The worst part about this story is that it's being directed by JOHN SINGLETON.

The A-Team Countdown Begins

By Joal Ryan Mon Mar 24, 5:14 AM PDT

If you've been holding your breath for The A-Team movie, well, we feel sorry for you.

But help is on the way for you and your oxygen-deprived brain. So just hold on. Until June 12. Of next year. Feel better? You should, actually.

The release date, as reported by Variety, is the first for the long-discussed, long-suffering project.

John Singleton, who last yelled cut on Four Brothers, will direct; Michael Bandt and Derek Haas, who helped shoot the lights out with 3:10 to Yuma, are writing the screenplay.

As reported, the movie will follow the basic recipe of the 1983-87 TV series: Take four ex-military men; add one war crime they didn't commit; mix in chases, pursuits and more chases.

Given the source material, Singleton has promised an action movie, a serious action movie—"wall to wall kicking ass and talking s--t," as he put it to Collider.com. The film presently is sans actors, A-list, B-team or otherwise, as Singleton himself has made very clear.

"I don't know who is in the cast yet, so all this bulls--t of who is saying who is this person and who is [this person]," Singleton told Collider.com.

Singleton did allow that he "really, really want[s]" Woody Harrelson to play "Howling Mad" Murdoch, the sanity challenged pilot given life on the TV series by Dwight Schultz.

In the interview, conducted in January, Singleton sounded a lot like a man who's been a little bit hounded by fans demanding to know who's going to play Mr. T.

"Nobody is playing Mr. T—the character's name is B.A. Baracus," the filmmaker reminded.

And, no, before you bother Mr. Singleton again, B.A. Baracus hasn't been cast yet, either. Ice Cube, however, has thrown his Mohawk into the ring.

"Hell yeah," the Barbershop multitasker recently told blackfilm.com when asked if he'd consider copping a "Bad Attitude," as it were, "especially with John Singleton directing!"

And, yes, we know Ice Cube doesn't really have a Mohawk to throw into a ring. But that could change.

"I wouldn't try to duplicate what Mr. T did," he told the Website. "I'm going to bring my own flavor to it, and I am going to do the Mohawk."

The race seems wide open for the roles of Col. "Hannibal" Smith, the disguise-handy ringleader, and the smooth-talking "Face" Peck, played on the TV series by the late George Peppard and the still-plugging-away Dirk Benedict, respectively.

Even with the cast undetermined, an announced director and a release date marks the furthest along the movie has gotten since the project started raising hopes nearly 10 years ago amid a spate of TV-to-film conversions, à la Charlie's Angels, The Mod Squad and Wild Wild West. Per the calendar keepers at the Internet Movie Database, on June 12, 2009, the big-screen A-Team will go head-to-head with an Eddie Murphy comedy called NowhereLand. Which is about where The A-Team movie used to live.

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