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Odds and ends from Thursday:

• Whether you want it or not, they're making a sequel to the fairly engaging Danny Boyle flick, 28 Days Later. Only 28 Weeks Later (Yes, that's the name of the sequel for those of you who have been living in a hole for the past year) will have a new director (Juan Carlos Fresnadillo), a new writer (Rowan Joffe) and, now, a new star. Jeremy Renner (Lords of Dogtown) has signed on to play Sgt. Doyle, one of the sequel's brand new heroes. Pic, which finds Boyle and 28 Days Later writer Alex Garland wearing producer hats, picks up six months after the original. While Special Forces come in to try and neutralize the area, the zombie virus once again rears its ugly head and, well, sh*t goes down ... as usual.
• Looks like Brendan Fraser now has a co-star for his new flick, Inkheart, as Paul Bettany has come onboard to play a fire-eating performer in this adaptation of the popular children's book (which is part of a trilogy written by German author Cornelia Funk). Story revolves around a father who has the ability to "bring characters from books alive by reading them aloud." Yikes, here's hoping he stays away from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
• In an attempt to cash in on the demand for movie downloading, AOL has struck a deal with 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures and Warner Bros. to begin offering selected titles from each studio online for downloading. Ranging from $9.99 to $19.99, folks will be able to own their film, as well as play it on a "limited number of Windows-based personal computers or portable devices that support Microsoft Corp's Windows Media Player technology." Yeah, put that in your Mac ad Justin Long!

This has been the year of the movie download, as studios have finally accepted the concept and have partnered with sites like CinemaNow, MovieLink and Guba. The problem is, downloading movies -- legally anyway -- still isn't a very popular idea. This could be due to many problems, such as picture quality and limitations on burning the movies to disc, but the main deterrent to consumers seems to be the price. All of the sites have been selling movies for a price too close to the cost of a DVD, which is certainly a better format.

Now Guba, which offers titles from Sony and Warner Bros., has slashed its prices. New movies are now only $9.99 (down from $19.99) and older movies are $4.99 (down from $9.99). But don't get too excited from this news. The site is only discounting its downloads for a limited time, likely not much more than a month. This seems like a desperate move and will undoubtedly attract people who can't decide which site to sign up with, but it's just bait for customers who probably won't stick around when the prices go back up.

While some reports are saying the move is simply to compete with iTunes for TV Show downloads, there is no logic in that thinking. Even though Guba is now offering shows for only 49 cents, compared with iTunes' $1.99, Guba only offers four shows, and none are probably that much in demand. But Guba does have reason to fear competition with iTunes, as Apple's in-the-works movie download service will probably blow them away when it finally arrives.

According to Variety, e-tailer IndiePix yesterday release software that they hope will "change the way indie pics are distributed." By downloading the Disc Factory software, consumers will be able to not only download movies to their desktops, but also burn those movies to DVD, thus freeing them (legally) to watch downloads via a traditional system (aka DVD player and TV) for the first time. Though the number of titles available to buy under this new system is only about 50 right now, IndiePix hopes to double that number by the end of the month. In addition, the company reports that they will be keeping just 20-25% of the $15 it costs to download a feature; their goal, they say, is not profit but "to be a positive force in the [independent] film biz."

What's odd about this whole thing is that the people at IndiePix are excited enough about the Download-to-Own initiative to either send out a press release or actually call Variety (yesterday afternoon), and yet as of this morning, their website shows no signs that the program even exists. So, either you have to accidentally click on one of the 50 participating films to find out about it, or they've changed their minds and scrapped the whole thing. What's really going on is anybody's guess.