True Blood, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Daredevil, Tron Legacy sequel, Noah, King Kong, Home Movies
Mission: Turtles
The writers of the upcoming Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec, have now been assigned to reboot another franchise: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, reports Deadline. The new film is being developed by Paramount, Nickelodeon and Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes production company. A previous script for it had been written by Iron Man writers Art Marcum and Matt Holloway, and it’s unclear as yet whether Appelbaum and Nemec are rewriting that script, or starting again.
Daredevil
Development on director David (30 Days Of Night, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse) Slade’s Daredevil movie is moving ahead with the announcement in The Hollywood Reporter that Brad Caleb Kane has been hired for script duties. Kane has written for JJ Abrams’s series Fringe, as well as the TV show Crash and, bizarrely, also provided the singing voice of the title character in Disney’s 1992 animated film, Aladdin. Apparently he is a huge fan of the crimson-hued Marvel superhero.
Tron Legacy Sequel
Although Tron Legacy wasn’t the box office behemoth Disney had hoped for it clearly performed well enough to spawn a sequel (and, hey, the company has done all the R&D on the special FX now, so a sequel could be produced for significantly less dosh). According to The Hollywood Reporter, Disney has hired David DiGilio to write the script for the Tron 3, or Tron Legacy 2, or whatever it will be. DiGilio wrote the 2006 film Eight Below, and created the short-lived US TV series Traveler. More recently he also sold a sci-fi pitch to US TV network Showtime called Last HOPE (“HOPE” standing for Hospital On Planet Earth).
Darren Aronofsky Planning Noah
Well, this one could be SFX territory, depending on your viewpoint. Black Swan and The Fountain director Darren Aronofsky is currently trying to get Hollywood studios interested in stumping up $130 million for a movie version of the Noah tale from the Bible he plans to make. According to Deadline, Aronofsky has written a script that’s getting a spit and polish by Star Trek: Nemesis and Gladiator scriptwriter John Logan. Aronofsky allegedly intends it to come across like a big fantasy epic.
Home Movies
Tom McCarthy, most famous as writer/director of The Station Agent, is to script a fantasy comedy for Dreamworks about a man who can make changes to his past through the use of old home movies, called (surprise) Home Movies. According to The Hollywood Reporter, he is only currently attached to write, not direct, although no director has yet been announced.
King Kong-Toon
20th Century Fox is developing an animated version of the 1933 classic King Kong, reports Deadline: “Fox Animation has set the team of Christian Magalhaes & Bob Snow to write a modern day twist on the King Kong story. It will be animated, and will tell the story from the vantage point of the ape. It is based on a story by Mike Weber, who’ll also produce.”
True Blood Vampires Strike Back
We keep hearing about how True Blood’s new season is “The Season Of The Witch” but don’t worry about the vampires being put on the backburner. Here’s HBO’s new promo images of the vampire united, including Nan Flanagain, who, after Russell Edgington’s live TV antics at the end of last season (ripping the spine out of a news anchor and declaring war on humanity) has a hell of a job trying to turn around the bloodsuckers’ public image.
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