Movie News

Praz Michel has optioned comic book series Dark Oz, with hopes of making a trilogy. The “storyline follows an older Dorothy Gale in a 'gothic and more macabre' setting as she journeys through Oz with the characters known to millions via Frank L. Baum's Wonderful World of Oz."

According to Crispin Glover, The I Scream Man has been held up by financial and legal difficulties. "We were supposed to go into production, and I would like to go into production soon, but I don't have the details yet of when that will happen." Glover would play a quiet ice cream truck driver who goes on a killing spree. It's written by J.T. Mollner and the rest of the cast includes Haylie Duff, Judd Nelson, George Romero, Fred Ward, Dee Wallace, and Michael Madsen.

The Mike Newell directed adaptation of video game Prince of Persia: Sands of Time is in pre-production and will be filming in Morocco in mid-June. Jerry Bruckheimer is producing, and Jeffrey Nachmanoff and Jordan Mechner are scripting.

Jill Culton will direct Sony Pictures Animation’s Hotel Transylvania. It focuses on young monster hunter Simon Van Helsing, who accidentally falls in love with Mavis – Dracula’s daughter. They then try to bring peace between humans and monsters.

Columbia Pictures has bought Mike Sobel’s first script, Animals. The disaster film is a contemporary set story about the world’s animals turning on humans and taking control of the planet.

Husband and wife Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida’s script about a couple looking for the perfect place to raise their children is still officially unnamed, but Cheryl Hines said that it’s called This Must Be the Place while promoting new movie The Grand. It also stars John Krasinksi and Maya Rudolph and is directed by Sam Mendes.

Gerard Butler and Alan Siegel have launched production company Evil Twins. One of the films on their list is Law Abiding Citizen, a psychological thriller written by Kurt Wimmer about an assistant DA (Butler) caught in the middle of a vigilante plot.

A movie sequel to the show 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter (later titled 8 Simple Rules) will also be based on a W. Bruce Cameron book, 8 Simple Rules for Marrying My Daughter: And Other Reasonable Advice From the Father of the Bride (Not that Anyone Is Paying Attention). It’s about a divorced dad, his two daughters that get engaged at the same time, and his younger girlfriend.

Milo Ventimiglia on Game, “…It's roughly a futuristic society where people are controlled by in a video game sense and there are two different worlds. One that takes place in society and one that takes place on a battlefield. There's a lot of action and a lot of death in this movie.” He plays a “sick ****” named (I kid you not) Rick Rape. The movie also stars Gerard Butler and Amber Valleta, with Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor directing.

It seems a The Equalizer movie may be around the corner. For you youngsters who don’t know what The Equalizer is, here’s the crash course: A TV series that ran 1985-1989 with Edward Woodward as Robert McCall, an ex-MI 5 (I think?) agent turned private eye in order to help the helpless and defend the defenseless in New York City to make up for his past misdeeds using the newspaper ad: “Need help? Odds against you? Call The Equalizer.” (…My mother loved that show)

Dante Tomaselli will direct low budget horror Torture Chamber, “In terms of outright fear, I want to push the envelope right off the table. The film is set in a small New England town where the residents are disappearing. Abducted and drugged, the victims wake up to find themselves in an underground prison—a medieval torture chamber. It is here, in this remote abandoned castle, within these walls, that they learn who their kidnappers really are: children. Escaped from a youth detention center, these boys and girls are sadistically violent, capable of cruelty beyond comprehension."

Zak Penn on The Avengers, "The Avengers is a project in the future. That's the best way to put it until Iron Man and The Hulk come out. I haven't talked to Marvel about it in awhile because I think that the best way to do it is to put together a movie that uses all the characters and so they probably want to see how the movies do and figure that out first."

Ain’t It Cool has a letter from a “spy” that paints an ominous future of re-editing and re-writing for Where the Wild Things Are.