The series centers on Axel Foley’s blue-collar police officer son, Aaron (Jackson), who helps take down the criminal elements of the rich and famous in Beverly Hills while trying to escape the shadow of his larger-than-life father. Murphy will reprise his role as Axel in the pilot and may recur if the pilot goes to series.

And look — Jackson's already a part of the Beverly Hills Cop family! (Pictured below: Judge Reinhold and Jackson at Spike TV's "Eddie Murphy: One Night Only" event earlier this month.)

If this Beverly Hills Cop reboot business is happening, I'm glad it's someone like Jackson, one of the more consistently hilarious actors of his class, getting the big shot. Because if there's some other young up-and-comer fit to step into Murphy's shoes, it's probably Jackson. Also: Alpha Chino Forever.

[via Deadline]

David Ayer chatted with ML the day after the premiere of End of Watch in Toronto the other week and gave shared why he decided to return to the cop story, they unique visual style he's going for in the pic, and just how real all the seemingly outrageous dramas the two officers face in the film are...

I heard you wrote the script for End of Watch in six days, how did that play out?
Yes, I did. It just kind of exploded out of me. It was six days by way of twenty years, you know what I mean? It's a world I've spent a lot of time in. I grew up in South Central L.A. I have a lot of friends in law enforcement, so a lot of things that happen in the script happened to a close friend of mine. I have been writing down stories he told me. So the challenge of writing this story lead me to do this pseudo-documentary style that makes it really natural and not just using the usual story landmarks that you might intuitively feel.

Were there certain documentaries that informed some of your style choices for End of Watch?
This one friend of mine takes cameras to work and guess what - he films things just like we all do with our phones etc anywhere. It can be riveting and it seemed like a fantastic device to tell a story, but at the same time, the "found footage" aspect can become a bit tedious if it's not from a place of total reality. It can become like a gimmick and the allusion alters. So we brought in conventional coverage to augment that and the movie is a hybrid.

There was a point where you went away from telling the Cop Stories, what made you do that and what brought you back?
I really want to direct. Whenever you want to start over in Hollywood, you have to start from the bottom. I did Street Kings and it was for a studio which is a different process as a director. I tried mounting up some projects afterward including a science fiction movie and nothing was working out. The surest way I could get back on set was to do another cop movie. A friend of mine in the studios said I should do a found-footage cop [story] but I thought that I should not do that. But as I was talking myself out of it, I talked myself into it.

But you didn't want to do it from the "corrupt cop" viewpoint?
No, the corrupt cop story is so freaking played out. I mean, it's so 2003. The real challenge becomes, if you don't have that dramatic engine of the corruption, what is the dramatic engine? What is the story? I made this movie about the friendship and the journey these guys are going through. The bad guy stuff is sort of an appendage to that story. They're not investigators solving crimes, they're just guys doing their jobs who end up way over their heads and that's how it is for real cops. There's a whole world they're not privy too, yet they keep running into it, they keep sighting the shark fin in the water.

That's the one thing that struck me - that great rapport between Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña's characters. There's of course all this fantastic crazy tough shit going on in this film with the shoot-outs and grim discoveries that make for great viewing, but there's also these hilarious moments of banter between their characters that really draw you into their lives.
To write the way people talk and not just make movie dialog and to get them to pull off a breezy, natural style together and live in the history of that friendship was the real challenge as a director. It's ironic because what appears so easy is insanely difficult as a filmmaker and insanely difficult as an actor. And it took the three of us a long time in the trenches to get them to the point to pull it off. My favorite scenes in the movie are the two guys in the car talking.

Did you have a regimen in mind for Jake and Michael off the bat in order to get them to be believable cops in the lead-up to the actual shoot?
A good friend of mine does martial arts training and what that does is get the mindset down of hitting people and being hit. Often it can be hard to override the instinct of not hitting someone. You have to overcome that. You have to have that ability and understanding of violence to become a cop and it starts to change everything including your body language. And there was firearms training. They were taught by a 35 year-veteran LAPD-SWAT officer who gave them training in LAPD by the numbers shooting style.

We went to the same LAPD outlets to get their equipment and uniforms because I wanted everything to be incredibly accurate. And they went on an incredible number of ride-alongs with officers and I wanted them to go with a number of different agencies so they can see just how different the LAPD itself is. I think they were shocked by the cultural differences between those departments. I had an idea of a program in mind, but obviously logistics and demands evolved. I think at first they were cursing me, but once they realized they had the real skills, they appreciated it and it just made it all the more real on set.

I think audiences everywhere and even in L.A. may be surprised that the Mexican drug cartels have such direct operations in the U.S. as this movie suggests. Obviously everyone knows they're involved with drug trafficking across the border, but I think people don't know there's such a direct connection to day-today operations on the U.S. side of the border.
Yeah, they control the wholesale of drugs in the United States and human trafficking. Nothing moves across that border without their permission. They'll give illegal immigrants drugs and will say, 'you're now a drug mule.' It's a busy organization and they're incredibly efficient - drugs, human trafficking, weapons. Everything that's happening in the movie is happening now. Friends of mine in the department pull over cartel runners all the time and do multi-kilo seizures. I know someone working in narcotics just last week who took a huge haul of cartel drugs off the street. They're here, they're operating...I feel like people have no idea that there's such a huge presence of the cartels not only in Southern California, but throughout the United States, even in the northern part of the country.

How were you able to get under the skin in portraying the gang members in the movie? It's a distinct subculture and it would be very easy to mis-represent that...
People not from L.A. and are not familiar with the gangsters there will look at something like this and think they're almost cartoonish, you know? But that's how they role. This is bang on. [End of Watch gangster] Lala, played by Yahira Garcia, is unbelievable in the movie. She's a rapper and was brought up in that neighborhood and her brothers are caught up in the life. And she's seen some tragic things. And "Demon" played by Richard Cabral is from a multi-generational gang family and just recently got out of it and now working in film. The only one who wasn't a former gang-banger was Maurice Compte who plays "Big Evil." He's incredibly soft-spoken, incredibly smart and such a nice guy and somehow he pulled off this alter-ego "Big Evil" persona out.

The film is, after, the latest from David Ayer, who wrote and directed Street Kings and scripted Training Day, two features that portrayed Los Angeles law enforcement as morally compromised at best and violently corrupt at worst. That sense of apprehension carries through an opening scene in which Taylor and Zavala shoot two suspects down in what  appears to be legitimate self-defense. (They're cleared of any wrongdoing and roll back onto the street on patrol.) The two cops are cocky and funny and young, and it still takes a good half hour to accept that they may be as forthright and dedicated to their jobs as they appear to be.

End of Watch is a Millennial police drama. It's a generation or two removed from Rodney King and the Rampart scandal, and Ayer manages to give a startling sense of a changing of the LAPD guard as well as the forces they're up against. Its main characters are tough but not yet jaded cops who bicker with affectionate familiarity about race and make obligatory gay jokes that lack the sting of homophobia. The longstanding L.A. battle against gang violence is ongoing, but lurking behind it is a new and more frightening enemy: the Sinaloa Cartel, onto whose ominous dealings Taylor and Zavala stumble more times than is good for their health.

The film's found footage aesthetic also speaks to its refreshing next-gen spirit. Taylor and Zavala blithely record themselves on the job — even though fellow officer Orozco (America Ferrera) warns them their footage can be subpoenaed and used against them should something go wrong — for the night school film class that Taylor's taking for a pre-law program arts requirement. Both he and his partner pin cameras to their uniforms and mount the camcorder on the front of their black and white (and we witness some stomach-churning car chases from that perspective).

It's a pretty standard police drama technique, but like Chronicle earlier this year, the conceit that most of what we're seeing was filmed by the characters on screen is only a loose one, allowed to drop away when it might interfere. Mostly, the self-documentation is a way of letting us get to know the central pair, who sometimes offer asides or explanations to the camera and who don't feel they have anything to hide.

End of Watch is fond of Taylor and Zavala almost to a fault — a scene early on in which the latter puts his weapons aside to fistfight a belligerent gang member, earning his respect in the process, feels ridiculous even as it establishes the partners' frat-boy delight in their work. Fortunately, the two characters are easily likable — Gyllenhaal looks more comfortable on screen than he has in years — whether they're busting each other's balls or discoursing on marriage. Zavala is married to his high-school sweetheart Gabby (Natalie Martinez) while Taylor is getting serious about Janet (Anna Kendrick). The film is shaped around the two cops rather than around much of a plot and offers a heightened slice of the contemporary lives of law-enforcement officers assigned to a rough area of the city. It's a depiction that includes some stirringly tense encounters with a cracked-out mother unable to find her children, and an ex-con whose encounter with fellow cop Van Hauser (David Harbour) and his rookie partner goes gruesomely wrong.

Taylor and Zavala aren't the only ones with access to recording equipment. One of the film's most interesting aspects is that it also includes the self-documentation of the Curbside Gang, who are run by Big Evil (Maurice Compte) and kept in line by the swaggering female thug La La (Yahira Garcia). Everyone's the star of their own movie, particularly when they're holding the cameras, and End of Watch depicts a gang-on-gang drive-by from both sides: While the primarily black Bloods barbecue and commiserate about getting driven out of their neighborhood by the growing Mexican community, the Latino Curbsiders roll up and open fire on them.

It's only the cartel point of view that goes unrepresented, and its appearances provide End of Watch with its most memorably haunting yet bothersome scenes: stacked body parts in a darkened house, jewel-encrusted handguns, people locked away behind chicken wire like animals. When we see the cartel handiwork through Taylor and Zavala's eyes, it looks demonic, apocalyptic and incomprehensible compared to the street skirmishes that they're used to tamping down. And though the real-life cartels have shown themselves to be capable of all this and worse, the near-supernatural way in which they're depicted in End of Watch doesn't mesh with the film's otherwise matter-of-fact sensibility and its warts-and-all adoration of the cops it portrays. Unlike the gang members, addicts and vicious ex-cons, who are all shown to be vividly human, the cartels are left to be symbolic — a metaphor for dread of terrible things coming that even the most devoted enforces of order won't be able to handle.

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The documents clearly state that in 2009 and 2011 Robert Brownell purchased pre-production services related to Desert Warrior, which has been widely reported as the working title of the film that the world now knows as Innocence of Muslims.

The documents also include Robert Brownell’s address in Tarzana, California (or at least his address when the purchases were made in 2009; the property is now up for sale), phone number, and “contact information,” which lists yet a different name—Alan Roberts.

Meanwhile, Gawker confirms Roberts was the director on Innocence of Muslims, filmed under the title Desert Warrior with a different script from the allegedly blasphemous final version.

A former business partner and an acquaintance confirmed to the website that Roberts is the same Alan Roberts listed on IMDb as the director of low-budget B-movie threequel The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood (1980) (co-starring Adam West!), the action pic Karate Cop (1991), and the Harry Hamlin erotic thriller Save Me (1994). Roberts is said to be laying low, understandably.

According to Roberts' ex-business partner, Roberts filmed Desert Warrior without knowledge that it was going to be re-dubbed into its final version:

"They redubbed it, they brought in the actors, put in new sounds, changed the names," said the business partner. "And this was done later, before it was initially released. Of course Alan had nothing to do with it."

If true, it sounds like producer Sam Bacile (or "Sam Bacile," as his identity is still in question) is more culpable for the incendiary material within Innocence of Muslims than Roberts, a workman director and sometimes editor with ties to the '70s-'80s Cannon/Vestron/Golan & Globus era of cheap-o schlock cinema.

More info as it comes... in the meantime, here's a look at Roberts' heretofore best known works.

[Gawker, Vice]

The bigger discoveries here concern the supporting characters in Batman/Bruce Wayne's life, including Gary Oldman's Commissioner Gordon and new characters Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard) and Gotham City police officer John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). Below, read a few select passages and get the pretty new TDKR IMAX poster:

[BEWARE SPOILERS! WHO KNOWS WHAT YOUR VIRGIN BAT-EYES WILL DISCOVER!]

On Gordon, who's now wrestled with Batman's secret for eight years:

"Gary Oldman returns to the role of Gotham City’s top cop, Commissioner Gordon, who withheld the truth of Harvey Dent’s demise at great personal cost. 'He respects Batman’s sacrifice, but allowing the citizens of Gotham to be fed a lie goes against everything that Gordon believes in,' the actor says."

“...to a certain extent, Gordon was more useful to the political leaders of Gotham when the city was overrun by organized crime,” Nolan points out. “Now that is under control, so there are people eyeing his job, presuming he’s no longer needed. But Gordon has been struggling with the fact that all of this is based on a false foundation.”

“It’s a secret that’s eaten away at him for years,” confirms Gary Oldman. “Crime is at an all-time low in Gotham, but Gordon knows that it’s tainted. Now he’s ready to come clean, but there doesn’t seem to be a right time or place, and he also questions if the city is ready for the truth. Then, because of Bane, he’s in the field again. I think he’s like a soldier who likes to be on the front lines, getting his hands dirty. He’s probably been doing a lot of paper pushing in the intervening years and that has dampened his spirits. Now you really feel like the old Gordon is back.”

On John Blake, AKA the fresh-scrubbed idealistic young cop guy played by Joe Gordon-Levitt:

Gordon finds a new protégé in policeman John Blake, whose devotion to the job impresses his boss. Emma Thomas says, “Gordon definitely sees something of himself as a young cop in John Blake. Everyone else seems to have lost focus because things have been so good, but Blake is the first to realize that something’s up, and Gordon recognizes those instincts by promoting him and putting him on his team.”

Describing his role, Joseph Gordon-Levitt says, “John Blake is the kind of guy who probably always wanted to be a cop and dedicates himself to being excellent at his job. He is someone who believes in what he does and I admire that in anybody. In the midst of a lot of cynicism, he remains proud to be a police officer.”

Nolan comments, “Commissioner Gordon and Bruce Wayne have become somewhat jaded, so we wanted to contrast that with a younger, more idealistic individual who, in a way, represents where they’ve come from. Joe really captured the strength and courage of a man who refuses to back down, regardless of the odds.”

On Miranda Tate, a wealthy new love interest for Bruce Wayne played by Inception's leading lady, Marion Cotillard:

The character of Miranda Tate can also relate to Bruce, albeit from a place of affluence. Cast in the role, Marion Cotillard notes, “They both have a lot of money and are trying to use it in a good way, so they understand each other right away.” Bale agrees. “Miranda is somebody who is encouraging Bruce to use his resources for the betterment of Gotham through an environmental project. She is beautiful, smart and altruistic, and all the good that she aspires to earns his respect and also intrigues him a great deal.”

A member of the board of Wayne Enterprises, Miranda’s affluence makes her a vital ally to Bruce when the company becomes the target of a hostile takeover. On a more personal level, Nolan says, “She is looked at by Alfred and Lucius as a woman who could perhaps bring Bruce out of his own exile and remind him that there is more to life than sitting alone in the Batcave.

On Bane and his dastardly terrorist plans for Gotham City:

"Working underground and undetected, Bane is plotting a multi-pronged attack on Gotham, involving firepower, finance and fear..."

While the Scarecrow was a madman and the Joker an anarchist, “Bane is a terrorist in both his mentality and his actions,” says actor Tom Hardy, who plays Batman’s new arch-nemesis. “He is physically intimidating and he’s also very intelligent, which makes him even more dangerous.”

Nolan relates, “In deciding on who the next villain would be, it was imperative that it was someone completely different from the Joker—that he be a brute force. The physical component of what Bruce Wayne does as Batman is of extraordinary importance, and we had not truly challenged that in the first two films. I really wanted to see Batman meet his match physically, as well as intellectually. Bane is raw strength with a fanatical devotion to duty, and that combination makes him unstoppable.”

And finally, the newly unveiled IMAX poster for TDKR. It's gorgeous in a painterly way, and in contrast to previous posters and promo images for the film, presents the Bat-sign in the sky as signaling a break in the clouds from all that chaos reigning down on Gotham City. Batman stands triumphant once more above his city shining his light through all the debris of Bane's fiery terror, and stuff. Nice.

For loads more on TDKR, including details on the 100+ piece Batsuit, Bane's mask, the airborne new vehicle known as The Bat, and Nolan's insane practical mid-air plane stunt, find the full production notes here.

[via THR]

The Dark Knight Rises hits theaters on July 20.

What do you make of these 50 pages of Bat-tidbits? (Did you cave in to curiosity?) Chime in below with your thoughts on the highly anticipated sequel.

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This July, we'll be releasing Ivan Reitman's landmark KINDERGARTEN COP on Blu-ray and DVD: ow.ly/a0AO5

— Criterion Collection (@Criterion) April 1, 2012

Better still: The Kindergarten Cop page at the Criterion site, replete with such special features as "New audio commentary featuring Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, author of It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Can Teach Us," Excerpts from the French television program Cinéastes de notre temps: 'Ivan Reitman'" and this extraordinary cover art:

Nicely, nicely done, team.

[Criterion Collection]

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Just in time for the 2011 awards-release homestretch come the first trailer for Rampart, promising star Woody Harrelson as “the most corrupt cop you’ve ever seen on screen.” Which isn’t a review blurb, mind you, or some praise from Toronto, AFI Fest or elsewhere on the circuit where Oren Moverman’s latest has made its first impressions. That’s just a bold claim by distributor Millennium Entertainment — kind of the Pepsi Challenge of Oscar-chasing bad-cop dramas.

And while no one can know for sure until they see Rampart how Harrelson’s performance stands up to those of awful, awful Orson Welles in Touch of Evil or — more in the awards mold — Denzel Washington in Training Day, that really heavy rock riffage implies that it’ll be up there! Kneel before Woody! Or something.

VERDICT: Sold.

While at the Austin Film Festival to pimp this week’s Hunter S. Thompson adaptation The Rum Diary, star Johnny Depp grabbed his guitar and took to the stage with Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top for a surprise rock show. Because that’s how you get the kids to come to your new period movie, folks! Viral marketing meets rock ‘n’ roll! Johnny Depp can do no wrong! Watch the video and stick around for more Buzz Break.

[via Gossip Cop]

• H&M is set to release a Lisbeth Salander-inspired clothing line. Dress like an emotionally-damaged Swedish anorexic punk hacker this winter! [Moviefone via Badass Digest]

• There’s another bin Laden assassination thriller on the horizon, based on the team of Navy SEALs that brought the political fugitive down in Pakistan, and it’s being directed by… the guy who made Into the Blue. Sure, why not? [Variety]

• A coalition of Hollywood studios and distributors have filed the biggest copyright lawsuit ever in Russia, charging that Moscow couple Andrei and Natalia Lopukhov with $1.24 billion in damages from pirating films like Resident Evil: Extinction and Shrek the Third. [THR]

• Beverly Hills Cop IV is dead. But Axel Foley may live on in television! [Rolling Stone]

• The best imagined explanation of that Kirk Cameron Subway sandwich birthday party picture floating around the web. [FilmDrunk]