Adaptations

Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige has confirmed that The First Avenger: Captain America will be a World War II period piece, they plan to remain faithful to the source material and be traditional. That it will help set up an eventual Avengers movie. Yes, that is his shield in Tony Stark’s workshop, but it’s just an easter egg and won’t influence the story. Also Matthew McConaughey will not play Captain America.

Feige says that the Thor movie will take place mostly in Asgard, not the contemporary world. Mark Protosevich is drafting a script and there should be an announcement about a director “later this summer”.

Marvel Comics’ Runaways, created by Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona, will be turned into a movie by Marvel Studios. Vaughan will adapt the series about a group of teenagers who become superheroes to make up for their supervillain parents’ evils. There’s no official release date but production is expected to start after 2011.

Steven Spielberg on Tintin: "We are going to make three Tintin movies back-to-back. I'll direct the first one, Peter [Jackson] will direct the second one. We'll probably co-direct the third one."

Latino Review takes a look at Green Arrow script Supermax.

South Korea’s United Pictures has sold theatrical rights to the live action adaptation of Fumi Yoshinaga’s manga Antique Bakery to SPO Entertainment for Japan, and Innoform Media for Singapore.

Celluloid Dreams has the rights to Philip K. Dick's scifi novel Ubik. The film, which is scheduled for production early next year, will be produced by Dreams’ Hengameh Panahi and Isa Dick Hackett of Electric Shepherd Productions, who is also Dick’s daughter.

Robert Charles Wilson’s novel Spin, a scifi thriller, the first of a trilogy, about a scientist trying to save the Earth from an apocalypse caused by a “spin” with the discovery of life on Mars, has been picked up by Olympus Pictures and Bits & Pieces Picture Co.

Sascha Penn will adapt The Last Equation, Stuart Gibbs’ debut novel, for Lionsgate. The story is the government hires a fugitive criminal and a mathematical genius to find Albert Einstein’s last equation, The Pandora, which simplifies atomic energy to the point where it could either solve Earth’s energy problems or make atomic weaponry available to anyone, before it falls into the wrong hands.

New York City based Little Magic Films has signed a deal to represent the works of Japanese novelist Hideyuki Kikuchi to U.S. producers for potential live action films and television series. The titles they’re focusing on especially are A Wind Named Amnesia, Demon City Shinjuku, Dark Side Blues, and Dark Wars: Meiji Dracula. The deal does not include Vampire Hunter D, which Davis Films has optioned, and Wicked City, whose remake rights belong to Mark Dippe.

Jake Gyllenhaal and Gemma Arterton will star in Disney’s Mike Newell directed Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time movie, written by Doug Miro and Carlo Bernard, Jordan Mechner and Boaz Yakin. Production starts July.

Filming has started on Disney’s Hannah Montana: The Movie. Directed by Peter Chelsom, and starring Miley Cyrus a “music-filled comedy adventure” “the film follows Miley Stewart as Hannah Montana’s soaring popularity threatens to take over her life. With a little urging from her father, the teenager travels back to her hometown of Crowley Corners, Tenn., to rediscover what’s really important.”