person’s body. Now, Dave and Mitch must literally step into each other’s shoes and keep up appearances until they can find a solution to their predicament.

IAR recently attended a press conference for the film, along with several other members of the press, and had a chance to speak with director David Dobkin, as well as the film’s stars Jason Bateman (Horrible Bosses), Ryan Reynolds (Green Lantern), and Olivia Wilde (Cowboys and Aliens).