Contact Music is reporting that James McAvoy is the producers’ choice to play Bilbo. If you remember from the Lord of the Rings films, that role was taken by Ian Holm, but obviously they need a much younger actor to play the part now.

I totally love the idea of McAvoy doing it. He has the accent and is a great performer. He’s also done a bit of fantasy already as Mr. Tumnus in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.

But the most hilarious part of their report is that two others were rumored to be in the running:

Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) and…Jack Black.

Jack who? Really? Are you frakking kidding me? Tenacious Hobbit? Nacho Bilbo?

I truly hope the role goes to McAvoy instead of the other two. Otherwise I don’t know how I can live in a world where Jack Black gets to play Bilbo Baggins.

[Contact Music]

The movie involves three actors who are a bit too full of themselves, so the director of the war film they are shooting decides to drop them off in the middle of the jungle to help them learn a little humility.

This trailer is of course the Red Band version, and it contains all kinds of R-rated material, so if you watch it at work, use some headphones or something.

The final scene in the trailer pretty much tells you what kind of comedy this is going to be.

The full trailer actually looks really funny. Sadly, Ben Stiller is probably the least funniest actor in the trailer. I’m sure he’ll do his Ben Stiller thing and that’ll be good if you’re in to that. I’m actually hoping he’ll stretch a bit and try to do something different for a change. It doesn’t really look like it, though.

Tropic Thunder is about a group of spoiled actors who think they’re filming a movie about the Vietnam war must fight for actual survival when their fed-up director and writer decide to dump them in the middle of a real war.

The film stars Ben Stiller’s, Robert Downey, Jr., Jack Black, Nick Nolte, Jay Baruchel, and Brandon T. Jackson and features cameos by Tom Cruise, Matthew McConaughey, and Tobey Maguire.

Tropic Thunder is set to open on August 15, 2008.

Most of the press for this film so far has come from the fact that Owen Wilson had to drop out of his cameo in it due to his suicide attempt last year and the fact that Robert Downey, Jr. is playing an actor who is so committed to his work that he decides to play a character originally written as a black man…as a black man…by dying his skin and using makeup to make himself appear to be black.

It seems that a lot of the media is trying to make a big deal out of the whole white person playing a black person thing, but I really don’t see the problem. We obviously can’t judge the context of the part without seeing the film and those people who have seen a rough cut of the film (including black people) have had nothing but good things to say about it. I think it’ll turn out to be a non-issue.

At any rate, the film doesn’t open until late summer, but the studio went ahead and released an early teaser trailer for the film. It doesn’t tell much so don’t get too excited.

Tropic Thunder Teaser Trailer

The film also stars Nick Nolte, Jay Baruchel, and Brandon T. Jackson and features cameos by Tom Cruise, Matthew McConaughey, and Tobey Maguire.

Tropic Thunder is set to open on August 15, 2008.

Jack Black returns to his old crazy self in the new comedy called “Be Kind, Rewind” which opens in theaters on January 25th, 2008.

He stars as a man who suddenly has a magnetic brain, which ends up erasing all the VHS tapes in the local video store run by his friend, Mos Def. This hurts the store’s most loyal customer, an elderly woman possibly suffering from dementia.

So what do you do? Purchase new ones? Get DVDs instead?

Nope, if you are Jack Black and Mos Def, you set out to remake all the movies yourself and record them back to the erased video tapes. A few of the titles they redo include Back to the Future, the Lion King, Robocop and Ghostbusters.

The movie is directed by Michel Gondry, the guy who also did “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind“, one of my all-time favorite films.

You have to like the choices Black makes. Yes, he kind of does the same thing in a lot of his comedies, but the guy has a pretty wide range of acting chops. He does quirky movies like “Nacho Libre” and “Tenacious D“, but then gets serious in stuff like “Margot at the Wedding” and the romantic comedy “The Holiday“.

I still will always like him the most in “High Fidelity“.

“Be Kind, Rewind” looks pretty funny and it’s been getting a lot of buzz around the net this past week. First Showing has a blog about it this film with a higher quality version of the trailer above and some other pictures. They also say it will be out in limited mode on December 21st, despite the January 25th regular release date.

You can see the full poster below. Can’t wait for this one.