Columbia Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Supermax! It's such a catchy word that not one, but two projects have borrowed it for their title. The first is David S. Goyer's Supermax, which puts the Green Arrow behind bars and pits him against the villains of the DC universe. The other is a horror script from actors-turned-writers Mitch Rouse and Christopher Nelson, and that's the one this particular Cinematical story is about.

Supermax does share some similarities with the Green Arrow script in that it's about a maximum security prison that's stocked full with unnatural individuals. Instead of DC villains, this one is full of the supernatural. The story centers around a skilled prison guard who is reassigned to the creepy facility just in time for a prison riot to break out. He's forced to team up with one of the prison's most horrifying inmates to survive, and fight his way out. Who or what that inmate is remains a mystery. (Fangoria has an interview with Nelson and Rouse up and while they don't reveal much beyond their enthusiasm, you might find it a fun read.

Bloody Disgusting first broke the news that Supermax had been sold to Columbia, and now The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed that Rouse and Nelson will be seeing their nightmares come alive there. Production is set to begin in early 2010, and while many have predicted this Supermax will kill the DC one, I imagine that the issue will be fixed by one or both films changing their titles.

I told you that He Man and the Masters of the Universe would find a new home. Mere weeks after being booted out of Warner Bros, Variety reports that the once and future king of Eternia has found a new home at Sony. As you might remember, Joel Silver and Warner Bros were unable to agree on a direction for He-Man, and Mattel promptly took its toys and went elsewhere.

But if you really dug everything to do with Warner Bros' version (which was reportedly titled Greyskull), you'll have some cause for lament. Sony plans on starting with an entirely clean slate, which means John Stevenson will no longer be directing, and that all the script work by Justin Marks and Evan Daugherty will be scrapped. All of those concepts belong to Warner Bros, not Mattel, who was only able to bring Sony the action figure.

One also has to be concerned with just who will be overseeing He-Man's latest incarnation. Escape Artists will be developing the project for Sony, and they've been responsible for The Taking of Pelham 123 remake, Knowing, Seven Pounds, and The Pursuit of Happyness. Without writers, a director, or cast attached, I don't want to predict doom and gloom but is that the kind of resume that screams success for He-Man?

Whatever you may think of Vin Diesel as an actor, you have to admire his dedication to his franchises. I mean, who else but Diesel would hang in for another round of extreme adventure sports and espionage? About a year ago we got the news that Diesel was reuniting with Rob Cohen for another installment of the xXx franchise, but according to The Hollywood Reporter there has been a small personnel change, and now Ericson Core (Invincible) will be stepping in to direct since Cohen is off to work on his period actioner Medieval.

Diesel likes to be in control of his franchises and xXx was no exception. Apparently, the muscly actor had to give Core his blessing before the DP/ Director could get to work, although I'm sure their previous working relationship on Fast and Furious probably helped. According to reports, the film will be called xXx: The Return of Xander Cage, and focus on Cage's return to the 'agency' after an eight-year absence. Now, if you remember, Cage was reported as dead in the second film, but Richard Wilkes (who wrote the original movie) will have to think of something, I guess.

Now I'll admit that I've seen both xXx films (I even went to the theater for the first one) and other than a marginally clever joke about the 'death of Bond' and some truly craptastic dialog, I don't remember much about it (and when it comes to Ice Cube's installment in the franchise, I think I'd probably be better off if I didn't remember that one, too). So I guess on the upside we can take solace in the fact the latest installment couldn't be worse than last time, or can it?

xXx: The Return of Xander Cage begins shooting early next year.

The superheroic team of Peter Berg, Will Smith, and Columbia have been bantering about a Hancock sequel since last July, so it's no surprise that it's gone and become official. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Columbia has hired Adam Fierro and Glen Mazzara to bring back the boozy immortal. Berg is expected to return as director,
though THR is mute as to whether Charlize Theron or Jason Bateman will be reprising their roles. (Given the way the last film ended, it could really go either way, couldn't it?)

While the plot is being kept under wraps, Smith already gave a few hints last winter. Smith says that the Hancock universe was "full of unexplored characters" and that we would meet them in a sequel. He certainly was a character with a long history, and a whole "last son of Krypton" thing going (I'm trying not to spoil anything), so I could see a sequel venturing into some kind of Phantom Zone territory. Or maybe they'll go downright Biblical with his immortal lineage. Who knows! It's too early to know!

When I last reported on a return to Hancock, a lot of you were intrigued by the idea of a prequel exploring his illustrious and godlike past than a sequel starring a reformed and purposeful hero. I guess all hope of a true origin story is shot, but maybe they will cater to your comments, and fill it full of flashback sequences! After all, Smith has The Last Pharaoh on his slate, so they'll have plenty of ancient sets and costumes available!

Movies with food-related themes at their core have always appealed to me: I like eating, I like watching movies, why not combine the two? Julie & Julia does so quite deftly, resulting in a lighthearted comedy that's very easy to like. And these days, a movie with intelligent humor and masterful comic performances is hard to find, so that should be enough to satisfy me. And it very nearly was, although I didn't feel quite appeased afterwards.

Nora Ephron directed the comedy, adapting two stories and squashing them together: Julie Powell cooking her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 2002 as detailed on her blog and in her book Julie and Julia; and Julia Child going from bored housewife in Paris to cookbook co-author, as detailed in the book My Life in France.

The future of movies on the Internet -- and how you get to watch them -- may be largely determined by a new lawsuit filed in Swedish courts. Over a dozen production companies, including Columbia Pictures, Disney Enterprises and Universal Studios, have filed a suit against file-sharing site The Pirate Bay, demanding that the operators be fined and prevented from distributing movies and TV series, according to the Associated Press.

The original owners of Pirate Bay, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundstrom, were found guilty in a Swedish copyright trial earlier this year, and sentenced to a year in prison. They were also ordered to pay over $4 million in damages.

It's a strange thing to live in a world where Dan Brown became a franchise before Patricia Cornwell. The rights to the Dr. Kay Scarpetta series have been languishing at Columbia (the very home of Robert Langdon) since 1992, but now the series has been dusted off, sold to Fox 2000, and assigned to Angelina Jolie.

According to Variety, Fox has won rights to all 16 of the Scarpetta books, and is eying it as a potential franchise along the lines of the Jason Bourne films. They're developing the first thriller now, which won't be tied to any one book, but will probably cherry-pick out of all Scarpetta's gruesome cases. The plan has met with approval from Cornwell, who discussed the idea personally with Jolie and her manager, Geyer Kosinski before handing over the rights.

I'm not an avid reader of Cornwell's books, but Jolie seems like a good fit for the sophisticated Scarpetta. While the coloring's different, Scarpetta's a workaholic who dresses well, drives a Mercedes, attracts handsome guys, and handmakes Italian food. She's kind of perfect, just like Jolie. But hardcore fans (and I know they're out there) may have other ideas.

Regardless of what you might think of the casting, I think it's pretty cool that we may get a female-led franchise, and one based around the cool, rational science of forensic pathology. It's the closest thing to a Bones movie that I'll ever get, so I'm all for it.

I should have known better than to start writing columns and dreaming too much about a Preacher movie. Apparently, the project is just as iffy as its ever been. EmpireOnline caught up with newly appointed director Sam Mendes to find out that things aren't as definite as they seem.

"I'd love to make Preacher. But there's no script. This is a typical Variety announcement, 'Mendes to direct Preacher' – I wish! Basically they should have written, 'Mendes in development with Preacher'. What I'm doing is, I've gotta find a script. I've just got to get it written." To be fair, The Hollywood Reporter did say that Mendes would "lead the search" for writers, but the directing job didn't seem so questionable.

Mendes does sound pretty enthralled with the material, so at the very least he'll have a good go at it. "It's brilliant, it's an incredible twisted vision. There's so much of it you couldn't possibly fit it all into one movie. It's just about what you keep and what you leave out, and how you structure the story. But just to have that toy set again, being able to paint on a big canvas and to say 'I am gonna do crazy crane shots and massive action sequences again because I want to,' it's exciting."

But enthusiasm doesn't always get movies made. Plenty of people have fallen for the material in the past, and this adapting it for the big or small screen always falls short of the finish line. I fully expect this to slip back into the purgatory of pre-production, the rights to the series collecting dust on a Columbia shelf.