Adaptations

Lionsgate has moved up the release date of The Spirit to Dec. 25, 2008, from Jan. 16, 2009,

Brandon Routh will play a private investigator who gets mixed up with the undead in Dead of Night. Kevin Monroe will direct the movie based on Tiziano Sclavi’s Italian comic book Dylan Dog from a script by Joshua Oppenheimer and Thomas Dean Donnelly.

Chris Wedge will direct John Logan’s adaptation of Brian Selznick’s children’s novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret, about an orphan who lives in the walls and looks after the clocks of a Parisian train station, who finds mystery and adventure when he tries to fix a mechanical man.

After development fell through with Bruckheimer Films, the rights to Buck Rogers have reverted back to the Dille Family Trust. Now Flint Dille will write and produce a movie, with Frank Miller directing. The story of an astronaut (originally a military pilot in the ‘50s) who goes into a coma and wakes up in the 25th century, has been done a few times as comics and TV shows. Current word is it’s budgeted at $40 million and “the cheapness of the low-budget effects will be a running joke in the movie, which will retain the campiness of the 1980s TV series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century starring Gil Gerard.” (No lie, I actually own a VHS copy of the movie/backdoor pilot from the ‘80s. It so cheesy, it’s great!)

Series creator and rights holder David Zlotoff says ‘80s show MacGyver is being reworked for a movie version. For those who don’t remember: Angus MacGyver, played by Richard Dean Anderson, was a taxi driver turned agent who refused to use a gun, but could build a bomb out of anything.

From Variety:
“Beyond that, [Seth] MacFarlane said he'd like to continue expanding his Fuzzy Door shingle to include multiple skeins and feature projects. And that includes a long-rumored "Family Guy" movie, which MacFarlane would like to produce in the next few years. There's no firm plan yet, although any feature will likely center on homicidal toddler Stewie, he said.”

Gore Verbinski will be directing the Bioshock movie.