The Hollywood Universe – 4/17/08

1) Film: Universal has hired Australian director Shane Abbess to helm Source Code, an SF thriller written by Ben Ripley. Plot details are not being announced, but the story concerns some sort of time continuum.

2) Film: Snoot Entertainment and Pictaresque Films are producing a fantastical noir film called Bunraku. The movie will star Josh Hartnett, Demi Moore and Woody Harrelson. Hartnett plays a man on a revenge quest in a strange universe who finds himself in the middle of a larger fight.

3) Film: MGM has bought Bobism, Ben Wexler's SF comedy about a shy collegian who discovers that life in 1,000 years will be based on his blog. Wexler is well known in the television world and is also adapting a t.v. series based on the film Hitch for CBS in the U.S.

4) Film Remake: Dimension Films has acquired remake rights to the 1986 SF comedy film Short Circuit, about Number 5, a military robot that develops a conscience and personality after being hit by lightning. The remake will be written by S.S. Wilson and Brent Maddock, who wrote the original Short Circuit film and its sequel. 

5) Film Remake: Trippy cult comedy classic Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure is being remaid by MGM. Details and plot circumstances of the high school duo who travel through time will be significantly altered and the remake is set in the modern time period. The original film starred Alex Winter, Keanu Reeves and George Carlin.

6) Film Remake: United Artists is remaking Nacho Vigalondo’s Spanish SF film Los Cronocrimenes as Timecrimes, a noir thriller about a man who travels back in time half an hour to prevent a serious crime. The original version played at the Sundance Film Festival. Timothy J. Sexton, of Children of Men fame, has been hired to adapt the English-language screenplay.

7) Comics Film: DreamWorks has optioned Platinum Comics’ Atlantis Rising comics series for a live action movie. The legendary underwater kingdom emerges after deep sea seismic disturbances to wage war with humans on Earth. 

8) Comics Film: Comics legend Stan Lee’s production company POW! Entertainment has teamed up with animation firm Rainmaker Entertainment and Brighton Partners to launch Lee’s newest project, a series of animated superhero feature films called Legion 5. The movies will be supported by print and electronic comics, games, merchandising, and online and mobile releases. Lee is receiving the New York Comics Legend Award at the New York Comic Con this year.

9) Comics Film: Boom Studios’ SF comic book series North Wind has been sold to Davis Entertainment for a live action film. North Wind takes place in a futuristic Los Angeles, years after global warming has created a new ice age, where exiles from a tyrannical underground society lead a rebellion against its cruel dictator. Screenwriter David DiGilio will adapt the work for the big screen.
 
10) Anime Film: Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan is taking a break from his own creations to adapt popular Nickelodeon Channel anime t.v. series Avatar: The Last Airbender into a live-action movie called Airbender. Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies will release the film in the summer of 2010. The creators of the television show were inspired by Japanese anime filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, and Shyamalan wanted to do the project as a Miyazaki fan. Airbender is about a young hero who has the ability to manipulate the elements, and who must stop a ruthless nation from destroying three other nations.

11) Anime Films: In addition to the up-coming blockbuster Speed Racer, numerous other anime adaptations are in the works. Neon Genesis Evangelion is apparently getting a live action movie treatment from ADV Films, announced at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival. And DreamWorks has acquired film rights to the Japanese manga Ghost in the Shell, with plans to adapt the futuristic police thriller as a 3-D live-action feature. Ghost in the Shell, which has been made into three anime films, a television anime series and several videogames, is said to be an inspiration for The Matrix movies, and follows the exploits of a member of a covert ops unit of the Japanese National Public Safety Commission that specializes in fighting technology-related crime. The original manga was created by Masamune Shirow.

12) Book Adaptation: Warner Brothers will be adapting The Rapture, an up-coming scifi novel by British author Liz Jensen. The novel centers on a peculiar young girl with the ability to predict natural disasters who believes that an offshore drilling project on the Florida coast will cause an apocalyptic earthquake.

13) Book Adaptation:  Actor Shia LaBeouf will star in Universal's SF techno-thriller Dark Fields, adapted from Alan Glynn’s novel The Dark Fields. Neil Burger will direct the film about a young man who comes into possession of the ultimate smart pill, from a screenplay by Leslie Dixon.

14) T.V. Adaptation: The title of the second X-Files movie has been announced as The X-Files: I Want to Believe. The subtitle comes from the famed t.v. series as the motto on the poster owned by FBI Agent Fox Mulder, played by David Duchovny. The film will debut in July of this year, and star Duchovny and Gillian Anderson as Agent Scully. Series creator Chris Carter wrote and produced the sequel film.

15) Horror Film: Wes Craven’s new project currently in pre-production, horror thriller 25/8, has had a casting change. Max Thierot (Jumper) will replace Henry Lee Hopper in the film, after Hopper became ill. The movie features seven teens who are haunted by a serial killer who supposedly died when they were born. Newcomers Nick Lashaway, John Magaro and Paulina Olszynski have also joined the cast.