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Well, finally. After 13 years of talk, rumor has it Owen Wilson and Jackie Chan will finally be reprising their roles in the third installment of MGM’s “Shanghai Noon” comedy series, “Shanghai Dawn,” but this time, it will be helmed by “Napoleon Dynamite” director Jared Hess.

Read More: Jared Hess’s ‘Peluca’ Short Film: Watch The Early Blueprint for ‘Napoleon Dynamite’

If you aren’t familiar, the “Shanghai” films are a modern, buddy-pic combo plate of Western meets Kung-Fu movie; in the first, Chon Wang (Jackie Chan), an Imperial guard, trails the captors of a Chinese princess to Nevada with the intention to save her, there meeting his cowboy outlaw partner Roy O’Bannon, (Owen Wilson) who helps him do just that. In the second installment, 2003’s “Shanghai Knights,” the duo bring their shenanigans to London to seek revenge for the murder of Chon’s estranged father.

Read More: Watch: Kristen Wiig,...

If you’ve ever wondered where writer-director Jared Hess came up with idea for his debut feature film, 2004’s deadpan cult comedy “Napoleon Dynamite,” Hess’s 2002 short film “Peluca” holds the answer. Hess shot the nearly nine-minute short for an assignment at Brigham Young University and premiered it the following year at the Slamdance Film Festival.

Watch: New Trailer For the Jared Hess Comedy ‘Masterminds’

Shot on black and white 16mm film, the short stars Jon Heder as “Seth,” who is Napoleon Dynamite to a T, just with a different name. Hess shot the short in his hometown of Preston, Idaho over the course of just two days, shooting at many of the same locations seen in the feature film, like the local high school and thrift store. The title “Peluca,” the spanish word for wig, refers to a wig Seth and his friends Giel and Pedro purchase in the short.

It's been a decade since America voted for Pedro and made Napoleon Dynamite a hipster touchstone. The 2004 indie comedy, about a small-town loser (Jon Heder) with mad dance skills determined to elect his pal Pedro (Efren Ramirez) class president, divided audiences when it debuted at the Sundance Film Festival. But Fox Searchlight saw the zeitgeist-shifting potential of director Jared Hess's first film (written with his wife, Jerusha) and turned the $400,000 oddball into a sleeper hit that raked in $45 million. How did that happen? With the help of the stars—and one stand-in llama—EW went searching for answers. —Jake Perlman...

What a difference a year makes. In 2003, Jared Hess, Jerusha Hess, and Jon Heder — students at Brigham Young University's film school — were just another trio of independent filmmakers working the festival circuit in Park City. Their short film "Peluca," about a fanny pack-wearing teen named Seth, was selected to screen at the Slamdance Film Festival. If the protagonist sounds slightly familiar, it's because he was the prototype for the titular geek hero of Napoleon Dynamite, the micro-budget indie that would become the toast of that city's other film fest — Sundance...

Those who live in Chicagoland but can’t make it to Sundance 2014 this weekend are invited to ring in a ten-year anniversary of one of the festival’s biggest premieres, “Napoleon Dynamite.”

Shown on the big screen in multiplexes located in Woodridge and Naperville, each showing will feature an appearance from actor Jon Heder, who went forward from the cult hit to appear in films like “Blades of Glory” and “When in Rome,” and appear as a voice actor for numerous video games and animated movies. He reappeared as Napoleon recently for an animated series of the same name.

Meeting in downtown Chicago, I chatted with Heder about the phenomenon of the little indie monument, his own reflections on the character, how “Napoleon Dynamite” is like “Nebraska,” the two Kanye West songs that reference his work, and more.

Below is some information on Heder’s appearance:

Show Schedule for Hollywood Blvd Cinema in Woodridge,...

This year is the 20th anniversary of the Slamdance Film Festival. For those who don’t know about Slamdance, it runs during the same time as the Sundance Film Festival, and all of the films are true indies. Sundance has its fair share, but you won’t see any famous actors in a Slamdance movie. However, you could see the debut work from an up-and-coming director. Slamdance alums include Christopher Nolan (Following), Marc Forster (Loungers), Jared Hess (Peluca), Lena Dunham (Dealing), Benh Zeitlin (Egg), and Lynn Shelton (We Go Way Back). If I had time to swing by Slamdance, I would because while it’s definitely a crapshoot, you could end up seeing something entirely unexpected and worth championing. Hit the jump for a list of films playing in competition at this year’s Slamdance Film Festival, which runs from January 17th – 23rd in Park City, Utah at the Treasure Mountain Inn.

In 2006, Netflix offered $1 million to the first person who could solve what they had called “The Napoleon Dynamite Problem.” The site’s recommendation engine, Cinematch, relied on an algorithm that considered the user’s likes and dislikes in order to tailor their next choice accordingly.

For example, if you gave Taken a high rating, it might suggest that your next choice be The Patriot or Man On Fire. And although the prize money was for the inventor of an algorithm that would benefit the whole site, no film typified the “Like this? Try this…” conundrum quite like Napoleon Dynamite.

Put simply, no one at Netflix knew what to compare it to. With viewers opting for either the one – or five-star – rating, and no middle-ground fence-sitting, this made for rather divergent results. But why all the fuss? Surely a humble high-school comedy couldn’t be the cause of such a commercial headache?...

While some filmmakers spend their entire careers maximizing the succinct pleasures of the short film, others start out by making shorts that they hope will maximize their chances of becoming a feature film director. This week alone will see the feature debuts of two directors who have turned their short films into full-length one -- Neill Blomkamp, whose 2005 socially conscious alien invasion tale "Alive in Joburg" has been turned into the Peter Jackson-produced "District 9," and Paul Solet, whose 2006 horror short "Grace," about a mother who refuses to give up on her miscarriage has morphed into a feature of the same name starring Jordan Ladd. Here's a look at ten other notable shorts that got the full feature treatment.

"Bottle Rocket" (1992)

Directed by Wes Anderson

What's another $4,000 after paying private school tuition? That was probably the pitch made by Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson to their fathers, a year...

Via the Fantastic Fest twitter we have been informed that ‘Gentlemen Broncos’ will open Fantastic Fest 2009. With more updates coming our way in the next hour we wanted to give you a breakdown of the opening night film. Here is a synopsis of the film:

Benjamin (Michael Angarano), home-schooled by his eccentric mother (Jennifer Coolidge), is a lovable loner whose passion for writing leads him on an offbeat and hilarious journey as his story first gets ripped off by the legendary fantasy novelist, Ronald Chevalier (Jemaine Clement) and then is adapted into a disastrous movie by the small town’s most prolific homespun filmmaker.

And here is what the guys from Fantastic Fest had to say for this selection:

A couple of months ago, the Fantastic Fest programming team had the pleasure of viewing an early cut of Gentlemen Broncos and absolutely loved it. In his third film, Hess continues...

Chicago – Welcome back to the world of the Blu-Ray Round Up, a safety net for all the Blu-Ray titles hitting store shelves that might otherwise slip through the cracks. Every week seems to see more and more catalog releases and new titles hitting the next-gen format and it’s shockingly easy to miss a title that you’d like to add to your collection. That’s why we’re here.

This edition of the Blu-Ray Round-Up presents an amazingly diverse wave of titles from Fox/MGM that includes comedy classics, two best picture nominees, and a couple of new flicks that barely made a dent at the box office.

“Igor” and “The Pink Panther” were released by MGM on January 20th, 2009.

“Little Miss Sunshine,” “Napoleon Dynamite,” “Office Space,” “The Secret Life of Bees,” and “Sideways” were released by Fox on February 3rd, 2009.

“Igor”

Photo credit: MGM “Igor” is one of...