The Hollywood Universe: Film Projects in the Works

1) The Surrogates: Bruce Willis will star in Disney’s scifi thriller, directed by Jonathan Mostow. The movie is set in the near future, where humans live in isolation and interact vicariously through surrogate robots who act as good-looking avatars. Willis will play a cop who uses his surrogate to investigate the murders of others’ surrogates, but a conspiracy case forces him to leave his own home for the first time in years.

2) Planet 51: New Line is entering the animation field with a SF movie made by Handmade Films International and Ilion Animation Studios. Written by Joe Stillman, the movie is set on a planet called Planet 51, where the inhabitants fear an alien invasion. A space pilot from Earth lands on the planet and finds himself in trouble. The feature is already in production and expected to be completed by 2009.

3) The Horsemen: Dennis Quaid is set to star in the supernatural horror film about a cop and recent widower who finds himself dealing with a serial killer case connected to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The film also stars Neal McDonough, Ziyi Zhang and Peter Stormare. Joss Akerlund is directing from a screenplay written by Michael Callaham.

4) Final Destination 4: The hit horror franchise will spawn a fourth film, this one to be in newly popular 3-D, for New Line, to be directed by David R. Ellis, who also directed Final Destination 2. The fourth movie will not feature any characters from the previous three, but will again focus on teens who attempt to escape Death’s grand and grossly complicated design. Eric Bress, co-writer on Final Destination 2, wrote the screenplay.

5) Weekend Warrior: Warner Brothers is prepping a new supernatural action comedy with producer Andrew Lazar (Get Smart.) Weekend Warrior follows the adventures of a high school teacher and amateur home repair enthusiast who unwittingly becomes a superhero. Actor Bill Birch wrote the screenplay. 

6) Director Tim Burton, fresh off of Sweeney Todd, has signed a two-picture deal with Disney to direct and produce 3-D movies of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and a remake of his 1984 short film Frankenweenie. Alice will be a mix of live action and performance-capture animation, based on a script by Linda Woolverton, with Richard Zanuck producing, to be filmed early in 2008. Frankenweenie is a bout a pet dog who is brought back to life by his owner. The remake will be shot in stop-motion animation.