Chris Brown Talks About His 'Killer' Role In T.I.-Produced Flick 'The Heist'

When you think of Chris Brown, you might think of a smiling R&B heartthrob. But all that could change when "The Heist," which begins production in September, comes out.

In it, he'll be playing a murderous bank robber.

"It's a movie called 'The Heist' that I'm doing with T.I., Idris Elba and Matt Dillon," he told MTV News recently at the Teen Choice Awards, where he walked away with four awards.

He kept further details close to his chest. "I'm playing a killer. I'm not going to give anything else away!" he said. "It's a bank-robbing movie, so it's one of those action-packed films. You get a little different side of me in that movie."

Those ideas were also put forth by T.I. when MTV News spoke with him about this and other film projects back in June.

"You can definitely expect action, definitely," he said. "It will be very entertaining.

"It's a new-age, young, hip-hop [version of] 'Heat,' " Tip continued, referring to the 1995 flick that brought Robert De Niro and Al Pacino together. "These are young, cool, well-dressed, articulate bank robbers. [Chris] be the little homey."

But "Heist" isn't the only movie Brown is adding to his résumé. He's also expected to start work on several other movies, including "Traded" and the basketball flick "Phenom," both of which are slated for release next year.

Brown has said he hopes his acting will make him a better performer when it comes to his live shows. "At the end of the day, I'm going to focus on my music first," he said. "[But] me being onstage enhances me being in the movie, and then me being in the movie — acting, catching characters — gives me time to transform into a different character onstage."

(Late Friday afternoon (August 8), Chris Brown's rep issued a statement saying that some unauthorized Chris music has leaked online, and that the songs are not completed.)

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'Dark Knight' Takes Box-Office Crown, Becomes Third Highest-Grossing Film Of All Time

The Box-Office Top Five

#1 "The Dark Knight" ($26 million)
#2 "Pineapple Express" ($22.4 million)
#3 "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" ($16.1 million)
#4 "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2" ($10.8 million)
#5 "Step Brothers" ($8.9 million)

When the Joker's on the loose, your city needs saving, and the fate of the world hangs in the balance, there's only one superhero you need call. He'll fight the Penguin, Two-Face or Catwoman — oversized villains in need of oversized justice. So who would have guessed that Batman would still have the time to take care of some low-level drug pushers?

Falling just 39 percent from its record third-week earnings, "The Dark Knight" scored another win for grim superheroes everywhere, netting $26 million to beat "Pineapple Express" and climb atop the domestic box office for the fourth consecutive weekend, becoming the first film to do so since "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" in 2003. The Christopher Nolan film's cumulative total is now an astronomical $442 million, already making it, astonishingly, the third-highest-grossing movie of all time (behind "Titanic" and the original "Star Wars"). And it's reached that number in less than a month of release.

Much like when he cleaned the streets of the Scarecrow's fear toxin, however, Batman had to put a hurt on the drug trade to get to #1, bogarting the public's attention and relegating Seth Rogen's very funny "Pineapple Express" to a second-place finish. The stoner comedy nabbed $22.4 million over the weekend, and $40.5 million since opening on Wednesday — solid, if not sensational numbers for an August comedy. But if there's any justice in the world, "Pineapple" will get at least one more chance to square up against "The Dark Knight" — when Heath Ledger and James Franco both get nominated for Best Supporting Actor at next year's Oscars.

In third place, meanwhile, "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" earned just $16.1 million, a disastrous drop of 60.2 percent in its second weekend. There was no tomb-raiding for this sequel, which brought its overall total to just south of $71 million, a far cry from the series' previous two installments. So much, it seems, for "Mummy 4."

Rounding out the top five, "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2" earned $10.8 million to come in fourth place, while "Step Brothers" earned $8.9 million for a fifth-place finish. Their totals stand at $19.7 million and $80.9 million, respectively.

Among other titles in release, "Journey to the Center of the Earth" continued to impress, earning $4.9 million for a seventh-place finish. After opening with just $21 million, "Journey" has now brought its five-week total to a healthy $81.8 million.

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'Elegy': Alone In The Dark. By Kurt Loder

Ben Kingsley is gazing with admiration at the unhaltered breasts of Penélope Cruz. As are we. "I adore them," he says. We understand.

In "Elegy," a new movie by the exceptional Spanish director Isabel Coixet ("My Life Without Me"), Kingsley plays David Kepesh, a middle-aged New York lit professor and man-about-media with an unquenchable thirst for the smartest and prettiest of his female students. Cruz is one of these, a beautiful young Cuban-American girl named Consuela Castillo, who has an informed taste for art and culture. With carnal formalities out of the way, Kepesh is falling in love with her, which is not the way these things usually go with him.

Kingsley's boney, goatlike presence contrasts alarmingly with Cruz's luxuriant beauty, but this is as it should be. It's not physical attraction that draws her to him; it's his mind, and, despite his cold, priggish self-regard, his emotional possibilities. The two actors are opposites in every conceivable way, and they're perfect together.

Kepesh is a transplanted Brit, an Oxford product who came to the States in the 1960s to sample the sexual revolution and has continued sampling it avidly ever since. Apart from his classes, he has a radio book-chat show, makes occasional TV appearances as a celebrity literatus, and sometimes reviews plays for The New Yorker. His accomplishments are wearyingly extensive. He plays the piano well and is also a talented photographer, developing his own prints (black-and-white only, of course) in a very professional darkroom in his elegant apartment. He is a rock of self-sufficiency, his only intimate acquaintances a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet named George O'Hearn (Dennis Hopper, in one of the warmest performances of his long career) and a successful businesswoman named Carolyn (Patricia Clarkson), with whom he's been sleeping on a no-strings basis for 20 years.

Kepesh has a failed marriage buried deep in his past and a now-grown son, Ken (Peter Sarsgaard), who's still bitter about his parents' divorce and his father's abandonment. ("Only one of us could make it over the wall," Dad says, with icy nonchalance.) Kepesh has never had emotional time for Ken or anyone else, and he's alarmed that Consuela is breaching the walls of his carefully erected isolation. When she tells him, at his urging, about a three-way sexual tryst she had at age 17, he jumps straight into "a terrible jealousy" without pausing at love. He knows some younger man will steal her away from him: "I know," he says, "because I once was that younger man."

Kepesh is wrong about this. Consuela really does love him; she wants a future with him. But for all his womanizing, he has little real interest in the opposite sex ("When you make love to a woman, you get revenge for all the things that defeated you in life"), and his consuming jealousy finally drives her away.

The movie, which is based on a 2001 novella by Philip Roth, is a marvel of formal control. The images — Kepesh sitting in stony silence in his richly shadowed apartment; Consuela presenting herself to him in the nude, as if posing for a Manet canvas — are composed with a hypnotic precision. The carefully scaled color palette (by cinematographer Jean-Claude Larrieu) wraps the story in atmosphere, while the soundtrack sighs with Bach, Satie and Chet Baker. At the end, Consuela steals back into her ex-lover's life, this time bearing a terrible secret. The news she brings, on a rainy New Year's Eve, is devastating — the picture takes a sudden, dizzying turn. Can anything ever again be the same? For Consuela, definitely not. But not for Kepesh, either, possibly. And that, in the movie's quietly triumphant denouement, is the good news.

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'Breaking Dawn' Exclusive: 'Twilight' Author Stephenie Meyer Reacts To Harsh Reader Complaints -- 'It Hurts'

Last Saturday afternoon, less than a day after "Breaking Dawn," the conclusion of Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" series, hit shelves, the Internet grumblings began. Of course, many readers were still eagerly drinking up the saga of Edward and Bella. But one fast reader expressed her disappointment in the book by launching a discussion on Amazon.com urging fellow disgruntled fans, "Don't burn your copies of the book — RETURN THEM."

(SPOILER ALERT, though we'll try to keep them vague for all you slowpokes.) And judging by the heated back-and-forth that followed, there are plenty of other Twilighters complaining about what is or isn't in the book: the lack of more explicit sex scenes, the excessive amount of sex scenes, the implausibility of Bella's pregnancy, the pace of the story, the lack of a big battle scene, the whole Jacob section, and on and on. One blogger told Entertainment Weekly that the story "didn't seem to fit the world that I thought Stephenie Meyer created." So how does the author feel about this venomous reaction to the novel that sold 1.3 million copies in its first day?

"You see the punch coming; that doesn't mean it's not gonna hurt when it hits," Meyer told MTV News on Thursday. "There's no way to make everybody happy. When I do one thing that a lot of people want, there's always the opposite reaction.

"But how can you possibly meet up with the expectations that this book had?" she asked. "It just got so built up. There is no book in the world that could stand up to that. So I knew it was going to happen, but at the same time it hurts."

Of course, members of Team Jacob can't be too thrilled from the very start of the book. But Meyer won't pander to their preference for Bella's hot-blooded werewolf pal.

"If they really love the characters, then I would hope that this would make sense to them, because these are the true characters," she explained. "This is the story the way it was always meant to be."

And other readers are giving Meyer grief about the fact that Bella does get a "happily ever after" without having to make any major sacrifices.

"I think she worked for it pretty hard," Meyer countered. "It doesn't always work out that way. Sometimes you make a decision about what you want and you pay for it and you suffer for it and it doesn't work out. Those types of stories always leave me horribly depressed. I'm not going to live in a world for a year at a time where that's going to be the ending. If people wanted a really depressing, tragic ending, I gave them a lot of hints that it wasn't going to be that way. They really shouldn't have been surprised!"

And though Meyer knew the complaints would come, she was surprised by what some of them were about. One minor quibble seems to be the awkward name of Bella and Edward's daughter, Renesmee.

"I should have known that people would feel that way," she laughed when we read aloud one comment about Bella's hybrid of Renee and Esme. "The name has been real to me for so long now that I've forgotten how unusual it would sound to everyone else."

Meyer did seem taken aback by the "don't burn it, return it" threats. "I've read a lot of books that I didn't like very much, and that thought never occurred to me, because I had read them! I hadn't heard of [doing] that before. That's not fun to hear."

But Meyer holds out hope that "Breaking Dawn" detractors will eventually see her side of things. "I hope that if they really do enjoy the other books, they'll realize that this is kind of where it was supposed to go."

Check back here on Tuesday for Meyer's answers to your questions about "Breaking Dawn." And head on over to the MTV Movies Blog for more thoughts on this backlash, as well as the answer to the question on everyone's mind: Where's Larry?

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Chris Evans, Djimon Hounsou, Dakota Fanning See The Future: 2009's 'Push'

SAN DIEGO — It would seem to be a recipe concocted for maximum fanboy accessibility: Take a dash of "X-Men," a pinch of "Heroes," and a heaping helping of "The Matrix." Mix liberally with some old-school "Firestarter," and top it off with a sampling of "The Fantastic Four," just for flavor. Throw in fan favorites like Djimon Hounsou ("Never Back Down"), Chris Evans ("Sunshine"), Camilla Belle ("10,000 B.C.") and Dakota Fanning; stick it all in a blender and hit "puree."

By the time you're finished, you've got "Push," an upcoming film from promising "Lucky Number Slevin" filmmaker Paul McGuigan. And with any luck, the February 6 sci-fi thriller will turn out to be one tasty dish.

"I would say it's a lot like 'X-Men,' although there's some 'Matrix' as well," Hounsou said of the film, which follows a group of young government escapees on the run from a secret agency that wants to exploit their telekinetic and clairvoyant powers. "The 'pusher' has the ability to alter your mind and change your thinking, or certainly predict what you're about to do in the near future, without you even knowing ahead of time."

"It's kind of in the vein of that show 'Heroes,' " Evans said of the script, written by relative newcomer David Bourla. "It's a group of individuals who have certain powers. They're either on the run or in hiding from this branch of the government called Division that wants to capture these people and get their power for warfare."

The cast recently hit Comic-Con to unveil an impressive peek for the thousands of fans who were willing to keep their minds open mere minutes before the "Twilight" panel began. There are definitely some behind-the-scenes people hoping that the sci-fi similarities between the two franchises — they're both put out by Summit Entertainment — will bring an audience to "Push."

Also like "Twilight," the origins of the characters in "Push" date back multiple decades: Their impressive powers are the results of Nazi scientists' attempts to create super soldiers.

"I play the character of a government agent who is the head of Division," Hounsou revealed. "[My character] has powers also, and is a pusher as well. ... And so I hunt these people down and enhance their abilities to see the future, whatever it is. And I want to turn all of them into real soldiers."

You can look forward to a mix of the familiar and the innovative when the film hits theaters next year. You can look forward to some impressive special effects and a very different, more action-star-like performance by the now 14-year-old Dakota Fanning. But don't expect the characters to be so badass that they could take down, say, Mr. Fantastic and the Thing.

"Oh, good question," the unflinchingly honest Evans, the former Johnny Storm, grinned when we asked him how the "Push" heroes would fare in a battle against the last superhero group he was associated with.

"I'm going 'Fantastic Four,' " he winced. "I've got to."

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'American Mall' Stars Promise A 'Sexier' Sing-Along Than 'High School Musical'

They represent the height of American surplus and greed, vast, homogenized spaces where old ladies power-walk and young ladies congregate. If there's one place nobody ever burns with the desire to express their individuality, to break out into song and dance, it's got to be an American shopping mall.

Well, either that or a high school.

Comparisons between "The American Mall" and the wildly successful "High School Musical" franchise aren't just coincidental but entirely expected, the cast told MTV News at the red carpet for their film, which premieres on MTV on Monday. There's the spontaneous singing and dancing, of course, and the fact that both projects were masterminded by the same team of producers.

But "American Mall" differs from its more famous cousin in important ways, castmembers insisted, especially with a more sophisticated tone and soundtrack. Compare it to "High School Musical" and the original begins to look so, well, high school.

"It's a little sexier than 'High School Musical,' a little edgier," "American Mall" co-star Blythe Auffarth said. "We deal with more adult issues. It's closer to home for maybe older groups of individuals, like [those] beginning years of college."

"It's not quite as poppy," co-star Autumn Reeser added. "It's sexier."

That means opportunities for the cast to slink and seduce suggestively, with songs that recall the double entendres of something like "Grease" rather than the Disney-approved lyrics in "HSM."

But moreover, and of particular joy to the actors, they said, is that it gives them opportunities to portray realistic characters with real hopes and dreams and problems. Real characters who occasionally break into song and dance, of course, but real characters nonetheless.

"I play Ally Shepherd, who's an aspiring singer/songwriter. She's just like your average 18-year-old girl, but she has a [problem where] she can't finish her songs, and life isn't going well until she meets this janitor Joey [played by Rob Mayes] who's able to finish her songs and inspires her to write more music," Nina Dobrev said of her character, who is the focus of the film.

Ally soon finds herself in competition with the Machiavellian Madison (Reeser) for Joey's love. It's not if things work out in the end that cast says ultimately set "American Mall" apart, but how.

"It's about finding yourself and doing what you want to do and being true to yourself," Mayes said. "And I think [for] a lot of people it's difficult to do that."

And, as it turns out, you can't buy that in a store.

"American Mall" premieres on MTV on Monday at 9 p.m. ET.

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'Up' And Coming: 3-D Pixar Movie Tells A 'Coming Of Old Age' Story, Director Says

At their heart, most of Pixar's films are about connecting: a father with his son in "Finding Nemo," a hero with his family in "The Incredibles," a little robot with the whole universe in "Wall-E."

Pixar's newest film, "Up," came from a desire to do the exact opposite, director Pete Docter said.

"Basically, I'm not a guy that loves being around people all day. There's times where I just need to get away. This film is born of that feeling," Docter told MTV News. "Sometimes, you just need to get away from everything."

For 78-year-old Carl Fredricksen (voiced by Ed Asner), the geriatric hero of "Up," that desire is manifested quite literally in an early scene, when he hooks hundreds of helium balloons to his house and soaring off through the skies to find a little peace and quiet among the clouds.

It's a last-ditch effort for an aging man to make good on a promise he once made to his dead wife, who always wanted to see the mountains of South America but never could.

And if you buy that sequence, you'll buy the whole film, Docter said, including scenes when Carl battles terrifying villains and creatures alongside a 9-year-old Boy Scout named Russell (who has stowed away for the ride in order to earn his "Help the Elderly" badge) when he finally touches down.

"Carl used to be a balloon salesman, and so when the outside world is going to take his house, he ties all his surplus balloons, fills them with helium, and floats his entire house up into the sky off to South America — that's the image of the film," Docter said. "It kind of defies description, because it's moving, it's emotional, it's active, but it's weirdly poetic and doesn't make a lot of logical sense. And yet it's really the cornerstone of the film."

To Docter, that means finding a connection to a loved one when that loved one isn't even around and finding a connection to the universe when the universe has said you're past your usefulness.

"We've described it as a 'coming of old age' story," he said. "It's really like an unfinished love story, is kind of the way we're talking about it. This wonderful romance this guy had with his wife and she passes away and it's the unfinished business of dealing with that. The little kid [also has things he] needs to deal with ... and so the two of them end up really needing each other and helping to finish each other's business."

Like all Pixar's films from now on, "Up" will be presented in 3-D. But unlike DreamWorks Animation, which is shooting its upcoming "Monsters vs. Aliens" using the process, "Up" is being made like any other film and being converted, Docter said.

"There's a whole other separate team that's following along that's doing the stereo version. We're going to educate each other on what's the best way to do the 3-D thing," he revealed. "So far, the difference is this. [He puts his hand over his eye.] If you close one eye, you're going to see what you'd see in another film."

"Up" is scheduled for a May 2009 release.

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