Movie Make-out

Superman appears to be taking after Batman in his next film iteration, in going by just one of his noms de guerre, in this case, The Man of Steel. And he’s doing it with the help of one of Batman’s saviors, David S. Goyer.

According to an exclusive posted at Latino Review, Goyer has been hired by Legendary Pictures’ Thomas Tull to script a Superman film that “actually takes the movies back to the John Byrne incarnation.” Neither Brandon Routh or Bryan Singer will be returning. The story will apparently involve Lex Luthor and Brainiac and will assume that viewers have a knowledge of some of the history behind the characters (i.e., not an origin story), though it will be working to set up a “huge Kryptonian mythology” as well as a story involving the Daily Planet suffering due to the internet. Timely.

This would be great news if there wasn’t already apparently so much confusion surrounding it. According to Harry Knowles, who contacted Tull, the story is only “probably true” and that Goyer has not been “unilaterally” hired. However, IGN claims an inside source says that Tull is downplaying this and, not only is Goyer involved, but Dark Knight co-writer Jonathan Nolan will be helping with scripting as well.

As of right now, Knowles seems to have the only reliable source, but it seems likely that with Christopher Nolan involved, this could all turn out to be quite true.

UPDATE: Apparently, DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson has debunked even Chris Nolan’s involvement, telling MTV News, “We don’t have any plans about that, and as I’ve mentioned, in the coming months we’ll be making a lot of announcements about what our content plans will be. But right now, that’s nothing but rumor — and we frankly don’t say a whole lot more about rumor than that, so…”

Editor’s note: We here at Movie Make-out are duly embarrassed, having been duped by a Nikki Finke rumor — and especially so, since the site originated from the frustration of seeing so many movie news sites run with obviously suspect non-news about… a bit of Superman movie news. We’ll try not to let it happen again.

Related Posts: Nolan to mentor Superman, begins work on 3rd Batman film

Män som hatar kvinnor (“Men That Hate Women”)
aka The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Directed by Niels Arden Oplev
Starring Michael Nyqvist, Noomi Rapace, Sven-Bertil Taube

Two months ago, we learned that there would be an English-language film adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which is the first in a planned trilogy of novels knows as the Millenium trilogy. At the time I said that I hadn’t read the book yet and that there was no work on when the original Swedish-language film adaptation would be released by Music Box Films.

Luckily, we now know that it will be going into wide release on March 19 and I got to see a preview of it last night. And I have to tell you perfectly honestly:

The executives at Sony Pictures are nuts for wanting to remake this film. Read more

The thing about adapting “chick lit” novels into film is that already the studio knows that there’s an audience for it, which is a good thing. The tricky thing is that the audience is invariably going to be made up of some people who are not in the novel’s targeted demographic, and this audience has to be entertained as well.

Which is why I’m not surprised that Universal Pictures and Spyglass Entertainment have finally settled on director Andy Fickman (The Game Plan, You Again) to lead its adaptation of Sophie Kinsella’s The Undomestic Goddess.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Fickman will be reporting to both Spyglass and Tribeca Productions, working from a script by Aline Brosh McKenna (The Devil Wears Prada).

Goddess is the story of a workaholic London attorney named Samantha Sweeting who suffers a brief mental episode at work after making a costly error and escapes to the English countryside. There, she is mistaken for a candidate for a maid position at a country estate and decides to just go with it rather than facing her problems back in the big city. The production will keep the setting the same, but it sounds to me like they’re going to turn Sweeting into an American, which irks me only a little.

To say that Fickman’s recent films haven’t been good is definitely a matter of opinion as even though The Game Plan only scored a 27% on the Tomatometer, it ranked #1 in box office sales for its opening weekend in September 2007 and has a total worldwide gross of $147 million. It was also the top DVD rental for three weeks in a row upon its release in January 2008.

It doesn’t hurt that he’ll have McKenna’s adaptation to work from and the fact that Sweeting is a more empathic character than the one in Kinsella’s Confessions of a Shopaholic may also help the film’s chances.

Ultimately, I think the success of this film is going to be based entirely on whom they get to play the leads and how many great character actors they can get to fulfill the supporting roles. This could almost be a job for Amy Adams, but I doubt she’d want to do another romantic comedy so soon after Leap Year only made it to #6 on its opening weekend.

Columbia pictures is bringing Doc Savage, the original action hero, back to the big screen.

Doc Savage was one of the most popular heroes of the pulps in the 1930s and 40s, first appearing in a novel entitled The Man of Bronze, and later getting his own magazine. He went on to appear in comics, but only made it to film once, in a feature that was more camp than anything else. (It’s available on DVD exclusively from Warner Bros. Archives.) Nonetheless, it’s safe to say he inspired many of the characters we know and love, including a certain state-named archaeologist.

Now, according to Variety, Doc is fighting his way back onto the big screen. Shane Black (Writer Lethal Weapon, Director Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang) who owns a huge collection of antique pulps and detective novels, is attached to the property to direct from a script that he’s working on with Chuck Mondry and Anthony Bagarozzi (Tick Tock, Cold Warrior).

According to Columbia Co-President Matt Tolmach:

Doc Savage is an icon, a character with limitless possibilities. We have had a great experience working with Neal to bring another classic character of the era, the Green Hornet, to a new generation of fans, and we think he and Shane make the ideal team to bring Doc Savage back to the bigscreen.

Related Posts: Green Hornet gains director Michel Gondry, Jay Chou is Kato in The Green Hornet

With the success of its stop motion-animated film Coraline, Laika Entertainment has been adding feature films to its production slate, and now we can add one more to the list.

According to The Hollywood Reporter Chris McCoy and Jan Pinkava will be writing Little White Lie for the animation house under Pinkava’s direction (he also directed the Oscar-winning short film Geri’s Game).

McCoy (who also has a story credit for Ratatouille) is credited with the original story, but neither THR nor Empire magazine seem to know what the story’s about—which makes me wonder if Laika’s withholding information just to get people more interested in finding out more about the movie and the story. If so, well… they’ve got me hooked.

Other films on Laika’s slate include an adaptation of Alan Snow’s Here Be Monsters! and Paranorman which features a young teenager who has to defend his small town from a zombie attack.