Boom! Studios is really experiencing a ... well, you know. According to The Hollywood Reporter, they just sold the rights to James L. White's five part comic series Hunter's Moon. Mekhi Phifer is set to star and co-produce the film, along with Boom! Entertainment, the studio's film shingle. White is in negotiations to adapt his graphic novel, and it will be his first screenplay since Ray.

Phifer plays a stockbroker, Lincoln Greer, who is looking forward to a hot date at a remote cabin, but gets stuck with his teenage son instead. The pair go on a weekend hunting trip, but the son is kidnapped. In order to save his kid, Greer is forced to obey his captor's demands, but soon finds matters complicated by being the only African-American in a small logging town.

There's shades of Ransom and Shattered in the plot description -- Ransom with racial tension. Maybe I am just feeling grumpy (and I haven't read the book), but I wish that the graphic novels being snapped up would have a real unique spark. There are so many good ones out there that it is disappointing to see the standard action thriller being bought up again and again. Still, the racial angle gives this some promise, and it is supposed to have a twist ending -- so best not to be too hasty.

Maybe it's because I just sat through the lazy, depressing Fred Claus. Maybe it's because I was expecting Tyler Perry in drag. Maybe it's because my holiday spirit is at an all-time low. Whatever the reason, This Christmas came as a complete surprise. I kinda loved the thing.

Loretta Devine plays Ma Dear, the matriarch of a sprawling Los Angeles-based family with a whole lot of secrets. A whole lot. There's Quentin (Idris Elba, Stringer Bell on The Wire -- the best show on television), a musician who owes big money to some bookies. There's Lisa (Regina King), trapped in an emotionally abusive marriage with the hissable Malcome (Laz Alonso). There's Kelli (Sharon Leal), a sexually frustrated businesswoman. There's Claude (Columbus Short), in love with a woman (Jessica Stroup) he's scared to introduce to his family. Ma Dear has a secret of her own regarding Joe (Delroy Lindo), something of a surrogate father to the Whitfield clan. Oh, and Baby (R&B sensation Chris Brown)? He wants to sing, damn it!

That's a lot of stories to keep afloat, and writer/director Preston A. Whitmore II handles that list and many more mini-dramas with ease. It's quite the balancing act. Whitmore has written and/or directed several smaller projects since 1995's Vietnam drama The Walking Dead, but Christmas will put him on the map in a big way.

As much as you would love this film to be about a couple of rappers who have tremendous egos, and go on MTV Cribs to show off their 13-car garage, 8-bedroom house and gigantic swimming pool, sadly it is not. According to Production Weekly, Mekhi Phifer, Vincent Laresca and rapper-turned-actress Eve have signed on to star in Ego, to be written and directed by Antonio Macia.

Story centers around a cop (Laresca) who finds himself to be an emotional mess after harassing the newly paroled ex-con (Phifer) who killed his father so much that it results in the ex-criminal's tragic death. Fifteen years later, this same cop is put to the test when his suspects his partner might be playing with a crooked deck of cards. Hey, whatever happened to Phifer? For awhile there I thought he was on his way to becoming one of the top African-American actors in Hollywood, but then he sort of disappeared off the radar. Was it a case of bad roles or bad acting?