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Back in November, it was announced that Paramount Pictures and Brad Pitt’s studio Plan B had bought the film rights to an in-progress graphic novel created by Paul Pope. The book’s still not out yet, but now comes word from The Hollywood Reporter that Alex Tse, the writer who managed to get so much right in Watchmen, will be adapting Battling Boy for the big screen.

I really wish I knew more about this GN because the premise does sound a little intriguing. Quoth Pope at his publisher First Second Books’s website:

Battling Boy is the son of a god or a super hero—it is left unspecified—who comes down from the top of a mountain (or rather, from inside a cloud/UFO contraption/contrivance from above a mountain top) at this father’s behest, in order to rid a giant city from it’s plague of monsters. Hercules had his labors, Batman has his Gotham, Battling Boy has his Monstropolis.

Well sure… entire epics have come from slimmer loglines, right?

But I still can’t help but feel as if better GNs that are just as well-drawn and actually have been released would make better movies, such as Mark Smylie’s Artesia series, about a woman who was both the concubine of a king and his greatest general, who survived his treacherous attempted slaughter to overtake his kingdom and lead it to glory against a darker, more evil threat to their known world.

Now isn’t that a much better logline and wouldn’t that make a much better movie?

The Battling Boy GN will be released onto bookshelves in 2010; there’s no date yet for the movie version.

Related Post: Paul Pope’s Battling Boy optioned

With a title that sounds like it’s from the Bible, director David O. Russell’s next film Aaron and Sara (aka B.F.F. according to IMDB) is going to be a romantic comedy, report the scribes from Variety.

To which, I say, “Bwuh?” And possibly cackle a little.

Yes, that David O. Russell, the one who had a fist-fight with George Clooney during the shooting of Three Kings and called Lily Tomlin a “cunt” while trying to shoot a scene for I Heart Huckabees. He’s going to be making a movie about teenagers in love.

According to the article, “[the] story centers on a nerdy guy and a popular girl who meet as freshmen and, over four years of high school, four proms and one funeral, become friends and eventually fall in love.”

The script is by Chad Gomez Creasey and Dara Resnik Creasey, a married couple who wrote the direct-to-DVD Legally Blondes which will be released this year and Milk‘s producers Bruce Cohen and Dan Jinks are signed as well.

I am really looking forward to what his take on the rom-com/teen movie genre will be, and what kind of brilliant performances he can wring from today’s young actors. The idea of him putting them through their paces like work horses gives me so much schadenfreude, you know?

Announced by Variety late on Monday, Diane Keaton and Jeff Goldblum will be joining Harrison Ford and Rachel McAdams in a comedy called Morning Glory for Paramount Pictures.

Keaton and Ford will be playing the leads on a morning TV show who are constantly battling each other rather than working together, and McAdams will be the plucky young producer who takes it upon herself to save the show by making them get along, while Goldblum will play her boss.

I can’t tell you how pleased I am to know that Harrison Ford is going to be doing another comedy. One of my most favorite movies of all times is Working Girl, and it seems as if Morning Glory will be made with that same kind of “go get ’em, tiger” spirit. At the same time, I am hoping (possibly against hope) that there will be no romantic male lead for McAdams because what is wrong with there being a movie all about a woman’s career that doesn’t have to do with her personal life?

J.J. Abrams is producing, Roger Michell (Enduring Love, Notting Hill) is directing, and shooting starts next month in New York.

With the confirmation of the news that “Cowboy Bebop” was going to be turned into a live-action movie (with Keanu Reeves producing and starring in it), it was only a matter of time before we got another confirmation of a live-action rights purchase.

From The Hollywood Reporter comes news that production studio Manadalay Pictures (Into the Blue, Sleepy Hollow) has picked up the film rights to Full Metal Panic!, a series of novels written by Shoji Gatoh. The story revolves around a male teenage anti-terrorist commando who is forced to go undercover at a high school to protect a high school girl who has mysterious mystical powers.

These powers are so mysterious, by the way, that I couldn’t even understand what they were supposed to do the first time I saw the anime series that was spawned from the books and released by ADV Films.

Word is that Zac Efron is in talks to star, and I must say that comparing and contrasting Efron’s talents with those of Chris Patton, the voice actor who dubbed the main character’s voice in all of the anime versions to date is a funny little exercise, mostly because I’ve worked with Patton before and remember the first conversation I ever had with him quite vividly.

There’s no studio yet, and no screenwriter or director yet, but since Mandalay Pictures has a “first look” deal with Universal Pictures, the odds are good that this deal can move forward because the FMP! story is strong enough to transfer over into a mainstream audience and not lose the appeal of the original.

And though I may have spent many years toiling as an otaku-journalist, I’m still realistic enough to understand that in order to get the movie made, they’d have to move the high school from Japan to the States and cast American-sounding actors, and I’m actually okay with that. I like the idea of Efron as the star, but I am praying that they do not get another Disney tweenie to be cast opposite him.

Also, thanks to Transformers, we may even be able to keep the giant robots that are seen in the anime series, but I personally think the movie might be a little stronger if they took them out.

Now, if only we could get more news on the Neon Genesis Evangelion live-action adaptation.

Last year, New Line Cinema announced that they were going to be doing a remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street and the race was on to find someone to be its lead bad guy, the horrifically scarred and allegedly pedophillic Freddy Krueger.

Well, the search is over, for Bloody-Disgusting.com broke the news late on Friday that Jackie Earle Haley—fresh off of his turn as Rorshach in Watchmen—had finished his negotiations and would be the new Freddy Krueger. Also starring in the film according to a post made just a little bit later will be Kyle Gallner—who has just been in another nouveau-horror film The Haunting in Connecticut—and he will take on the role that Johnny Depp’s character had in the original.

The movie starts filming in Chicago next month, with music video director Samuel Bayer working from Wesley Strick’s script. I fervently hope that this new version will be closer to how awesome and genuinely psychologically scary New Nightmare was and less like the schlock-fests that most of the other movies were.

Almost two months after just hearing about it, the lead cast has been announced for Christopher Nolan’s next movie from Warner Bros. that will not begin with a “B” and end in “-atman.”

Earlier in March, Variety reported that Leonardo DiCaprio was “final negotiations” to star in Inception, which is currently set for a July 16, 2010 release date. Looks like those negotiations worked, because now he’s considered the movie’s lead. Joining him, also according to Variety, will be Marion Cotillard, Cillian Murphy, and Ellen Page.

Out of the four of them, only Murphy has worked with Nolan before (it was his “blink and you’ll miss it” cameo as the Scarecrow in the beginning of The Dark Knight). He’s also the only one of the four of them who has not yet been nominated for or won an Academy Award.

Once you know the latter fact, getting rid of the fantastical mental image of him sitting alone in the commissary while the other three are at a table next to him, talking about how wonderful it is to go to the Oscars as a nominee is very difficult. But I’ll try.

However, I’ll also note that even the vaunted scribes at Variety aren’t being made privy to any of the details of the plot or what DiCaprio’s three recently announced co-stars will be doing in the film. It’s still being only described as “a contemporary sci-fi actioner set within the architecture of the mind”—which is driving the reporter in me crazy—but as a movie fan and Christopher Nolan fan, I don’t want whatever surprises he’ll throw my way to be ruined by knowing what’s going to happen. That’s why I didn’t run to pick up the book that The Prestige was based on before going to see the movie; I wanted to see the movie first.

2010 can’t come fast enough.

Related Posts: Third Batman movie to be delayed by Christopher Nolan’s Inception…

I’m not sure what to think of this news from Variety that James Franco has signed onto the David Gordon Green-helmed buddy film, Your Highness, opposite his Pineapple Express co-star Danny McBride, also by Green. (Before you ask, no it’s not about weed.)

Written by McBride and screenwriter Ben Best (and co-creator of McBride’s HBO show “Eastbound and Down”), Highness contains a classic buddy comedy plot: “[Two] spoiled and arrogant princes in a medieval fantasy setting. When an evil wizard casts a spell on their father and kidnaps the older prince’s fiance, they’re forced to go on a quest to save their family and the kingdom.”

This re-team-up this only serves to remind me of the greatest film buddy comedy duo of all time: Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. If you’ve never seen any one of the seven Road movies, you should put one on your Netflix queue right now. I’m not going to be a fanatical purist and say that there are no two American actors or comedians who can match Hope and Crosby for their sense of pure timing or improv skills, but… there really aren’t.

I mean, look what happened when they teamed up Billy Crystal and Robin Williams in the 1997 comedy Father’s Day (which was based on a 1983 French comedy called Les Compères). These two comedians who killed every time they did a host segment together at the Comic Relief telethons, but the film is only best-known for Kevin Costner’s cameo as a nipple-ring wearing leather daddy.

Anyway, I think I’m going to have to see more before I decide to give Franco and McBride any slack.

Related Post: McBride and Green Get High Again

I’m a nut for book-to-movie adaptations, and already I’ve given my tentative stamp of approval to Easy A as it’s written by playwright Bert V. Royal and directed by Will Gluck.

Now comes the news from Variety that newcomer Emma Stone (Superbad, The House Bunny) will take the leading role. As far as leading ladies are concerned, Stone isn’t a half-bad choice as she’s already got cred for being able to play younger and knows her way around comedy. She’ll next be seen in the Jennifer Garner/Matthew McConaughey romcom twist on A Christmas Carol, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, and Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch.

Easy A is set to start production “soon” in Ojai, Calif., so let’s see which other actors they cast against her.

Related Posts: Producer, creator Will Gluck earns a directorial Easy A

The Hollywood Reporter is calling the newest script buy from newbie screenwriter Chris McCoy a “novel twist” on the romantic comedy genre and I’d have to say I most definitely agree.

McCoy’s script Good Looking, which is his second sale to Dreamworks within one month, takes the concept of Internet matchmaking one step further by positing that in the near-future, a service arises where not only do you get that “soulmate compatability” that a site like eHarmony predicts through questionnaires and personal essays, but you can also know exactly what the person is doing at any hour of the day thanks to the integration of surveillance camera technology. The other “novel twist” of course comes when a man using the service rejects the person the service claims is perfect for him.

But let’s hear from the man himself:

“If someone could organize that information and know what everyone in London was doing and eating and who they’re dating and who they’re going home with [via the city’s existing surveillance camera technology], then that’s an incredibly powerful tool,” McCoy said. “I think I have an oddball brain or something, but then I started thinking about how all that stuff could be applied to matchmaking. It would totally subvert Match.com and eHarmony, (where) I think people lie about who they are or they say what they think people will want them to be. But Good Looking, my service, knows who they are and can put them together.”

The other script that was purchased is an untitled college comedy, and if the premise for that one is as inventive as this one, I’m definitely willing to find out more.

Well, okay, they’re not actually attempting to conjure up the Great Old One, but considering that Universal Pictures and Imagine Entertainment have just acquired the film rights to the Image Comics graphic novel titled The Strange Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft created by Jeff Blitz and Mac Carter, it is always a distinct possibility.

According to the Variety article, Universal tweaked to the GN because they thought it had a similar kind of sensibility to what they’re currently doing in reviving the classic Universal monster movies and re-introducing them to today’s audiences.

Strange Adventures takes the meta approach to storytelling, wherein the main character is Lovecraft himself whose encounter with a cursed book allows his feverish and horrific nightmare creatures across the dimensions from their world to ours.

The script adaptation will be done by Carter himself, who is apparently a commercial director. The other cool thing is that apparently Blitz and Carter are a film-making team who won a Bronze Lion at the Cannes advertising awards, but this info is only on Carter and Blitz’ website and has yet to be independently confirmed. They will also get executive producer credits, and Imagine’s Brian Grazer and Ron Howard with be producers.

In a move that made the Associated Press newswire, it was announced earlier this week that Zac Efron would no longer be in the Footloose remake.

The Wrap.com has the juiciest details from a protected senior member of the production team:

The team member told TheWrap that Efron had script approval on the movie and used a rewrite on the screenplay as the loophole to get out of his contract: “People had been working on this project since last July — we were all shocked.”

The other word is that Efron’s tired of the “cute song and dance man” persona that he and his management team have created for himself by being cast in the first three High School Musical movies and the 2007 movie adaptation of the Broadway play Hairspray (which itself was based on the original 1988 movie from John Waters.) So if he wasn’t going to be in that movie—which was being fast-tracked thanks to the HSM3 box office success—what is Efron going to be doing next?

Just last night, Variety reported that Efron is “in talks” to work with soon-to-be released 17 Again director Burr Steers on the film adaptation of a novel called The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud.

In the novel, St. Cloud is a young man whose even younger brother died in an accident, but with whom he still plays catch every evening after he finishes his work in the graveyard where his brother is buried. There are some weird twists and turns in the novel which you can read in the Publisher’s Weekly review on the above link, and if a strong female lead were cast against Efron, this would be a pretty amazing movie.

This is truly excellent for Efron, but I can’t help but feel bad for everyone on the Footloose production team. Here’s hoping they find a better male lead soon.

Though I was immensely surprised when actress Anne Hathaway sung and vamped her heart out during the opening number at the Oscars ceremony this year, I should not have been surprised that the next movie project announced for her would be tied to Broadway.

Variety reported that the Weinstein Co. has cast Hathaway as Judy Garland in the film and live stage versions of Get Happy, which is based on the eponymous 2001 biography by Gerald Clarke. VP of production and development Ben Famigletti was quoted in the article as saying that there’s a possibility that the film would and the stage show would be produced at the same time, with the film being released first. No word yet on who’s writing the adaptation for either, but apparently, just because of Hathaway’s announced involvement, people are lining up to take a crack at it—which is just as it’s supposed to be.

I think this is a perfect role for Hathaway, because she not only looks like triple threat star Garland (film actress in The Wizard of Oz, TV star with “The Judy Garland Show” and a Grammy-award winning singer) she’s got the serious chops to back up her looks, as evidenced by Hathaway’s Academy Award nomination for Rachel Getting Married.

Definitely looking forward to hearing more about this one.

Variety turned in a report about the recent changing of release dates for some major tent-pole flicks, and it’s hard not to read the schedule and this report from last Friday about how the studios may not have enough films to go around after 2011 and wonder.

From that report and today’s, check out which movies are moving when and which of the other mainstream movies they’ll be up against, courtesy of ComingSoon.net and IMDBPro.com:

June 19: The Proposal (moved from June 12)
Also scheduled for that date: Imagine That, The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3

November 5: Ninja Assassin
Also scheduled for that date: Nine, Old Dogs

December 11: The Princess and the Frog (moved from December 25)
Also scheduled for that date: The Lovely Bones

July 16, 2010: The Sorceror’s Apprentice
Also scheduled for that date: Inception

Proving that one can make a movie out of almost any kind of book, Variety reported that Paramount Pictures has acquired the rights to the Leanne Shapton photo book Important Artifacts and Personal Property From the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion and Jewelry which will star Brad Pitt and Natalie Portman.

The book details the rise and fall of the relationship between Pitt and Portman’s characters, a photographer in his 40s and a New York City food columnist in her late 20s, through the gifts and objects they acquired and gave to each other and which are now up for auction at the end of their relationship. It’s a terribly clever conceit and one that I’m pretty familiar with as I’m still not done auctioning off the toys I started collecting during my first relationship which started almost a decade ago.

The movie, however… I don’t know if even the uber-intelligent Portman co-producing with Pitt under their respective production houses will be be able to replicate the wonderous charm of being able to slowly watch the love affair unfold and then watch its demise as you do in the book. And if they tack on a cheesy Hollywood ending…? I think I’d have to hurl or cry.