Random News of the Week (September 15 - September 21, 2008)

More news is out on the proposed remake of John Carpenter’s THE THING which was a remake itself. There seems to be no good reason to even touch this masterpiece (my personal favorite for best Sci-Fi horror of all time). Marc Abraham talked about his plans for the remake which is actually sounding more like a prequel now and actually quite promising. “This is more of a prequel than a sequel, there is your exclusive. It’s going to be taking place in the same time frame. These are the events leading up to the 1982 film.” So we may actually get to see what happened to the Norwegians or “crazy Swedes” as MacReady called them.

Darren Aronofsky talked a little more about his attempt at telling the story of Noah’s Ark. The co-writer of THE FOUNTAIN has been working on the script with Aronofsky. “We have an amazing screenplay. It's a great script and it's HUGE. And we're starting to feel out talent. And then we'll probably try and set it up. It deals with "the end of the world and it's the second most famous ship after the Titanic. So I'm not sure why any studio won't want to make it. I think it's really timely because it's about environmental apocalypse which is the biggest theme, for me, right now for what's going on on this planet. So I think it's got these big, big themes that connect with us. Noah was the first environmentalist. He's a really interesting character. Hopefully they'll let me make it.”

Word is out that Brett Ratner may be the director for the new CONAN movie.

Great news on the new SHERLOCK HOLMES project from Warner. First, we found out the brilliant casting of Robert Downey Jr. as Sherlock. Then we found out that Guy Ritchie will be directing (Jury is still out on that one). Now we find another great move. Jude Law will be playing Watson.

Supposedly Rob Cohen is going to direct a sequel to XXX and Vin Diesel is going to be back as the main character again. It seems they are doing their best to forget the whole Ice Cube debacle and act like it never happened.

A little more information is out on Y THE LAST MAN. The screenplay is now complete. He is just waiting for Warner’s approval. Shia LeBeouf is still the first choice to play the main character Yorick. There was a rumor that Alicia Keys was up to play 355. Here’s what director DJ Caruso had to say, “Yeah, you know, that ... came up a lot in the last couple of weeks, and it's very interesting. I mean, I have not met her, but I mean she might be an interesting 355. I thought she did a cool job in the Joe Carnahan movie.”

Ed Norton talked about his future with the HULK series. “The minds of Marvel are sometimes opaque. I won't say obtuse, but I don't have any idea what they want to do. They've got this notion of collecting the Marvel characters. Who knows where they'll go.”

Word is that Toby McGuire took a HUGE pay day this week to do SPIDER-MAN 4 & 5 back to back. Supposedly, he was offered over $50 million to come back as Peter Parker again.

Stephen Chow is not only expected to play Kato in the GREEN HORNET film but it looks like he may also be directing the film.