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Looks like we have some good (and possibly bad) news for fans of the Mission Impossible franchise. Mike Fleming at Deadline Hollywood is reporting that Paramount and Tom Cruise have indeed put away their past squabbles in order to pave the way for a fourth Mission Impossible film starring Cruise as Impossible Mission Force agent Ethan Hunt. The possibly bad news? MI3 director J.J. Abrams will not be captaining the ship this time out.

Deadline reports that Abrams will be producing alongside the leading man, but that the studio is actively looking for a director to hire. I suppose that means Abrams hasn't been ruled completely out - who knows, he may fall in love with the project and hop back into the directors chair - but it's not likely he'll return in that capacity. We do have two more names confirmed for the project though: writing duo Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec. The pair may not be all that well known on the cinema front, but fans of the small screen should recognize both as writer/producers on a number of television shows, including the Abrams-produced, spy-loving Alias.

There's no confirmation at this stage as to whether or not any previous cast members will be returning, but if they're keeping the streak going by bringing back Cruise they may as well bring back Ving Rhames for him to play off. Beyond that, however, the only other major bit of news is that Paramount will be shooting this summer for a Memorial Day 2011 release.

But what say you? Are you glad to see Tom Cruise reentering the IMF fold? Or would you rather see a franchise return follow the current Hollywood trend of flat-out reboot with a new cast?

Louie Psihoyos's animal rights documentary The Cove (a film we've been championing since Sundance '09 - read our review here) has been opening eyes stateside and in a handful of overseas markets since opening last summer, but the real question was whether or not the people of Japan would hear about the mass dolphin harvesting that had been going on for years under their noses in the small fishing village of Taiji. According to a press release, Japanese audiences will get their chance to watch The Cove come April 2010, when distributor Medallion Media releases the Oscar nominated film.

In the press release (via The Hot Blog), Medallion Media director Norio Okahara stressed that the company was remaining neutral in the highly political dolphin harvesting debate, but that it was an important issue that deserved attention, so as to let the Japanese public decide for themselves. "In distributing The Cove we are not taking sides. Rather, we are presenting the film for the Japanese to decide for themselves about the issues it raises. There is a debate to be had here and this important film – and the Academy Award® nomination only serves to reinforce its importance - offers the opportunity for such a debate."

It's a bird, it's a plane ... it's Warner Bros. asking Christopher Nolan to pretty please resurrect their Superman franchise and do something cool with it! According to Deadline Hollywood, Nolan has been asked to come in and sort of "mentor" the next Superman movie, and it won't be a sequel to Superman Returns, but instead the beginning of a brand new franchise. Furthermore, DH says Nolan probably won't direct -- especially since David Goyer, Jonah Nolan and Chris Nolan are all busy planning and writing the next Batman installment as we speak -- so what will he do, exactly, when it comes to the new Superman? That's not clear yet, and DH stresses that the film is still in its real early stages of development (ahem, I think they're bringing him in to lay the groundwork for a Justice League movie, but we'll see ...)

Still, knowing Nolan is somehow involved in the rebirth of Superman should at the very least breathe some excited life into a franchise that a lot of folks have kinda lost faith in because, let's face it, the fans feel Warner Bros. had lost faith in it, too. One insider told DH, "We know what we don't want to do. But we don't know what we want to do. We learned a lot from the last movie, and we want to get it right this time." Obviously Nolan has success in rebooting a DC Comics franchise, as evidenced by the work he's done with Batman. But Superman is a different beast all together, and one imagines they'll start with trying to ground the franchise a bit more with a freakier set of villains and perhaps a more relatable, down-to-earth storyline. Not that we need Clark Kent making MySpace references for 120 minutes, but I could see them focusing more on the burden Superman is carrying -- that "weight of the world" angle -- and less on his little romance with Lois Lane.

What do you think? What would you like to see them do with the new Superman?

Everyone has been mildly interested to see who would win the Terminator franchise rights after Halcyon Holding Corp. went into bankruptcy. (Come on, we all wanted Joss Whedon to get it.) Last we knew, Lionsgate was the leading contender to win the rights to making more chronicles of John Connor. But according to Deadline Hollywood Daily, the bidding has ended, and the winner? Pacificor, the Santa Barbara hedge fund that had loaned Halcyon the money to buy Terminator in the first place. Halcyon failed in their loan payments, forcing Pacificor to come after them, which they tried to head off by filing their own lawsuit. But now the slate has apparently been wiped clean to the tune of $29 million dollars.

Sony and Lionsgate did place bids, and even united to bid together once the first round was over. But both dropped out at $29.5 million when it became clear that Pacificor was willing to pay any amount necessary to win the Terminator rights. Reportedly, Sony's Peter Schlessel was "furious" at how the auction went down and stormed out of the building. Was that because he really, really wanted Sony to have Terminator? Was he just mad that he wasted his evening? Or is everyone as weirded out by the shadowy business practices as we on the outside are?

The sale must be approved by bankruptcy court, so there could still be another chapter to the sad saga. What Pacificor plans to do with the franchise is anyone's guess, but I suspect that Terminator will be something so tied up in legal red tape and rights that we won't see another film for a long, long time.

New Line must be pretty happy with Valentine's Day, the new Garry Marshall rom-com that hits theaters this Friday. It hasn't even been released yet, and the studio is already prepping a follow-up. Variety reports that they're getting ready for a spin-off of the ensemble comedy, and they expect Marshall to come back and direct.

Titled New Year's Eve, the film will deal with a big Fourth of July celebration. No, I kid. Shooting late this year for release at the end of 2011, the film will tackle New Year's Eve celebrations, and it will include "some" of the characters from Valentine's Day. I'm assuming that "some" will be whomever is interested in continuing on the romance train. Katherine Fugate is returning to write the feature, and the producers are back; it's pretty much a repeat of the last film.

Since the first isn't out yet, it would be a wee bit hard to muse over what the follow-up will be like. However, I'm eager to see what happens with Eric Dane and Bradley Cooper. If you caught my post last week, their relationship has been well hidden by the film's marketing department, and as a reader who has seen the film commented, "they're still the only couple in the movie that never touch one another, let alone kiss." Maybe it's all riding on the sequel.

If there's one man not lacking for work in this economy, it's Danny McBride, but we're cool with that. He's signed on to yet another movie, but according to Variety this one is more special than most because it's the debut production of Rough House Productions, the shingle McBride heads up with Jody Hill and David Gordon Green.

The film is an action comedy titled L.A.P.I., and the plot is being kept under tight wraps. All that's known is that McBride will be playing "a beaten down, hard boiled P.I." Hill will be directing, and the script is being penned by Michael Diliberti and Matthew Sullivan. If you follow the screenwriters' Black List, you'll recognize their name immediately. They're fast up-and-comers, and hitching themselves with Rough House Productions can only help their upward climb.

The talent accumulated on this is enough to make any comedy fan excited. Because I'm a dork, I always associate private investigators with the 1940s, so my mind has put McBride in a fedora. I doubt that's the case, but I can certainly wish for it to be a 1940s action comedy. Something tells me it'll be more in the vein of Tropic Thunder and Hill's Observe and Report -- a modern day P.I. who has a bit of a dark, scary edge to him. It's something to look forward to, anyway, and I'm anxious to see who they recruit for McBride to bounce off of.

Poor McG. At this time last year, he was the king of the world! Terminator: Salvation was rumored to be the coolest movie of the summer, and he was raking in franchise deals like there was no tomorrow. But there was, and it's now, but he may finally be stepping behind the camera again for a genre miles away from Judgment Day -- a romantic comedy. According to Variety, McG is in talks to direct This Means War, a romantic spy comedy starring Reese Witherspoon and Bradley Cooper.

This Means War has been through the rewrite mill for a couple of years, and its latest incarnation (penned by Timothy Dowling) is a delightful romp where two spies are lifelong friends until they fall for the same woman. Presumably they then try to kill each other using nasty, slick covert methods like cyanide capsules and thin wires you can hide in a sleeve. The girl's preferences, of course, will not factor into their bitter rivalry. It never does! (I wouldn't be surprised if Gerard Butler is the third corner of the triangle, since the tabloids claim to have spotted him lunching with Witherspoon. Those are the kind of rumblings that preceded The Bounty Hunter.)

Fox is desperate to get the film off the ground, and wants to begin shooting by late spring. If McG is as eager to return to the director's chair, expect the wheels to start turning immediately.

Pictured: Saw creators Leigh Whannell and James Wan [photo credit: Sahlan Hayes]

While Paramount and Lionsgate battle it out for the top spot at the Halloween box office with Paranormal Activity and Saw sequels in 2010, the original creators of both those properties are actually teaming up on a new low-budget film called Insidious. Following the grassroots success of Paranormal Activity, producers Oren Peli (who also directed), Jason Blum and Steven Schneider signed a five-picture deal with Alliance Films to produce low-budget genre pics. As such, the first film under that deal will be Insidious, which comes from Saw creators James Wan and Leigh Whannell.

Wan will direct the film off a script by Whannell, and while they're currently keeping the story under lock and key, Wan said that Whannell's script "took a haunted house movie with all the usual conventions and twisted it on its head." Shock had reported at the end of January on the film when it was under the title The Further, and here's how they described it: "Further tells the story of a young family that makes the terrifying discovery that the body of their comatose boy has become a magnet for malevolent entities, while his consciousness lies trapped in the dark and insidious realm known as The Further."

No word yet on how low budget these films will be, but considering that Paranormal Activity clocked in somewhere around $11,000, there's a chance these could be really low budget genre films, which is good because, in my opinion, it'll force these folks to get creative and find ways to freak us out on the real cheap instead of having millions of dollars and endless amounts of special effects to cover up a weak script.

He may have been circling Held By the Taliban last month, but now Terrence Malick is looking for a little romance. Deadline Hollywood reports that Malick's next film will be a romantic love story starring Christian Bale, Javier Bardem, Rachel McAdams, and Olga Kurylenko. Unfortunately, practically nothing is being shared about the feature, except that Malick wrote it and plans to get into production this fall. (A lovers' rectangle perhaps?)

The fastidious filmmaker is known for taking his time creating his films, so chances are he's not going to elbow Kathryn Bigelow, or whoever else is circling the Taliban pic, out of the way. Then again, someone has definitely lit a fire under this man. Let's recap: He started his career in 1969 with the short Lanton Mills. Badlands was his first feature in 1973, followed by Days of Heaven in 1978, The Thin Red Line in 1998, The New World in 2005, and The Tree of Life coming sometime this year. That's it -- his entire directorial career. Completing a project in four years is considered a big event for the filmmaker, and although Life isn't even out yet, having been delayed to get finished, here he is prepping his next. And, if he does take on the Taliban pic, he'll have two features in the works before his latest hits the screen.

The man is on a roll! And with that cast above, he's sure to whip up something interesting.

Disney has never made a film it didn't want to return to at least once or twice, and (usually) spin off into direct-to-DVD sequels. The latest to receive a Mouse House double dip is Enchanted, and Variety reports the film has already attracted Anne Fletcher to the director's chair. Jessie Nelson will pen the script. At this point, none of the original actors are signed to return, though Disney is hoping they'll all sign on for a sequel.

I absolutely loved the original Enchanted. It was delightfully self-aware for a Disney film, and yet it wasn't slick or modern enough to lose any heart. As romantic comedies go, it's a pretty empowering one for females of all ages. Giselle fights a dragon, finds her own willpower, and starts her own business. She could survive just fine without Patrick Dempsey. I love it. It's just one of the sweetest, funniest movies I've seen, especially from Disney.

I see no reason for a sequel. The point of Enchanted (and any fairy tale, modern or medieval) is that it ends happily ever That's it! They've overcome their drawbridges and dragons, and now they get to chill out. This is what Shrek failed to grasp a dozen times over, and what Ever After miraculously dodged. Considering Fletcher's uneven resume (The Proposal, 27 Dresses), one assume they'll undo "happily ever after" and force Giselle to make some traumatic choice between New York and Andalasia. Perhaps Dempsey will get to save her, just to even things up. Whatever they cook up, it's just an unnecessary twist for a feel good movie.