Sacha Baron Cohen’s hit mockumentary “Bruno,” about an outrageous gay Austrian fashion journalist, has been banned in Ukraine because it is “immoral.”

The country’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism described shots of sexual organs, homosexual intercourse and bad language as obscene and improper.

The ban — in a former Soviet country that has struggled to create European-oriented institutions following its pro-democracy Orange Revolution five years ago — is likely linked to fears that the film could offend deeply religious sections of the population.

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The actor has joined Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins in “John Carter of Mars,” Disney’s adaptation of the Edgar Rice Burroughs book series that Andrew Stanton is directing.

In the story of a Civil War soldier transported to the red planet where warring races vie for control, Dafoe will play Tars Tarkas, a leader of the Thark race who knows that the only way his people can survive is if they turn away from war, a position that may cost him dearly.

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The director is on the verge of a deal that would have him helming passion project “Black Swan” later this year … But insiders in the rep community say the studio has also quietly put out feelers for other directors who could come on to “Robocop” in case the timing doesn’t work out.

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“Hack/Slash,” based on the Devil’s Due Publishing comicbook, has been a top contender to receive a greenlight at Rogue for some time, and it remained a high priority after Relativity acquired the company from Universal early this year and spun it off as a separate entity.

Property, created by Tim Seeley and Stefano Caselli, revolves around Cassie Hack, a young woman who travels the country, taking on homicidal maniacs and serial killers along the way.

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Setting a new all-time record for midnight boxoffice, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” rung up an estimated $22.2 million from 3,003 midnight performances Wednesday.

The sixth installment in Warner Bros.’ oh-so-lucrative film franchise continues its first day of release in 4,275 domestic locations. “Prince” expands to 4,350 theaters on Friday.

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Pierce Brosnan, Patricia Clarkson and Julianne Moore will headline indie comedic drama “The Hunter,” with Stanley Tucci directing from his screenplay.

“The Hunter” will be produced by Olive Prods. and Irish DreamTime, with pre-production scheduled to begin in September. Olive was co-founded by Tucci, Steve Buscemi and Wren Arthur, with Arthur overseeing production.

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His biopic of Che Guevara made back half its budget. His Brad Pitt baseball film was pulled five days before the shoot began. The director of Traffic and Erin Brockovich tells Henry Barnes why he might just disappear.

Steven Soderbergh doesn’t sound fine. A bad telephone line between London and Los Angeles isn’t helping, but it’s not wholly to blame for that air of tired resignation. That crept into his voice as soon as he started talking about Che, his two-part, four-and-a-half-hour-long biopic of Ernesto Guevara.

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“We are going to be doing Scream 4,” Arquette just told me from New York City, where he’s hanging out in plastic box over Madison Square Garden for Feeding America (more on that later). “Kevin Williamson is writing the script at this moment, and hopefully Wes Craven is going to direct.”

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Emily Blunt will star opposite Matt Damon in “The Adjustment Bureau,” a sci-fi love story George Nolfi is directing Universal and Media Rights Capital.

The story, which Nolfi adapted from a Philip K. Dick short story, follows a congressman (Damon), on the rise in politics, who meets a beautiful ballet dancer only to discover strange circumstances keep them apart.

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Sources close to the actor confirm that after waiting for 20th Century Fox to set a budget and a fall start, Washington has formally withdrawn from the film and is looking at other projects to keep him busy this autumn.

Washington had planned since April to reteam with Tony Scott, this time to play a veteran engineer who jumps into a locomotive with a young conductor (”Star Trek’s” Chris Pine) to halt an unmanned runaway train filled with a toxic chemical.

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Natalie Portman has been cast as the female lead in “Thor,” Marvel Studios’ adaptation of its comic book featuring the Norse god of thunder. Kenneth Branagh is directing.

Portman will play Jane Foster, who in early comic book lore was a nurse who became Thor’s first love. The studio said the character will be updated for the feature adaptation, with Foster being a doctor-scientist type.

Chris Hemsworth is already cast as Thor. Tom Hiddleston is Loki, the god of mischief who serves as the movie’s villain.

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Jackie Chan will play the wise kung-fu master in a Hollywood-Chinese remake of the 1984 hit “The Karate Kid” that kicked off filming in the Chinese capital at the weekend, a movie company publicist said Monday.

Chan’s young disciple in “Kung Fu Kid” will be played by Jaden Smith, the son of Hollywood superstars Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, China Film Group spokesman Weng Li told The Associated Press in a phone interview.

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Susan Sarandon and John Goodman are set to co-star opposite Al Pacino in “You Don’t Know Jack,” HBO Films’ biopic of Jack Kevorkian, which is being directed by Barry Levinson.

Kevorkian, known as Dr. Death, assisted in more than 130 suicides. After willingly sending a videotape of himself euthanizing a terminally ill man to “60 Minutes,” he was convicted in 1999 of second-degree murder and spent eight years in prison before getting paroled in 2007.

Loosely based on Neal Nicol and Harry Wylie’s book “Between the Dying and the Dead: Dr. Jack Kevorkian’s Life and the Battle to Legalize Euthanasia,” the HBO film follows Kevorkian’s (Pacino) rise as he builds his infamous Mercy Machine and sets out to perform assisted suicides while waging an epic legal battles defending a patient’s right to die.

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Just weeks before Paramount Pictures invades theaters with “G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra,” the studio is teaming with Joe Roth to pick up Mattel’s “Max Steel” as another action figure it wants to play with on the bigscreen.

The toy property revolves around a 19-year-old extreme sports junkie recruited by a secret agency after an accident infects his body with nanobots, making him superhuman.

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