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

A little more info is out on the FORBIDDEN PLANET remake and its really cool news. It turns out that James Cameron is circling and is in negotiations to make FORBIDDEN PLANET his next film after AVATAR. AICN joked that, if true, this would mean the film would take 10 to 12 years to develop.

Baz Luhrmann’s (MOULIN ROUGE) AUSTRALIA has been somewhat of a disaster at the box office but most of his films do “slow burn” business so it could hang on, especially internationally, for a while still. It looks like his next film will be an adaptation of THE GREAT GATSBY titled simply “GATSBY”. He said "If you wanted to show a mirror to people that says, 'You've been drunk on money,' they're not going to want to see it. But if you reflected that mirror on another time they'd be willing to." He added, "People will need an explanation of where we are and where we've been, and 'The Great Gatsby' can provide that explanation."

THE PHANTOM is getting a reboot a la DARK KNIGHT. This will not be a sequel to Simon Wincer’s 1996 film. Tim Boyle said, “Like Batman Begins, where he takes a high tech spelunking suit and turns it into the basis of his costume - we're looking at making it a real world costume. Think of what Bryan Singer did with the blue and yellow Wolverine costume - that's what we have to do. Make it accessible to the public without annoying the fans too much."

Out doing press for his epic CHE film, Soderbergh was asked about a possible 4th OCEAN’S film. "With Bernie Mac being gone, I don’t think any of us would want to return to that...I was done anyway. It’s sad because that was a fun group of people to hang out with."

Alan Rickman talked a bit about Tim Burton’s upcoming ALICE IN WONDERLAND film. He said, "The movie is a mixture of live action, animation, and stop motion, so it’s very complicated and I don’t think all three have been put together ever before. So I’ll be with a live action Alice. I will be a construct. I’ve only done the first stage of it, which is them recording me saying these lines quite badly. Then, somewhere down the line, they’ll have animated it and I’ll redo it."

Stephen Chow has backed out as director of the upcoming GREEN HORNET film although he is still set to play Kato. The move was done due to “creative differences”.

THE CROW remake is on its way. We’ve officially moved into the 1990’s remakes. Pretty soon, we’ll be remaking films from last year. Stephen Norrington (BLADE, L.O.E.G) is set to direct. He says “Whereas Proyas’ original was gloriously gothic and stylized, the new movie will be realistic, hard-edged and mysterious, almost documentary-style.”

It looks like Frank Miller’s next film after THE SPIRIT will be a re-imagining of BUCK ROGERS. Hollywood Reporter claims, “while the creator has only begun to sketch ideas, it's expected to be a darker take, with many of Miller's signature visual elements and themes, such as corruption and redemption.” I love the late 70’s version (I’ve got the boxed set DVD collection) but I’ve really been turned off with Miller’s eye on THE SPIRIT so I’m not that excited about this. I don’t think Buck should be “dark”. Just because THE DARK KNIGHT made a lot of money, doesn’t mean everything needs to be dark.

TR2N (the sequel to TRON) is going to be shot entirely in 3D. If ever there was a film that this made sense to do, this is it.

There’s a rumor that Tim Robbins will play Tony Stark’s father in IRON MAN 2. According to Latino Review, “Tim Robbins is going to be playing Howard Stark in an important flashback sequence that is going to set up the Avengers and Captain America films. Jon [Favreau] wanted to get a good actor because he didn't think the guy who played Howard in the last film could carry such an important scene.”

Finally, Rob Zombie is back on board to do HALLOWEEN 2. Originally, he didn’t want to do another but he recently said, “I was so burned out. I took a long break, made a record and I got excited again."