Marc Forster has directed Monster’s Ball and Finding Neverland.

But may truly become a household name with The Kite Runner, considering the popularity of the book and the controversy surrounding the movie.

He recently spoke to Comingsoon.net about the project:

Q: Was The Kite Runner one of the more challenging films you’ve done? It obviously has a lot of challenges in terms of the locations, the kite sequences…
Marc Forster: Oh, it was hands-down the most challenging thing I’ve ever done. Yeah, hands down. Nothing came close to it.

Q: When you read the book and were offered the movie, what was the first thing you realized you’d have to figure out how to do?
Forster: You know, the thing about it when I read the story was I said, “Oh, my God, this is such a beautiful book, it’s such an important story” because it’s the first time I’m reading about this part of the world. It really deals with a human story about forgiveness, healing, and atonement, and it doesn’t deal with violence or terrorists.

I hadn’t read a story about that part of the world, which deals with a really human story, and every time you think about Afghanistan, you think about Bin Laden and the Taliban, and this story wasn’t dealing with that. I hadn’t really seen anything like that, so I thought it was an important story to tell, and that was why I felt “you have to make this movie” because it humanizes and puts a human face on this part of the world.

Click here to read the full interview.

More details are emerging about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

When last we left our hero, as USA Today reports, he was riding off into the sunset in 1989’s The Last Crusade, set in 1938 near the start of World War II. The new film, meanwhile, is set at the height of the Cold War in 1957, so the character has aged 19 years in real time.

“He’s teaching and having kind of a quiet life,” Producer Frank Marshall says, adding that once the archaeologist is thrust back into danger, the signature Indiana Jones red line tracing across the map will take him to New Mexico, Connecticut, Mexico City and the jungles of Peru.

The Nazis are no longer Indy’s chief enemy: he’s racing for the Crystal Skull against operatives from the Soviet Union, including Oscar winner Cate Blanchett as the seductive Agent Spalko.

“Indy always has a love-hate relationship with every woman he ever comes in contact with,” Marshall says.

Ray Winstone (Beowulf) co-stars as an unethical rival archaeologist. Shia LaBeouf sports greaser hair and rides a motorcycle as the hero’s sidekick.

The Last Crusade concluded without a cliffhanger, but Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will revisit bits from other films, including Karen Allen’s feisty Marion Ravenwood from 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark.

As the ads for Will Smith’s latest project, I Am Legend, announce: “The Last Man on Earth is Not Alone.”

Well, this applied to the actor during filming, as well: director Francis Lawrence played a key role throughout production of the flick. Below is an excerpt of an interview conducted with him:

ShockTillYouDrop.com: Why rescue I Am Legend from development hell?
Francis Lawrence: I read one of [screenwriter Mark] Protosevich’s drafts before I did “Constantine” and it stuck in my head. I hadn’t read the novel before that draft. When I was finishing “Constantine,” Akiva and I were talking about working together again and Warners gave him that project to resurrect ’cause they thought it was dead.

Will Smith, in a scene from I Am Legend. 

He brought it up to me, and I finally read the novel. Even before these projects, I was always intrigued by someone surviving in an abandoned urban environment. Back when I was doing music videos I’d try to do that with some of the artists I worked with. Trying to sell this feeling of isolation and emptiness.

I said, Let’s take a crack at it, and we went off with our own take from there.

Click here to read the full interview.

Michelle Williams - best known for her roles in Dawson’s Creek and Brokeback Mountain - is the latest actor to join the cast of Martin Scorsese’s forthcoming feature Shutter Island.

According to Variety, the actress will play the wife of Leonardo Di Caprio’s character, joining an already strong cast that includes Mark Ruffalo and Ben Kingsley.

Ellen Page and Michael Cera star in Juno. Below, the young stars talk about the film with Movie Web:

How quickly upon reading the script, were you like “I want to do this project?”
Ellen Page: When I read the script it just blew mind and I fell totally in love with it and I just really wanted to be part of it.

Michael Cera: How quickly?

Ellen Page: Oh, how quickly? … I don’t know, page 4. No, that’s exaggerating. One of those things where immediately when you started reading it, you knew it was something special and then the more you read, the more it surprised you, and the more you realized it was devoid of stereotype and…

Michael Cera: I really liked the format of the script. It was not written like a script. It didn’t look like she (screenwriter Diablo Cody) was trying to write it like a script. It was more like a book. I can remember certain paragraphs were just like broken up oddly and that kind of … not like reading a script.

Kinda like a book. That made me want to do the movie. I thought “wow, if it’s written oddly then, if it’s not written like a script, it’s got to be a good movie”. I found out, that’s not the way to make a decision. And it’s not a lesson that I’ll soon forget.

What did you two like most about your characters? What about that character that caught your eye?
Michael Cera: I really liked that my character’s just kinda immediately less out of the equation. I didn’t have any sort of control in the matter. It’s like a movie that takes course over 9 months or so and just the whole time, not aware of what’s going on and have no control over it, so that kind of, I thought that would be fun to do.

Ellen Page: I was excited about this character because I felt like it was a teenage female lead that we just never seen before and although she’s an incredibly unique and witty and all these things, she’s also very genuine and it all felt very sincere.

IGN recently sat down with Christopher Nolan, director of The Dark Knight. Here are a couple highlights from the interiew:

IGN: In all the many fan casting wish lists that made the rounds online, Ledger’s name never came up. How and when did you think to cast him?
Nolan: To be honest, I don’t exactly remember when it came to pass. I’d met with Heath several times on projects in the past and nothing had ever come of it. And I think he’d heard I was looking for someone to play the Joker before we had a script, and I’d heard that he was really actually into the idea.

Christopher Nolan shoot The Dark Knight.

And we met and we got each other. We both had exactly the same concept in our heads of who that guy would be in this film in the way that we’d interpreted it. It wasn’t specific to, “Oh, he’s going to look like this or talk like that” at all. It was about a psychological concept.

It was about a character concept. It was about the threat of anarchy. It was about anarchy being the most frightening thing there is. Chaos and anarchy in this day and age, and I think it is. It’s certainly the thing I’m most afraid of.

IGN: Are you concerned at all about the Justice League of America movie and of a new Batman being introduced to audiences while your franchise is still going?
Nolan: Not really. To be perfectly honest, it’s not really something I’ve thought about much. I really am just immersed in making this movie. Whatever will happen will happen, and we’re just working very hard to make this movie the best it can be.

Read the full interview now.

Producer Frank Marshall recently spoke on Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Just how did the making of this movie finally come about?

“It’s kind of been out there in the air, but we never had the right script, and we kind of put it on the backburner and then back in 2000, we all went to the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award for Harrison,” Marshall said. “George and Harrison and Steven and I and Kathy were all backstage all dressed up and we were looking at clips from the movies and we thought, ‘God, those were really fun. Maybe we oughta really focus on trying to do another one.

And that’s what happened. David Koepp came up with a great script finally, and we’re done shooting and now in the editing process. It’s pretty amazing.”

Marshall continued:

“What we’ve done is we moved it from the ’40s to the ‘50s so we’re acknowledging that everybody’s 10 or 15 years older and it plays into the story,” he told us when asked about how things would be different from the earlier movies.

We’re not trying to hide that Harrison’s older, but we have Shia LaBeouf coming in as his sidekick, so we’ve got a young element. The best way to describe the movie is that it’s an Indiana Jones movie. It’s got all the style and elements of the old movies, and we’re not really trying to do anything different.”

Nor would we want them to!

Here’s another exclusive picture from the set of the next Rambo movie.

Sylvester Stallone told MTV News the following regarding the next - and, we gotta assume, final - installment of the franchise:

“We pushed the boundaries further than they have ever been pushed in an area of brutality and violence because we want to show the horrors of war and not candy-coat the real nightmare that the people are faced with there.”

Here’s what so many people have been waiting for: the preview for the Sex and the City movie!

Check it out now, along with a couple screen caps from the film:

As it roars into theaters - and creates a bit of controversy in the process - here are a series of interesting tidbits regarding The Golden Compass:

• It follows an orphan girl named Lyra who goes in search of her missing friend Roger and learns that all sorts of children are being spirited away to become the subject of nefarious experiments aimed at determining the source of original sin.

• Some otherworldly things about Lyra’s otherworldly world: daemons (pronounced demons), animals who follow people around throughout their lives (and represent their souls); Gobblers, baddies who, legend has it, gobble up children; and talking polar bears who wear armor.

• Dakota Blue Richards (pictured) beat out 10,000 girls to score the part of Lyra. The newcomer, now 13, was spotted at an open casting call in Oxford, England

• Sir Ian McKellen, who ruled as Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, lends his authority as the voice of Lyra’s trusty polar-bear friend and protector, Iorek Byrnison.