The Hollywood Universe – 6/13/08

1) Platinum Studios has teamed with Valhalla Motion Pictures to turn the SF comic book Final Orbit into a feature film, with Russell Gewirtz writing the script. Final Orbit, which will be published by Platinum Studios Comics early next year, tells the story of a lottery that gives thrill-seekers a chance to vacation aboard a newly completed International Space Station. But the trips turns nightmarish after the station is damaged, trapping tourists in a crippled module with no trained astronauts to help them.

2) Gothic icon Emily the Strange will be featured in a new film from Dark Horse Entertainment. The film will recount the origin of the character and her four mysterious cats. Skateboarder Rob Reger created the character in the 1990s for stickers, T-shirts and skateboards sold through his company, Cosmic Debris. Since then, the character and pictures of her four cats – Sabbath, Nee-Chee, Miles and Mystery -- have adorned a wide variety of merchandise, including toys, school supplies, accessories and other apparel. In 2005, Emily appeared in her first Dark Horse Comics series, Emily the Strange #1: Chairman of the Bored. Reger has remained the creative director behind the character and is one of several artists responsible for the character. A tie-in young adult novel will be published next year by HarperCollins.

3) Jon Cryer, William H. Macy, Leslie Mann and James Spader are set to star in Robert Rodriguez's family comedy adventure Shorts. As usual, Rodriguez is writing, directing and producing the fantasy film, for Warner Brothers. Jimmy Bennett, Kat Dennings, Trevor Gagnon, Leo Howard, Devon Gearhart, Rebel Rodriguez, Jake Short and Jolie Vanier also star. Shorts is set in a suburb where all the houses look the same and everyone works for Black Box, manufacturer of the ultimate communication and do-it-all gadget. Chaos follows when an 11-year-old boy is hit in the head with a rainbow-colored rock that grants wishes to anyone who holds it.

4) Danny McBride will star in the fantasy comedy Your Highness for director David Gordon Green, for Universal Studios. McBride, who wrote the script with collaborator Ben Best, will play an arrogant, lazy prince who must complete a quest to save his father's kingdom. McBride is currently filming the big-screen version of Land of the Lost, starring Will Ferrell and Anna Friel.

5) Actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan has played many roles, but his success at playing dead and dying guys is becoming eerie. After guest starring in the fantasy television show Supernatural as the lead characters’ father who dies, as the dead husband of Mary-Louise Parker in television show Weeds, and as a heart patient love interest who dies in the medical series Grey’s Anatomy, Morgan is currently starring in Warner Brothers’ upcoming graphic novel adaptation of cult classic Watchmen as The Comedian, an ex-superhero who, naturally, dies. Most recently, he has signed up for a World War II thriller film, Shanghai, along with John Cusack and Ken Watanabe, for The Weinstein Company. In the film, Morgan plays Connor, an American killed in Japanese-occupied Shanghai before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Cusack's character sets out to investigate his friend's murder.

6) Johnny Depp has long expressed his admiration of the 1960’s supernatural vampire series Dark Shadows and is now adapting the television show for a feature film, through his production company Infinitum-Nihil, along with GK Films and Warner Brothers. Director Tim Burton, Depp’s long-time collaborator, will direct and John August will pen the script.

7) Andrew Stanton and Mark Andrews are currently writing the film version of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars for Pixar. The film is rumored to be a mix of live action and animation, as opposed to previous Pixar animated features, with a possible release date of 2012. John Carter is the lead character of much of Burroughs’ Barsoom series. Carter, an Earthman, is transported to Mars, which the natives call Barsoom, by astral projection, and must deal with the dying planet and its warring cultures.

8) The comic series Ocean, written by Warren Ellis, is scheduled to be adapted into a feature film. The story revolves around the discovery of thousands of coffins containing angel-like bodies and a giant weapon of mass destruction beneath the ice on Europa, one of Jupiter's moons. A UN weapons inspector is sent to investigate the find, teaming with a space station crew, when a powerful conglomerate moves in to exploit the discovery. Warner Brothers is producing. No crew or cast has yet been announced.