A mountain got made out of a molehill recently when CHUD’s Devin Faraci sparked a wild rumor that director Darren Aronofsky (Requiem For A Dream) might be off the Robocop remake that MGM currently has in production.

Well Ain’t It Cool News is playing rumor-killer today: AICN has gotten in touch with Aronofsky himself, who answered the rumor by stating, “No, still on it.”

Guess we can chalk this rumor up to another example of what happens when bloggers get too eager.

This is how the whole ‘Aronofsky off of Robocop‘ rumor started: Faraci saw a video that was shot recently at the Edinburgh Film Festival; during a Q&A with Aronofsky, one crowd member raised a question about the Robocop remake and Aronofsky (a seasoned veteran of film, remember) responded by seeming ignorant of such rumors, or even what “Robocop” was.

Now, I could tell you that Aronofsky was simply displaying some dismissive wit to an aggressive fan- but then I’d be accused of exploiting 20/20 hindsight. Instead, I leave it up to you the reader: below is the footage of the Q&A with Aronofsky – at about 3:45 into it he gets the Robocop question. Watch his reaction and tell me if you have any “confusion” about whether it was genuine or not:

Wow… How did that brief moment get turned into such a big rumor so quickly? Seriously, it seems like people sometimes need just half a syllable out of a celebrity’s mouth before they go running wild with speculation. Thankfully the blogosphere is pretty good about policing its own (take it from somebody who has both done the policing and felt the long arm of blogging law), so kudos to Harry over at AICN for getting the story straight.

What do you think about Darren Aronofsky helming the Robocop remake?

Robocop is slated for release in 2010.

Source: CHUD

Reliable Source: AICN

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As it stands, Hollywood studios are deadlocked in their contract negotiations with the Screen Actors Guild. That news stirs up foul memories of a year ago, when the Writers Guild of America was at a similar juncture with the studios… Soon after that there were no TV shows for about half a year.

And we all know what that did last year’s TV season.

In anticipation of the worst (which has ironically become the norm in these days and times), studios are turning to the pre-strike protocols they devised after the 2007 WGA strike, pushing as many films as they can into production so that the 2010-2011 movie roster doesn’t end up barren.

Check out the studio by studio list of the films that are either currently in production, or are headed into production in light of the looming strike.

The list of movies being fast-tracked are as follows:

COLUMBIA

• Ruben Fleischer-directed “Zombieland”
• Phillip Noyce-helmed “Edwin A. Salt” with Angelina Jolie
• Stephen Chow-directed “The Green Hornet” with Seth Rogen

DISNEY

• Tim Burton-directed “Alice in Wonderland”;
• “Tron” sequel;
• Robert Zemeckis-produced motion-capture film “Mars Needs Moms”;
• Jon Turteltaub-directed “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” with Nicolas Cage;
• Walt Becker- helmed “Wild Hogs 2″

FOX

• James Cameron-directed “Avatar”
• Shawn Levy-helmed “Date Night,” with Steve Carell and Tina Fey
• “A-Team”
• “Ramona”
• Chris Columbus-directed “Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief”
• “Diary of a Wimpy Kid”
• John Carney-directed “Town House”
• “Alvin and the Chipmunks 2″
• Tom Bezucha-directed “Orbit”
• Rick Famuyiwa-helmed “Family Wedding”

MGM

• Drew Goddard-directed “The Cabin in the Woods”
• Kevin Tancharoen-helmed “Fame”
• “The Matarese Circle,” which David Cronenberg is negotiating to direct Washington
• Darren Aronofsky-helmed “RoboCop”

MARVEL
(Paramount distributing)

• Jon Favreau-directed “Iron Man 2″ with Robert Downey Jr.
• Kenneth Branagh-helmed “Thor”

MIRAMAX

• John Madden-directed “The Debt” with Helen Mirren
• “Man on a Train”
• “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark”

NEW LINE

• “Torrente”
• “Sex and the City 2″
• Wesley Strick-directed “A Nightmare on Elm Street”
• Len Wiseman-helmed “Gears of War”

PARAMOUNT

• Kenny Ortega-directed “Footloose” with Zac Efron;
• M. Night Shyamalan-helmed “The Last Airbender”
• “Morning Glory”
• “Beverly Hills Cop”
• “Us and Them”

UNIVERSAL

• Edgar Wright-directed “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” starring Michael Cera
• Untitled Nancy Meyers-helmed comedy with Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin
• Peter Billingsley-directed “Couples Retreat” with Vince Vaughn;
• Gore Verbinski-helmed “BioShock”
• Nicholas Stoller-directed “Get Him to the Greek”
• Ridley Scott-helmed “Nottingham” with Russell Crowe

WARNER BROS.

• Clint Eastwood-directed “Human Factor” with Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon
• Mark Neveldine/Brian Taylor- helmed “Jonah Hex”
• “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” the David Yates-directed final, two-part installment in the franchise, which begins production in February;
• Alcon-financed “Book of Eli,” the Hughes brothers-directed Denzel Washington starrer
• Louis Leterrier-helmed “Clash of the Titans”
• Zack Snyder-directed “Suckerpunch.”

Not to worry, Summer movie enthusiasts: just about all of your big budget sequels (Transformers 2, Night at the Museum 2, Angels & Demons) are safely in production. Doomsday epic 2012 is also going to make the cut. Any other new films that studios hope to get off the ground, however, are going to face major problems without actors to act in them. But we’ll cross that bridge if and when we come to it. For now, negotiations continue.

Personally I’m glad Iron Man 2, Thor, Green Hornet and Avatar made the cut; I’m hoping that Bioshock and Gears of War will be worthy of their excellent video game sources–and I’m praying that Jonah Hex is going to turn out well. Hex was badass on that Batman: The Animated Series episode.

How about you? Any movies you’re glad are in the pipeline? Any films you wish they’d kept on the shelf?

(Thank Variety for putting the list together.)

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• Green Hornet & Tron Legacy Fight For Release Date
• Nic Cage Passes On Green Hornet Villain Role
• Matthew Vaughn Wants to Direct The Avengers

In welcome news today from MTV.com comes word that the Darren Aronofsky-helmed Robocop reboot will probably be rated R.

This is very good news. Some people were concerned that MGM would push for a more teen-friendly PG-13 rating for this “re-imagining instead of an R rating that would be more in line with the original film directed by Paul Vorhoeven from way back in 1987.

As a matter of fact the original was so violent that it had to be trimmed down to acheive its R rating because the MPAA gave the first cut of the film an X rating.

Producer Mike Medavoy had this to say about the film:

“Well I was involved with the original ‘Robocop,’ and it was an R, and the likelihood is that this will be an R. It’s likely to be an R unless the director cuts back on some of it.”

Based on Aronofsky’s previous work it’s not likely he’ll be going for a PG-13 rating.

The new Robocop film is not a sequel, so I guess we can stop calling it Robocop 4. Instead of “remake” or “reboot” Medavoy prefers the currently chic ”reimagining.” It will not be tied to anything that has come before in the series, so it will be the Batman Begins of the Robocop movie franchise.

Rumors of the film being shot as a 3D feature were also shot down.

Robocop is set to open some time in 2010.

Source: MTV

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• Will Arnold Schwarzenegger Be In Predators?

In today’s Movie News Grab Bag, I’ve got a confirmation on the director and writer of the RoboCop sequel, X-Files: I Want To Believe is getting poor reviews, and my theory on why Ant-Man isn’t on the release slate yet.

RoboCop 4 (unless they ignore parts 2 and 3 and do a reboot): Darren Aronofsky, director of Pi and the one movie I liked but I’ll never watch again, Requiem For a Dream, has officially signed on to direct the RoboCop sequel, set further in the future after the program was shut down.  Will it be a new RoboCop, or will Murphy live again?  David Self (Road to Perdition) is writing the script.  Sounds like it’ll be fun, especially since it isn’t a remake!

So I’ve been looking over at Rotten Tomatoes to see how X-Files: I Want To Believe is doing, ratings-wise.  Not so good with a 30% (so far) “rotten” rating.  Sure, it’s still a little early, but wow, that’s not looking so good.  Ebert seemed to like it, though, but others complained that it was more like a boring, long episode than a movie.

Ant-Man: Edgar Wright told ComingSoon.net/SuperHeroHype.com that his adaptation of Scott Pilgrim will come out first, and that Ant-Man isn’t even on the release schedule for Marvel Studios.  My theory is that a draft was written and budgeted and, following The Incredible Hulk debacle, Marvel decided to launch a film franchise of the tiny hero after The Avengers comes out.  It’s a safe way to test the waters.  We’ll find out if that’s the case when The Avengers opens in 2011.

Also, on the fantasy movie front, a couple of news items caught my eye today, so I thought I’d write up a quick movie news grab bag.

First up is Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland 3D movie, of which I’m getting excited about.  Burton and Alice, a match made in heaven!  Anyway, Burton found his Alice in Australian actress Mia Wasikowska.  The film will go into production soon with a projected release date of 2010.

I think this will be a fun movie, and yet another reason to go to the theaters as 3D becomes huge.  The movie is from Disney, so I wonder how dark they’ll let Burton get.  By the way, here’s a look at some 3D movies coming out (or already out).

And then we have director Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are, probably the most frustrating thing I can write about today.  The movie that has had more problems than even the fourth Exorcist movie a few years back, that resulted in two versions!  Remember that?  Funny how all these movies are from Warner Bros., but I digress…

Anyway, as our own Niall Browne reported recently, the WWA movie was taken off WB’s release slate (originally set to open October 2008).  It’s opening exactly one year later, and it looks like major work will be done after a disastrous test screening.

While Jonze will remain involved, Ain’t It Cool News’ “Beaks” had a chance to talk to one of the producers, Gary Goetzman, who said that while WB and Jonze may have differing visions on the film, he also confirmed the studio is backing Spike 100%.  Nothing new, right?

Wrong.  In the article, Goetzman mentions, “Final cut Spike,” which is a reference to the holiest of holies for a director, being able to have final say on a film.  About 10 years ago, a bunch of films came out that gave directors final cut, and they all bombed, including the excruciatingly long Meet Joe Black.

I’m curious if Spike Jonze does indeed have final cut, and if he’s willing to watch that go away so he and the studio can fix the film.  And keep the running time shorter than 2-3 hours.

This is a tragedy and I hope a great film comes out of it.  We’ll be keeping our eyes on the ongoing saga of this film.

Sources: Alice, Hollywood Reporter via Ain’t It Cool News; Wild Things, Ain’t It Cool News, Deadline Hollywood Daily, Rotten Tomatoes, and Super Hero Hype!

• Amazing Trailer For ‘Where The Wild Things Are’
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• Glowing Early Review of ‘Where the Wild Things Are’
• Rumor Patrol: Darren Aronofsky is Still Directing Robocop

So The Dark Knight has finally been released and it’s kicking all sort of Box Office butt. It’s great news, the bad news (for me at least) is that I don’t get to see it until Friday!!

However, don’t worry – we’ll always have the Weekend Movie News Wrap Up!

This week:

We have more news on the new RoboCop movie, we take our Tom Cruise news with a pinch of Salt, Christian Bale does some Terminating, we look at another X-Files poster, and Rob Cohen remakes The Monster Squad.

1. Last week I brought you news that Darren Aronofsky was helming the RoboCop remake. Well it looks like the film isn’t a remake after all. The film appears to be more of a sequel to the original films. Bloody Disgusting report that the logline of the film (a logline is the plot – in a line or so) says:

Present day Los Angeles, 20 years after the termination of the RoboCop program, the city decides to reinstate the program.

It’s an interesting concept that appears to be more along the lines of Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns, where they acknowledge the previous films in the franchise (or they acknowledge the original and forget the crap sequels).

It’s interesting news, but I’m not sure if it’s good news. As ever I’ll keep you posted.

Source: Bloody Disgusting

2. It’s Sunday, and that can only mean one thing – I’m going to write about Tom Cruise!

News circulated at the start of the week that The Cruiser was off the spy thriller Edwin A. Salt. The reason – he was too old and not worth his $20 million asking price!

His replacement?

No, it’s not Christian Bale. However, it is rumored to be Will Smith.

“What ?” I hear you scream. “They can’t do that to little Tom!”

Well, I don’t think that they are.

Fox News “jackass” Roger Friedman wrote:

“Cruise is out, and I’m told it’s because of money. Apparently, Tom is unaware of the change in his status in the Hollywood community. Where once he was the top-paid star, Cruise now is in a position where a $20 million salary is not possible. I’m told an internal memo went around among the film’s producers and top creators in which the Cruise situation was discussed and names were gathered for a replacement.

The reasons for Cruise’s departure are not just his diminished popularity, negative public opinion and Scientology — although those would be good enough. It’s also just generational. Cruise is 45. His heyday as a box office star — if he ever had one — is over.”

The “writer” also went on to say :

“Like past huge leading action stars such as Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, Cruise must face the brutal facts of aging. Ironically, he’s been replaced by Will Smith, whom Cruise has courted for Scientology. Talk about rubbing “Salt” in a wound!

Of course, it doesn’t help that his last big feature, Mission: Impossible 3, was eons ago, in Hollywood terms — 2006. On top of that, even a film shot now and released next summer would have to erase in the audience’s mind Cruise’s upcoming release, Valkyrie, aka The Nazi movie, due next February.”

However, this all sounds a bit too much like kicking somebody when they are down.

The much more reliable folks over at Moviehole however have some insider information that sounds sooooo much more reliable that Friedman’s tabloid musings.

Moviehole state:

“A representative of the film tells us that Cruise is the only person that has been approached about the film – but he isn’t yet on board. ”Tom is not set for the film. Cruise has never been officially attached to the project, but will decide on his involvement once the new script is finished. He was previously concerned that the part was too close to his Mission Impossible character.”

Phillip Noyce is still attached as director.

If there’s anymore Tom Cruise news, you can be sure to find it here. Stay tuned!

Sources: Fox and Moviehole

3. The first official picture of Christian Bale in Terminator Salvation has been released and it shows Bale kicking some Terminator butt.

It would appear that the Terminator in the picture won’t be back!

Maybe Bale hadn’t heard the grosses for The Dark Knight yet!

Source: Aintitcool

4. A new UK poster for The X-Files: I Want to Believe has been released and it looks… very plain.

There’s a very low key marketing campaign on this film and nobody really knows what it’s about yet. Man – I hope that this movie makes some dough, I’d love to see the franchise continued.

It kind of looks like an X-Files poster photographed by Janusz Kaminski (War of The Worlds, Minority Report).

The X-Files: I Want to Believe opens July 25th in the US and August 1st in the UK

Source: Empire

5. Rob Cohen director of the forthcoming Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is set to produce a remake of cult kiddie-horror flick The Monster Squad.

The 1987 film directed by Fred Dekkar as co-written by Shane Black and features a group of you teenagers battling the Dracula, The Wolfman and The Mummy and the rest of the Universal horror gang.

Cohen said to Bloody Disgusting:

“I am talking withParamount about the ownership rights, we just found out that because of all the different companies being bought and sold, (it was so hard to do) but we believe all the rights are back at Paramount. I have been waiting to finish this (third Mummy) film, to really start the talks about remaking it. Maybe I would direct, maybe someone else withme producing. I really think highly of that that film…I mean, how great is it with The Mummy, the Wolfman, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Dracula, Frankenstein they all were in it! It would be a prime remake!”

I haven’t seen the film in years (although I did catch a few minutes on TV a year or two ago) but it was a fun flick, sort of like The Goonies Meet Dracula.

Something to watch out for. Maybe

Source: Bloody Disgusting

That’s it for another week. See you at the movies!

• Abrams Snags Writers for Mission: Impossible 4
• New Posters For ‘Terminator Salvation,’ ‘Knowing’ & ‘Dark Mirror’
• Bale’s Batman Terminated By Worthington? Yeah, Right
• New Images Of ‘The Wolfman’
• Tom Cruise Planning ‘Mission Impossible 4′
• Cool New Terminator Salvation Picture

It’s almost time for The Dark Knight. We’ve almost made it. Not long now. However, in the meantime here’s a new Weekend Movie News Wrap Up to keep you preoccupied.

This week:

We try and figure out Where the Wild Things Are, David Duchovny blogs, Robert Downey Jr goes Holmes, John Cusack sues and Darren Aronofsky may be giving us some Prime Directives.

1. Warner Brothers’ Where the Wild Things Are isn’t out of the woods yet. The $80 million Spike Jones film has been pulled from the WB release schedule.  The film was originally supposed to open this October, but after a test screening went haywire (kids crying and terrified at children’s film is never  a good thing) the release was then shifted to October 2009, but now it’s appears to be going under some major retooling.

Warner Brothers Big Cheese Alan Horn (that is his official title) said this about the current state of the film:

“We’ve given him more money and, even more importantly, more time for him to work on the film. We’d like to find a common ground that represents Spike’s vision but still offers a film that really delivers for a broad-based audience. We obviously still have a challenge on our hands. But I wouldn’t call it a problem, simply a challenge. No one wants to turn this into a bland, sanitized studio movie. This is a very special piece of material and we’re just trying to get it right. We try to take a few shots, sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. The jury is still out on this one. But we remain confident that Spike is going to figure things out and at the end of the day we’ll have an artistically compelling movie.”

It’s good to see that the studio is still behind Jonze, but I just wonder how long that will last. This is starting to sound an awful lot like the troubles that The Exorcist: Dominion had a few years back.

At the very least – expect a few interesting versions of the DVD in 2020.

Source: LA Times

2.  David Duchovny has begun blogging about his X-Files: I Want To Believe experiences. The star will be answering fans questions and sharing stories about the franchise.

Come on – who wants to go online and read what some idiot has to say about movies? …. um I just realized – that’s what I do. Do’h!

Seriously though, it’s a fun blog  (fitting in nicely with Duchovny’s dry sense of humor) so I recommend that you check it out here.

Source: Chud and The Duchovny Files

3. Robert Downey Jr will star as Sherlock Holmes in the Guy Ritchie directed film about the legendary detective which is to be titled..err.. Sherlock Holmes.

The film is being pitched as a more action oriented version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s iconic creation, but it will have to compete with the Judd Apatow produced comedy starring Sacha Baron Cohen and Will Ferrell that also plans to put a modern spin on the literary character. Wait a minute – wasn’t that comedy version already made with Michael Caine and Ben Kingsley as Without A Clue ?

Source: Variety

4. John Cusack seems like a pretty nice guy – but be warned  – make sure that you pay him!

Last year Cusack signed on to the Jan De Bont film Stopping Power, an action thriller with a supposed 51 minute car chase. However, the film was never made (the company didn’t have enough money) and now Cusack is suing to get his $4.5 million salary that was promised in his “pay or play” contract, and an extra $1.1 million for costs and other payments for relocating to Germany for the shoot.

If you don’t know “pay or play” is a contract that stipulates that you get paid whether or not the film is made – hence the reason Nicolas Cage was paid $17 million for not playing Superman!

Source: TMZ

5. We screamed and cried when we heard that MGM were planning a RoboCop remake, but it would seem that the film has taken a very interesting turn. Requiem For A Dream and The Fountain helmer Darren Aronofsky is now in discussions to direct the remake of the 1987 Paul Verhoven original.

Interesting, if there’s a director who won’t play safe it’s Aronofsky. He is after all the man who Warner’s originally brought in to reboot the Batman franchise, but when he delivered a script that was dark, serious and nothing like Batman, he left the project.

Side note – although I own Requiem For  A Dream on DVD I’ve never watched it because I haven’t got over the experience of seeing the film in the cinema. Never has a film left me so shell shocked.

Source: Chud

That’s it for another week.

See you at the movies!

• Rumor Patrol: Darren Aronofsky is Still Directing Robocop
• Natalie Portman Is A Black Swan
• Darren Aronofsky To Make A Gritty Heist Movie
• First Sherlock Holmes Trailer Looks Great
• New Character Posters For Sherlock Holmes
• New Sherlock Holmes Photos, Villain Revealed

Hey gang… man, one of the downsides of being a computer geek is getting sucked into the back-end stuff when redesigning a website. I’ve been so busy trying to fine tune thing (thanks for the suggestions!) and trying to fix bugs that I haven’t been doing any movie news coverage.

So here’s my little attempt at a bit of catch up on what’s popped up over the last few days.

- There’s a new muppet movie coming and supposedly it will be faithful to what we’ve come to know and love about the little fellas. – Ain’t It Cool

- Transformers 2 has a title: Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen. I can’t wait (yeah, that was sarcasm). – Superhero Hype

- Transporter 3 is on the way starring Jason Statham once again and there’s a French trailer out for it. I think he’s an awesome action star and he’s back in the franchise that launched his career. I didn’t think the second one was as good as the original and I imagine this one will dive even deeper into unapologetic total-action flick land. – Allocine

- Ain’t It Cool has some pics from the NY Licensing show including the first Terminator 4 poster and a poster for (God help us) the next Robocop movie. – Ain’t It Cool

- The Smurfs movie is moving forward. I have nothing to say about this other than it’s giving me flashbacks to an old girlfriend. – Cinematical

- There are a bunch of new action-packed images from The Dark Knight out that I haven’t had a chance to upload here yet. Check ‘em out at the link. Comic Book Movie

- More news on the Pixar-helmed John Carter of Mars. It’ll be the first non-kid-targeting movie for them but I have utter and complete faith in the gang over there. – Film School Rejects

- Hayden Christensen threatens to do more Jumper movies. – First Showing

• Awesome New Images From Stallone’s ‘Expendables’
• New Posters For ‘Terminator Salvation,’ ‘Knowing’ & ‘Dark Mirror’
• Transformers 2 Concept Art Collection
• Transformers 2: New Pics, TV Spots & Soundtrack Song
• Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried in ‘Jennifer’s Body’
• The Last New Transformers 2 Photos!

MGM has the largest back-catalog of movies in Hollywood – musicals, James Bond, Ben-Hur - you name it, MGM has it stashed in a vault somewhere. They have over 4,000 movies. Just imagine the amount of DVDs they could release and re-release and… you see what I’m getting at.

In the past several years they haven’t been too lucky: They were bought out by Sony and became a little more than a distribution company… but recently they’ve been getting back into the producing sector.

They have Tom Cruise’s Valkyrie in the pipeline, but hey – who needs an original idea when you can remake an old film or bleed a franchise dry.

MGM has set its sights on RoboCop and Fame remakes as well as more Bond, more Pink Panther films, and maybe more than two Hobbit films and possibly, possibly – another Rocky!

Yes you read that correctly.

Another Rocky film.

MGM honchos Mary Parent and Harry Sloan recently talked about the company’s future at the
American Pavilion, where Sloan stated:

“Ultimately MGM needed to stand on its own. We needed to go into original production. Films like ‘The Hobbit’ are immense opportunities.”

Parent went on to say:

“The library is a treasure chest. There is a great deal to pull. ‘RoboCop,’ possibly in 3-D. ‘RoboCop’ would be great in 3-D, as would something we’re hoping to announce soon.”

With regards to The Hobbit she said :

“There’s 80 years between the end of ‘The Hobbit’ and the beginning of ‘The Lord of the Rings’. Think of the franchise.”

I think that the sound you just heard was J. R. R. Tolkien spinning in his grave.

Mary Parent also mentioned the possibility of another Rocky film, however when she broached the idea to the crowd, they didn’t seem too enthused by the idea. I wonder what Sylvester Stallone thinks?

I can live with Bond sequels, to be honest with you – I can’t get enough of them. I love Rocky, but please leave it alone. You ended the series in a high note. Don’t sour it.

As for The Hobbit – I don’t much care about the Lord of The Rings films, but making more than two prequels is really milking that cash cow, and you could destroy the good faith of the audience.

The only MGM film that I’m looking forward to (besides Bond) is The Topkapi Affair, the follow-up to 1999’s The Thomas Crown Affair. There hasn’t been much news since we heard that original RoboCop helmer Paul Verhoeven signed up to direct the Pierce Brosnan starrer. A shame.

What do you folks think? Artistic rebirth or crazy cash-in?

Source: Indiewire

• Stallone Making Rocky 7 After Rambo 5?
• Great News For The Hobbit: LOTR Lawsuit Finally Settled
• Rumor Patrol: Darren Aronofsky is Still Directing Robocop
• The Hobbit: Hobbiton Currently Under Construction
• Guillermo del Toro Talks ‘Hobbit’ Monsters [Updated]
• Hobbit Rumors Debunked: No Trilogy or Radcliffe