From ComingSoon.net:
"With Warner Bros. Pictures moving Clash of the Titans back a week to April 2nd so that the film can be released in 3D, the studio has now decided to move Sylvain White's comic book adaptation The Losers away from its previous April 9th date as well. The film will now be released on June 4th.
The move is interesting for several reasons. It now leaves Fox's comedy Date Night as the only wide release on April 9. Also, moving The Losers to June 4th puts the movie in theaters just one week before Fox's The A-Team, the movie to which The Losers has been compared to the most.
The other wide releases scheduled for June 4 right now are Get Him to the Greek, Killers and Marmaduke."
Sounds like one Owen Wilson-sounding dog is about to be put down. Put down hard! I didn't even remember that the Judd Apatow-produced, spirited sequel to Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Get Him to the Greek was coming out the same day. Also a movie with Ashton Kutcher and Katherine Heigl called Killers comes out that day as well (think diet-Knight & Day)
UPDATE:
From ComingSoon.net:
"Last week, Warner Bros. Pictures moved director Sylvain White's The Losers from April 9 to June 4 in order to get it away from Clash of the Titans' April 2 release and to fix some things from a recent test screening.
It sounds like the studio will be able to do this much quicker as they've now decided on an April 23 release date for the action-thriller, starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Zoe Saldana, Chris Evans, Idris Elba, Columbus Short, Holt McCallany, Oscar Jaenada, Jason Patric and Peter Macdissi.
The other wide releases scheduled for April 23 are Universal's MacGruber and 20th Century Fox's Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps."
Well, this'll be a interesting series of events. Marmaduke is saved (for now. I saw that Get Me to the Greek trailer - which I WILL NOT post on this blog - and it looked interesting enough for fans of both Forgetting Sarah Marshall and The Hangover). But what about this three-way race between a "Saturday Night Live" anti-hero and '80s-turned-'90s villain-turned-hero?
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Stan Lee confirms ANT-MAN?
From SuperHeroHype!:
"While Marvel Studios is moving full steam ahead with Kenneth Branagh's Thor and Joe Johnston has been all over the place talking about his The First Avenger: Captain America this past weekend, there's still one very elusive missing piece to the Avengers puzzle, and that would be... Ant-Man!
A movie about the diminutive Avenger, Dr. Hank Pym, who is in fact one of the charter members of the team, has been in the works for some time. In fact, Edgar Wright was on hand at that very same Marvel Studios Comic-Con panel back in 2006 when Jon Favreau and Louis Letterier were first talking about their upcoming projects Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk.
When Disney bought Marvel, there were some [rum]ors Pixar might take over the project, but those were swiftly denied by John Lasseter, so that puts Ant-Man back into Wright's hands, having developed the project with Joe Cornish quite a bit before shifting his focus to Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.
Apparently, Stan 'The Man' Lee, the co-creator of Ant-Man, met with Wright for lunch today, something that Lee proudly recapped on his Twitter feed with two intriguing tweets:
'To make up for my previous grievous error, here's a little item that may have escaped you. Marvel is prepping a movie starring-- Ant Man!'
and
'I had lunch with the cool, young director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the [UnD]ead) and, as you'd imagine, we had fun discussing the tiny hero'
Now of course, it could just be a coincidence that they were having lunch and talking about Ant-Man, but Lee stating that Marvel is prepping the movie seems to indicate they're finally moving forward now that Wright is putting the finishing touches on Scott Pilgrim.
Here's hoping Stan Lee isn't being the tease we've known him to be since he started writing Stan's Soap Box."
"While Marvel Studios is moving full steam ahead with Kenneth Branagh's Thor and Joe Johnston has been all over the place talking about his The First Avenger: Captain America this past weekend, there's still one very elusive missing piece to the Avengers puzzle, and that would be... Ant-Man!
A movie about the diminutive Avenger, Dr. Hank Pym, who is in fact one of the charter members of the team, has been in the works for some time. In fact, Edgar Wright was on hand at that very same Marvel Studios Comic-Con panel back in 2006 when Jon Favreau and Louis Letterier were first talking about their upcoming projects Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk.
When Disney bought Marvel, there were some [rum]ors Pixar might take over the project, but those were swiftly denied by John Lasseter, so that puts Ant-Man back into Wright's hands, having developed the project with Joe Cornish quite a bit before shifting his focus to Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.
Apparently, Stan 'The Man' Lee, the co-creator of Ant-Man, met with Wright for lunch today, something that Lee proudly recapped on his Twitter feed with two intriguing tweets:
'To make up for my previous grievous error, here's a little item that may have escaped you. Marvel is prepping a movie starring-- Ant Man!'
and
'I had lunch with the cool, young director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the [UnD]ead) and, as you'd imagine, we had fun discussing the tiny hero'
Now of course, it could just be a coincidence that they were having lunch and talking about Ant-Man, but Lee stating that Marvel is prepping the movie seems to indicate they're finally moving forward now that Wright is putting the finishing touches on Scott Pilgrim.
Here's hoping Stan Lee isn't being the tease we've known him to be since he started writing Stan's Soap Box."
ZOMBIELAND writers talk sequel!
From MTV Movies Blog:
"Last October, Zombieland took a big, gory bite out of the box-office, debuting at number one and bringing in over $25 million in ticket sales. Immediately, there was talk of a sequel, and when we caught up with the hit film’s writers recently, they said the plans are moving forward.
'We want to stick with our dysfunctional family,' revealed Paul Wernick, who created the post-apocalyptic zombie world with writing partner Rhett Reese. 'But also introduce new characters.'
'There absolutely will be a sequel, and it will absolutely be in 3D,' Reese revealed. 'Now, it’s just a question of what that sequel will be. It’s not a question of having enough ideas, but almost having too many ideas. We have a lot of ideas!'
'We entirely want to write with 3-D in mind,' Wernick added, down the majority of filmmakers who these days claim to concentrate on the story first and the three-dimensional stuff later. 'We have the vision, and want to have fun with the technology.'
Could that mean a zombie head-bashing with a baseball bat, causing the eyes to fly off the screen and into our laps? How about brains splattering all over the movie theater? The writers wouldn’t rule anything out.
'We want you to be looking down at your popcorn to make sure there isn’t on it,' Reese said laughingly. 'There will be a lot of fluids flying!'
These guys have a lot of fun in the writing room, aren’t afraid to mess with the zombie canon, and plan to gleefully continue dragging George Romero’s vision into the 21st century with the sequel. 'We don’t discriminate when it comes to zombies,' laughed Reese. 'We like to think that a zombie’s character isn’t just about their profession, or what their personality was, but what were they doing at that moment they became a zombie.'
As for what else we can expect, Reese said he hopes to give Woody Harrelson’s character a female (we assume, unbitten) who can keep up with his high-adrenaline, zombie-killing ways 'There will be continuing romantic adventures,' he said. 'We haven’t decided on this, but it would be nice to have a love interest for Tallahassee.'
'I think that we like to think about the Zombieland characters in terms of how they survived, what qualities do they have that led them to survive?' Reese said of the defining factor in the new human characters they’ll introduce to fight alongside Tallahassee, Wichita and the rest. 'As long as they have some quality for survival, then they make sense for the movie.'
Finally, Reese said that he has big plans for Abigail Breslin’s tough-talking-tween character. 'I think that it’s going to continue to be about growing up in Zombieland,' he said of Little Rock’s development. 'Growing up in a world that’s not necessarily geared towards growing up; it’s a world that forces you to grow up much quicker than you would have otherwise.'
Zombieland 2 is in its development stages, and should hit the big screen sometime next year or in early 2012."
Wow. A sweetheart for Tallahassee? Who'da thunk it? I was perfectly willing to assume that Tallahassee would simply stay a "father figure" to Little Rock and when he dies, die alone. But then that wouldn't be any fun. It's much more interesting to me now to see Tallahassee slipping over himself to impress a woman (who might actually be more tough than he is).
UPDATE:
From MTV Movies Blog:
"You might not realize it, but long before there was a Zombieland hit movie, there was nearly a Zombieland TV series. Writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick originally envisioned the reality of a post-apocalyptic, zombie-heavy world as ideal for the television medium, had a pilot script that ended when Wichita and Little Rock drove off and left Tallahassee and Columbus behind, and only expanded it after the networks passed. Now, the flick is on DVD, sequels are on the way – and the writers are determined to still make a Zombieland TV series.
'We wrote it as a TV show almost five years ago – the summer of 2005 - and sold it to CBS,' said Paul Wernick, who conceived the project with his writing partner Rhett Reese as the first-ever zombie TV show. 'Ultimately, it just wasn’t the perfect fit at the right time for CBS, and they ended up not moving forward on it.'
'It was after 28 Days Later, but I think zombies and CBS were never necessarily the greatest of fits,' Reese said. 'Interestingly, we shopped it around everywhere else. Every single network and cable network in America said no, and we’re not sure why… for some reason, they didn’t trust it as a television show, and it ultimately became a movie.'
Asked if they still think Zombieland is a uniquely-suited for-TV idea, Wernick had a simple answer: '[Oh,] yes,' he said with a grin.
These days, the duo are hard at work working on their Zombieland 2 script, Deadpool and a sequel to G.I. Joe, amongst other things. But when they’re done with Zombieland sequels, the writers have every intention of taking the world of laughter and the living to TV.
'I think that’s what we would do probably is recast it - or at least, our four leads,' Reese said of the unlikely possibility that Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone and the others would want to do weekly TV years from now. 'And then, beyond that, we can introduce any characters we want - and that was going to be the joy of the TV show, bringing in new people and them off, not them off, depending on how we felt about them. We really wanted to explore that.'
'It would have to be shot differently,' Wernick said of the -and-gore restrictions that would also need to be taken into consideration. 'It’s funny; you write action and you write gore and you write horror and it’s all how it's shot, how it’s presented. You can write it as graphic as you want, it’s just [up to the director] to cut away on the gory stuff on TV. Whereas, you would show it with the clown and the mallet in the movie, where the squirts all over the place.'
'We always thought [it should be a TV series],' Reese added, saying that the duo have pages of still-unused ideas at this point, waiting to be dusted off for future Zombieland storylines. 'If you watch the movie with that in mind, you will see some remnants of the television show. We have the ‘Zombie Kill of the Week,’ which was always intended to happen every week. The movie ends on a cliffhanger; it doesn’t have a real resolution. [The movie’s ending] is just our guys driving off into the sunset for some new adventures. That’s because, that’s how the television pilot ended.'"
"Last October, Zombieland took a big, gory bite out of the box-office, debuting at number one and bringing in over $25 million in ticket sales. Immediately, there was talk of a sequel, and when we caught up with the hit film’s writers recently, they said the plans are moving forward.
'We want to stick with our dysfunctional family,' revealed Paul Wernick, who created the post-apocalyptic zombie world with writing partner Rhett Reese. 'But also introduce new characters.'
'There absolutely will be a sequel, and it will absolutely be in 3D,' Reese revealed. 'Now, it’s just a question of what that sequel will be. It’s not a question of having enough ideas, but almost having too many ideas. We have a lot of ideas!'
'We entirely want to write with 3-D in mind,' Wernick added, down the majority of filmmakers who these days claim to concentrate on the story first and the three-dimensional stuff later. 'We have the vision, and want to have fun with the technology.'
Could that mean a zombie head-bashing with a baseball bat, causing the eyes to fly off the screen and into our laps? How about brains splattering all over the movie theater? The writers wouldn’t rule anything out.
'We want you to be looking down at your popcorn to make sure there isn’t on it,' Reese said laughingly. 'There will be a lot of fluids flying!'
These guys have a lot of fun in the writing room, aren’t afraid to mess with the zombie canon, and plan to gleefully continue dragging George Romero’s vision into the 21st century with the sequel. 'We don’t discriminate when it comes to zombies,' laughed Reese. 'We like to think that a zombie’s character isn’t just about their profession, or what their personality was, but what were they doing at that moment they became a zombie.'
As for what else we can expect, Reese said he hopes to give Woody Harrelson’s character a female (we assume, unbitten) who can keep up with his high-adrenaline, zombie-killing ways 'There will be continuing romantic adventures,' he said. 'We haven’t decided on this, but it would be nice to have a love interest for Tallahassee.'
'I think that we like to think about the Zombieland characters in terms of how they survived, what qualities do they have that led them to survive?' Reese said of the defining factor in the new human characters they’ll introduce to fight alongside Tallahassee, Wichita and the rest. 'As long as they have some quality for survival, then they make sense for the movie.'
Finally, Reese said that he has big plans for Abigail Breslin’s tough-talking-tween character. 'I think that it’s going to continue to be about growing up in Zombieland,' he said of Little Rock’s development. 'Growing up in a world that’s not necessarily geared towards growing up; it’s a world that forces you to grow up much quicker than you would have otherwise.'
Zombieland 2 is in its development stages, and should hit the big screen sometime next year or in early 2012."
Wow. A sweetheart for Tallahassee? Who'da thunk it? I was perfectly willing to assume that Tallahassee would simply stay a "father figure" to Little Rock and when he dies, die alone. But then that wouldn't be any fun. It's much more interesting to me now to see Tallahassee slipping over himself to impress a woman (who might actually be more tough than he is).
UPDATE:
From MTV Movies Blog:
"You might not realize it, but long before there was a Zombieland hit movie, there was nearly a Zombieland TV series. Writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick originally envisioned the reality of a post-apocalyptic, zombie-heavy world as ideal for the television medium, had a pilot script that ended when Wichita and Little Rock drove off and left Tallahassee and Columbus behind, and only expanded it after the networks passed. Now, the flick is on DVD, sequels are on the way – and the writers are determined to still make a Zombieland TV series.
'We wrote it as a TV show almost five years ago – the summer of 2005 - and sold it to CBS,' said Paul Wernick, who conceived the project with his writing partner Rhett Reese as the first-ever zombie TV show. 'Ultimately, it just wasn’t the perfect fit at the right time for CBS, and they ended up not moving forward on it.'
'It was after 28 Days Later, but I think zombies and CBS were never necessarily the greatest of fits,' Reese said. 'Interestingly, we shopped it around everywhere else. Every single network and cable network in America said no, and we’re not sure why… for some reason, they didn’t trust it as a television show, and it ultimately became a movie.'
Asked if they still think Zombieland is a uniquely-suited for-TV idea, Wernick had a simple answer: '[Oh,] yes,' he said with a grin.
These days, the duo are hard at work working on their Zombieland 2 script, Deadpool and a sequel to G.I. Joe, amongst other things. But when they’re done with Zombieland sequels, the writers have every intention of taking the world of laughter and the living to TV.
'I think that’s what we would do probably is recast it - or at least, our four leads,' Reese said of the unlikely possibility that Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone and the others would want to do weekly TV years from now. 'And then, beyond that, we can introduce any characters we want - and that was going to be the joy of the TV show, bringing in new people and them off, not them off, depending on how we felt about them. We really wanted to explore that.'
'It would have to be shot differently,' Wernick said of the -and-gore restrictions that would also need to be taken into consideration. 'It’s funny; you write action and you write gore and you write horror and it’s all how it's shot, how it’s presented. You can write it as graphic as you want, it’s just [up to the director] to cut away on the gory stuff on TV. Whereas, you would show it with the clown and the mallet in the movie, where the squirts all over the place.'
'We always thought [it should be a TV series],' Reese added, saying that the duo have pages of still-unused ideas at this point, waiting to be dusted off for future Zombieland storylines. 'If you watch the movie with that in mind, you will see some remnants of the television show. We have the ‘Zombie Kill of the Week,’ which was always intended to happen every week. The movie ends on a cliffhanger; it doesn’t have a real resolution. [The movie’s ending] is just our guys driving off into the sunset for some new adventures. That’s because, that’s how the television pilot ended.'"
SPIDER-MAN swings into 3D coming 2012
From ComingSoon.net:
"Spider-Man will swing into theaters worldwide in 3D beginning July 3, 2012, it was announced today by Jeff Blake, Chairman of Sony Pictures Worldwide Marketing & Distribution. The new film which is still untitled, will begin production later this year directed by Marc Webb from a screenplay by James Vanderbilt. Avi Arad and Laura Ziskin will produce the film from Columbia Pictures and Marvel Studios.
Commenting on the announcement, Blake said, 'Spider-Man is the ultimate summer movie-going experience, and we're thrilled the filmmakers are presenting the next installment in 3D. Spider-Man is one of the most popular characters in the world, and we know audiences are eager and excited to discover Marc's fantastic vision for Peter Parker and the franchise.'"
As bad as this reboot for the fans of the TRUE Spider-Man films, I haven't heard any bad things yet. Let's hope they cast Logan Lerman.
"Spider-Man will swing into theaters worldwide in 3D beginning July 3, 2012, it was announced today by Jeff Blake, Chairman of Sony Pictures Worldwide Marketing & Distribution. The new film which is still untitled, will begin production later this year directed by Marc Webb from a screenplay by James Vanderbilt. Avi Arad and Laura Ziskin will produce the film from Columbia Pictures and Marvel Studios.
Commenting on the announcement, Blake said, 'Spider-Man is the ultimate summer movie-going experience, and we're thrilled the filmmakers are presenting the next installment in 3D. Spider-Man is one of the most popular characters in the world, and we know audiences are eager and excited to discover Marc's fantastic vision for Peter Parker and the franchise.'"
As bad as this reboot for the fans of the TRUE Spider-Man films, I haven't heard any bad things yet. Let's hope they cast Logan Lerman.
Penelope Cruz becomes a PIRATE
From ComingSoon.net:
"Penelope Cruz is in negotiations to join Johnny Depp in... Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, reports Heat Vision.
Scheduled for a release on May 20, 2011, the fourth installment revolves around the Fountain of Youth. Depp is reprising the role of Captain Jack Sparrow and Cruz's character is expected to be 'Sparrow's foil and equal in many ways'.
The Jerry Bruckheimer-produced film was written by Terry Rossio and Ted Elliot. will take place in Hawaii this summer."
That would be nice. "Academy Award winner Penelope Cruz". Though it's gonna be a stretch to make her as nuts as Captain Jack Sparrow is.
"Penelope Cruz is in negotiations to join Johnny Depp in... Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, reports Heat Vision.
Scheduled for a release on May 20, 2011, the fourth installment revolves around the Fountain of Youth. Depp is reprising the role of Captain Jack Sparrow and Cruz's character is expected to be 'Sparrow's foil and equal in many ways'.
The Jerry Bruckheimer-produced film was written by Terry Rossio and Ted Elliot. will take place in Hawaii this summer."
That would be nice. "Academy Award winner Penelope Cruz". Though it's gonna be a stretch to make her as nuts as Captain Jack Sparrow is.
Tom Cruise accepts MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE IV
From ComingSoon.net:
"Paramount Pictures announced today that it is making Mission: Impossible IV. The film, which will be produced by Tom Cruise, J.J. Abrams (Star Trek) and Bad Robot Productions and will star Cruise, will be released Memorial Day weekend 2011 [officially May 27, 2011].
'Tom and J.J. are great talents and we are excited to be working with them to re-launch this legendary franchise,' said Paramount Pictures Chairman & CEO Brad Grey.
Screenwriters Josh Applebaum and Andre Nemec are attached to write the script, from an original idea by Cruise and Abrams.
The studio, Cruise and Abrams are in now the process of identifying a director for the film. Cruise's Mission: Impossible franchise has grossed over 1.4 billion globally.
Mission: Impossible IV will be co-financed by David Ellison's Skydance Productions.
The move puts the fourth installment up against The Hangover 2, while Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides opens a week earlier on May 20th."
Ooh. That'll be a photo finish. Who will win in a three-legged race between the gang from The Hangover, Tom Cruise (playing his most famous character) and J.J. Abrams (coming back to produce a sequel to his first film), and Johnny Depp (playing his most famous character)?
"Paramount Pictures announced today that it is making Mission: Impossible IV. The film, which will be produced by Tom Cruise, J.J. Abrams (Star Trek) and Bad Robot Productions and will star Cruise, will be released Memorial Day weekend 2011 [officially May 27, 2011].
'Tom and J.J. are great talents and we are excited to be working with them to re-launch this legendary franchise,' said Paramount Pictures Chairman & CEO Brad Grey.
Screenwriters Josh Applebaum and Andre Nemec are attached to write the script, from an original idea by Cruise and Abrams.
The studio, Cruise and Abrams are in now the process of identifying a director for the film. Cruise's Mission: Impossible franchise has grossed over 1.4 billion globally.
Mission: Impossible IV will be co-financed by David Ellison's Skydance Productions.
The move puts the fourth installment up against The Hangover 2, while Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides opens a week earlier on May 20th."
Ooh. That'll be a photo finish. Who will win in a three-legged race between the gang from The Hangover, Tom Cruise (playing his most famous character) and J.J. Abrams (coming back to produce a sequel to his first film), and Johnny Depp (playing his most famous character)?
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
From BATMAN to SUPERMAN?
From ComingSoon.net:
"In possibly one of the biggest superhero movie shockers since the last one--when was the Spider-Man reboot, three weeks ago?--Deadline Hollywood is now reporting that The Dark Knight and Batman Begins director Christopher Nolan has been assigned the potentially thankless task of being the latest filmmaker assigned by Warner Bros. to try to save the Superman franchise, in this case in a mentoring capacity to figure out the best way to proceed.
Director Bryan Singer helmed the last installment Superman Returns three and a half years ago, which grossed $391 million worldwide, but wasn't seen as a hit due to its reported $270 million production budget. (Remember that the studio doesn't get 100% of those theatrical grosses.)
Since then, various names have been mentioned as possible candidates to get Superman back to the screen, most vocally comic book creator Mark Millar (Wanted), but nothing had been confirmed or definite.
This latest news seems to come out of two recent developments, the restructuring of Warner's relationship with DC Comics into a new company called DC Entertainment, headed by Diane Nelson, and the looming deadline of the estates of Superman creators Jerome Siegel and Joe Shuster gaining back the entire copyright for the character in 2013. During a court hearing about the rights to Superman, Warners chairman Alan Horn said that he hoped to make another film for 2012 at the earliest but that no script was currently in development.
Some may remember that before Bryan Singer came on board, various versions of the Man of Steel were floundering in development, including one version starring Nicolas Cage to be directed by Tim Burton based on a screenplay by Kevin Smith. Even J.J. Abrams took a crack at writing a Superman screenplay with both Brett Ratner and McG attached to direct his version at one point.
It's unclear how far Nolan's role as a mentor might stretch and whether he'll just be offering some suggestions on the direction, or will be actively involved in picking the director, writers and casting for the reboot, as it's still very early in what is already being labeled 'Superman 3.0.'
You can read a lot more about what led to Warner Bros.' decision over at Deadline Hollywood, and we'll keep you posted as things develop.
Knowing how many fans of The Dark Knight there are, need we even ask what you think about Nolan being actively involved in another movie about a DC Comics character?"
UPDATE:
From Slashfilm:
"I’m sure quite a few people have called for something like this in discussions about what Warner Bros. should do to make Superman work on the big screen: the studio is reportedly turning to Christopher Nolan to act as a 'godfather' to help shepherd development of a new Superman film. Before we go further, at this point Nolan is not writing, and is not directing. Rather, Nolan would play more of a mentor’s role to help the film get moving. In other words, WB wants him to communicate some of the methods he used to reinvent Batman on film to help Superman get off the ground in time for Warners to exploit the character before the rights go back to the Siegel and Shuster families.
Deadline Hollywood has the report, which doesn’t have many details on what we can actually expect to see. No surprise there, as Nolan has a movie to finish right now, and Deadline’s Finke and Fleming insist that a new Superman is in very early stages of development. The only sourced quote that will matter to most readers is, 'It would definitely not be a follow-up to Superman Returns'.
Finke and Fleming also reiterate that Jonathan Nolan and David Goyer are actively working on a Batman 3 script right now; they say that Christopher Nolan came up with a story idea and that they’ll write a draft while he finishes Inception."
"In possibly one of the biggest superhero movie shockers since the last one--when was the Spider-Man reboot, three weeks ago?--Deadline Hollywood is now reporting that The Dark Knight and Batman Begins director Christopher Nolan has been assigned the potentially thankless task of being the latest filmmaker assigned by Warner Bros. to try to save the Superman franchise, in this case in a mentoring capacity to figure out the best way to proceed.
Director Bryan Singer helmed the last installment Superman Returns three and a half years ago, which grossed $391 million worldwide, but wasn't seen as a hit due to its reported $270 million production budget. (Remember that the studio doesn't get 100% of those theatrical grosses.)
Since then, various names have been mentioned as possible candidates to get Superman back to the screen, most vocally comic book creator Mark Millar (Wanted), but nothing had been confirmed or definite.
This latest news seems to come out of two recent developments, the restructuring of Warner's relationship with DC Comics into a new company called DC Entertainment, headed by Diane Nelson, and the looming deadline of the estates of Superman creators Jerome Siegel and Joe Shuster gaining back the entire copyright for the character in 2013. During a court hearing about the rights to Superman, Warners chairman Alan Horn said that he hoped to make another film for 2012 at the earliest but that no script was currently in development.
Some may remember that before Bryan Singer came on board, various versions of the Man of Steel were floundering in development, including one version starring Nicolas Cage to be directed by Tim Burton based on a screenplay by Kevin Smith. Even J.J. Abrams took a crack at writing a Superman screenplay with both Brett Ratner and McG attached to direct his version at one point.
It's unclear how far Nolan's role as a mentor might stretch and whether he'll just be offering some suggestions on the direction, or will be actively involved in picking the director, writers and casting for the reboot, as it's still very early in what is already being labeled 'Superman 3.0.'
You can read a lot more about what led to Warner Bros.' decision over at Deadline Hollywood, and we'll keep you posted as things develop.
Knowing how many fans of The Dark Knight there are, need we even ask what you think about Nolan being actively involved in another movie about a DC Comics character?"
UPDATE:
From Slashfilm:
"I’m sure quite a few people have called for something like this in discussions about what Warner Bros. should do to make Superman work on the big screen: the studio is reportedly turning to Christopher Nolan to act as a 'godfather' to help shepherd development of a new Superman film. Before we go further, at this point Nolan is not writing, and is not directing. Rather, Nolan would play more of a mentor’s role to help the film get moving. In other words, WB wants him to communicate some of the methods he used to reinvent Batman on film to help Superman get off the ground in time for Warners to exploit the character before the rights go back to the Siegel and Shuster families.
Deadline Hollywood has the report, which doesn’t have many details on what we can actually expect to see. No surprise there, as Nolan has a movie to finish right now, and Deadline’s Finke and Fleming insist that a new Superman is in very early stages of development. The only sourced quote that will matter to most readers is, 'It would definitely not be a follow-up to Superman Returns'.
Finke and Fleming also reiterate that Jonathan Nolan and David Goyer are actively working on a Batman 3 script right now; they say that Christopher Nolan came up with a story idea and that they’ll write a draft while he finishes Inception."
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