Category: Films

Angelina Jolie has been hired to star in Universal Pictures' bigscreen adaptation of the graphic novel, WANTED, reports VARIETY. James McAvoy and Morgan Freeman have already signed on and NIGHT WATCH director Timur Bekmambetov will helm.

McAvoy (LAST KING OF SCOTLAND) plays a young man who soon after learning his dad is an assassin, discovers that his father has been murdered. Jolie will take on the role of an assassin who educates the youth man in the ways of an assassin.

Although it predictably dropped 53% in its second week, Warner Bros.' 300 still had enough muscle to lead the box office for the weekend period ended March 18, 2007. The Zack Snyder-directed epic captured another $32.8M for a total gross of $129.1M (with vfx from Hybride, Animal Logic, Hydraulx, Scanline VFX, Buzz Images, Meteor Studios, WB Internal, Pixel Magic, Screaming Death Monkey and Lola Visual Effects).

Partly owned by the Hilton family, EnterAktion Studios has teamed with Asia Legend on four CG features, reports VARIETY. Each film will have a budget of $12 million and will be produced between Hong Kong's Asia Legend, Legendtoonland and Los Angeles-based EnterAktion.

The first two projects are set to start production in the summer. LIFE WITH DWEGONS' plot is being kept quiet, but it is scheduled for completion in early 2009. LOS OPOLIS follows the creature that live in an underground building.

Dimension Films has announced that Alexandre Aja (THE HILLS HAVE EYES) has signed on to write and direct a new PIRANHA movie, based on the 1978 cult hit. Mark Canton (300), Marc Toberoff from IPW, Aja and Gregory Levasseur will produce. Alix Taylor, J. Todd Harris from IPW, and Chako VanLeeuwen from Chako Film will serve as exec producers.

New Line Cinema has quickly snatched up the ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK remake, which was pitched to the studio by CAA this week, reports THE HOLLWOOD REPORTER.

Neal Moritz will produce with 300 star Gerard Butler playing the lead role of Snake Plissken. Ken Nolan (BLACK HAWK DOWN) will pen the screenplay, which will add a Plissken origin story with the plot of the 1981 original, where Plissken was given the task of rescuing the president from Manhattan, which in the futuristic world of the film is turned into a prison.

Disney has bought the rights to the graphic novel THE SURROGATES, which TERMINATOR 3 helmer Jonathan Mostow is set to direct, reports VARIETY. Michael Ferris and John Brancato will adapt the screenplay.

Written by Robert Venditti and illustrated by Brett Weldele, the Top Shelf Comix published comic finds humans in the future only interacting via surrogate robots.

Mandeville's David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman are set to produce alongside Max Handelman and Elizabeth Banks.

Frank Coraci, director of CLICK, is set to helm PART-TIME PIRATES for 20th Century Fox, according to THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER. Terra Firma Films is producing.

Jordan Cahan will write the screenplay, which follows two blue-collar guys who become modern pirates, raiding yachts of their greedy former bosses.

Terra Firma's Adam Herz, Greg Lessans and Josh Shader are set to produce with Fox's Debbie Liebling shepherding.

With it in U.S. theaters for less than a week, THE HOST is already being circled as a remake possibility at Universal, reports SCI FI Wire. In an interview, the original's director Bong Joon-ho stated that Universal had bought the rights to his film, which follows a dysfunctional family as they try to rescue their youngest member from the clutches of a genetically altered amphibian, which has run amok in Seoul.

300 star Gerard Butler is part of CAA's pitch for a remake of John Carpenter's 1981 sci-fi cult classic ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, reports VARIETY. Neal Moritz is set to produce from a script by BLACK HAWK DOWN writer Ken Nolan. The story follows Snake Plissken as he is given the task of rescuing the president from Manhattan, which has been turned into maximum-security prison.

Maggie Gyllenhaal is in closing negotiations to take on the role of Rachel Dawes, which was played by Katie Holmes in BATMAN BEGINS, in Christopher Nolan's THE DARK KNIGHT, reports VARIETY. Holmes stepped down from the part earlier in the year.

Late spring or early summer is when the film will start shooting with it set for a summer 2008 release.

Emma Thomas, Charles Roven and Nolan are producing with Legendary Pictures and Warner funding the project.