Set the bar low enough, and it can only be exceeded. That's how I feel about the upcoming big-screen version of The A-Team, a 80s television series entirely beholden to the staid formula of the day and ripe for reinvention. I didn't hate the series so much as I found it routinely mediocre. My colleague Monika Bartyzel loved the series as a kid, yet still questioned the casting choices that were being entertained: Liam Neeson as Hannibal? Bradley Cooper as Face? Adding fuel to the fire, rapper The Game is being considered to play the role of B.A. Baracus, according to blackfilm.com, which quotes "a very highly reliable source in the entertainment industry."

For me, the only thing that made The A-Team watchable was the bantering between the characters, and the choices so far all indicate that director Joe Carnahan is aiming for a more straightforward action picture, based on a script by Wanted's Michael Brandt and Derek Haas. Which is crazy, like moving Miami Vice to Seattle or transforming the lead character in Get Smart into a fairly bland, somewhat competent secret agent. (Even though the latter still made money.)

The mistake would be in confusing brand recognition with brand loyalty. If you're promising fans of the TV show that you're going to deliver the same thing, only bigger and better, then you damn well better deliver something in the same spirit. I haven't seen The Game's work as an actor (Waist Deep, Street Kings) yet; is he any good? If this rumor is true, could he wear the mohawk of the immortal Mr. T?

Lots of movie geeks (yes, like us) have been abuzz with the vague discussions regarding the Predator remake / reboot / sequel / whatever. All we really knew was that the generally kick-ass Robert Rodriguez was on board to oversee, as the producer, but now we have confirmation have Robert's good pal that the director has been named. And that name ... is Nimrod.

Nimrod Antal, to be precise, who fest-goers will know from Kontroll and thriller fans will recall from Vacancy. Harry's got a whole bunch of cool info on the project right here, but I've chosen a small segment that makes me particularly happy: "It involves a very intense group of people stranded on a Predator planet discovering unspeakable horrors." Yes! Plus Mr. Rodriguez shares some enthusiasm from a Fox colleague: "No one is going to talk about AVP again after this movie. I stake my life on it."

Hell, just give us a knock-down, drag-out Predator fest with a few meaty characters, a whole lot of action, and maybe a few storytelling hooks. That'll make a whole lot of people happy. Speaking only for myself, heck, I thought both of Antal's films were darn good, so I've no reason to doubt RR's call on this one!

Pixar and everything else - them's the breaks when it comes to judging computer-animated fare these days. Although Pixar has rightfully earned themselves the lead among studios, and by a significant margin, it's all too easy to then marginalize the performance of others.

DreamWorks has certainly raised their game beyond pure pop-culture recitation with the inventive and entertaining likes of Over the Hedge, Kung Fu Panda, and Monsters vs. Aliens (and Aardman or no, I'd even include the winning Flushed Away among their finer efforts). For every Open Season, Sony has given us a Monster House (okay, so that's just one-for-one at the moment). And every time that Fox bequeaths to unwilling audiences something like Space Chimps or Everyone's Hero, Blue Sky has nothing to do with it.

Fox/Blue Sky, however, is the precise pairing that gives us the visually engaging and moderately amusing outings like Robots, Horton Hears a Who!, and the Ice Age films, with the latest of which -- Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs -- falling right in line with that modest-yet-reliable tradition.

A mere week after Sony canned Steven Soderbergh's Moneyball, another big-budget film may have bitten the dust. Fox is putting the breaks on Tony Scott's next project, Unstoppable, over budget concerns, and may can the project altogether.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film was set to begin shooting in fall, and Denzel Washington and Chris Pine were attached to play the leads. But none of the acting deals have been officially closed, and not even Scott is definitively signed to the project. Fox is growing more and more concerned about the cost of production on the thriller, which would be quite high -- after all, it centers around a runaway train loaded with toxic chemicals, and it's being stopped by the $20 million dollar Denzel Washington. While the film isn't in as much production peril as Moneyball, its budget is definitely a roadblock, and fat will have to be trimmed somewhere. Maybe they can make a smaller train, or just have it be an unstoppable semi-truck, or maybe some of the A-Listers can take a pay cut ... something like that.

This summer has seen a lot of big-budget films falter at the box office, so studio hesitations are understandable, and budget trimming has been a long time coming. Though I do love a good action flick, I'm neither here nor there about the plot of Unstoppable, but it would be a shame for Pine to lose his next big role, and kill his Captain Kirk Buzz. So let's hope they figure out how to cut some corners.

It was just last week that anime fans the world over breathed a sigh of relief that Leonardo DiCaprio's live-action Akira was no more. But, that doesn't mean Hollywood has lost its taste for anime, and there are still plenty of other reboots headed our way. So while most of them have stayed in development limbo, two of the more popular titles: Cowboy Bebop and Robotech have started to make new ground, and some of the people involved are starting to talk.

Cowboy Bebop:
When the live action film of the beloved anime was first announced, fans were not thrilled with the idea. Plus, it probably didn't help that Keanu Reeves was taking the role of Spike. But, maybe we shouldn't count out the film yet, because when it comes to the film's screenwriter, there is good news and some bad news. But, let's start with the good news. In an interview with Anime Vice, Craig was asked about whether or not he was familiar with the series, and to his credit, Craig went into full fan-boy mode, telling them about some of his favorite episodes and that both he and Reeves have been meeting with Sunrise studio (the creator of the anime) to make sure that the original 'feel' of the show remains intact. According to Craig, "they [Sunrise] were very specific about their vision for the series, and how it might convert to a live-action film." -- sounds promising, right? Well, the bad news is that Craig has zero experience with sci-fi, and made his name writing about con-men and dysfunctional families. But, I'm going to remain hopeful that with Sunrise watching over the flick, there might be a chance we get something a little better than expected.

Read the rest over at SciFi Squad

The Avengers' mighty writer Zak Penn gave a nifty little update on all things Marvel yesterday, and it completely slipped past my radar. Better late than never though, right?

SciFi Wire caught up with Penn right as he was on the verge of another Marvel meeting. With Iron Man 2 well underway, they're beginning to knit together the continuity and overlap the plotlines: "I'm taking a meeting next week with the Thor and Captain America people, and we are all going to get together, and I will see what is going to happen. I'll see where they are leaving the characters; it's pretty complicated. ... There's a board that is tracking what is happening. [We'll see] how this movie overlaps in that movie ... Marvel is autonomous now. It is night and day: Everyone has read every comic. They know how to make a cool movie." (Low wages or not, wouldn't you just love to work for Marvel?)

Every compliment Penn has for Marvel is a backhanded slap to his old parent studio, Fox. He revealed that he was frustrated while writing X-Men and X2 because he was dying to do a crossover, and bring in the Fantastic Four.
"They're doing Captain American and Thor first, and then Avengers is coming out," Penn said. "They want to see that they're all connected, not like the Fantastic Four can't come into the X-Men world, like I was told ... It is a world of difference [at Marvel]; it is a lot easier to do things like that, and they encourage it." Here I'll leave off so you can weep at the missed opportunities, and wish we lived in an Ultimate Universe where Marvel still owned their entire stable of heroes.

My principles may be crumbling, just a little. Neil Marshall (pictured) is in talks to direct Predators, according to Bloody Disgusting, citing an anonymous tipster. At this point, it's very much a rumor -- for all we know, Marshall was visiting a friend in the commissary at 20th Century Fox and was seen in close proximity to an executive -- but of all the possible candidates to helm a sequel to the alien hunter franchise, I'd definitely be down with Marshall.

He has three features to his credit: The Descent is the best and most widely-acclaimed, a feverish nightmare in which a group of women explore a cave and discover deadly denizens, to their dismay. I got a huge kick out of the bloody, funny, pulse-pounding Dog Soldiers, featuring Scottish soldiers on a training run who encounter werewolves, and, though I was decidedly in the minority, really enjoyed the post-Apocalyptic action epic Doomsday. The latter was his first with a Hollywood studio (Rogue Pictures). Upcoming is his "old-style swords 'n' armor action epic" Centurion, which looks promising but doesn't yet have US distribution.

Robert Rodriguez is on board to produce. Predators is already set to be released on July 7, 2010, so Fox will have to make a decision soon. Marshall has always written his own scripts; if this rumor proves to be true, either he'll have to pound out a rewrite in a hurry or take what Fox gives him. Considering the track records of Marshall and Fox, there's reason for both optimism ... and despair.

If you're going to dump Vin Diesel and XXX: The Return of Xander Cage for anything, it should be The Magnificent Seven. Nothing less would do. Now, if your heart stopped at the idea of Rob Cohen directing The Magnificent Seven, let me pause here to laugh, and assure you that he isn't ... he's just going medieval.

According to Variety, Cohen has dumped Diesel for Medieval, "an event-sized action film" that the director is describing as Magnificent Seven meets the Middle Ages. Fox and New Regency paid a nice chunk of change to Alex Litvak and Michael Finch for their spec script, and brought McG on to produce. They're hoping to get underway by October. Regency is determined to keep the details of this medieval tale under tight wraps, but the Seven reference stems from it reportedly being about a group of warriors who hail from different cultures, and come together to fight ... something. that exists Cohen's promise of "a heightened reality" and gigantic action pieces. Knowing his past films, I would bet very good money on it being a dragon.

While this has shades of 10,000 B.C., I have to give props to Cohen for carrying around a degree like mine, and finding some way to use it. All those facts about the Plantagenets don't come in handy nearly as often as I thought they would.

Now we're talking! Javier Bardem will bring Anton Chigurh, his character from No Country for Old Men, roaring back to life in the sequel to Oliver Stone's Wall Street. The hired assassin with the funny haircut will stalk financial company executives, using a fire extinguisher to put the fear of God into those heartless suits who stole America's money and refuse to give an accounting for their actions.

Unfortunately -- at least to my way of thinking -- that's not quite how the Wall Street sequel will play out, but it's not that far from the truth, either. Instead of playing a bad guy who sets things straight, Bardem will, in fact, play "a stock-shorting worldwide hedge fund manager," according to Nikki Finke at Deadline Hollywood Daily. He is the villain of the piece, held responsible for the suicide of the hero's mentor.

UPDATE: Nikki Finke clarifies today (via Fox) that Bardem is not onboard ... yet ... though that's who they want for the role.