Movie News

General News:

Sucker Punch! Has been pushed from October 2010, to March 25, 2011.

Senator Distribution has pulled Jonathan Levine’s All the Boys Love Mandy Lane from its July 17th release date, and it’s release is officially “to be determined.”

Anchor Bay has acquired the domestic rights to Michael Meredith’s indie drama The Open Road. They have a late summer theatrical release planned.

Todd Lincoln will write and direct Dark Castle’s The Apparition. A haunted-house movie supposedly based on true events, the story is being kept under wraps.

Christopher Lee will join Hilary Swank and Jeffrey Dean Morgan in Hammer Films’ The Resident. “Swank will play a doctor who moves into a Brooklyn loft. Becoming suspicious that she’s not alone in her new home, she discovers her landlord is a stalker.” It’ll be directed by Antti Jokinen.

Antonio Banderas will star in Tony Krantz’s neo-noir The Big Bang. The detective story is about a “L.A. private detective who’s hired to find a missing stripper. The trail leads to the New Mexico desert, where the private eye finds a trail of bodies and contends with a brutal Russian boxer, three LAPD detectives and an aging billionaire looking to perfect the nuclear physics equivalent of the Big Bang.” Shooting starts September in Spokane, Washington.

Matthew Goode has joined Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s dramedy Cemetery Junction (former title The Men at the Pru). It “takes a period [1970s] look at a group of twentysomething men working at the Prudential insurance company and their relationships with each other as well as the women in their lives.” Also stars Christian Cooke, Tom Hughes, Jack Doolan, Ralph Fiennes, and Ricky Gervais.

Ken Watanabe and Tom Hardy have joined the cast of Christopher Nolan’s Inception.

James McAvoy, Elizabeth Banks, Laura Linney, and Anna Friel will star in Jacob Estes’ black comedy The Details. “Story concerns a couple, to be played by McAvoy and Banks, who discover an infestation of raccoons in their back yard. Disagreements over how to deal with the animals lead to an escalating series of events.” Films this summer.

Robert De Niro and Edward Norton will star in indie psychological thriller Stone. Directed by John Curran, it’s about “a correctional officer (De Niro) who is seduced by the wife of a convicted arsonist (Norton) up for parole.” Written by Angus MacLachlan.

Rachel Weisz will star in Larysa Kondracki’s feature directorial debut, indie political thriller The Whistleblower. Based on the story of Kathryn Bolkovac, It’s about “a female cop from Nebraska who serves as a peacekeeper in post-war Bosnia and exposes a United Nations cover-up of a sex trafficking scandal. Kondracki and Eilis Kirwan wrote the film, which will shoot in Budapest.”

Uppity Films and H20 Motion Pictures have secured the rights to, “negotiator between pirates and the owners of vessels hijacked off the coast of Africa,” Andrew Mwangura’s life story. Samuel L. Jackson plans to play the “journalist and ex-marine engineer who runs the Seafarers’ Assistance Programme, a nonprofit group that offers humanitarian aid to all seafarers.”

Prequels; Sequels & Remakes:

Happy Feet 2 in 3-D will come out November 18, 2011.

After the success of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Fox has green-lit the Deadpool movie. Called just Deadpool, Ryan Reynolds will reprise his role. “It is understood that Reynolds would regain the ability to mouth off, with the movie going back to the roots of the character known for his slapstick tone and propensity to break the fourth wall. The character also was disfigured in Wolverine, though it’s unclear at this time how much the studio would want to mess with Reynolds’ face.” Lauren Shuler Donner and Marvel Studios would act as producers.

Meanwhile, Hugh Jackman and his Seed Productions have begun planning a Wolverine sequel to X-Men Origins: Wolverine. “They are squarely focusing on the samurai storyline originated in the comic series, whose Japanese locale was teased after the film’s final credits.” No writer has been brought on yet.

Sin City 2 info from IGN: “’As for the story in the film, Rodriguez said that it will include the Sin City story ‘A Dame to Kill For’ as well as new additional material written by Miller himself.
“‘There’s a lot of stories,’ Rodriguez said. ‘That was sort of the approach I took to it. That’s why there’s three stories in the [first] movie, because I thought, ‘I love this material, but gosh, what happens if it’s not successful and I don’t get to make a part two and part three. I still want to see ‘The Big Fat Kill’ and ‘That Yellow Bastard.’ So I wanted to put them all in one movie so I could at least get some of these stories out of my system. But there’s still so many books and so many stories to do.’”

Halloween 2’s official synopsis: “It’s that time of year again, and Michael Myers has returned home to sleepy Haddonfield, Illinois to take care of some unfinished family business. Unleashing a trail of terror that only horror master Rob Zombie can, Myers will stop at nothing to bring closure to the secrets of his twisted past. But the town’s got an unlikely new hero, if they can only stay alive long enough to stop the unstoppable.”

Due to “timing issues” Brett Ratner has left the Conan movie. Conan and Red Sonja producer Joe Gatta says, “We have a potential start-date on Conan of August 24. And we’ll be shooting in Bulgaria. I would say though the emphasis is on Conan [rather than Red Sonja]. It’s our crown jewel here at the company and that will be the leader. Red Sonja probably won’t happen until next year, as far as making it goes. So we want to launch Conan and reinvent the franchise.” … “We’re currently in the process of hiring a director.”

Twisted Pictures will remake Troma Films’ 1980 cult horror Mother’s Day. “Story follows a family of villains, led by a sadistic mother, who return to their former home and terrorize the new owners and their guests.” Darren Lynn Bousman will direct. They’re hoping to film this summer and release Mother’s Day 2010.

Simon West will direct the “update” of Charles Bronsan starrer The Mechanic. The 1972 original is about a “hitman who finds himself training the son of one of his victims.” While Sylvestor Stallone was at one point interested in it, Jason Statham will star instead. Films this summer in Louisiana.

The storyline for the Karate Kid remake.

Adaptations:

Green Lantern has been pushed from December 17, 2010, to June 17, 2011.

President of Production at Marvel Studios Kevin Feige updates Thor and The Avengers.

CBS Films has the rights to Johanna Stokes’ comic book Station. Published by Boom Studios!, who’ll also produce, the miniseries is about “five nations [who] have sent their finest astronauts to operate Earth’s first multinational space station. But when one turns up dead, the remaining personnel race against time to discover whether it was sabotage, an accident or murder.”

Jeffrey Nachmanoff will direct Warner Brothers’ adaptation of B. Clay Moore and Eric Kim’s upcoming comic book series Billy Smoke. “The story centers on an elite hit man who is nearly killed during a botched job. He realizes that his only way to find redemption is to rid the world of all assassins.” Matthew Fox will star.

Universal is developing a modern retelling of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Keanu Reeves is attached to star and Justin Haythe will write the script. Plot details are slim. Nicolas Winding Refn is in negotiations to direct.

Ray Stevenson, Christopher Walken, and Val Kilmer will star in Code Entertainment’s mob drama The Irishman. Jonathan Hensleigh will direct from his screenplay inspired by Rick Porrello’s book To Kill the Irishman: The War That Crippled the Mafia. “Project is based on the life of mobster Danny Greene (Stevenson), who lorded over Cleveland’s criminal underworld during the late 1970s. Walken is onboard to play infamous loan-sharking nightclub owner Shondor Birns, and Kilmer will portray a Cleveland cop who befriends Greene.” Filming starts May 19 in Detroit.

Rosario Dawson and Steve Coogan have joined the cast of the Percy Jackson movie.

Director Yasuomi Umetsu is working on the animated adaptation of Electronic Arts’ upcoming videogame Dante’s Inferno. “According to Umetsu, the American side of the production asked that the project not have a uniform overall style; instead the Americans requested that each company contribute in its own unique individual style to its portion of the anthology. Each company is responsible for about ten minutes of the final work.” Umetsu will personally direct one of these portions with Tsukasa Kotobuki doing character designs for him. It will “loosely follow Dante’s classic Divine Comedy poem as the fictional Dante descends through the nine circles of Hell in search of a woman named Beatrice.”

Chris Morgan, writer of the Gears of War movie, says that a first draft is done. “I think the gamer side is going to be thrilled with it. All the stuff you want to see, we put that in there and then we blow it out a little more, even. Now it’s just a matter of honing in on all of the character arcs and determining production types of things.” Len Wiseman is directing.

Vin Diesel will star in, and John Singleton will direct, Paramount’s Wheelman movie. Rich Wilkes adapted, with a rewrite by Oliver Butcher and Stephen Cornwell, the Ubisoft videogame, which also starred Diesel, about “an expert driver who comes out of retirement to protect a woman from his past.”

Universal is developing Andy and Barbara Muschietti’s debut feature Mama. The horror movie is based on their Spanish short film about “two girls, Victoria and Lily, who are on the run from a ghostly woman who appears to be their mother in a Gothic home.” Guillermo del Toro is in talks to produce and “mentor.”

Troy Nixey will make his directing debut with Miramax’s thriller Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark. Written by Guillermo del Toro and Matthew Robbins, it’s based on the “1973 ABC telepic about a young girl who moves in with her father and his girlfriend and discovers they are sharing the house with devilish creatures.”