Prequels, Sequels & Remakes

Michael Bay has announced that production has finished on Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and now post-production will begin.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine’s trailer will debut in December attached to The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Dolph Lundgren won’t be in Universal Soldier 3. [E: Nooooo!] Says Jean Claude Van Damme, "I told them, guys bring in Dolph! They said there's no more value [to cast him]. I said, ‘it will have value with me!'" He also says that he doesn’t know if it’ll be a theatrical release or not, and that he’s only working ten days on the movie.

Ashok Amritraj says, depending on how Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li does, he’d like a franchise, and even has the next two in mind: ''I would like to do the Ryu and Ken stories [separately].”

Brothers Peter and Bobby Farrelly will finally be moving forward on the Three Stooges movie with MGM (it was previously developed for Warner Brothers). It already has a release date of November 20, 2009.

Brett Ratner will direct Nu Image/Millennium and Lionsgate Films’ reboot/remake of the Conan series. “The story opens on the battlefield where Conan is born and tells the origin story that sets the stage for what will be the first of multiple films.”

Darren Aronofsky on the RoboCop remake: “It's a real reinvention. Me and David Self are working on the screenplay. He's a great, great writer and we're trying to do something new and fresh. We'll see what happens when the screenplay comes.”

Is Planet of the Apes Getting Rebooted Again?

DreamWorks is securing the remake rights to Oldboy, and Steven Spielberg and Will Smith are in early talks to collaborate on it.

Mickey Rourke, Ray Winstone, Jason Statham, Sam Riley, 50 Cent, and Ray Liotta will star in 13. Remake of French psychological thriller 13 Tzameti, it’s about a “young man who stumbles into an underground competition where the wealthy gamble on human beings in a Russian Roulette-like competition.” Gela Babluani, who wrote and directed the original, will write and direct the movie that begins shooting in New York, November 20.

Universal is in negotiations to remake Seung-wan Ryoo’s Korean crime drama Die Bad. They’re developing it as a vehicle for director Marc Forster, and Brad Ingelsby will write the script. The remake will move the original’s story about the rise and fall of a gangster told in four short stories to New York.