Warner Bros. has moved up the release date of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by two days. The fifth film in the fantasy series has been shifted from a Friday, July 13 opening to a Wednesday, July 11 big-screen bow.

The studio’s move will likely cut into the box office reign of Transformers, which opens the previous weekend, and is sure to wreak havoc on the schedules of thousands of Potter devotees who already planned to take Friday off.

Phoenix follows Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) as he returns for another year at Hogwarts and discovers that much of the wizarding community is in denial about the teenager’s recent encounter with the evil Lord Voldemort, preferring to turn a blind eye to the news that Voldemort has returned.

Fearing that Hogwarts’ venerable Headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, is lying about Voldemort’s return in order to undermine his power and take his job, the Minister for Magic, Cornelius Fudge, appoints a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher to keep watch over Dumbledore and the Hogwarts students. But Professor Dolores Umbridge’s Ministry-approved course of defensive magic leaves the young wizards woefully unprepared to defend themselves against the dark forces threatening them and the entire wizarding community, so at the prompting of his friends Hermione and Ron, Harry takes matters into his own hands.

Meeting secretly with a small group of students who name themselves “Dumbledore’s Army,” Harry teaches them how to defend themselves against the Dark Arts, preparing them for the battle that lies ahead.

Directed by David Yates from a script by Michael Goldberg, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix will run in standard and large-format theaters. The IMAX version will have an unprecedented for the series 3-D finale.

All directors promise that their sequels will be bigger and flashier than the predecessors’. But Christopher Nolan doesn’t mess around.

The director’s sequel to Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, will become the first feature film to be partly shot in the IMAX format, an expensive and cumbersome process that typically is the province of documentaries and short films.

Nolan will shoot four action sequences — including the introduction of the Joker, played by Heath Ledger — on IMAX.

The move is one of Hollywood’s most pronounced steps yet in its embrace of IMAX theaters, which are increasingly showing commercial fare on their giant screens.

“There’s simply nothing like seeing a movie that way,” Nolan says. “It’s more immersive for the audience. I wish I could shoot the entire thing this way.”

Typically, the feature films that play in IMAX theaters are simply stretched out to fill the enormous screens. That can dilute the picture quality and give the movie a wide, squat look.

Shooting on IMAX, Nolan says, will have a twofold effect. The four scenes will fill the IMAX screens, some of which are eight stories high. And in traditional theaters, the scenes will appear more vivid (think high-definition television over standard).

Don’t expect many movies to follow suit. Only 280 IMAX theaters are in operation worldwide, and fewer than 100 show feature films.

And shooting in the format is difficult. IMAX film, which is 10 times the size of standard film stock, is costly and must be shot using bulky cameras.

And “they’re loud,” Nolan says. “We had to figure a way to eliminate the sound so we could shoot dialogue.”

In a rarity for Hollywood, the payoff isn’t primarily financial, so far. “It doesn’t have a huge effect yet on the money you bring in,” says Chris Aronson, a distribution chief with 20th Century Fox, which carried Night at the Museum on IMAX. “But it does help make your movie more of an event.”

For Nolan, IMAX makes the moviegoing experience unique again.

“You can’t do this on any home theater,” Nolan says. “Batman has some of the most extraordinary characters in pop culture. We wanted the Joker to have the grandest entrance possible.

“I figured if you could take an IMAX camera to Mount Everest or outer space, you could use it in a feature movie.”

SOURCE: USA Today

Baseball has Eight Men Out and The Natural.

Boxing has Cinderella Man and Raging Bull. Heck, even golf has The Greatest Game Ever Played.

For fans of America’s true sporting pastime, however, cinematic nostalgia has been far too fleeting…until now, that is. OnDecember 7th, George Clooney aims to pay homage to pigskin’s early days with the film Leatherheads.

“We just wrapped [it],” Pirates of the Caribbean co-star Jonathan Pryce told MTV News. “It’s about the creation of American pro football in 1926 when they brought in the rules.”

The movie is directed by Clooney, who penned the script with frequent collaborator Steven Soderbergh.

“Clooney’s wonderful,” Pryce said. “I think it’s going to be really good.” Make no mistake, however, this is no Good Night, and Good Luck,” Pryce joked. “It’s a kind of screwball comedy.”

So with Clooney quarterbacking the production, where do all the other stars line up? “George plays for a ragtag, over-the-hill football team. They attract [The Office star] John Krasinski, star college football player to come and play. I’m [his] sleazy agent and manager,” Pryce divulged.

[There’s a] bit of a scandal involved. Renee Zellweger, ace reporter, is dispatched to expose [it].”

The Sims, the hit life simulation videogame series from Electronic Arts, is being turned into a live-action movie by 20th Century Fox.

No, seriously.

The story is being kept under wraps and no actors are attached to the project at this time. According to today’s Variety, Brian Lynch (Scary Movie 3) will write the script.

Rod Humble, head of Sims Studio, said: “The Sims has done an interactive version of an old story, which is what it’s like to have infinite power and how do you deal with it. Given that that’s an old story, you can imagine how easily that would translate to traditional story telling.”

Oh, now we see their angle! But will it work?

Fox-based producer John Davis is putting together the project. Davis’ recent credits include Norbit, Eragon, and Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties - not exactly a list that will reassure skeptical fans of the game.

Will the characters speak that weird language? Will they have those symbols popping up over their heads? We’ll let you know when we do.

If Brian De Palma moves ahead with prequel The Untouchables: Capone Rising, it will be without Nicolas Cage.

Cage had been in negotiations to star in the follow-up, but talks have ended because of scheduling issues, according to his reps.

Relativity Media is financing the film, while Paramount has domestic distrib rights. Art Linson, who produced De Palma’s 1987 original The Untouchables, is producing the prequel as well.

In Cannes last week, Relativity’s Ryan Kavanaugh announced that Gerard Butler has joined the cast.

Butler (300) is set for the part of Jimmy Malone, played by Sean Connery in the original. Cage would have played the young Al Capone.

Cage is presently shooting National Treasure: Book of Secrets, which opens in December. He hasn’t said what his next movie will be after that.

Have you seen those pulled posters for Captivity?

Think they’re sadistic, or violent, or maybe even wildly inappropriate? Well you ain’t seen nothing yet, promised the film’s star Elisha Cuthbert when talking to MTV News.

“I’m a model that gets [held] captive and gets locked in a room, wakes up in a cell and doesn’t know what day it is or how long she’s been there. She just gets tormented the entire time,” Cuthbert said of the horror flick’s plot. “I get buried in sand up over my head. [It’s] scary. Really scary.”

Blame the filmmakers or the stars if you like, but Cuthbert insists that there’s an audience for this kind of flick.

“There’s some really brutal stuff in this film, but I think that’s what audiences are waiting for now,” she asserted. “Saw, Hostel, all these movies have really raised the bar as far as horror movies go, and we had to get up there ourselves.”

Still, it’s not a genre Cuthbert is going to be hanging around in long. My Sassy Girl, a romantic comedy Cuthbert joked was like “a mix between Big Fish and When Harry Met Sally” comes out later this year.

“It’s about a guy that falls for a girl that’s completely off her rocker and out of her mind,” she said. “It’s a really beautiful film.”

It’s been widely reported that Indiana Jones 4 will feature a major car chase sequence. The only other detail we’ve known thus far is that the scene in question would film in New Haven, Connecticut. But now there are new revelations.

This week, the New Haven Independent spoke to city officials involved in bringing the production to New Haven, and managed to piece together numerous details on the Indy 4 shoot.

The final Indiana Jones movie, as far as New Haven aldermen were told, is set in the year 1957. New Haven was selected as a key location because of the abundance of attractive New England architecture, particularly around Yale University. And most of the scenes to be filmed there reportedly involve Harrison Ford on a motorcycle.

The scene descriptions are vivid, so be warned of some minor spoilers: Indy and his bike will be tearing through the courtyards of several Yale colleges and speeding through an underground tunnel off Derby Avenue. Supposedly, Indy might pick up a football from one of the nearby sports fields and use it as a weapon while riding.

Then, he’ll burst through the Yale Commons — set up to look like a study hall — while books and papers fly, and students scramble out of the way. And on a nearby street, a sedan — one of Indy’s pursuers, perhaps — will have an accident and get flipped over.

The entire New Haven shoot is expected to run from June 28th until July 6th. Auditioning will begin soon for the 500 or so extras required.

Remember, these details are not official, and there’s no telling just how these scenes fit into the overall story; however, it is official that Spielberg will be shooting in New Haven, and there’s no reason to doubt that these scenes will be shot as planned - and that young stud Shia LaBeouf will be involved somehow.

By now, you’ve probably heard a lot about this summer’s supposedly best comedy, Knocked Up. But what is it actually about?

Here’s a summary:

Allison Scott (Katherine Heigl) is on the fast track for a promising career as an entertainment journalist. Her big plans get a little messed up, though, after a one-night stand with a total slacker (Seth Rogen) gets her pregnant. Although she has the determination to be a successful working single mom, Allison tries to involve her baby’s daddy in her life, but he may turn out to be a little too immature to handle fatherhood

Warner Bros. and producer Joel Silver are working with Mattel to turn “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe” into a live-action film.

Justin Marks is set to write the script. Silver will produce.

The deal, which is contingent on Mattel formally approving an outline for the project, is another example of Hollywood overhauling a 1980s-era pop-culture touchstone in the hopes of seeding a tentpole pic. The sale comes just a few weeks before the July preem of DreamWorks’ Michael Bay-directed Transformers, which began as an ’80s animated series and toy line.

He-Man was born as a Mattel action figure, and the toymaker created an animated series in hopes of selling dolls. The series became a cult favorite, but the brand was hardly helped by its first bigscreen incarnation, the campy 1987 flop Masters of the Universe that starred Dolph Lundgren as the title character and Frank Langella as his nemesis Skeletor.

The toymaker, which now licenses “He-Man” for high-end merchandise sold to hardcore collectors, has been wary of going Hollywood again. An attempt by Fox 2000 to make another movie, this time with director John Woo, ended in futility as the toymaker didn’t spark to the screen plans.

For Mattel, the stakes are potentially high as success could mean an entire relaunch of a toy line.

The franchise has been reimagined by the producer and the writers and pitched to Mattel as a classic good vs. evil battle, using the kind of visual effects strategy employed in 300. A warrior is touted as the last hope of a magical land called Eternia, which is being ravaged by technology and the evil Skeletor.

Lindsay Lohan is scary because she’s a walking STD.

But in the picture below, the actress is spotted in a scene from I Know Who Killed Me, an upcoming thrilled in which Lohan plays a stripper tortured by a serial killer.

Lohan told People magazine in December that she endured some bruising workouts to prep for her role as a stripper.

“I’ve been in pole-dancing lessons, S Factor by Sheila Kelley, every day for four hours,” Lohan said. “I have bruises all over. That’s why I haven’t worn shorts.”