Now this is what you call a reboot..

X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE HD


Here's hoping it's as good as X2!

Singer Beyoncé Knowles is interested in play Wonder Woman on the silver screen and has met with representatives at DC Comics and Warner Bros. to discuss donning the red, white and blue bathing suit on screen, she says.

"After doing these roles that were so emotional I was thinking to myself, 'OK, I need to be a superhero,'" Beyoncé tells the Times. "Although, when you think about the psychology of the heroes in the films these days, they are still a lot of work, of course, and emotional. But there's also an action element that I would enjoy."

My opinion? I think she'd be great for the role, but there are folks out there who would openly criticize the fact that Beyoncé is African-American, similar to the backlash against Jessica Alba (who is Mexican-American) when she was first reported to have taken the role as Invisible Girl in the Fantastic Four movies. Hopefully people can look past this, if she is in fact chosen.

Down these mean streets a man must come. A hero born, murdered, and born again. When a Rookie cop named Denny Colt returns from the beyond as The Spirit, a hero whose mission is to fight against the bad forces from the shadows of Central City. The Octopus who kills anyone unfortunate enough to see his face who has other plans. He's going to wipe out the entire city. The Spirit tracks this cold hearted killer from the city's rundown warehouses, to the damp catacombs, to the windswept waterfront all the while facing a bevy of beautiful women who either want to seduce, love or kill the masked crusader.

IGN posted a video few days ago with Frank Miller speaking on the movie, and some behind the scenes shots, which you can see after the break. The Spirit, starring Gabriel Macht, Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson & Eva Mendes is scheduled for release on Christmas Day, 2008.

Terrence Howard says he was surprised to learn that Don Cheadle would replace him in "Iron Man 2."

"It was the surprise of a lifetime," the actor and musician told National Public Radio on Tuesday. "There was no explanation, (the contract) just up and vanished."

Howard said he read news reports that money was the issue, saying the contracts he signs apparently "aren't worth the paper that they're printed on sometimes."

Cheadle assumes the role of James Rhodes, a character that becomes Iron Man's sidekick War Machine in the comics, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Robert Downey Jr. will reprise his role as weapons mogul Tony Stark.

G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra, coming August 7, 2009!

"The Dark Knight" on Sunday became the second movie in Hollywood history to top $500 million at the domestic box office, raising its total to $502.4 million, according to estimates from distributor Warner Bros.

The film hit that mark in just over six weeks, half the time it took "Titanic," which reached $500 million in a little more than three months. "Titanic," the biggest modern blockbuster, remains No. 1 on the domestic charts with $600.8 million.
Factoring in today's higher admission prices, "The Dark Knight" would need to take in about $900 million to match the number of tickets sold by "Titanic."

Dan Fellman, head of distribution at Warner Bros. expects "The Dark Knight" to finish at about $530 million, though it could reach $550 million if business persists as strongly as it has.

Overseas, the film led the foreign box office for a third consecutive weekend - and fourth overall - as its international sales hit $417 million (230 million pounds).

The film earned an estimated $19 million from 62 markets, led by No. 1 rankings in Germany ($4.4 million in its second weekend) and France ($3.3 million in its third). The top markets overall are the U.K. with $90.3 million and Australia with $41.1 million.

As of now, worldwide, TDK has made over 900 million..

Domestic: $502,421,000 54.7%
+ Foreign: $416,700,000 45.3%
= Worldwide: $919,121,000 !

According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, Warner Bros. has quietly adopted Marvel's model of releasing a single film for each character, and then using those movies and their sequels to build up to a multicharacter film. And there's also talk that depending on the direction Supeman Returns director Bryan Singer takes the reboot would decide his fate with the franchise.
As quoted from blogger Anne Thompson at Variety:

Fans have been clamoring all over the web—and on this blog—for a complete reboot. And within the halls of Warner Bros. the same debate rages on. They too believe that the last movie didn't break the mold and wound up in some kind of middle limbo. Today I was told that it is a priority at the studio to find the right direction and if Bryan Singer is willing to do that, fine, but if he gets in the way, he may not stay on the project. There are no writers working on a Superman script now. The studio wants to figure it out. "It might be better to start from scratch," one exec admitted.

Studio executive Jeff Robinov plans to have the film released either by 2010 or 2011. Here's what he had to say on it:

"Superman' didn't quite work as a film in the way that we wanted it to," Robinov said of Singer's movie, which made just $215 million domestically. "It didn't position the character the way he needed to be positioned," he continued. "Had 'Superman' worked in 2006, we would have had a movie for Christmas of this year or 2009, but now the plan is just to reintroduce Superman. We're going to try to go dark to the extent that the character allows it."

A movie referred to internally as "Justice League of America," originally said to debut as soon as summer 2009, was planned as one of the studio’s major releases. With that film, starring a superhero team, Warner hoped to spark interest in DC characters like Green Lantern who haven’t yet attained the level of popularity of Batman. But script problems, among other things, have delayed the movie.

The studio is set to announce its plans for future DC films in the next month. For now, though, it is focused on releasing four comic book films in the next three years, including a third Batman film, a new film reintroducing Superman, and two movies focusing on other DC Comics characters. Movies featuring Green Lantern, Flash, Green Arrow, Jonah Hex, Shazam and Wonder Woman are all in active development.

Green Arrow: Escape from Super Max follows a wrongly convicted Green Arrow as he is incarcerated in a super maxim security prison filled with villains (like Luthor, Icicle and the Joker?!) and rogue superheroes. Arrow will also come face to face with some of the people he put in the prison.

LatinoReview.com has a review of the film's status so far:

He’s Green Arrow for the first 10 minutes of the movie, and then he’s arrested and his secret identity is revealed,” Goyer told Wizard. “They shave his goatee and they take his costume and send him to prison for life, and he has to escape. It’s like ‘Alcatraz,’ and he has to team up with, in some cases, some of the very same villains he is responsible for incarcerating in order to get out and clear his name. Of course, tons of people try to kill him while he’s in there. We’ve populated the prison with all sorts of B and C villains from the DC Universe. For the fans, there will be all sorts of characters the hardcore comic book junkies will know, but they’re all going to be there under their human names and no one is wearing a costume, but there will be a lot of characters with powers and things like that.

There are no plans for the Black Canary (Oliver’s wife)to appear in the film.

20th Century Fox said on Monday it will seek an injunction to block release of the Warner Bros movie "Watchmen" after a Los Angeles court ruled a copyright lawsuit against Warner can go forward.

"The Watchmen" is directed by Zack Snyder (300), with a budget around $120 million, is based on a 1980s DC Comics graphic novel written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons. The movie, which has already been shot is slated for release on March 6, 2009. Watchmen stars Patrick Wilson, Carla Gugino, Billy Crudup and Jackie Earle Haley as a band of former superheroes who find themselves reclassified as criminal vigilantes in an alternate universe circa 1985. As an unknown assassin begins to hunt them down, the heroes try to unravel a conspiracy and thwart a nuclear war.

Fox argues it acquired motion picture rights to the "Watchmen" graphic novel in the last 1980s, and that even though it relinquished certain rights to the material in 1991 it held onto the right to distribute the first movie. Fox filed its lawsuit against Warner Bros in February. Fox's accusations against its rival studio included copyright infringement, interference with contract and breach of contract.

In his decision released last week, Judge Gary Feess of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California wrote that Fox could hold some of the rights to the material, even if it did not hold all rights.

Fox spokesman Gregg Brilliant said:

"We will be asking the court to enforce Fox's copyright interests in "The Watchmen" and enjoin the release of the Warner Brothers film and any related 'Watchmen' media that violate our copyright interests in that property."

Hopefully this will be resolved by next March when the movie is expected to debut.

"Dark Knight" Breaks yet another record:

The Warner Bros. Batman flick pulled in $16.8 million to raise its total to $471.5 million. "The Dark Knight" passed the original "Star Wars" ($461 million) and now stands as No. 2 on the all-time domestic charts(not adjusted for inflation), behind only "Titanic" ($600.8 million). Warner Bros. expects "The Dark Knight" to top out at about $530 million domestically.

As of right now worldwide, TDK has made a little over 800 million so far..

Domestic: $471,493,000 58.9%
+ Foreign: $328,600,000 41.1%
= Worldwide: $800,093,000 !

Justice League movie officially cancelled:

Via Filmonic:
“We’re not off the notion of a Justice League,” Robinov says. “There’s a massive interest and knowledge in the comicbook industry and it takes time to sort of catch up and understand the characters and the history, where they’ve intersected with each other and what their worlds are. That’s part of the education that we’re going through.”

“These are big, iconic characters,” [Greg] Noveck says. “So when you make them into a movie, you’d better be shooting for a pretty high standard. You’re not always going to reach it, but you have to be shooting for it. We’re going to make a Justice League movie, whether it’s now or 10 years from now. But we’re not going to do it and Warners is not going to do it until we know it’s right.“

DC’s first solo movie off the blocks will most likely be Green Lantern, which already has a script and is apparently ready to go.

Director DJ Caruso on Y: The Last Man:

Q: Is "Y: The Last Man" going to happen?

Caruso: It's probably going to be happening, yeah. With New Line now part of Warner Brothers, Warners is now very high on the project. And Carl Ellsworth and I are probably going to deliver the script to WB/New Line by next week.

Q: Can you elaborate on what you mean when you say that you've cracked "Y: The Last Man"?

Caruso: What I mean by that is that there's so much to choose from. Just trying to narrow down the story, and in all the drafts written over the years there's a lot of great stuff in there, but what I think "Y" was missing in screenplay form was a ticking clock. So we did something where we separated Yorick from [pet monkey] Ampersand for a brief period of time where Yorick gets very sick, which kind of opened up the movie in the middle of the act. And also the Agent 355 / Yorick relationship to me has always been sort of a De Niro / Grodin thing. And so I was working on that and not quite getting it right, believe it or not. Because Yorick to me is so solid, it's really like 355 and her journey with Yorick that's been…and also Act 3, where do you end the first movie and how can you go from there? But I think we licked it.

Q: So is this a trilogy?

Caruso: I see it as a trilogy. I definitely see it as a trilogy. I see the first movie ending anywhere basically when you pick up after the incident you're picking up about six weeks later, meeting Yorick six weeks later after the incident and progressing down, I think it's about… only a five or six week journey from that point to the end of the first movie. It's been hard, in a good way, just because there's so much good stuff to choose from, and every time you start throwing certain scenes in the screenplay you'll see that it sort of dislodges and starts to head a different way.

More at the link!

The new Batman movie "The Dark Knight" smashed the weekend record set by "Spider-Man 3" last year, selling an estimated $155.3 million worth of tickets during its first three days of release across North America. The Caped Crusader also generated $40 million from 20 foreign markets. More recently, "The Dark Knight" was the number-one movie for the second week in a row, raking in $75.6 million.

The Dark Knight' has just become the first movie ever to gross $300 million in its first 10 days, beating 2006's Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, which took 16 days. Warner Bros. head of distribution Dan Fellman is anticipating that The Dark Knight will reach the $400-million mark in 18 days -- topping over 2004's Shrek 2, which took 43. If The Dark Knight keeps this up, chances are it'll surpass 1997's Oscar-winning massive epic Titanic, which still holds the record as the highest-grossing film of all time at $600 million dollars domestically.

Punisher:War Zone is the upcoming Punisher reboot, which will be directed by Jonathan Hensleigh. It will be released December 5th, 2008.

Waging his one-man war on the world of organized crime, ruthless vigilante-hero Frank Castle sets his sights on overeager mob boss Billy Russoti. After Russoti is left horribly disfigured by Castle, he sets out for vengeance under his new alias: Jigsaw. With the "Punisher Task Force" hot on his trail and the FBI unable to take Jigsaw in, Frank must stand up to the formidable army that Jigsaw has recruited before more of his evil deeds go unpunished.

Starring Ray Stevenson (HBO's "Rome") as Punisher, "Punisher: War Zone" is directed by Lexi Alexander and produced by Gale Anne Hurd and Ari Arad. The film's executive producers are Kevin Feige, Ogden Gavanski, Oliver Hengst and Jeremy Latcham.

A Warner Bros. executive says the Batman sequel "The Dark Knight" has set a single-day box office record by taking in $66.4 million on opening day.

The movie's Friday haul surpasses the previous record of $59.8 million set last year by "Spider-Man 3." "The Dark Knight" also might break the opening weekend record of $151.1 million that also was posted by "Spider-Man 3."

Warner Bros. head of distribution Dan Fellman says the death of co-star Heath Ledger and the buzz about his frenzied performance as the Batman villain Joker was a big part of the movie's allure.

In an interview with TV Week about the upcoming season of “Family Guy,” Seth MacFarlane let drop that “Family Guy: The Movie” will be going into production within a year. “We want to do it. And it is time. In the past six months we have seriously started talking about it,” MacFarlane said. “And my hope is that we will get it going within the next year. Doing the show is a seven-day a week process, so I don’t know how we will squeeze in a movie. But we will figure it out. I have an idea about what it will be. It is definitely something you wouldn’t be able to do on the show. That’s the only reason to do a movie.” When he was asked if there would be nudity and obscenities, MacFarlane added, “Oh, yeah!”

Considering the success of the "Simpsons Movie" this seems like it makes good financial success.

IGN chatted with Transformers actress Megan Fox this week at the Television Critics Association summer press tour where the beauty spoke about the Michael Bay-directed sequel Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, as well as her forthcoming thriller Jennifer's Body. You can read the interview here. Revenge of the Fallen will have a release date of June 26, 2009.

It's opening in the most North American theaters ever! From The Hollywood Reporter:

The film's more than 4,366 domestic playdates is a record, surpassing the 4,362 theaters for May 2007's bow of "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End." Double- and triple-screening at many venues means "Dark Knight" will play on 9,200 screens in the U.S. and Canada.

Its engagements include 94 Imax venues -- Nolan shot long segments using Imax-format cameras -- and most of those giant-screen auditoriums were sold out by midweek. A Warners exec estimated that Imax presales totaled $3.5 million, with advance ticketing for other venues adding considerably to that total.

"Dark Knight" also bows in more than a dozen foreign markets this weekend and several more the following frame, but some of the bigger territories won't get the film until August because of calendar-driven marketing considerations in some countries. "Dark Knight" rung up a big first-day estimate of almost $2.3 million Wednesday in Australia, where the territory's usual Thursday bow was moved up one day to take advantage of a final week of school holidays.