The Hollywood Universe – 5/17/08


1) The up-coming GI Joe live action movie, building on the toys/cartoon/comics franchise, has changed the all American commando team to a more international squad. The film’s cast includes Dennis Quaid, Channing Tatum, Christopher Eccleston, Said Taghmaoui, Byung-hun Lee, Rachel Nichols, Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje, Ray Park, and Sienna Miller.


2) The SF electronic game Bioshock will be adapted into a live action film for Universal with Gore Verbinski directing. Bioshock takes place in a secret underwater city, based on the works of Ayn Rand, where a pilot crash-lands and gets caught in a power struggle.


3) Hellboy star Ron Perlman’s next project is playing an Eastern European gang lord villain in the martial-arts movie Bunraku, written and directed by Guy Moshe. He joins actors Josh Hartnett, Gackt, Shun Sugata, Demi Moore, Woody Harrelson, Kevin McKidd and Jordi Molla.


4) Superman Returns star Brandon Routh will headline Dead of Night, based on the best-selling Italian supernatural comic book Dylan Dog. Kevin Munroe will direct. Routh plays a private investigator who is drawn into the world of the undead. Created by Tiziano Sclavi, Dylan Dog was first published in 1986 and has been translated into 17 languages.


5) The film adaptation of Will Eisner’s comic The Spirit, directed and written by Frank Miller, will have a Christmas release in 2008. The movie stars Gabriel Macht, Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson and Eva Mendes, and tells the story of the Spirit, a slain rookie cop who returns from the dead to fight crime and track a dangerous killer.


6) Director James McTeigue will helm scifi horror film Revelation, about a female journalist who investigates a series of bizarre murders that may involve alien abduction.


7) Sony Pictures will be developing feature films based on R.L. Stine’s kids horror series Goosebumps. The Goosebumps books and spin-off series have previously been adapted for comics, toys and for a television series in the 1990’s for Fox that is currently being re-run on the Cartoon Network in the States. In the last 16 years, the print series has sold more than 300 million copies and is still on-going. 


8) Witchblade, the Top Cow comic that was turned into a telefilm, a brief-lived television series starring Yancy Butler for TNT in the States, and a Japanese anime television show for Gonzo Digimation, will be moving on to a live-action feature film. The comic series, about a magical gauntlet that gives a chosen female special powers, has sold more than 100 million copies since debuting in 1995. The new film is planning to shoot in Australia.