The Random – Ant-Man, DiCaprio maybe Hoover and Travis McGee, Joss Whedon on The Avengers, Harold & Kumar 3, Soderbergh’s Contagion

It is April 1st so it may be possible one or two of these tales have fooled me.

– Edgar Wright and Pixar may be teaming up to bring Marvel’s miniscule Avenger, Ant-Man, to the big screen according to JoBlo.

– Leonardo DiCaprio may play J Edgar Hoover in Spielberg’s biopic of the FBI chief. The actor is also in talks to play Travis McGee, the detective beach bum, in an adaption of John D MacDonalds book, The Deep Blue GoodBye. Oliver Stone is down to direct.

– Joss Whedon (Buffy, Dollhouse, Firefly) may be on the shortlist to direct The Avengers movie. Shiny! That would be very cool. First Showing have more.

– Kal Penn may be back for the third Harold and Kumar film – A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas. Apparently his job at the White House is almost at an end.

– The Playlist have had a look at the script for Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion.- – ”…if you took the breadth and scope of “Traffic” or “Syriana,” tidied up the writing, and found a subject matter that terrified you relentlessly for two hours, you’d have something close to Contagion…clearly done an enormous amount of research, and it’s thoroughly, horrifyingly conceivable throughout, but it’s also as much about the way that information can spread virally in the Web 2.0 age, as it is about the spread of the virus. Burns ties these dual themes together in the final pages, the two dovetailing in a hugely satisfying way.”

The Random – Wolverine 2, Marco Polo, Green Lantern, The Shadow, The Smurfs, De Niro in Dark Fields, Jackman in Selma, Rachel McAdams gets a Woody, Splice

– Screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie (X-Men, The Usual Suspects) has finished his draft of the Wolverine sequel, which he began writing in August. Shooting is currently expected to commence in January of 2011. It is going to be set in Japan and no word yet on who will direct although Hugh Jackman will be back as Logan. I just hope the claws are better than the first film.

– Francis Lawrence (“I Am Legend,” “Constantine) will direct a feature about Marco Polo for Warner Bros. Pictures reports Variety – More fantasy/adventure epic than serious biopic drama, the film will be most set in “the Orient of our imagination”

– Test shooting on the Green Lantern has started shooting in New Orleans. Apparantly it involves a stunt car.

– David Slade (30 Days of Night) could direct the Sam Raimi produced film adaptation of classic pulp character The Shadow at 20th Century Fox reports Latino Review.

– Dr Horrible himself, Neil Patrick Harris, is to be the live action star in The Smurfs movie. I feel slightly more interested in the project…but only a little.

– Robert De Niro joins Bradley Cooper in The Dark Fields. The film is about ‘a down-and-out Gotham writer (Cooper) who comes into possession of a designer drug that gives him newfound intelligence and success‘. According to Variety, De Niro will be playing the role of the brilliant financial mogul that’s chasing after Bradley Cooper’s character. The film will begin shooting in May in Philadelphia.

– Hugh Jackman will be starring in Selma to be directed by Lee Daniels (Precious). Deadline previously reported that Robert De Niro was on board to play Alabama Governor George Wallace in the film, which is about the historic march from Selma to the state capital in Montgomery.

– Rachel McAdams has signed on to co-star in Woody Allen’s next project. Production of the still untitled film is to begin this summer, likely with a 2011 release date in mind. Owen Wilson and Carla Bruni-Sarkozy are also starring in it.

– Vincenzo Natali’s Sci-fi creature feature, Splice, is to be released on 4th June. Looks like the studio are pushing this to be a big Summer film.

The Random – Soderbergh’s Contagion, Things Fall Apart, Red Riding Hood, Scream 4, Green Lantern, Hit Somebody

Kate Winslet, Matt Damon, Marion Cotillard, Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow are all already attached to star and now Laurence Fishburne is in talks to join Steven Soderbergh’s viral outbreak film, Contagion, according to The Playlist.

Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson is set to star in and produce Things Fall Apart for Cheetah Vision Films says Dark Horizons. The story follows a football running back in his final year of college who suffers a personal tragedy that makes him question his own mortality.

Amanda Seyfried (Chloe, Mamma Mia, Dear John) is the favourite to play the titular character in Catherine Hardwicke’s contempory gothic Girl With the Red Riding Hood says The Los Angeles Times. The studio hopes it will be a success along the lines of Twilight.

Wes Craven has finished My Soul To Take and has confirmed he will be directing Scream 4.

Comic book writer Geoff Johns confirmed Mark Strong is Sinestro in the Green Lantern film over on Twitter – “Back from an amazing trip to Green Lantern town a.k.a. New Orleans!! Ryan IS Hal. And Mark Strong is going to be a brilliant Sinestro. “

Seann William Scott (American Pie, Cop Out, Southland Tales) is tipped to play the lead role in Kevin Smith’s new comedy Hit Somebody reports NHL.com. He would play Buddy, a rough hockey enforcer prone to fighting who tries to improve his playing skills so that he can score just one goal. Smith seems to really rate him in the interview.

The Random – Laverne & Shirley, Bubo in Clash of the Titans, Salvation Boulevard, Vacation, Unknown White Male, Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Earthbound, Vamps, Transformers 3

Valentine’s Day director Garry Marshall created the classic Happy Days spin off sitcom Laverne & Shirley, which starred Cindy Williams and Garry’s sister Penny Marshall as Milwaukee brewery workers.  Extra talked to Marshall who claimed that a film adaptation may be in the works with Jessica Biel and Jennifer Garner as the duo.

Variety are saying that Pierce Brosnan, Ed Harris, and Jim Gaffigan will star in indie feature Salvation Boulevard. The comedic thriller is set in the world of mega-churches in which a former Deadhead-turned-born again-Christian finds himself on the run from fundamentalist members of his mega-church who will do anything to protect their larger-than-life pastor.

New Line has hired screenwriters Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley (Sam Weir from Freaks and Geeks!) to write the new Vacation film according to Variety.  The story will focus on Rusty Griswold, now a grown man, who decides to take his own wife and kids on a road trip to Wally World before it closes forever. Chase is expected to reprise his role as Clark Griswold, now a grandfather. It will be closer in tone to Planes, Trains and Automobiles than the previous chapters.

Filming has begun on Jaume Collet-Serra’s (Orphan) next project Unknown White Male in Germany.  The film stars Liam Neeson (Schindler’s List, Clash of the Titans), Diane Kruger (Inglorious Basterds), January Jones (Mad Men), Aidan Quinn (The Book of Daniel), Bruno Ganz (The Reader, Downfall) and Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon) –  Liam Neeson stars as Dr. Martin Harris, who awakens after a car accident in Berlin to discover that his wife (January Jones) suddenly doesn’t recognize him and another man (Aidan Quinn) has assumed his identity. Ignored by disbelieving authorities and hunted by mysterious assassins, he finds himself alone, tired, and on the run. Aided by an unlikely ally (Diane Kruger), Martin plunges headlong into a deadly mystery that will force him to question his sanity, his identity, and just how far he’s willing to go to uncover the truth.

According to Variety screenwriters Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten “Kiwi” Smith are to write a remake of the 1982 musical The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.  The 1982 version (based off the 1978 Broadway play of the same name) starred Burt Reynolds and Dolly Parton as a town sheriff and madame who team up to stop a crusading TV personality from shutting down the local whorehouse. 

THR is reporting that Richard Matheson’s 1982 novel Earthbound is heading to movieland. This will join adaptions of his other books I Am Legend, The Shrinking Man and What Dreams May Come. Earthbound is described as an “erotic ghost story” about a married man who starts an affair with a young stranger, only to realize that she may actually be the ghost of a long-dead woman driven by something more than earthly passion.

Screen Daily have the news that Alicia Silverstone will reunite with Clueless director Amy Heckerling in a film called Vamps – “ a modern-day tale of two young female vampires living the good life in New York until love enters the picture and each has to make a choice that will jeopardize their immortality.” Krysten Ritter (Confessions of a Shopaholic, Veronica Mars, Breaking Bad) will be the other Vamp alongside Silverstone.

Tyrese Gibson has confirmed that he will be back as Sgt. Epps in Michael Bay’s Transformers 3. In a post on Twitter, he confirmed by saying that “Yes I will for sure be in Transformers 3.. Get Ready!! Epps is here to STAY!!”.

Bubo the mechanical Owl has a cameo in Louis Leterrier’s remake of Clash of the Titans. Film School Rejects had the news, but it is not clear whether his scenes will make it into the final cut.

The Random – Ghostbusters 3, Daredevil reboot, 24 film, Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion, Terminator rights sold, Hanna, 127 Hours, Jane Eyre, The Fields, Thomas Crown Affair 2

– Bill Murray has sort of confirmed the rumour started by Sigourney Weaver a while back, “I’ll come back in Ghostbusters III only if I get to be a ghost,” said Murray in a new interview “I said to them, ‘I’ll do it if you kill me off in the first reel.’ So now they are going to have me as a ghost in the film.” I just think he is taking the piss.

– Marvel’s Daredevil will get another chance on the big screen as David Scarpa, the man who wrote the recent remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still is writing a new DD script….doesn’t fill me with much hope that the character will get the treatment he deserves. The main reason for the reboot is that Fox’s rights to the character would revert back to Marvel if they didn’t make it.Will Jason Statham be Matt Murdock?

– Jack Bauer may be heading to the big screen for a 24 film. Still early days, but Kiefer Sutherland is up for it and Billy Ray (Shattered Glass, Breach) has pitched the studios about it. Would be set in Europe, but I have to say what’s the point of taking a series that is set over a day and condensing it into a 2 hour action film?

– Steven Soderbergh has another film in the works called Contagion. According to The Playlist, Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard and Jude Law have all started negotiations to star in the film, which is written by The Informant! screenwriter Scott Z Burns. It’ll follow multiple plotlines across four continents as a virus begins to spread, and terrifying events follow.

– Sony Pictures and Lionsgate bid on the rights for the Terminator franchise. However, according to Deadline, Halcyon Holding Corp accepted the $29.5 million bid from the debtholder which pushed it into bankruptcy, Santa Barbara-based hedge fund Pacificor. (This is the same Pacificor whom Halcyon accused in a lawsuit of extortion, bribery, and fraud and demanded $30M in damages.)

– Cate Blanchett will join Saoirse Ronan and Eric Bana in Hanna. The Joe Wright-directed Focus Features drama that casts Ronan as a 14-year old assassin.

– Amber Tamblyn will play the female lead opposite James Franco in 127 Hours. The Danny Boyle film about Aron Ralston, the mountain climber who cut off his arm with a dull knife to save his life after being unable to free the limb from under a boulder. Tamblyn will play his girlfriend, with their relationship played out in flashbacks that keep him going.

– Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland) has landed the title role of Jane Eyre, the Cary Fukunaga (sin Nombre) directed adaptation of the Charlotte Bronte novel.

– Sam Worthington (Avatar, Clash of the Titans) has signed on to star in Ami Canaan Mann’s very dark thriller The Fields reports Production Weekly. Based on a true story, Worthington would play a homicide detective from Texas investigating a strong of unsolved murders amidst the oil refineries in the state’s south-east with the help of a peer from New York.

– On the progress of the Thomas Crown Affair sequel, actor Pierce Brosnan said this week that “We’ve got the fourth script in and this is the closest we’ve gotten in structure to making sense. It’s very very hard. Now we have the character, it’s not really fleshed out, so we have to work on him, Mr. Crown, and her, Miss Moore, another affair, more art, but it has to be an unexpected surprise”

The Random – Patrick Stewart in Mad Max 4, Zac Efron as Spider-Man, Spock as Gershwin, Bourne with no Damon, Kathryn Bigelow wins best Director at DGA Awards, Being Human gets a third series

– Patrick Stewart has mentioned he is working with director George Miller on a film and it isn’t Happy Feet 2. Still very much a rumour via AICN, but it would be very cool to see Stewart in the post-apocalyptic world of Mad Max. I’m hoping he plays a bad guy.

– An even bigger rumour (an probably totally made up as it comes from the UK magazine OK) is that Zac Efron could be the new Peter Parker in Spider-Man 4. The article says that Tobey Maguire has picked Zac and that his High School Musical co-star Vanessa Hudgens could be Mary Jane. Zac is closer in age to the Peter Parker back at high school tale they want to tell. Do you think it could be true? Go and vote on who you want to be the new Spidey.

– Zachary Quinto (Star Trek, Heroes) could be down to play George Gershwin and Spielberg may be directing.

– After basically wrapping up the Bourne franchise in Bourne Ultimatum it looks as if the studio want to continue the franchise, but so far they have no tale to tell. Empire have word from Matt Damon that the next Bourne could be a prequel and feature a different actor playing the younger version of Bourne. “There’ll probably be a prequel of some kind with another actor and another director before we do another one,” he said, “just because I think we’re probably another five years away from doing it – we’ve got to get a script…”

– The Hurt Locker’s Kathryn Bigelow is the first woman to win the Directors Guild of America award for Outstanding Directorial Effort In Feature Film this weekend, calling it “the most incredible moment of my life.” Does this mean she’ll win the Oscar or will James Cameron get it for Avatar?

– The excellent Being Human (the show about a Vampire, Werewolf and Ghost living together) is currently showing its second series. Word from the BBC is that a third series has already been given the go ahead and the main cast are still in place. Fantastic news. Go watch the new series now.

The Random – Robert Pattinson & Sean Penn, Promised Land, The Graveyard Book, Martin Scorsese to direct Hugo Cabret, Burke and Hare

– Sean Penn and Robert Pattinson are considering joining Water for Elephants at Fox 2000 reports Variety. Based on the best-selling historical novel by Sara Gruen, the story centers on a 90-year-old man (Pattinson) reminiscing about his life and is set during the Depression. At the time the man found work at a B-level circus taking care of the animals. He sees the brutality of circus life while falling for the wife of an abusive animal trainer (Penn). Reese Witherspoon is already attached to play the wife.

– Michael Winterbottom (“Nine Songs”) is next set to direct the $5 million indie Promised Land for Revolution Studios reports Variety. The story deals with the events that lead up to the 1948 partition of Palestine and the subsequent creation of the state of Israel. Jim Sturgess (“Across the Universe,” “21”) will star as a British officer hunting down the extremist Jewish factions.

– Neil Gaiman says the film adaptation of his The Graveyard Book is still on the cards. Speaking to The Los Angeles Times Gaiman said “It was all put together over at Miramax Films. The people there had a long, great relationship with Neil Jordan and it was all set up and ready to go, and then Miramax was more or less erased from existence. It became a filing cabinet in somebody’s desk, more or less… But it looks like almost all the pieces are on the table again. They have a studio, they have a distributor and they are putting stuff together and I’m not allowed to say anything else.”

– Martin Scorsese is in talks to direct a live-action adaptation of Brian Selznick’s children’s book The Invention of Hugo Cabret reports Variety. The 2008 novel centers on an orphaned boy who secretly lives in the walls of a busy Paris train station and looks after the clocks. He gets caught up in a mystery adventure when he attempts to repair a mechanical man.

– Isla Fisher (“Wedding Crashers,” “Confessions of a Shopaholic”) and Tom Wilkinson (“Michael Clayton,” “Duplicity”) have joined the horror comedy Burke and Hare says Heat Vision Blog.
The film is based on the true story a pair of the U.K.’s earliest serial killers, William Burke (Simon Pegg) and William Hare (Andy Serkis), gravediggers who lucratively sold the corpses of their victims to a medical college for dissection. Fisher will play Pegg’s girlfriend, an actress looking for a patron who might or might not be an accomplice to the murders. Wilkinson will play Dr. Robert Knox, an anatomy lecturer looking for fresh corpses. John Landis directs.

– John and Drew Dowdle (“Quarantine”) are set to direct an adaptation of Jack Kilborn’s gory novel Afraid reports Production Weekly. Larry Malkin and Chad Thumann will adapt the script about five government-sponsored lethal torturers wrongly sent on a mission to a small, sleepy Wisconsin town. The military sends in a bunch of Green Berets, Special Forces, SEALs and marines to take down this killing force. However it’s the townsfolk who band together to save their home that will make the critical difference.

Source: Dark Horizons

The Random – Kick-Ass, The Ghost Writer, Cowboys & Aliens, Thor, The Hobbit, G.I. Joe, Clash of the Titans, Tree of Life, Despicable Me, The Expendables, Faster

The South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Conference and Festival has announced it will host the world premiere of Lionsgate and Marv Films’ “Kick-Ass” for its 2010 Opening Night on March 12th in Austin, Texas.

Polanski’s The Ghost Writer to be released in February according to Variety.

Jon Favreau’s 3D comic adaptation “Cowboys & Aliens” at DreamWorks is apparently slated to start shooting in July –More

Shooting is scheduled to begin today on Marvel Studios’ “Thor” at Raleigh Studios in Manhattan Beach. ‘Babel’ and Drag Me to Hell actress Adriana Barraza may be joining the cast.

The two Guillermo del Toro-directed Hobbit films will begin filming this June for a 14-month shoot in New Zealand.

Zombieland writers may have been hired by Paramount Pictures to begin work on the script for the sequel to “G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra”

Rock band Muse is tipped to be doing the film score for the upcoming Clash of the Titans remake – More

Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” could be heading for a Cannes Film Festival premiere and a Fall release – More

Three-time Grammy Award winner Pharrell Williams will write original music for Universal Pictures’ upcoming 3-D CGI feature “Despicable Me“. This marks the first time The Neptunes and N.E.R.D. artist will compose music for a film. Oscar winner Hans Zimmer and Heitor Pereira are also composing the score.

Sylvester Stallone broke his neck while filming The Expendables.

Maggie Grace (Lost, Taken) joins Dwayne Johnson and Billy Bob Thornton in Faster – More

The Random – The Wolfman, Cameron’s Doomsday Protocol, A Couple of Dicks renamed, Gears of War, Resident Evil: Afterlife, Priest, Butcher’s Crossing, The Social Network, A Nightmare on Elm Street

– The Wolfman starring Benicio Del Toro has finally gone before the MPAA. It got an ‘R’ rating for “bloody horror, violence and gore”

– James Cameron is rumoured to be developing the Shane Salerno-scripted sci-fi action vehicle Doomsday Protocol for Fox. The ‘event’ film set in the future deals with a group of aliens and humans with various abilities who are brought together to save Earth according to Production Weekly

– Kevin Smith’s buddy cop comedy A Couple of Dicks has a new title that will be announced soon. The first trailer for the film will be attached to every copy of “Sherlock Holmes” when it hits theatres Christmas Day. Unlike his other work, Smith days the film is “not MY movie, [its] a movie I was hired to direct.”

– The 3D sequel Resident Evil: Afterlife has been pushed back several months from August 2010 to a January 14th 2011 release.

– Scott Stewart’s Vampire Western, Priest, starring Paul Bettany has been moved up two months from October to August 27th.

– Producer Wyck Godfrey (“The Twilight Saga”) talks about adapting hit XBox 360 game Gears of War to the big screen and says the film will be “Cloverfield”-esque where we start with the planet pre-Emergence Day and follow the action as the peace is shattered by the Locusts. Makingof have more.

– Joe Penhall (“The Road,” “Enduring Love”) is set to pen an adaptation of John Williams’ 1960 Western novel Butcher’s Crossing for Focus Features says The Hollywood Reporter. Set during the 1870s, the adventure story centers on a man who drops out of Harvard and heads west to the small Kansas town of the title. There, he joins the search for a great buffalo herd. Sam Mendes is considering directing the film.

– Rashida Jones (“Parks and Recreation,” “I Love You, Man”) has joined the cast of David Fincher’s The Social Network for Sony Pictures reports Variety. Jesse Eisenberg, Justin Timberlake, Andrew Garfield and Joe Mazzello star in the film which revolves around the founders of the social-networking website Facebook.

– Spoiler TV reports that several roles are out to cast for reshoots on Platinum Dunes’ remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street. All the scenes seem to be for a diner scene where the lead character Nancy works and only consist of a few lines at most.

– Jonah Hex is getting another two weeks of reshoots according to Collider. They are currently casting for the new scenes that seem to deal with Jonah’s past.

Source: Dark Horizons

The Random – Avatar, 20000 Leagues Under the Sea, Cedar Rapids, The Conspirator, Hack/Slash, The Hobbit, Hanna, The King’s Speech

– X-Factor Winner & Multiple Grammy® Award-nominated singer Leona Lewis is set to sing title song, ‘I See You’, for James Cameron’s upcoming sci-fi epic Avatar. The song will be included on the official soundtrack featuring James Horner’s score. The soundtrack gets a release on December 15th and can be pre-ordered at Avatar Score.

– Captain Nemo: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Disney’s latest adaptation of the Jules Verne classic, has been cancelled reports Variety. The project, which aimed to begin shooting in February, has been indefinitely postponed and director McG has withdrawn from the project. No cast was ever set despite rumors of Will Smith’s involvement, but the change of the studio’s chairman from Dick Cook to Rich Ross has de-prioritised this and quite likely several other properties in development as so many Hollywood regime changes do.

– Stephen Root (“No Country for Old Men,” “True Blood,” “The West Wing”) has joined the cast of “Cedar Rapids” and “The Conspirator” says The Hollywood Reporter. In Fox Searchlight’s ensemble comedy “Rapids,” Root plays the proud owner of an insurance company and boss of the film’s lead Ed Helms. Anne Heche and John C. Reilly also star. Miguel Arteta directs. In “The Conspirator”, Root plays a principal witness for the prosecution in the trail of a Confederate sympathizer who is tried as a conspirator in the Lincoln assassination. James McAvoy and Robin Wright star in the Robert Redford-directed drama.

– Stephen Susco (“The Grudge”) has signed on to pen the film adaptation of comic adaptation Hack/Slash . The story chronicles the adventures of Hack, a young woman who travels to small towns across the country hunting slashers. Susco will pen a new draft. Justin Marks, Todd Lincoln, Ben Magid and Martin Schenk penned previous drafts.

– Brian Cox is said to be a big contender to play a dwarf in Guillermo del Toro’s upcoming film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” says AICN.

– Joe Wright (“Atonement,” “Pride and Prejudice”) is in talks to direct the action adventure thriller Hanna for Focus Features reports Heat Vision. Seth Lochhead and David Farr’s script centers on a 14-year-old Eastern European girl who has been raised by her father to be a cold-blooded killing machine. She connects with a French family, forms a friendship with their daughter and goes through the pangs of adolescence. When the girl is dragged back to her father’s world and discovers that she was bred as a killing machine in a CIA prison camp, she must fight her way to a free life.

– Helena Bonham Carter, Jennifer Ehle, Derek Jacobi, Timothy Spall and Michael Gambon – and Australian star Guy Pearce have all joined The King’s Speech for The Weinstein Company. The story follows the man who would become King George VI, the father of the current Queen, Elizabeth II. After his brother abdicates, George ‘Bertie’ VI (Colin Firth) reluctantly assumes the throne. Plagued by a dreaded nervous stammer and considered unfit to be King, Bertie engages the help of an unorthodox speech therapist named Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush). Through a set of unexpected techniques, and as a result of an unlikely friendship, Bertie is able to find his voice and boldly lead the country into war.

Source: Dark Horizons & MovieWeb