Adaptations

Zack Snyder talks Watchmen’s ending.

Latest Dragonball release date: April 8, 2009.

Joe Johnston has signed with Marvel Studios to direct The First Avenger: Captain America. Kevin Feige will produce. There are no writers currently, but the studio is hearing pitches. The movie is due May 6, 2011.

The Cowboys and Aliens movie is now being written by Kurtzman and Orci. With Imagine producing, and Ron Howard is developing it for Robert Downey Jr.

Dark Horse’s Mike Richardson: "The most immediate is R.I.P.D. ... David Dobkin is directing. We're doing it over at Universal Studios. We have a great script by [Matt] Manfredi and [Phil] Hay. R.I.P.D. stands for Rest in Peace Department. It's based on a graphic novel by Peter Lenkov. It's about dead cops that died in the line of duty that are sent back, basically, to get people who don't want to come peacefully, people who stayed behind. It's a lot of fun. ... It has a few of the elements of something like a Men in Black, except this one has real scares in it. It's not sort of cartoon scares. A lot of humor, but real scary stuff going on."

"I will say we'll have a good announcement [about Emily Strange] coming up very shortly. I'm working with Rob. Yes, we've set it up with a studio, ... but there'll be an official announcement coming up soon. ... [There's a] very interesting story that we've come up with, too. It'll add background to Emily."

"We just set up Freaks of the Heartland over at Overture, with David Gordon Green directing. And the writers just started working on that."

Guillermo Del Toro on The Hobbit, Frankenstein, and At the Mountains of Madness.

The 39 Clues is still in scripting phase with Jeff Nathanson adapting the first book.

Simon Beaufoy has finished a draft for a screenplay based on Steven Hall’s novel The Raw Shark Texts. "OK, get this. It's about conceptual sharks that eat your memory. It's like Memento and Jaws and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Just pair it all up. It's the most amazing flight of imagination I've read for 20 years."

Guillermo Del Toro will be producing a stop motion adaptation of Carlo Collodi and Gris Grimly's Pinnochio. Says Del Toro, "The idea came from Gris, and everybody loves his book about it. The original story is far more perverse and spooky and semi-necrophilia vibe to it in certain aspects. Gris certainly has that vein in him, he wants to do this with that original spookiness in it, we are trying to get it going. The Jim Henson Company is the behind it and we are currently working on the screenplay! Its not coming to a screen near you any time soon, even if it were to begin today it would be about three years in the making, but we are working to make it happen. A full-scale puppet universe takes time.” Grimly will direct.

Marc Foster will direct World War Z. The movie, based on Max Brooks’ zombie novel, is being produced by Brad Pitt owned Plan B, leading to rumors that he may star. It “tells the story of the world's desperate battle against the zombie threat with a series of first-person accounts ‘as told to the author’ by various characters around the world. A Chinese doctor encounters one of the earliest zombie cases at a time when the Chinese government is ruthlessly suppressing any information about the outbreak that will soon spread across the globe. The tale then follows the outbreak via testimony of smugglers, intelligence officials, military personnel and many others who struggle to defeat the zombie menace.”

Pamela Pettler will write Hasbro-Universal’s Monopoly movie. Already producer, Ridley Scott has officially signed on as director “with an eye toward giving it a futuristic sheen along the lines of his iconic ‘Blade Runner.’"

Ron Howard on an Arrested Development movie:
"I really hope we do it. The reason there's been so much back and forth is... well, for two reasons, is the business understanding coming from the studio side was not clear, so even though we were wanting to do it and said, 'Yeah, maybe we could' but things weren't defined. I think that's really come into focus in the last week or so. Mitch's full-on commitment to not only write it but direct it is something he's been wrestling with, he's been launching a TV show at the same time, so he couldn't let it really be at the forefront of his mind creatively. It is now. He seems very committed. We still don't have a script. Yeah, he's got some great ideas, and the cast seemed very excited about it and I certainly am. I'm very, very hopeful—more hopeful now than ever—that it's really going to happen."