'Paul Blart' Director Boards the 'Short Circuit' Remake

Were it not for Dan Milano (Robot Chicken) writing the screenplay, I'd have very few good things to say about a remake of Short Circuit. What a silly movie. And it was tragically unnecessary back in 1986, which makes me wonder how it will be refitting almost 25 years later.

Dimension is revamping the concept - another bad omen - and the studio has hired Steve Carr to direct. Carr made lemonade out of Paul Blart: Mall Cop, an idea so leaden it absolutely shouldn't have worked. It was a mild distraction, neither good nor terrible, but if you polled anyone who saw it, I doubt they'd say it was well-directed. If anything, they liked Kevin James, who has a way of getting audiences on his side.

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'Observe and Report' Director Slams 'Paul Blart'

If you've seen trailers or TV commercials for Observe and Report, the new dark comedy starring Seth Rogen, you've come to the conclusion that its premise is pretty similar to that of Paul Blart: Mall Cop. It's certainly not intentional and the movies are wildly different.

But don't believe me. Just listen to Observe and Report director Jody Hill, who found out about Blart while making his film last summer in Albuquerque. "I figured it was gonna suck," Hill confessed to New York Magazine. "It's annoying that every time I read an article, they mention this piece-of- shit movie." Hill adds, "I don't want a battle of the mall cops. If somebody's doing something, I don't want to do that." And yet, here we are, and people do bring it up because we had zero mall cop movies in the past I don't know how many years, and now we have two in four months. Observe and Report received positive notices at SXSW and opens on April 10th.

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Who'd You Rather: Paul Blart or Madea?

If you had to pick one to get rid of the other, which would you choose?

Over the weekend, $41 million was thrown at the feet of Tyler Perry, whose Madea Goes to Jail was clearly the number one movie over that time span, outperforming the rest of the top five all by itself. It's also the biggest opening weekend of the young year, a record that should hold for another two weeks. Not too far off Madea's pace, though, is the ever-alert security guard, Paul Blart, which has the year's third best debut performance. Yes, the opening weekends of these films accounted for more money spent than the lifetime grosses of three of the five Best Picture nominees combined.

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More 'Paul Blart,' More of the Time

You wanted the Blart, you got the Blart!

The Los Angeles Times caught up with Sony executive Doug Belgrad to discuss the surprising success of Paul Blart: Mall Cop, a poorly reviewed comedy with an unlikely leading man in Kevin James. The studio, naturally, wants a repeat performance. "Happy Madison historically has been very reluctant to do sequels," says Belgrad of the movie's production company. "But we believe there is an opportunity to make another Paul Blart movie."

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