Movie News

General News:

An earthquake near Mexico City and swine flu has caused Cinepolis, Cinemex and Cinemark, Mexico’s top three exhibitors, to close dozens of theaters. This will delay the release of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Terminator Salvation, Star Trek, and Angels & Demons.

Fanboys’ Australian DVD release has been pushed back to October, due to its recently announced theatrical release.

David R. Ellis will direct Amber Entertainment’s 3-D horror Humpty Dumpty. Billy Majestic is writing the script about “a half-human, half-alien creature who embarks on a murderous rampage after his alien mother is abused by two rednecks in the Deep South.” Goes into production September.

Ben Stiller’s next directing job will be Help Me Spread Goodness. Mark Friedman’s script is about “a Chicago banker who gets swindled in a Nigerian Internet scam.” He’ll also be replacing Steven Spielberg on The Trial of the Chicago 7.

Lizzy Caplan, Crispin Glover, and Sebastian Stan have joined Steve Pink’s comedy Hot Tub Time Machine.

Don Johnson has been cast in porn themed comedy Born to Be a Star.

Elizabeth Banks will headline DreamWorks’ workplace comedy Forever 21. Mike Culbert and Mike Pellettieri wrote the top secret script.

Prequels; Sequels & Remakes:

From UGO:
“Jordan Hoffman: Who’s voicing Soundwave in Transformers?
Roberto Orci: Welker.
Jordan Hoffman: That’s official?
Roberto Orci: I think so.”

Director McG on the possible Terminator 5:
“I strongly suspect the next movie is going to take place in a [pre-Judgment Day] 2011. John Connor is going to travel back in time and he’s going to have to galvanize the militaries of the world for an impending Skynet invasion. They’ve figured out time travel to the degree where they can send more than one naked entity. So you’re going to have hunter killers and transports and harvesters and everything arriving in our time and Connor fighting back with conventional military warfare, which I think is going to be [E: ahem “fairly”] awesome. I also think he’s going to meet a scientist that’s going to look a lot like present-day Robert Patrick [who famously played the T-1000 in Terminator 2], talking about stem-cell research and how we can all live as idealized, younger versions of ourselves.”

Robert Rodriguez on Predators:
“We’d create new otherworldly characters while not taking away from the draw our main Predator has. I think another reason I called it Predators was to mark it as a project that should be taken seriously by a filmmaker to make a worthy follow-up to a classic, much in the way Cameron made Aliens a compelling work on its own, following Ridley Scott’s Alien.” He wants to make it an R-rated movie.

Shia LaBeouf will play opposite Michael Douglas in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street 2 (working title; former development title Money Never Sleeps). “The sequel will once again involve a young Wall Street trader (LaBeouf), and the recent economic meltdown spurred by rampant greed and corruption will fit prominently into the plot.”

Chris Noth has committed to Sex and the City 2.

[E: *rubs hands down face*…] Universal is remaking Drop Dead Fred as a starring vehicle for Russell Brand. “The 1991 original starred Phoebe Cates as a wallflower who loses her job and husband during the course of a lunch hour. Forced to live back home, she’s reunited with her childhood imaginary friend (British actor Rik Mayall), who promises to help but causes more havoc. The angle for the new Fred is to make a film with the tone of Beetlejuice, building a universe around the concept of imaginary friends. Brand would play the trouble-making pal.” Dennis McNicholas is one of the writers. [E: I honestly… Just… Why? The mind boggles.]

Clancy Brown [E: who is awesome] will play Allen, and Katie Cassidy will play Kris, in Samuel Bayer’s Nightmare on Elm Street remake.

Danny Huston will play Poseidon in Louis Letterier’s Clash of the Titans remake.

Dina Meyer, Brooklynn Proulx, Quinn Lord, and Riley Steele have joined Alexandre Aja’s Piranha 3-D.

Adaptations:

Dimension Films will release John Hillcoat’s The Road October 16.

Samuel Goldwyn Films will release SAJ’s live action Blood: The Last Vampire in American theaters this summer.

Mike Newell will direct Disney’s Lone Ranger movie.

Peter Stormare and Kurt Angle will play werewolves Gabriel and Wolfgang, respectively, in Dylan Dog adaptation, Kevin Munroe’s Dead of Night.

John Wells and Don Murphy are developing an adaptation of indie comic The Forgotten. It’s “about a man who, no matter what he does or whom he meets, is forgotten five minutes later.”

Nehst Studios has picked up Kevin Grevioux’s graphic novel The Pale Horsemen. Grevioux will write the script and make his directing debut with the adaptation of his “supernatural thriller that revolves around a gang of hitmen who are forced to work together to uncover who killed their mentor.”

Hugh Jackman will star in, and produce through Seed Productions, an adaptation of Doug TenNapel’s upcoming graphic novel Ghostopolis. “The story centers on a man who works for the government’s Supernatural Immigration Task Force. His job is to send ghosts who have escaped into our world back to Ghostopolis. When a living boy accidentally is sent to the other side, the agent must team with a female ghost (and former flame) to bring him back.”
Warner Brothers has the rights to adapt Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata’s Death Note manga. Vlas and Charles Parlapanides will adapt the supernatural suspense series about “a teenager [who] finds a notebook with which he can put people to death by writing their names. He begins a self-anointed crusade against the criminals of the world, and a cat-and-mouse game begins with the authorities and one idiosyncratic genius detective.” In the live action movie the main character would change to a college student.

JJ Abrams on Stephen King’s Dark Tower series: “Damon Lindelof and I talked to Mr. King. We got the rights for [Dark Tower] as a film. Damon is obviously still on Lost, and we’ve been working on Star Trek together. As soon as Lost is done, hopefully we’ll begin tackling that.”

Director Marcus Nispel is in talks for Phoenix Pictures’s The Last Voyage of Demeter. Written by Bragi Schut Jr., it’s “based on a chapter in Bram Stoker’s Dracula describing the arrival of the vampire count in England on a cargo ship that has crashed into the rocks at Whitby with no crew and the dead captain lashed to the wheel. Stoker tells the story via the captain’s log of the voyage, which begins in Bulgaria and becomes increasingly disjointed as members of the crew disappear.”

Director Roger Donaldson has signed on for Phoenix Pictures and Robert Chartoff’s adaptation of Seymour Reit’s The Day They Stole the Mona Lisa. “The book centers on the theft of the world’s most famous painting from the Louvre in 1911. It was missing for more than two years before an Italian carpenter named Vincent Perugia showed up with the painting in Florence. The film will center on the conman who masterminded the theft.”

Illumination Entertainment will make 3-D animated feature based on Ricky Gervais’ children’s series Flanimals. Gervais will voice the lead character, and Matt Selman will write the script.

Norwegian director Tommy Wirkola is developing Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, “exploring how things played out for the poor siblings 15 years after that whole gingerbread house incident.”