Director Rian Johnson opened up the Looper panel today at WonderCon 2012 by explaining that it’s a time-travel action movie that he had conceptualized as far back as when he directed Brick.

Loopers are hit men hired by future-dwelling organized crime members who are able to send their targets back into the past, where the loopers shoot them and dispose of them back in time. Joseph Gordon-Levitt ‘s character is a looper who is surprised when he discovers his latest target is his future self. He stars in the film along with Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt, Jeff Daniels, and Piper Perabo. At the heart of it is the question, “What would you do if you sat across the table from your older self?”

Released back in October 2010 the comic action-thriller RED was a pleasant surprise. Based on a DC Comics graphic novel by Warren Ellis and Cully Hammer and directed by German-born Robert Schwentke (The Time Traveler’s Wife), RED brought together a killer cast (including Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, John Malkovich, Richard Dreyfuss, Karl Urban, and Brian Cox), armed them with cutting quips and heavy artillery, and let them have a paycheck-cashing ball. It was a hoot to see a fun action flick that relied more on old school ass-kicking and witty dialogue rather than CGI fireballs. The movie was also a huge success for distributor Summit Entertainment, grossing over $200 million and making a sequel inevitable.

A few years ago I, like many, wouldn’t have thought a second G.I. Joe movie to be a likelihood. While G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra was a spazztastic joy-bomb of a movie that bled pure, unadulterated fun from its pores, it wasn’t quite the moneymaker that Hasbro’s other big screen franchise brand, Transformers, had become. But after three years it looks like we’re getting a sequel to The Rise of Cobra, and not only does G.I. Joe: Retaliation look a lot better than its predecessor but it appears that director Jon M. Chu (Step Up 3D) and writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (Zombieland), along with a mighty cast, have made a real-as-rhubarb G.I. Joe movie.

The movie isn’t due in theaters until this summer but in the past two months the studio has released a teaser trailer and Super Bowl spot that both garnered positive reaction, something that the early trailers for The Rise of Cobra couldn’t quite accomplish and thus hurt its chances at the box office.

Today Paramount Pictures and MGM have released an international trailer for the movie. You can watch it here below.

After the great movie that was JCVD, director Mabrouk el Mechri has become something of a hot commodity around the film world. And now he’s back with his next effort, In The Cold Light Of Day. A new trailer has been released, which you can watch here below.

Starring Sigourney Weaver, Henry Cavill, and Bruce Willis, the film follows the story of a young man whose family is kidnapped during a vacation in Spain, only to find out various things about the kidnappers, and also his family.

Not many people know this but Sylvester Stallone‘s 2010 brawny mercenary epic The Expendables was originally shot with the intention of getting a PG-13 rating. Fans of old school action the world over were disheartened but were willing to look past it just as long as Sly delivered the goods, and given the insane amount of heavyweight ass-kicking talent the star/director had assembled for the movie, there was no question he wouldn’t. As the film approached its release date the decision was made to pump some more blood-soaked carnage digitally into the proceedings to get its rating up to an R, despite the nagging stigma that the box office appeal of R-rated action films was dropping off fast each year.

That didn’t prevent The Expendables from becoming one of the surprise hits of that summer, grossing over $100 million in the U.S. and banking a grand worldwide total of over $274 million (with a budget of only $80 million). At that point not only was a sequel inevitable but it was assumed from the beginning that the next Expendables adventure, appropriately titled The Expendables 2, would be from the very beginning designed and executed with the intention of getting that all-important R rating.

But then a funny thing happened to The Expendables 2 on its way to principal photography. A funny thing named Chuck Norris. Continue reading to see how Norris changed the entire course of the movie, and to see a video.