No matter how you look at it, one group of dedicated fans aren't going to be very happy about this. In an interview with MTV Movies blog, writer/director David Goyer dropped the hint that his X-Men origin flick Magneto may be taking a back seat to his Invisible Man update -- not the choice I would have made, but maybe Goyer is a little 'Superheroed' out. Goyer tells MTV that Magneto, "may be next," but he wouldn't confirm which film is going to get priority on his schedule, saying, "So it could be 'Magneto,' or it could be 'The Invisible Man' next." -- Gee Dave, thanks for clearing that up.

Goyer's Invisible update is just the latest in a series of adaptations of the classic H.G. Wells story on the big screen. Universal famously adapted the novella in 1933, with Claude Rains as the invisible Jack Griffin, and don't forget about the embarrassingly bad comedy version starring Chevy Chase back in 1992. Goyer told MTV that his story, "involves Scotland Yard getting their hands on the current Invisible Man and basically saying, 'Wow, you'd be a really good secret agent to send into Imperial Russia right now,'" an enthusiastic Goyer said of the plot. "It starts off from there." -- I'm suddenly having flashbacks to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and that is not a good sign.

So the real question is: What does this mean for Magneto? We all know that there is no danger that the film won't get made (No please, don't bring that dump truck full of money to the studio doors), but his work on The Dark Knight earned Goyer the reputation of 'Patron saint of comic book movies' (well, until Watchmen is released anyway), and it will be hard to top that; you can't blame the guy for wanting a break.

Stay tuned to Cinematical for the official word on which film will cross the finish line first.

Love him or hate him, you've got to hand it to Brett Ratner for keeping his career in motion. Variety brings word that the hustling filmmaker plans to take his Rat Entertainment company from New Line, where it first settled in 1996, to a first-look deal with Paramount Pictures. Ratner says the departure of New Line execs Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne in February convinced him it was time to move on. At Paramount, Ratner will probably get bigger budgets and executives more receptive to his blockbuster-ready concepts. Stating the obvious, Ratner told Variety he "will not be pitching art films. I want to make major tentpole movies." You don't say?

Unless you're Scott Foundas, you probably balk at the idea of more Ratner movies populating the mainstream film scene, but the guy does fit the proper archetype of the classic Hollywood powerhouse. A modern day Sammy Glick, he knows how to make movies that bring out the audiences, whether or not they're any good. But maybe that determination means that, one day, Ratner will make a lot of great movies. His planned Hugh Hefner biopic sounds promising -- or at least, appropriate.

Still, that's a little ways off. Encouraged by his experience with X-Men: The Last Stand, Ratner decided he wanted to work on a new superhero franchise, so he's adapting Valiant Comics' Harbinger. Also in his queue: Beverly Hills Cop 4, The Incredible Shrinking Man and The Boys From Brazil. Do these projects get anyone excited? Anyone at all?

The sharp-eyed crew at SuperheroHype.com spotted an interesting listing in Production Weekly -- a listing for X-Men: First Class, which means 20th Century Fox has some kind of young X-Men movie in the works. Whether it is based on Jeff Parker's series of the same name, or if they're just snagging the title for the oft-discussed Young X-Men spin-off remains to be seen. But Fox already has a domain for it, though at this time it only sends you back to the studio's website.

It's certainly odd timing -- the time and place to announce a new X-Men movie just wrapped up in San Diego. But another X-Men spin-off seems inevitable, particularly with the buzz that's beginning to build on X-Men Origins: Wolverine. And I have a feeling that Star Trek's fresh-faces reboot will inspire a number of similar origin stories from all corners of nerdland.

If they do it, I hope they really do base it on Parker's series. I haven't read it (somehow I ended up reading Ultimate X-Men instead, and it's best to just forget all about that), so the more literate among you will have to tell me if it's worth filming or not. But when it comes to the salad days of the X-Men we all know and love, I would rather see an existing storyline adapted. Otherwise, there will probably be all kinds of silly references to the future team -- Cyclops will be splattered by mud from a car driven by Wolverine, or he'll drunkenly hit on a teenage Jean Gray. Assuming that doesn't actually happen in Parker's book ....

[via SuperheroHype.com]

On a cloudless January day in 1966, Los Angeles was such a dull small town that children could be alerted to something as small a skywriter at work. My parents must have been watching the Rose Bowl, as they did every New Year's Day. In those days we lived five miles or so away from the arena, on the heights over the Arroyo Seco. They saw the plane on TV buzzing the big game and urged me to go outside and have a look. Up in the sky, the small plane, low enough that you could hear the drone of the engine, spelled out the words in smoke B-A-T-M-A-N I-S C-O-M-I-N-G.

This summer may be confusing to some less blog-literate moviegoers thanks to two recast roles. In both The Dark Knight and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, a prominent character is played by a new actress. In the former sequel, "Rachel Dawes" will be played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, replacing Katie Holmes, who had the role in Batman Begins. In the latter, "Eveyln Carnahan O'Connell" will be played by Maria Bello, subbing for Rachel Weisz, who appeared in both The Mummy and The Mummy Returns.

This certainly isn't the first time characters have been recast with different actors, and over at The Onion, the A.V. Club has listed 20 such memorably jarring switcheroos, which they're calling The Darrin Effect (after the famous character replacement on TV's Bewitched), in television and film. Surely everyone recalls when Sarah Chalke took over the part of "Becky" on Roseanne; the writers even occasionally even slipped in some reflexive jokes about it. And let's not forget the glaring problem of recasting Jodie Foster's Oscar-winning role of "Clarice Starling" -- Julianne Moore played the part in Hannibal. Or the tragic yet surprisingly respectable replacement of Michael Gambon for a deceased Richard Harris in the Harry Potter movies.

We're already getting a bigger taste of Wolverine with X-Men Origins, and Magneto is also on the way, but now it looks like we're getting another new group picture. Black Book Magazine reportedly spoke with Gossip Girl creator Josh Schwartz, who says he's developing a prequel, but it isn't one like Origins. (What's with the desire for all these X-Men prequels!?)

Schwartz says: "I'm very well aware that I'll be bludgeoned by purists, but I love its mythology, and it comes with a pretty hefty paycheck." His idea for this whole affair is to follow a teen who attends the Xavier Institute. He says he won't be adding any new characters, so the question becomes: Which lucky X-Men character will Schwartz focus on? The writer goes on to diss The Incredible Hulk, saying that it "looks like it's going to be terrible. And why does he look like he's fighting against the monster from Cloverfield?" So, if he can pull this off to his tastes, it should be, at the very least, better than Hulk.

Even after the disappointment of the latest X-Men movie, I'd love to see another movie pop up with more than just Wolverine or Magneto. Unlike most action or geek fare movies, where I fall for the movie as a whole, I really dig a lot of the characters in X-Men and the way the actors portray them. I've spoken before about how much Hugh Jackman rocks as Wolverine, but there's also Magneto, Professor X, Mystique, and my other big favorite -- Anna Paquin's Rogue. But this will be something entirely different, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's a whole different set of actors. So, does this sound good to you, and which character should Schwartz be focusing on?

[via Ace Showbiz]

As Scott pointed out in his review, you need not fear that this week's Superhero Movie is another brainchild of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, whose satanic perversions of the parody genre -- Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans -- have been terrorizing unsuspecting audiences every year since 2006. Superhero Movie was actually directed by Craig Mazin, a protégé of the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker dream team responsible for Airplane! and The Naked Gun, and produced by David Zucker himself. But it, too, is plagued -- albeit to a much lesser degree -- by what's turning out to be the problem with the entire modern generation of spoofs going back to Scary Movie: relentless pop culture specificity.

The basest incarnations of this, of course, are the Friedberg-Seltzer monstrosities, which may be worthless as comedies but which could prove valuable to historians because they indicate precisely what dominated the American zeitgeist in the few months before their release. It's too generous to call these films' vulgar spasms "jokes," but to the extent that's what they are, they depend entirely on either audience members' awareness of US Weekly-type factoids such as Britney Spears' shaving her head or their recall of particular scenes and characters in recent box-office hits. That's not to say that these kinds of jokes can't be funny -- the problem with Friedberg and Seltzer, as others have pointed out, is that they think throwing something current on the screen ("Look, Paris Hilton!") constitutes humor. But they do limit comedies' universal appeal and staying power.

Have we finally reached an age where practically the entire cast for a huge, highly-anticipated movie is announced not through the trades, but on various movie news websites? I think we have, and I think the name of that movie is X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Last night, we told you how Ryan Reynolds was suiting up to play Deadpool in the spin-off flick, and now Superhero Hype tells us Taylor Kitsch (Friday Night Lights) has signed a three-picture deal to star as Gambit (aka Remy Lebeau) in the Gavin Hood-directed film, due out May 1, 2009.

Gambit, a fellow mutant and member of the X-Men, "possesses the ability to manipulate kinetic energy as well as limited hypnosis. He is also skilled in card throwing, hand-to-hand combat, and the use of a Bo, " so says Wiki. When you compare a picture of the character to Kitsch, they look almost exactly the same -- so it's a good match in that department. Fans have been itching to see Gambit show up on the big screen for some time now; the character had his name show up in X2 when Mystique hacked a system holding mutant names, and he was rumored to be involved in X-Men: The Last Stand, with a bunch of actors auditioning for the role, but never showed up. Originally, he was supposed to appear in the prison convoy scene.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine will star Hugh Jackman (Wolverine), Liev Schreiber (Sabretooth), Danny Huston (William Stryker), Lynn Collins (Silver Fox) and (we think) Ryan Reynolds (as Deadpool). Talk about an eclectic cast! What do you think?

Definitely, or maybe? According to AICN, Ryan Reynolds is definitely showing up in X-Men Origins: Wolverine as the character Deadpool -- which not only means there may be a new spinoff franchise in the works, but that this new Wolverine prequel will be chock-full of groovy comic characters. As per Wiki, the character is "Nicknamed the "Merc with a Mouth", Deadpool is a high-tech mercenary known for his wisecracks, black humor, and satirical pop-culture references. Like the X-Men's Wolverine, Deadpool is the product of the Canadian government's paramilitary Weapon X program, although his place of birth is unknown. After Weapon X cured his terminal cancer by implementing a regenerative "healing factor" extracted from Wolverine, Deadpool is left disfigured and mentally unstable."

Sounds like the perfect comic book character for Reynolds, who's made a name for himself in the comedic realm and always looks relaxed in front of the camera. But can he kick ass? Additionally, Film School Rejects also claims to have received information indicating that The Blob will make an appearance in Wolverine as well. The character is just that -- a friggin' giant blob-ish mutant who "possesses an extreme amount of pliable body mass, which grants him superhuman strength and his own gravitational pull. Possessing the mindset of a bully, he mostly uses his powers for petty crime and as a member of the Brotherhood of Mutants and Freedom Force." Fat dudes, funny men -- seems like Wolvy will get rather dirty in this one.

What do you think about adding both these characters into the mix? Too much?

There is no exclamation or excitement in the title for this post because, well, there's not too much to "ooh" and "ahh" over. Still, this is a hugely-anticipated movie, one that I'm really itching to see, so here goes. Superhero Hype has posted the first set photos from 20th Century Fox's X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Both photos were taken in Queenstown, and one shows the frame of a building, while the other shows a half-built log cabin. The original source of the latter photo, Southland Times, says the log cabin is in Deer Park Heights, which already houses locales from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and The Rescue.

I imagine Logan (Wolverine) will hole up the log cabin, being all pensive, for at least some of the film, but hopefully that will be followed by classic, huge, and impressive action scenes, Wolvie Berzerk style. We have to wait over a year until the flick hits theaters on May 1, 2009, but in the meantime, here is some Wolverine action against a dastardly assailant: