Random News of the Week (October 20 - October 26, 2008)

Crispin Glover has joined Tim Burton’s ALICE IN WONDERLAND. He will play “the knave of hearts.” In the book, this character is put on trial for stealing the queen’s tarts. Alice must defend him against the queen. Glover has experience with this kind of format from BEOWULF where he played Grendel. His character will be made up of motion capture and live action combined.

Marvel Studios is hinting that a DR STRANGE film is in the works. President Kevin Feige said, “I'd say in the next year, year and a half, as we start putting together our film slate for 2012 and 2013, I would not be shocked if we saw Dr. Strange on those lists. I love the idea of taping into the magical realm of the Marvel Universe, which is fairly significant and hasn't yet seen life on screen. It's something I'm very, very interested in.”

Word was out last week that Terence Howard was not going to be in IRON MAN 2. Now some completely bizarre news comes out. According to Howard, “It was the surprise of a lifetime. There was no explanation. Just...up and vanished. I read something in the trades implicating that it was about money or something. Apparently the contracts that we write and sign aren't worth the paper that they're printed on, sometimes. Promises aren't kept, and good faith negotiations aren't always held up. Even friendships, people you support.” Either this is some strange hardball negotiations or he completely got the shaft. If it did go down the way Howard says, I can’t believe Jon Favreau would be a part of this nonsense.

TERMINATOR 4 is now in editing/post production phase. In particular he mentioned, “There's one sequence in particular where we're trying to achieve something that's never been done before. I don't want to talk about it because we haven't been successful yet...But we're working on it. This film is so much more that just Los Angeles. It reflects the global crisis of man, all of man versus machine.”

A Direct-to-DVD remake of THE CHILDREN OF THE CORN is on its way courtesy of Dimension Films. It’s budget is in the $3 to $6 million range.

A remake of FOOTLOOSE is moving quickly. Zac Efron (HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL) is still set to play the lead. Kevin Bacon was asked this week and said, “I met Zac briefly at an event and we talked, only briefly, but he seemed like a really nice kid. I really do wish him all the best with it.”

Early reviews of QUANTUM OF SOLACE are saying it’s not as good as ROYALE but a good Bond film overall. I’ve been worried about this since I saw the first trailer.

Sam Jackson has mentioned this week that Favreau has told him that Nick Fury will have a much more prominent role in IRON MAN 2.

John Singleton has jumped ship on A-TEAM. He had been working on things for quite a while now and they were targeting a 2010 release. According to Singleton, Fox had rescheduled the release date so many times it was unclear if they even wanted it and they had just ordered more rewrites yet again on a script that was becoming swiss cheese so he’s out. Honestly, this is probably for the best. This project wasn’t exciting anyone.

Word came this week that Daniel Craig had been offered the lead as THOR. But he turned it down. That honestly didn’t seem like a good match anyway.