Peter Weir, Danny Boyle, Mark Romanek and Errol Morris will be headlining this year’s Telluride Film Festival, which kicks off Friday.

The Colorado mountain fest, now in its 37th year, officially announced its program Thursday, and festival directors Tom Luddy, Gary Meyer and Julie Huntsinger have stocked the high-altitude event with a typical mix of the new and unseen, the archival and obscure. Festivalgoers who make the trek to the lush box canyon in the western end of the San Juan Mountains will have their choice of outdoor screenings, shorts programs, filmmaker panels and sneak peeks at some of the fall’s new releases as the program unspools through Monday.

Romanek’s “Never Let Me Go,” which Alex Garland adapted from the Kazuo Ishiguro novel, will screen Friday night at the 650-seat Palm Theatre. Keira Knightley, Andrew Garfield and Carey Mulligan star in the film, which Fox Searchlight will also show at the Toronto film festival before a theatrical release September 15.

Later that night, Morris will unveil his new documentary “Tabloid,” about the bizarre case of former Miss Wyoming Joyce McKinney, before it also moves on to Toronto.

Though Boyle will officially be on hand to present a special Sunday morning screening of his 2005 film “Millions,” it is widely expected that he will also sneak in his new film “127 Hours” ahead of its Toronto berth. Fox Searchlight has a November theatrical release scheduled for the drama, which stars James Franco as a hiker trapped under a boulder in Utah for days.

Poor Lindsay. She can’t catch a break.

Released early from rehab and suddenly free again to pursue personal and professional rehabilitation, Lindsay Lohan has an opportunity to re-enter the public consciousness with the seriousness of a newly clean starlet intent on sobriety. And then here comes “Machete” (check out the review here).

When Robert Rodriguez’s Mexploitation flick opens Friday, Lohan will have been out of jail and rehab for a mere 10 days. And the vision that fans, family and friends will see of her in the film is that of a rich, spoiled junkie who makes money on the side by doing homemade sex videos. With her mom.

She can kiss those Kids’ Choice Awards goodbye.

Fox wants to find the funny in saving money.

Scribes Lisa Addario and Joe Syracuse (pictured) have been hired to write the screenplay for an untitled family event movie based on journalist W. Hodding Carter’s various writings about his drastic real-life efforts to scale down his family’s spending. The studio is aiming to hit the zeitgeist of an America wracked by economic woes and weighed down by its debt-carrying lifestyle.

Double Feature Films’ Stacey Sher and Michael Shamberg originally brought the project to Fox and are producing. Exec Lauren Levy is overseeing the comedy for the studio.

A journalist and author, Carter realized his family of six was living far beyond its means in rural Rockport, Maine, and decided they should try to live on $550 per month after mortgage payments. Among their new domestic policies are farming their front yard, raising chickens, eating roadkill, forgoing vacations and meals out, making their own birthday gifts, plugging trees for maple syrup, reusing coffee filters and bartering with neighbors.

In movie terms, this means they eventually become “project rich” rather than financially rich, and, thus, much happier.

Company 3 founder Stefan Sonnenfeld has signed a first-look producing deal at Paramount. Paramount Film Group president Adam Goodman made the announcement Tuesday.

A fixture of the post-production field, Sonnenfeld has worked on a number of Paramount tentpoles, including the “Transformers” films, “Star Trek,” "Watchmen" and “Cloverfield," plus films such as “Alice In Wonderland,” the “Pirates of the Carribean” movies and “300.” Founded in 1997, Company 3 tackles feature and commercial post-production and counts Nike, Microsoft, Coors, UPS and Nissan as clients.

Still an active colorist, Sonnenfeld is next prepping for the third “Transformers” film at Paramount and the fourth “Pirates of the Caribbean” film at Disney.

“Stefan is uniquely positioned to help us find and develop emerging voices in other mediums, including those in the advertising and music video world, who can make the leap into features," said Goodman.

What a surprising weekend! Moviegoers didn't abandon the late-summer offerings as I thought they would.

Screen Gems' "Takers" and Lionsgate's "The Last Exorcism" both performed much better than expected. And while Monday's preliminary box office results put the spooker ahead with $21.3 million to "Takers'" $21.0 million, I'm not convinced the final numbers will shake out that way. I said "Takers" would end up on top (though at a lower $16-$17M to "Exorcism's" $15M), and I still think tomorrow's final results will show that to be the case.

[UPDATE, 8/30, 2:26 pm: And it turns out I was right, for once.]

On the other hand, I took a random stab at what the "Avatar" re-release would stir up and over-estimated at $9-$10 million. It only culled $4M, so the young crowd was clearly more interested in checking out the new flicks than sitting through Cameron's 3D opus again.

In my Bullseye analysis from Friday, I called the third weekend of "The Expendables" at $10M and it grossed $9.5M. Of the holdovers, it looked like "Piranha 3D" and "Vampires Suck" had enough warmed-over interest to scare up a few more million and a pair of top-ten slots, so I placed them in the $4-$7M range. They both hit that -- at $4.3M and $5.3M, respectively -- but "Nanny McPhee Returns" and "The Switch" put a few butts in seats, too, for about $4.7M each.

"Eat Pray Love," "The Other Guys" and "Inception" held viewers' attention, as well.

George Clooney sneaks into theaters Wednesday in the Focus thriller "The American," and then Fox's "Machete" and Warner Bros.' "Going the Distance" will bully into the September 3 weekend. I'll have some early numbers for Clooney and then the regular new-release snapshot up on Risky Thursday afternoon.

Ryan Reynolds and Bradley Cooper are signing up for take-your-dads-to-work day.

The busy actors are attached to star in an untitled original action-comedy written by Sheldon Turner (“Up in the Air”), who snagged north of seven figures for the gig. The story follows two friends, who are also San Francisco cops, whose fathers were once partners on the police force. The older generation is forced out of retirement to help their sons crack a case, with typically antagonistic results.

The actioner is meant to have an updated “Lethal Weapon” flavor that plays into edgier R-rated territory.

Neal Moritz (“The Bounty Hunter”), Andrew Panay (“Wedding Crashers”) and Reynolds’ Dark Trick Films partner Jonathon Komack Martin (“Van Wilder”) are producing along with J.C. Spink and Chris Bender of Benderspink (“A History of Violence”).

I'm way late on this week's Bullseye for the weekend of Aug. 27, but we're right in the middle of the end-of-summer dead spot, so there's not a lot going on anyway..

There are a few wide openers, though, that are set to stir up decent bank. The heist thriller "Takers" from Screen Gems and the horror flick "The Last Exorcism" from Lionsgate are the new releases. But Fox and James Cameron are also floating their 3D special edition of "Avatar" back onto 800 or so 3D and IMAX screens.

As the Bullseye shows, holdovers such as Lionsgate's "The Expendables," Dimension's "Piranha 3D" and Fox's "Vampires Suck" still have a little blood left in them. And newcomers "Devil" from Universal and "Easy A" from Screen Gems popped up this week ahead of their mid-September bows.

(Click for larger image —> )

In limited release will be Magnet Releasing's post-VOD theatrical opening of "Centurion," Music Box Films' "Mesrine" and Olive Films' "The Milk of Sorrow."

Here’s Carl DiOrio's boxoffice preview and the Bullseye for the weekend of Aug. 20, plus my Monday followup, for added context.

Comments and observations after the jump:

Talk about speaking truth to power. TV and radio personality Dennis Miller has been doing something few others in Hollywood would ever do: publicly ridiculing the world's most successful filmmaker.

For context, we need to back up five months to when James Cameron, director of the eco-friendly blockbuster “Avatar,” passionately challenged to debate the forces who deny that humans are causing the earth to warm up to dangerous levels.

Planned or unplanned, it was a beautiful bit of marketing, given that Cameron was pitching the DVD release of “Avatar” for Earth Day in order to drive home one of the film's major themes: environmentalism.

And his seemingly off-the-cuff and fairly colorful remarks taking the deniers of manmade global warming to task generated news way beyond anything that might be expected from an event celebrating a DVD release. Even one for “Avatar,” the biggest blockbuster ever.

Katie Aselton's micro-indie "The Freebie" had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year as part of the new Next section. It stars Dax Shepard and Aselton as a young married couple who give each other one free pass to stray.

Phase 4 Films picked up the film right after the fest and will release it Sept. 17.

Check out the new trailer:

“Phillip Morris” has finally been released from movie jail.

Roadside Attractions and Liddell Entertainment, who just picked up rights to Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Biutiful,” have acquired U.S. and Canadian rights from EuropaCorp to “I Love You Phillip Morris.” Roadside will distribute the film in North American theaters Dec. 3.

Written and directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (“Bad Santa”), “Phillip Morris” had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2009. Since then, the gay-themed dark comedy, which stars Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor as incarcerated lovers, has been a hot potato for potential distributors.

Ethan Hunt has just picked up a new Mission: Impossible team member -- and he’s got a speciality in bombs.

Jeremy Renner, who starred as Sergeant First Class William James in “The Hurt Locker,” has been cast opposite Tom Cruise in the next installment of Paramount’s “Mission: Impossible” franchise, which is aiming for a Dec. 16, 2011 release date. Brad Bird is directing a script from Josh Applebaum and André Nemec, with shooting expected to begin in the fall. Skydance Prods. is co-financing the project.

Repped by CAA and Untitled Entertainment, Renner has been on a tear since his Oscar nomination for “Locker” earlier this year. Marvel recently cast him as Hawkeye in its 2012 release, “The Avengers,” which is supposed to start shooting in February, and Paul Thomas Anderson wants him for his next film, “The Master.”

Roadside Attractions and Liddell Entertainment have acquired U.S. rights to Alejandro González Iñárritu’s latest drama, “Biutiful.” Maple Pictures, Roadside’s Canadian partner, will release the film in Canada.

The film had its world premiere at the Festival de Cannes in May, where star Javier Bardem was honored with the best actor award. After the film screens at the Toronto film festival next month, Roadside Attractions will release it in theaters in December.

In the film, Bardem plays a conflicted man struggling with life in the Barcelona underworld. The screenplay was written by González Iñárritu, Armando Bo and Nicolás Giacobone.

“‘Biutiful’ joins the growing pantheon of tremendous, groundbreaking work by Alejandro González Iñárritu,” said Roadside Attractions co-president Howard Cohen. “It’s a deeply felt film, guaranteed to rock audiences to their core, and that’s due to the amazing  reciprocity between filmmaker and actor.”