Movie News

Anime distributor FUNimation says that Japanese trading company Sojitz’s decision to dissolve its North America anime licensing and distribution subsidiary ARM will not effect their titles. "FUNimation no longer deals with ARM or Sojitz regarding the titles we acquired over the summer. Each title was transferred to us and we have been in direct contact with the licensers." A list of transferred movie and series titles here.

Castle Rock has bought Zoe Green's spec script Book of Shadows. The movie, which'll be a vehicle for director Rob Reiner, is about "a young man who must embark on the perilous journey of first love and face many trials of maturity while on the dangerous quest to close a mythical tome called the Book of Shadows in order to restore balance to the world."

Chris Columbus will direct Paramount's Ripley's Believe it or Not, a film Tim Burton was at one point the director for. The biopic of newspaper columnist/explorer Robert Ripley is still starring. Columbus has dropped Burton's China set storyline.

Steven Soderbergh is shopping around a 3-D rock ‘n’ roll musical about Cleopatra. The script is by James Greer, with music by indie band Guided by Voices, and Greg Jacobs and Casey Silver are producing. Soderbergh wants Catherine Zeta-Jones for Cleopatra and Hugh Jackman for Marc Antony. [E: Chicago meets Oklahoma! in Egypt]

Robert Luketic will direct action comedy Five Killers. It'll star Ashton Kutcher as an ex-hitman with someone from his past sending people to kill him. Ted Griffin is doing the rewrite of Bob DeRosa's spec script.

Burr Steers will direct romantic comedy The Fiance, starring Anne Hathaway as a woman who breaks up with her fiance in oreder to find herself, cue meddling parents. Ethan Cohen is rewriting from Dyanne Stempel and Jennifer Robinson's script.

Ron Perlman, Stephen Campbell Moore, Claire Foy, and Robbie Sheehan have joined Nicholas Cage in the cast for Dominic Sena's Season of the Witch. [Okay, I know it's about knights and witches, and it's going to have Ron Perlman, so yeah I'm seeing it, but every time I hear the title I think of this:


French Stewart, Doug Hutchinson, and Eileen Ryan have been cast in Russell Mulcahy's Give 'em Hell, Malone.

Teri Polo will play the mother in Joe Dante's supernatural horror The Hole.

Ashley Greene, Haley Ramm, and James LeGros will star in Anthony Burns' '80s coming of age roller rink story Skatetown. Taylor Handley and Shiloh Fernandez are in talks to join the cast.

Stella Stevens has joined Derek Milton’s horror western Death Keeps Coming.