Vampire problem could pose threat to Johnny Depp and Tom Hanks team-up
Melissa Mercer at Examiner
All it takes is a quick peek at Johnny Depp’s IMDb page to realize his demand among directors, and now Deadline is reporting that Academy Award winner Kathryn Bigelow has her sights set on the actor for her next project, Triple Frontier.
Though Depp is purportedly attracted to the role, and the prospect of working alongside Tom Hanks, also in talks to star, filming presents a scheduling conflict. At the time that Frontier is set to begin shooting in February, so too is Depp’s next Tim Burton project, a big screen adaptation of the late 1960s vampire soap Dark Shadows. Because he is producing, as well as starring, the pic takes precedence over the lure of Hanks and Bigelow, but everything is being done to accommodate Depp and allow him to take on both.
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Spielberg salvaging Halo movie?
By Tor Thorsen at Game Spot
What we heard: From 2005 to 2006, the film adaptation of Microsoft’s sci-fi shooter franchise Halo was the talk of Hollywood. Alas, in October 2006, the two studios behind the project–20th Century Fox and Universal–backed out, leaving it to languish in development limbo ever since.
Now, according to Vulture, the Halo movie may be back on. Citing unnamed sources, the show business blog says that Dreamworks and its head, director Steven Spielberg, are now actively seeking the big-screen rights for Halo. The apparent impetus for the push? The small matter of Halo: Reach grossing $200 million in 24 hours just last month.
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DC disses Marvel to explain why there’ll never be a JLA movie
By Scott Edelman at Blastr
Marvel’s movies have been telling one long interlocking story, what with Iron Man and Captain America feeding into The Avengers, while DC’s movies … haven’t. You might think this has been an entirely economic decision. Not so, said DC’s chief creative officer today.
Geoff Johns, speaking at New York Comic-Con, explained there were no plans for a Justice League of America movie that would team up its big guns a la Marvel’s Avengers flick. But he didn’t let it go at that, making sure to get a dig in at his competition while clarifying why they weren’t going the shared-universe route like Marvel.
“I’m going to speak frankly: I think our characters are bigger than Marvel’s,” said Johns, adding that the company had chosen to spend its time building each character rather than “smashing them together.”
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David O Russell Tapped To Direct Vidgame ‘Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune’
by Mike Fleming at Deadline
David O Russell has signed on with Sony Pictures Entertainment to rewrite and direct a movie based on the PlayStation 3 game Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. Russell, who last directed Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale in The Fighter, takes on a vidgame that follows treasure hunter Nathan Drake. Tom Donnelly and Josh Oppenheimer wrote the first draft.Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer wrote the first draft of the screenplay for this project.
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Additionally, Nathan Fillion has expressed interest in the role (the link pictured goes to the article featured above):
In “Jim,” one man’s middle-class misery catalyzes the clone apocalypse
By Cyriaque Lamar at io9
The indie flick Jim pinballs between two unlikely, intertwined storylines: a depressed man in the present contemplates suicide, and a clone child gains sentience in a far-off dystopian future. While this dual plot is promising, it ultimately doesn’t coalesce.
This review contains some spoilers.
This isn’t to say that director/writer Jeremy Morris-Burke’s Jim isn’t intriguing — the film’s early moments are some savvy high concept science fiction. Jim (Dan Illian) is an unemployed widower whose home is in foreclosure. He’s saddled with his deceased wife’s medical bills, burdened with an outmoded resume, and contemplating suicide. His life is joyless, and his life is further complicated by visions of a strange boy who haunts his dreams.
This child is Clone 3774 (Abigail Savage), a worker clone child from an apocalyptic Earth. The clones toil away for Niskaa (Michael Strelow), a genetically modified overlord who is attempting to rebuild civilization after “pure” humans abandon Earth for Mars.
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I have to wonder about what Geoff Johns said about DC characters. If they’re so big, then why is there even a Justice League? I imagine that the real reason is that Marvel got their collaborative movies off the ground first, and DC didn’t want to look as though they were copying them. I would absolutely go see a Halo movie directed by Spielberg. That would have to be better than Doom, right? I think an Uncharted movie might look a bit like an Indiana Jones rip-off, but I did enjoy the games. And Nathan Fillion would be really good in it, his personality is perfect (although the character looks exactly like Ben Browder from Stargate and Farscape).
Are you excited to see Johnny Depp in a vampire movie? What do you think of Spielberg directing Halo? Do you want to see a Justice League movie?
