Random News of the Week (March 23, 2009 - March 29, 2009)

It looks like things are coming together in a way that maybe no one had expected on the THREE STOOGES film. Sean Penn is now set to play Larry. Benecio Del Toro is on board for Moe. And out of NOWHERE, Jim Carrey will be playing Curly! The release is set for 2010. The film was originally planned as a series of shorts like the old Stooges episodes but new work on the script has now been confirmed to have a full narrative plot line.

The Coen Brothers are about to adapt TRUE GRIT, the 1969 movie starring John Wayne as a remake for Paramount. The new version will be more faithful to the original Charles Portis novel about a 14-year-old girl who, along with an aging U.S. marshal and another lawman, tracks her father's killer in hostile Indian Territory.

Ok, good news, 50 Cent is now OUT of THE EXPENDABLES. The backlash online, coupled with other issues, has caused it all to fall apart. Now we are getting Terry Crews (you’d know him if you saw him) will be filling the role. This guy has the chops to do justice to it. I think this move is so much better.

With the medium performance of THE WATCHMEN in the R rated category, Warner is rethinking it’s R-rated strategy for super hero films. It looks like more and more things will be getting closer to PG-13.

Disney and Robert Zemeckis are planning to adapt STONEHEART using the mo-cap technology that Zemeckis has grown so fond of. The story revolves around a 12-year-old London boy who enters a hidden alternate world where statues, imbued with the soullike essence of their makers, come to life.

Marc Forester (director of QUANTUM OF SOLACE) who made one of the most somber and vengeful bond films in history is thankfully not going to be involved in the next film. His comments this week at least show that he understands what fans thought of the film “For me, I wanted to take it to a harder and darker place, but now that that journey I’ve gone on has succeeded, I feel like the next one can take it to a bit more humorous place again. I feel like next time you should take it in a lighter and more humorous way, maybe add a few more girls and a bit more sex – all that kind of stuff. I think that would be interesting”.

Maybe there is hope for SPIDER-MAN 4. Sam Raimi says unlike the last film on which he compromised control with Marvel, on the new one, he will "be the singular voice that makes the creative choices on the film.”