Pirates of the Caribbean 4 might be coming to a theater near you in the future, and Johnny Depp will likely return as Captain Jack Sparrow, but Gore Verbinski, the director of the previous Pirate trilogy, won’t…

That’s right! It’s the generic Ghostbusters 3 Banner.

Sorry guys, but you spend enough time tracing the Ghostbusters logo from 2 and adding a third finger, you kind of just use it over and over again. Not to mention that everything we’ve heard about Ghostbusters 3 is still in rumor territory. Because, if you remember, there is no script yeat, at least not one that has been turned in with star attached to it. No script means no official green light, which means I can only spend so much of my free time making banners for it.

But did Ghostbusters just take another step towards a new damn banner? And what other “part 3″ came up at the same time?

This, unlike some things I might possibly blog about today, is not a joke. I don’t intended to pull wool over your eyes this April 1st, because I don’t have enough ‘net sway to make a really effective joke. All I’d be doing is either making something up or re-reporting something someone else was making up. I’m going to try not to do that. I’m going to try to pull the actual news out of the day.

Which is bad news for 20th Century Fox, because the rumors that started flying last night about a workprint of X-Men Origins: Wolverine leaking online seems to be true…

Here’s a small excerpt of what I wrote about Friday Night Lights the day of its first season finale.

Trying to tell someone about a good TV show usually means you have anywhere for 30 - 90 seconds to hook them. Most people are not into television as much as the people I work and go to school with. [My friend] Nate tells me, via his David Foster Wallace essay, that TV is a huge clusterf*ck of mirrored psychological quirks for both the public in general and specifically fiction writers. I’ve read, in my oft-recommended Everything Bad is Good for You, that modern day television is making us smarter when it’s good. Nevertheless, whatever someone thinks about TV, they will give you at least 30 - 90 seconds to talk about it. The social rules of small talk dictate you get 30 - 90 seconds about most anything (except the weather, which gets a minimum of a minute).

In 30-2-90, here’s the way I’d describe Friday Night Lights:

It’s based on a book written by this journalist who lived in a small Texas town - you know, one of those towns that revolve around football. He lived in this town and wrote this book about this season where the star quarterback was severely injured and the team had to overcome adversity to do well in the playoffs for the town. The book did well and became a movie - unfortunately starring Billy Bob Thornton - around 2004. The TV show is about the fictional town of Dillon Texas and their football team that is supposed to go the state this year, but the star quarterback is paralyzed during the first game. But, it’s not just about that. The show isn’t really about football, it’s more about the relationships of the people in the town, and small town life in general. It kind of reminds me of high school and how people acted back then. It’s also serialized, so it’s kind of like a soap-opera.

In terms of the content, all the above information is correct, but reading it back to myself right now, it doesn’t sound like something I’d want to watch. Maybe I’m the only one who describes it this badly, but I find it difficult to explain the things I really like about FNL. There isn’t really a hook like other really popular shows:
-It’s a suspense show about terrorism that takes place in real time

BAM!
-These people are in a plane crash and are stranded on a desert island, but through the slow revelation of their pasts through flashbacks, we learn that things are much more sinister and complex than that.

POW!
-Two FBI agents explore strange happenings. One believes in the paranormal because his sister was abducted by aliens, and the other is attractive and skeptical…and a redhead

ZAP!
-Heroes…one’s actually named Hiro. And we’re going to sloganize our plotlines (”Save the Cheerleader, Save the World”)

Uh…sure, why not.

All I’m saying is that you really have to sit down and watch one, maybe two episodes to notice the nuances in character, the fantastic acting (mostly from the actors who play Coach Taylor and his wife Tami Taylor - the Taylors deserve some sort of award), and the accurate portrayal of small-town life and falling in love during that f*cked-up period of high school.

Then, Friday Night Lights kind of stumbled during its sophomore season, only to barely get picked up by DirecTV for a third, 13-episode season, which surprised the crap out of me by returning to being really good.

[The good news for those of you convinced by my old write up? You can see ALL of Season One on HULU Free!]

And I’m glad things worked out, because there are TWO more DirecTV-sponsored seasons on the way…

Ok, this is where I’m going to be a geeky screenwriter for a second, because the rise of Mr. Roberto Orci and Mr. Alex Kurtzman is basically the dream of a certain phylum of writer that dreams of working on big, important projects.

Kurtzman and Orci started working as a writing duo right out of high school and managed to both get on board Hercules and Xena: Warrior Princess, where they worked their chops until they got picked up on Alias, where they collided with JJ Abrams.

Flash forward to now, and these two get thier pick of fun properties: The Island, The Legend of Zorro, Mission: Impossible III, Transformers, Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, Star Trek and now…

Hey, you remember the preview for Labor Pains? It’s a Lindsay Lohan movie where she’s, like, the worst secretary ever and instead of getting fired, she pretends to be pregnant to avoid the axe.

Yeah, there’s a pre-economic downturn story for ya. These days, not knowing how to manage your personal birth control still get you fired.

But, pretending that Lehman Brothers didn’t happen, the film was possibly going to be Lohan’s return to a film star, a reputation she destroyed by going on a high-speed, coke-fueled chase and getting arrested right before her latest movie was released. Also, that movie was I Know Who Killed Me, which did great…at the Razzies.

So what happened to Lindsay’s comeback…?

Thanks to Film Drunk for the photoshop work. I was being lazy and writing about other things.

So that post I did called “Don’t trust the tabloids” suggesting Sean Penn wasn’t going to be in the Farrelly Brothers’ film imagining of The Three Stooges?

Yeah, I was wrong…