Adaptations

Uwe Boll's next video game adaptation? Pong. F'reals.

The Gears of War movie has a release date of 2010.

Chris O’Donnell has joined the cast for Max Payne.

According to Latino Review, Stuart Beattie has written a spec script for Halo based on Eric Nylund's tie-in prequel novel Halo: Fall of Reach.

Michael Cera is in final negotiations to star in the Edgar Wright directed Scott Pilgrim’s Little Life, based off Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim – Volume 1: Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life. “’Life’ tells the story of a young slacker (Cera) who meets the woman of his dreams but finds that he can only win her heart by battling and defeating her seven evil ex-boyfriends.” It was adapted by Wright and Michael Bacall, and the studio is looking for a fall start.

Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor say they've completed the script for DC's supernatural western about a horribly disfigured Confederate Civil War officer, Jonah Hex. Also, that they'll start filming on the live action movie after they finish Crank 2.

Benderspink will adapt Bobby Crosby's four issue comic book Last Blood. Set on a post zombie apocalypse Earth, vampires protect the last human survivors for food.

DreamWorks has the movie rights to graphic novel The Return of King Doug, with Ben Stiller producing and possibly starring. Greg Orb and Jason Oremland who wrote it will also write the screenplay. But the comic won't be published 'til next year (by Oni Press), so no one knows what it's about.

Shekhar Kapur will develop and direct Larklight, a period fantasy based on Philip Reeve's novel. Writer Steven Knight will adapt the alternate universe Victorian era story about a pair of siblings who join up with some renegade space pirates to save the world from a madman.

The first two books of Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos science fiction series, Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion, will be turned into a movie by producer Graham King and Warner Brothers. Trevor Sands is on board to adapt the stories about a space war set mostly on a planet called Hyperion.

Hayden Panettiere will star in the movie version of Rachel Cohn and David Levithan's Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List. The story is set in Manhattan, and about Naomi and her gay best friend Ely. They make a "no kiss" list to strengthen their friendship, but Ely kisses Naomi's boyfriend.

An adaptation of Robert Ludlum’s The Matarese Circle is looking for a studio. Already attached is Denzel Washington, writers Michael Brandt and Derek Haas, and producers Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Nick Wechsler. It’s about “two secret agents -- an American and a Russian -- who must work together to fight a mysterious group of killers known as the Matarese. The twist: The agents, Bradley Scofield and Vasili Taleniekov, have been nemeses for years, with each responsible for killing someone close to the other.”

Scott Backula will play opposite Matt Damon in Steven Soderbergh's espionage thriller The Informant. Adapted from Kurt Eichenwald's book, which was based on a true story, FBI agent Brian Shepard exposes an international price-fixing scheme with the help of biochemist Mark Whitacre.

Brad Pitt will produce through his Plan B shingle, and potentially star in, Lost City of Z. Paramount preemptively bought David Grann's nonfiction manuscript about the disappearance of British explorer Col. Percy Harrison Fawcett and his party during his 1925 expedition to find the "City of Z." The expansion of Grann's article (The New Yorker, September 2005) is scheduled for publication in February by Doubleday.