Movie News

General News:

Disney announced that Ghibli’s Ponyo (the English title for Ponyo on the Cliff) will open in US theaters August 14.

Danny and Oxide Pang will direct Asia’s first digital 3-D horror film The Child’s Eye in 3D. Filming begins June in Thailand on the movie about “six stranded Hong Kong travelers during the shutdown of the Bangkok airport in the November 2008 anti-government protest and their supernatural encounters after the disappearance of three in the group.”

Japanese anime, music, and game production company Marvelous Entertainment “is asking for a number of its employees — ‘in the range of 20’ or about 17% according to its press release — to voluntarily retire in an effort to reduce costs. As of December 31, 2008, the company employs 120 people. The employees who choose to take advantage of the program between March 23 and April 3 will receive a special severance payment. Their retirement will become effective on April 30.”

Brian White has been added to Joss Whedon’s The Cabin in the Woods.

Terry Crews has replaced Curtis ‘50 Cent’ Jackson (who replaced Forest Whitaker when Whitaker had to leave due to schedule changes) as Hale Caesar in Stallone’s The Expendables.

Kevin Costner and Tommy Lee Jones will star with Ben Affleck in John Wells’ The Company Men. The indie drama is “about the impact that a corporate downsizing has on both its casualties and survivors.”

Justin Long will star in New Line and Nanette Burstein’s romantic comedy Going the Distance. Geoff La Tulippe’s script is about “a man and woman in a long-distance relationship who ultimately come to the realization that they would be happier dating someone closer to home.”

Adam Scott, Amy Adams, and Matthew Goode will star in Anand Tucker’s romantic comedy Leap Year. “A young woman who travels to Dublin to propose to her boyfriend (Scott) on Leap Day. When weather forces her to veer off course, she enlists a cynical Irish innkeeper (Goode) to join her on a cross-country trip.”

Prequels; Sequels & Remakes:

Evan Charnov will write the script for Lost Boys 3, which will be another straight to DVD [E:…piece of garbage]. Corey Feldman will return, with this one being reportedly about Edgar Frog.

Pete Segal will direct, Meet the Parents sequel, Little Fockers.

Producer Mark Burg on this year’s Saw, Saw VI: “Shawnee Smith [as Amanda] is in Saw VI. There are several new characters. Also, this movie is a lot more violent than the previous five. Lastly, we have traps that pit victims against each other like the opening of Saw V. Could be the best script yet!”

After Variety reported that Paramount wanted to stake out July 1, 2011 for a possible Transformers 3, Michael Bay posted on his blog: “I said I was taking off a year from Transformers. Paramount made a mistake in dating Transformers 3. They asked me on the phone. I said yes to July 4—but for 2012—whoops! Not 2011!!! That would mean I would have to start prep in September. No way. My brain needs a break from fighting robots.”

Tohokushinsha Film Corporation have confirmed their plans for a 2009 theatrical release for Yamato. “Nishizaki’s new project is set in 2220, or 21 years after the first Yamato story. An expanding black hole threatens Earth, so three hundred million people set forth into space as part of an emigration operation. The transport fleet is attacked, and the Yamato leads the counterstrike. 38-year-old Susumu Kodai, the hero of the first series, is now a space captain with a daughter named Miyuki with his wife Yuki (the heroine of the first series).”

Karl Urban and Adriana Barraza have joined Marcos Efron’s remake of And Now the Darkness.

The Coen brothers’ next project will be their version of True Grit. This one “will be more faithful” to Charle’s Portis’ book, about “a 14-year-old girl who, along with an aging U.S. marshal and another lawman, tracks her father’s killer in hostile Indian territory,” and be told from the view point of the girl.

Director Pascal Laugier on the Hellraiser remake: “The idea behind Hellraiser is not to do a remake—it’s to do what they call a reboot—that is to say, a new version. [E: That is to say, a remake] So what I am proposing to Dimension, the studio behind Hellraiser, is some elements coming from the first film mixed with brand-new stuff. My main problem, honestly, with the Hellraiser reboot is that Hellraiser is very transgressive material. It deals with S&M and gay issues, and I really want to be faithful to the book and Clive Barker’s world. I don’t want to betray him. So if I have the feeling that I am being asked by Hollywood to soften the franchise, I will leave in a blink.”

Adaptations:

Disney’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice has a release date of July 16, 2010.

Motion capture work on Spielberg and Jackson’s Tintin movie has finished. It’s scheduled for a 2011 release.

Sam Fell will direct the live action Demonkeeper adaptation of Royce Buckingham’s novel about “a Seattle teen who inherits responsibility for a house filled with demons.”

Catherine Hardwicke is in talks with Columbia to develop and direct an adaptation of James Patterson’s Maximum Ride. Don Payne wrote the script based on the YA series about “six teens, known as the Flock, who are genetically altered so that they are part human and part bird. Learning to fly, they escape the laboratory where they have been housed and are pursued by a pack of creatures called the Erasers who are part human and part wolf.”

Lionsgate has acquired the worldwide distribution rights to, independent production company, Color Force’s adaptation of Suzanne Collin’s The Hunger Games. Collins will also write the screenplay for her futuristic YA novel, the first in a planned trilogy, about “a dystopian future in which North America has been divided into 12 oppressed districts, each of which is forced to send tribute in the form of a boy and a girl to compete in a televised battle to the death once a year.”

Keiichi Hara will direct Sunrise’s animated Colorful for a projected 2010 release. Based on Eto Mori’s YA novel, “The ‘heart-warming comedy’ follows a person who finds himself trapped outside the normal endless circle of life and death. Thanks to ‘winning’ a lottery in the angel world, the protagonist is brought back to inhabit the body of a 14-year-old boy — who is planning to commit suicide. Thus, the protagonist begins a new life.”

Toei Animation has announced plans for a Niji-Iro Hotaru ~Eien no Natsu Yasumi~ (Rainbow-Colored Fireflies: The Eternal Summer Vacation) movie, based on Masayuki Kawaguchi novel. “The story revolves around a sixth-grade boy named Yūta on his summer vacation. His father passed away one year ago in a traffic accident, and Yūta now goes alone to visit a place where he and his father once shared memories. The two had gone often to an unused dam deep in the mountains to collect the rhinoceros beetles nearby. Yūta suddenly receives a shock in a thunderstorm, loses his footing, and gets knocked out. When he wakes up, he sees a small girl and a village — except this village is the one that should be submerged below the dam. Yūta realizes that he slipped back time to over thirty years ago, before the dam was completed. Another summer vacation, and another chance for Yūta to reclaim what cannot be reclaimed, begins.” The tagline is “Another summer vacation begins.”

Fox Atomic, with Zombie Studios and Union Entertainment, will develop a Blacklight movie, game, and comic book. Jason Dean Hall will write the movie and game about “a covert military action story set 25 years in the future.”

Universal has hired Dan Harris to write Dante’s Inferno, a live-action version of Electronic Arts video game where “players journey through the depths of hell.” Electronic Arts and Strike Entertainment are also producing.