She was the Jewish bad girl in “Saved,” but in “The Life Before Her Eyes,” Eva Amurri is the Christian goodie good to Evan Rachel Wood’s bad girl — and she likes it that way. “I was playing a bad girl when I got the script, and I thought, ‘What a great thing to do, pull a total 180,’” she said. “Who wants to play one thing all the time anyway?”

Despite their differences, Evan and Eva’s characters become best friends who are put to the ultimate test, when they’re forced to choose which of them will live or die during a school shooting. “It’s a horrifying situation, to be point blank at the end of a gun,” Eva said, “and have someone say, ‘Who should I kill?’” Read more…

Michelle Trachtenberg was off fighting vampires when she was 17 — but for “Seventeen Again,” she’s happy to be “free and clear” from action scenes, especially those that involve dancing. That, she leaves to her co-star Zac Effron.

“I just watch him and mope,” she said — and not because she’s pining for a different sort of action. As if! He’s playing her dad (even though she’s two years older), and just to rub it in, she called him “Dad” on set. “Anything we did, father/daughter-wise,” Trachtenberg told us, “I’d tease him, ‘I’m older than you! You’re not really my father,’ while he’s trying to tell me what to do.” But she understands that the girls love Zac, and she doesn’t fault them for that: “If you think he’s hot, rock on. He is.” Read more…

Is the “Harry Potter” film franchise done passing the wand? After the first two films, Chris Columbus stepped aside as Alfonso Cuarón, Mike Newell and then David Yates expanded the Potter-verse. But could it be that Yates, who shot “Order of the Phoenix” and is in the middle of “Half-Blood Prince,” will be the last one to leave his mark?

Children’s writer Lois Lowry thinks so, as she wrote on her blog Tuesday, telling her fans that Yates had pulled out of shooting an adaptation of her book “The Giver” so that he can do “Deathly Hallows” instead. “He has just decided he wants to do the final ‘Harry Potter’ first,” she wrote, “thereby postponing ‘The Giver’ for several years.” Read more…

Fleur Delacour doesn’t know her own fate — at least, Clémence Poésy, the actress who played her in “Goblet of Fire,” hasn’t read beyond that book yet. Poesy told MTV News that she’s not back in what she calls “Harry Potter world” just yet and won’t be appearing in “Half-Blood Prince” — which probably means that the subplot of her character’s engagement to Bill Weasley has been cut out or is only a mention, no actual scenes.

Still, there’s hope for Phlegm — we mean, Fleur — in “Hallows,” since the couple’s wedding is a major action sequence when it’s disrupted by Death Eaters, and the newlywed’s home at Shell Cottage becomes a place of refuge — but don’t tell her that. Read more…

Sweeney Todd’s a serial killer, and you know what that means — serial movies! The younger cast members of “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” all have dream sequels on the brain, each starring themselves as the latest revenge-seeker in the cycle.

For instance, Jamie Bowers, who plays the love-struck sailor Anthony, proposes that his character and his lady love Johanna (played by Jayne Wisener) end up running away together — to start a new killing rampage. “We’re the killers this time,” he proposed, “but you can’t tell anyone yet.” Read more…

You thought Snape was enigmatic, hard to figure out? Don’t count on Alan Rickman to help you — because once he makes a promise, he keeps it. When we caught up with Alan in London for “Sweeney Todd,” we had to ask what he thought of what’s finally revealed about Snape in “Deathly Hallows,” and he refused to spill. “There may have been people who have not read that book,” he insisted. “I won’t talk about it just in case somebody flips some channel, some computer screen, and they haven’t got that far.” Read more…

For some, it was TMI — for others, too little. J.K. Rowling’s epilogue to the “Deathly Hallows” may have actually caused more debate than the rest of the book, simply for the who-ended-up-with-whom element, some of which we knew and saw coming, and others, like Draco gets married?! And spawns?! that we still can’t get behind. But for Luna Lovegood and Cho Chang, or at least, the actresses who play them, they’re quite happy with their happily-ever-afters — even if Jo didn’t see fit to give us all the details in the actual book itself. Read more…

One scene in “The Golden Compass” might shock fans of the book — because Mrs. Coulter does something taboo to her monkey. And no, she’s not spanking her monkey, just slapping him. “That’s entirely different,” director Chris Weitz laughed.

So why would this be shocking? Because her monkey is her daemon, the physical manifestation of her own soul, and it’s a tad sadomasochistic, to say the least — it’s unheard of to hurt someone else’s daemon, let alone to hurt your own. And when she smacks him, she gets a red mark on her own cheek. Read more…

Lots of wizard-rock bands probably see themselves as pioneers of the genre, but the Switchblade Kittens really did get there first, with their 2000 Potter anthem, “Ode to Harry.”

But the band hadn’t set out to be a wizard rock band — they had non-Harry-rific tunes, such as a punk riffing on the Titanic theme that got them play on KROQ. But after three million downloads, spots on the Warped Tour, and thousands of emails begging for more, the Kittens obliged with a full-fledged wizard rock album for their sophomore effort, called “The Weird Sisters.” Read more…

One Hulk, Two Hulk, Red Hulk, Blue Hulk — when is one Hulk not enough? When there’s going to be yet another movie version and a new comic version.

“The Incredible Hulk,” a reboot of Ang Lee’s 2003 take on “The Hulk,” isn’t upsetting the actors from the last go-round, at least not enough to cause any real tears. “Boo hoo,” said Sam Elliott, pretending to cry over being replaced by William Hurt as General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross. “That’s a little weird [to see someone take your part]. But I happen to be a huge Edward Norton fan, and I think he’s a great choice for the Hulk. I’m sure he’ll be incredible.”

Ditto for Jennifer Connelly, who played his daughter. “I love Liv [Tyler],” Connelly said of the next Betty Ross. “She’s a friend of mine and I’m so excited that she’s doing it and I can’t wait to see it. I love Ed [Norton] as well, and I can’t wait to see what Ed does with it.” Read more…

The problem of coming up with a clever title? Following it up. You just try writing a story called “Babbity Rabbity and her Cackling Stump” — “if anyone thinks it was easy, let me disabuse them here,” J.K. Rowling wrote on her website of her efforts to flesh out the fairy-tale book Dumbledore leaves to Hermione in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.”

Since J.K. wanted to create a very personal thank you present to those most closely involved with Harry over the years, she actually wrote the fables referred to in “The Tales of Beedle the Bard.” “The Tale of the Three Brothers,” the only one we got a real sense of in Book Seven, so that left the titles Ron rattles off: “The Fountain of Fair Fortune,” “The Wizard and the Hopping Pot,” the aforementioned “Babbitty Rabbitty” and a new story, “The Warlock’s Hairy Heart.” Rowling handwrote and illustrated the 160-page “Tales of Beedle the Bard,” which is extremely limited edition — only seven copies were made, and one of those, the “Moonstone” edition, is being auctioned off for the charity Children’s Voice, with an asking price of $60,000. Don’t have that kind of dough? You can look at the book, which will be on display in London until the auction on December 13. Read more…

Still buzzing from the advance buzz of “The Golden Compass” at New Line’s 40th anniversary gala in New York on Friday night, New Line’s co-chairmen and co-CEO’s Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne were in great spirits — so we figured they wouldn’t mind a little “Hobbit” question. After all, “Golden Compass” features a mini “Lord of the Rings” reunion of sorts, with Ian McKellan (who of course played Gandalf) voicing the panserbjørne Iorek Byrnison, and Christopher Lee (who played the traitor wizard Saruman) making a cameo in the Magisterium (The voice you hear in the trailer is pre-McKellan, with a different voice actor).

So could a bigger “Lord of the Rings” reunion be in the making, as a “cautiously optimistic” Entertainment Weekly reports, possibly with Peter Jackson as the executive producer and someone else directing “The Hobbit”? (Hear what we learned after the jump.) Read more…

Bummed because you never got a chance to see Daniel Radcliffe naked? Don’t despair — he’s bringing “Equus” to the states next year. Of course, that’s not the only reason you’re interested in checking out the, um, production — we totally understand your deep interest in theatre, especially theatre involving horses and full-frontal nudity.

Radcliffe gave his final London performance in June, but he told MTV News that he thinks he could be doing it on Broadway by “late next year.”

“There’s an internet frenzy of people who think it’s happening in the spring, but it would be six months later than that,” he said. “In all probability, if everything goes according to plan, it would definitely be me and Richard Griffiths and how many other cast members the unions will allow.” (Griffiths, who co-starred with Radcliffe in the play’s West End run, also plays Uncle Vernon in the Harry Potter movies). “I’m excited. Terrified, but excited.”

How terrifying can it be, though? And what would be more terrifying or nerve-wracking — kissing Cho Chang in “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” losing his virginity in the upcoming “December Boys,” or baring his all on stage? After the jump, Radcliffe rates his various love/sex scenes to date… Read more…

Scarlett Johansson really made an impression on music video director Samuel Bayer during the making of Justin Timberlake’s “What Goes Around…Comes Around” mini-movie — so much so that the two will team up again later this year.

“Scarlett is one of the sexiest actresses around,” Bayer told MTV News. “And she can just become her characters. Look at what she did during the Corvette scene, which a lot of people won’t catch. She was shooting that on a green screen, and right before we were rolling, she was laughing. We start, and she’s crying. It was just unbelievable. It’s stuff like that which makes you know someone’s a star.”

So it was a no-brainer for Bayer that when Johansson mentioned her next project was hunting for a director, and she’d like to work with him again, to come aboard. “It’s called ‘Brilliance’ and it’s about diamond thieves, and we start shooting this winter,” Bayer said. “So many things came together in all the right ways. It really was a case of ‘what goes around, comes around.’ In a good way.”

After the jump, watch Bayer’s full nine-minute music video for “What Goes Around…Comes Around,” featuring Scarlett driving really fast and making out in a pool with our boy JT. Read more…

When I caught up with Neil Gaiman recently (watch our complete “Rough Cut” interview here), I had only about a hundred questions to ask about probably just as many projects, but only 30 minutes in which to ask them.

So what do you do when the crew is wrapping after the cameras have stopped rolling? Ask more questions! That’s how we’re able to add “Neverwhere” to the list of Neil Gaiman works about to be adapted to the big screen — despite its placement in development hell all these years. Many people who have read the book think the BBC “Neverwhere” miniseries was an adaptation, but it’s the other way around: Neil wrote it for the small screen, and started writing the book on set (in the never-seen kitchen of Richard Mayhew’s apartment). Probably because he knew the low budget series, which was shot on video but lit for film, was going to look like a cheesy soap opera from the ’80s.
Read more…