Category: Films

White Buffalo Media and Prana Animation Studios will team to produce CG-animated feature HOLY COW!, with Dwayne Johnson providing the voice of a Texas bull, per VARIETY.

An original idea from Peter Kalmbach and Teddy Grennan, the film will be about a steer in Texas who decides to head off to India, where cows are not eaten, but worshiped. Producers are looking for writers and directors.

WATCHMEN will open on 3,611 screens this weekend, the most ever for an R-rated film, according to THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER.

Among those will be 124 IMAX theaters, as well as 29 international IMAX theaters. On MovieTickets.com, IMAX ticket sales account for one-third of all Watchmen sales, and IMAX's site crashed four times this week due to WATCHMEN traffic surges, according to IMAX Filmed Entertainment president Greg Foster.

Comedy Central and Paramount Vantage have acquired the rights to the recently-released book, GHOSTS/ALIENS written by Trey Hamburger, for a pilot and feature film script.

Scott Aversano and Carrie Beck of Aversano Films are producing the projects. The pilot script will be written by Phil Johnston.

Alfred Molina will play evil magician Horvath in Disney's THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE, according to THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER. Nicolas Cage, Jay Baruchel and Teresa Palmer are also starring in the Jon Turteltaub-directed film with producer Jerry Bruckheimer.

In modern-day Manhattan, an average college student (Baruchel) is recruited to work for a sorcerer named Bathazar Blake (Cage), who gives him a crash course in magic to prepare him to battle the forces of darkness. Palmer will play Baruchel's love interest.

Michael Brandt and Derek Haas have been hired by New Line Cinema to turn Richard Doetsch's upcoming novel THE THIRTEENTH HOUR into a screenplay, according to VARIETY. Michael De Luca is producing.

Brandt and Haas (WANTED, 3:10 TO YUMA), recently adapted Robert Ludlum's THE MATARESE CIRCLE for MGM and director David Cronenberg and likely will star Tom Cruise along with Denzel Washington. They are also working on a new BEVERLY HILLS COP installment for Eddie Murphy and director Brett Ratner at Paramount.

TRANSFORMERS actress Megan Fox will star opposite Josh Brolin and John Malkovitch in Warner Bros.' JONAH HEX and is attached to star and develop FATHOM at Fox Atomic, according to THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER.

In HEX, an action Western based on the DC Comics character, Fox will play Leila, Hex's love interest and a gunslinger herself. Filming is set to begin in April under Mad Chance's Andrew Lazar and Weed Road's Akiva Goldsman producing.

TYLER PERRY'S MADEA GOES TO JAIL's weekend gross dropped almost 60 percent, but still came in the top spot at the box office, with $16.2 million for Lionsgate, and a two-week cume of $64.5M.

Opener JONAS BROTHERS: THE 3D CONCERT EXPERIENCE (Disney, vfx by Furious FX and Tippett Studio) placed second with $12.5M, lower than was expected. The regular theater per-screen average was healthy, though, at almost $10,000 and the film grossed $765,000 in select IMAX 3-D screens for a per-screen average of about $15,000. The limited IMAX engagement runs through March 5.

ROBOT CHICKEN co-creator Seth Green has joined MARS NEEDS MOMS, from Disney and producer Robert Zemeckis' ImageMovers, according to THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER.

Based on the Berkeley Breathed children's book, the story follows a boy named Milo (Green) who is a stowaway on a spaceship to rescue his mom from alien abductors. Green's AUSTIN POWERS mom Mindy Sterling will play the alien leader of Mars. Other voice cast announcements include Joan Cusack as Milo's mom and Dan Fogler as Gribble, a friend of Milo's.

Intelligent Creatures created the dynamic and continuously changing inkblot concealing the face of WATCHMEN's vigilante hero, Rorschach. IC animated his inkblot movement to reflect the mood and emotion of the actor, while maintaining the integrity of this celebrated graphic novel. IC replaced the character's live action head through complex cranial and facial-motion tracking, which was seamlessly positioned between the live action scarf and fedora.

Warner Bros. has set up DC Comics' SUICIDE SQUAD for Dan Lin to produce as a potential franchise, according to VARIETY. The series is about a group of jailed supervillians and started life as a DC Comic in 1959 and got its own series in 1987.

Lin (SHERLOCK HOLMES) will produce with Stephen Gilchrist at Lin Pictures. Justin Marks, working now on 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, will write the script.