Movie News

Lionsgate has dropped Clive Barker’s Midnight Meat Train from its May release, without giving another date, or even saying if it’ll still be a theatrical release.

Dream Works has acquired Peter Morgan’s supernatural thriller script Hereafter. It’s “in the vein of The Sixth Sense.”

Mark Levin, co-director of Nim's Island, says "Nim had some imaginary friends that lived in her imagination, [including] Huck Finn and Alice in Wonderland from the books, who kind of brought to life the idea of a girl who lived on an island and what her imagination must be like. But when we made the movie and then we shot them and saw them in the context of the movie, we realized that the girl alone, and her aloneness, made her situation much more poignant, and it just drove the story better." Those imaginary characters have been cut from the movie, but will be available on the DVD release.

Creature of Darkness (formerly titled Hunter’s Moon), has finally worked out its financing issues for post production -it shot in 2005- and should be able to screen soon. “This extraterrestrial hunter terrorizes a group of young friends on an off-road cycling trip in the desert, including one played by Devon Sawa, who has had dreams of falling victim to the Catcher.”

Sites like Stop Darth Weinstein have been organizing and urging fans of the first cut of Fanboys to boycott and picket Weinstein’s movies, namely Superhero Movie. The company responded with this statement: "In recent weeks, Star Wars fans nationwide have built a multi-tiered grassroots effort to voice their strong support for one of the earlier versions of the film, including a campaign which generated over 300,000 e-mails in support for the film. Based on the tremendous feedback and interest from the fans, today's announcement will ensure both versions will be equally available within the marketplace." This means both versions will be released on DVD, and see theatrical releases (that's a big maybe). Producer Kevin Mann said, "This is more about avoiding picket lines at 'Superhero' than it was about making a decision about the release of our movie."

Now Millennium/Nu Image have greenlit a Dolph Lungren starring, directed, and co-scripted -with Steve Latshaw- action movie, Command Performance. (Be still my heart!) Lundgren describes it as “Die Hard at a rock concert.” … “I got the idea from Madonna.” The movie, set and filming in Russia, is about a drummer for a warm up band at a concert for the Russian premier. But (Wait for it!) bad guys drop in, unsuspecting that aforementioned drummer is (Wait for it again!) an ex-Marine.

Satoshi Kon’s next movie, Yume-Miru Kikai (The Dreaming Machine), is described as "animation that children can enjoy" and “a future folklore story."

Animation studio Madhouse announced Sunao Katabuchi’s Maimai Shinko to Sennen no Mahō (Maimai Shinko and the Millennium-Old Magic). It’s about “a transfer student [who] lands in a field of millennium-old magic…"

Tyrannosaurus Rex, Rob Zombie’s next project, will go into production August 2009. It’ll be distributed by Dimension, and Sheri Moon Zombie will be in it. No official word on what it’s about.

Antoine Fuqua will direct Michael Martin scripted Brooklyn’s Finest, a drama with three intertwining stories about Brooklyn cops. Richard Gere and Ethan Hawke will star, and could start filming as early as May.

Another George W. Bush movie, titled Commander and Chief and directed by Gerson Sanginitto, will star C. Thomas Howell. This one’s a parody/comedy that won’t actually use his name.

Ice Cube will star in Janky Promoters, a movie based on his first original script since Friday. “Two music promoters get the chance to book a top-tier hip-hop artist into a midsized California venue. The pair are ill equipped for such a task and everything goes wrong.”

Radha Mitchell and Bruce Willis will star in Jonathan Mostow’s The Surrogates. A science fiction action thriller set in the near future, humans are isolated and interact through robots, called “surrogates,” who are wishful versions of themselves. A cop uses his surrogate to investigate surrogate murders, until he has to leave his home and unravel the conspiracy himself.

Vinnie Jones, Michael Matthias, Michael Madsen, DMX, Armand Assante, William McNamara, Pittsburgh Slim, Rachelle Leah, Traci Lords, and Kat Von D have been cast in, and Charles Picerni will direct, Indifferent Entertainment's action vampire movie The Bleeding. It's about a former Army Ranger who stumbles upon a coven of vampires in a weapons factory turned nightclub, while looking for his parents' killer. Shooting starts next month in North Carolina.

Anime series Bleach's first movie, Bleach the Movie: Memories of Nobody, has been licensed in North America by Viz.