Movie Minesweeper - The Too Early Edition

- Aint it Cool have some new Transformers posters. They are, essentially, close ups of robot faces.

- A basic outline of the next Hulk film has appeared online.

- Alex Cox has written a piece for The Guardian about film stars turned directors. He doesn't think this can lead to success - and, of course, he doesn't mention Robert Redford anywhere in the piece. Quiz Show alone is living proof that Cox's argument won't stand. He also tears into One Eyed Jacks which is, in fact, really very good indeed. Even Ken Branagh has proven himself to be Cox's equal, if not superior, as a director. And don't get me started on Alex Cox's attempts to act...

- America Olivo is to appear in Iron Man as 'Dubai Beauty' - she says so on her official site. But... who is America Olivo anyway?

- Peter Jackson does a good job of making Halo sound dead but The Dambusters sound great in a new interview.

- Dana Gould's The Last Larry sounds a wee bit like Shaun of the Dead: the Series. More promisingly, he's writing Alternadad about a father trying to stay hip and cool in the eyes of his kids.

- New EU rules might curb the import of some American shows because they're simply too laden with product placement.

- Scorsese seems to be gearing up to shoot Silence in Japan.

- Stephen Susco has found a 'awesome' spoof of The Grudge, perhaps two and a half months too late.

- Two clips from Hostel 2 are up on the MTV Movies Blog, so if you're in the US, you can watch them... me... I just have to imagine. [EDIT: BllodyDisgusting have seven clips, and I can see those ones. Do they include the two MTV snippets?]

- Also at MTV, Daniel Wilson discusses Bro-jitsu.

- Joe Kosinski looks set to direct Logans Run. Bryan Singer has better things to do now, I suppose, than argue with Joel Silver. Previously, Kosinski has directed cut-scenes for video games, including Gears of War. I've seen those ones and... well, I'm not excited about this decision, I can tell you. But then, see... with Joel Silver calling the shots, what was I to expect?

- TVSquad have plenty of info on Heroes season 2. You might even call these bits and pieces spoilers, if you're delicate about that kind of thing.

- The lastest Sound of Young America is an interview with Marty Kroft. It's confirmed that Land of the Lost doesn't yet have a director attached, though Will Ferrel has definitely been cast.

Dreck To DVD... Again

According to Joel Silver, speaking to The Wall Street Journal, the House on Haunted Hill sequel has a pretty interesting reason to be going direct to DVD: if it's going to offer viewers alternate plot options at various points, leading off to four different conclusions and countless different digressions along the way.

I hope it catches on. It's not a movie, really - having to press buttons and make arbitrations as you go will be quite distancing - but it sounds like a lot of fun. But will anybody play through enough times to see all options played out? Perhaps being able to select the 'diversion' footage from a menu would be a good thing.

Wonder Woman Cast?

There's no script, there's not even any (known) screenwriter, but has Joel Silver's Wonder Woman already been cast?

Cobie Smulders - pictured above, in case you're one of the many who don't yet know who she is - was apparently Joss Whedon's top choice to play the Amazon godess and, according to somebody who seems to think they know about these things and saw fit to e-mail me, she was allegedly one of the few Whedon ideas that Silver liked. As such, he's trying to move the project forward with her still in the frame.

It sounds like whoever gets to draft the next version of the screenplay gets that tiny piece of Whedon legacy but will be 'encouraged' to head in different directions otherwise. Tough job.

I thought I'd share this tip-off with you even though, for what it's worth, I can't see any Wonder Woman film going into production any time soon, with Smulders or not.

Whedon's Woman Not So Wonderful?

Matthew Jennison and Brent Strickland have written a Wonder Woman script on spec, and sold it to Warner Bros. What does this mean fro Joss Whedon's long-coming, heavily discussed take on the superheroine?

The story seems to be that Silver pictures and Warners have stepped in to purchase this script simply as a cautionary measure. They've snapped this version up so that no legal trouble will arise if it bears any comparison to Whedon's version. Hmmmm. I'm not buying that entirely, not on face value. Does that mean we could all sit down tomorrow, knock out Spider-Man 4 specs and guarantee ourselves a nice, fat paycheck? Of course not. This given explanation doesn't explain everything, that's for sure.

There would certainly be no issue if Whedon had anything like a completed script - how could he be accused of plagiarism in that case? So, it's reasonable to assume that, so far at least, none of Whedon's drafts have met producer Joel Silver's approval. It might also be reasonable to assume that, actually, the Jennison and Strickland version does contain elements similar to Silver's preferred approach, and he's looking to have them incorporated into Whedon's script. The Hollywood Reporter do admit that Silver was impressed by Jennison and Strickland's writing.

It has been reported that this spec Wonder Woman script is a period film, set in the aftermath of the second World War, while Whedon's story is a contemporary one.

This all smells fishy to me. We haven't heard the end of this.

All White At The Back?

Nope, this won't be a post about Michael Barrymore. Disappointed?

[EDIT: New info at the bottom and it changes some important facts]

Joel Silver is producing a heist-come-chase film called White Out. It's apparently a bit like Hard Rain, but instead of being set amidst torrential floods, it all goes down in the middle of a calamitous snowstorm; and it's also a bit like Insomnia in that the Antarctic setting is about to be plunged into months of darkness as the story gets underway.

Kate Beckinsale is reportedly set to star as US Marshall Carrie Stetko, our heroine in pursuit of the robber-killers.

These plot details may be a little off the mark, I'm afraid, but here's the easy way to check them out: the film is an adaptation of Greg Rucka's 1999 Eisner Award-winning comic book miniseries of the same name.

I think this is a film ick exclusive.

[EDIT: Better still, I think. Word reaches me now that Beckinsale won't necessarily be playing Stetko, but instead could well be a character called Lily Sharpe, an agent of British descent working for a UK Intelligence agency of some kind. Apparently, there's a very good chance Reese Witherspoon is going to play Carrie Stetko as she's been trying to get the film off the ground in an Execuivie Producer capacity for sometime - but this detail of casting hasn't been confirmed for me yet. Interestingly, if they do play to their nationalities, they'll both have to dye their hair; if they play to their hair colour, they'll each have to affect an accent]