The lackluster box office grosses (not a flop, but not a good omen either) for the 2006 sequel Mission: Impossible III had the studio suits at Paramount questioning the future of the once-viable tentpole action franchise, but after more than five years the blockbuster movie series is back with Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.

The second trailer for the movie has been released and you can watch it here below.

It’s being reported that Helena Bonham Carter, Barry Pepper, and Dwight Yoakam are all in talks to join Walt Disney’s revival of The Lone Ranger.

The trio join stars Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer on the project, as well as director Gore Verbinski, who of course directed Depp in the first Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy and the recently released Rango.

The first teaser trailer for the fourth movie in the Mission: Impossible franchise, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, has been released online by Paramount Pictures.

While the trailer is of the teaser variety, it plays more like a full trailer packed with plenty of intense action, a brief story set–up, and peeks at the movie’s fantastic cast, which includes Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Paula Patton, Josh Holloway, and Tom Wilkinson.

Ghost Protocol is directed by Brad Bird (The Incredibles, Ratatouille) and produced by J.J. Abrams (Star Trek, Super 8). It hits theaters December 16, 2011. Be sure to click on over to the other side to check out the teaser trailer now!

For a while now, Danny Elfman has been attached to compose the musical score for Michel Gondry‘s upcoming crime fighting action-comedy The Green Hornet, but it looks like a last-minute change is unfolding.

The Playlist is reporting that they’re sources are saying that Elfman is now out due to simply having too many other projects on his plate. They’re also hearing that the man currently in talks to replace him is James Newton Howard, who also happens to be handling the score for Green Lantern as well. Fancy that.

Valkyrie
Directed by Bryan Singer
Starring Tom Cruise, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Eddie Izzard, Carice van Houten, Thomas Kretschmann, Terence Stamp, Kenneth Branagh
Rated PG-13
Release date: December 25, 2008

Fundamentally speaking, the appeal of Tom Cruise in the last few years doesn’t make any sense. Just as soon as he took Katie Holmes hostage and started parading her and her “˜too scared for escape’ look around the world, people seem to have become disinterested in anything he has to do professionally; or so they say. Sure he was great in Tropic Thunder, but I’m talking about the movies he has had to carry on his own. Everyone seems to talk a big game but with the exception of last year’s Lions for Lambs, you have to go all the way back to Magnolia, almost a decade ago, to find a film he starred in that didn’t gross at least $100M domestically. So much for disinterest. Maybe he just has mind control over all of us too.

Keep in mind, these aren’t secrets I am exposing for the first time, so why his pick for his latest project was a big budget WWII Hitler assassination movie is beyond comprehension. For a man so caught up on selling his image, it stands to reason that there would be better ways to spend his time. It ended up being much worse than it appeared on the surface. The release date for Valkyrie moved so many times nobody cared when it was really coming out and as soon as the trailers came out the backlash was already in full effect.