Movie Minesweeper - The Bishop Edition

- Jon Favreau is making a cameo in Iron Man, and it was the very last shot of the shoot.

- The Darjeeling Limited is the opening night film of the New York Film Festival.

- A Psycho remake TV series? Yep.

- Randal Kleiser is part of a start-up planning to bring 3D images to mobile devices.

- The odds are in favour of a TMNT sequel, if not the quality of a TMNT sequel.

- Nicholas Sparks' Dear John is to be a feature film, adapted by Jamie Linden and with Channing Tatum attached to star. Okay - but what about John Sullivan's Dear John? You can have that one on me, Mrs. H.

- Uwe Boll has called Postal his 'final statement'. So I assume Far Cry and Bloodrayne 2 and 3 and whatever comes afterwards aren't even supposed to be statements at all.

- Kim Jee-Woon's The Good, The Bad, The Weird (missing an 'and' if you ask me) has changed financiers mid-production. The new team are CJ Entertainment, also in preproduction on Chan Wook Park's Evil Live.

- Death of a President's Gabriel Range is writing and will direct what sounds like a sort-of-Somersby, sort-of-Six Degrees of Seperation prodigal son drama.

- Mos Def is to produce and star in Bobby Zero. This one's about a social satirist come advertising copywriter (I wonder if he'll have a comic book gossip column too?). I like Mos Def a lot, and if he's that into this film, then I'm very interested.

- George Hickenlooper's next is to be Morning Spy, Evening Spy, an adaptation of the novel about a CIA operative obsessed with hunting down Osama Bin Laden.

- The Conan option has expired at Warners and it seems that New Line are to pick it up next.

- Starbucks are to hawk Arctic Tale in a return for profit points.

- Megan Fox has signed to appear in How to Lose Friends and Alienate People.

- The Franny K. Stein books are to become animated films.

- Michael Gilvary's spec script Transit has been snapped up by Thousand Words. The premise is simple: a fmaily on a road trip through the desert are hunted by criminals who stashed money in the family's car. Apparently, Gilvary did a recent rewrite on Rendezvous with Rama, which suggests that project might not be as conclusively dead as I had been assuming.

- The inevitable 300 spoof is to be 301: The Legend of Awesomest Maximus Wallace Leonidas, so Gladiator and Braveheart have clearly been tossed into the mix too. Rest assured that Troy is on the hit list also, and I assume a series of completely irrelevent films will be too (Borat again? Pirates of the Caribbean?)

- The Wall Street Journal are cautiously predicting big money success for Ratatouille.

- Cameron Diaz is to star in Richard Kelly's The Box. The film is adapted from Richard Matheson's Button, Button which has already been a Twilight Zone episode (in the 80s comeback series) where Mare Winningham had the role - and the story had been given a more satisfying, less daft ending (if you ask me). I've no idea how Kelly can spin this one out to feature length without making it mightily repetitive.

- Kevin Smith wants unknowns for Red State, which might actually really mean unkowns for once.

- The Hollywood Reporter are only just today covering Pool Rats being set up at Disney, despite the Mouse House registering the appropraite domain name weeks and weeks ago. Sigh.

- Carter Blanchard's spec script Near Death is about.... yep, you guessed it: spooky near death experiences. Fox Searchlight have taken the option.

- Marc Forster is developing, and may direct, Land of Roses. The film will be a drama about Ibrahim Parlak, a real-life Kurdsh Immigrant who campaigned to exonerate a falsely imprisoned terrorist.

- Sid Haig has been confirmed as appearing in the Halloween rehash

- Arthouse Films are to release The Cool School: How Los Angeles Learned to Love Modern Art. Jeff Bridges has narrted the film, which sounds just about perfect.

- The Cloverfield site URL is just redirecting to Paramount's homepage as I write, but any minute now (or hour, or day at least) it is going to go live, probably with a teaser.

- Jonathan Jakubowicz is to direct Queen of the South, all about a female, immigrant drug lord - a prettier Scarface. Apparently, Penelope Cruz, Jennifer Lopez and Eva Mendes are circling the lead role - I'd go for Lopez, personally.

- Arielle Kebble has signed to play one of the titular girls in A Tale of Two Sisters.

Movie Minesweeper - The Variety And Hollywood Reporter Edition

Here's a run down of some stories that have popped in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter over the last day or so:

- Shane Ri... sorry, Guy Ritchie is doing it again. RocknRolla is an ensemble comedy set in London, hinging up a crooked land deal and some no-doubt silly gangster shenanigans. Joel Silver sense a quick buck and will produce the relatively cheap film under the Dark Castle umbrella.

- Maria Bello is to play Rachel Weisz's role in the next Mummy film. Clearly she wasn't as troubled by the criminally awful script.

- ThinkFilm are to release Paul Schrader's The Walker in North America. I bet they fudge the DVD release. So careless, rude and selfish - I think we should all boycott their every DVD from now until they replace all of their screwed-up titles for free.

- Five years after Kissing Jessica Stein made me roll my eyes back so far they almost ran down my throat, Jessica Westfeldt is returning with Ira and Abby. It played at the LA Film Fetsival last year and took this long to strike a distribution deal: either it's really original and hard to market or just not any good at all. Ahem.

- Psycho/Analysis is to film in Hungary later this year. Guess what? It's about the making of Pyscho. Groan.

- Tarantino is running a Spaghetti Western sidebar at this year's Venice Film Festival.

- Palm Pictures have picked up Marcelo Pineyro's The Method for US release. It was written by Mateo Gil, who previously scribbled for Alejandro Amenebar, co-writing Tesis, Open Your Eyes and The Sea Inside.

- Jane Bussmann's one woman show Bussmann's Holiday is to be a film, produced by Nira Park.

- Dan Mazer is to make a comedy about the Eurovision song contest. Will Wogan be in it?

- Mary Elizabeth Winstead is to dance in Make it Happen.

- Michael Scott's The Alchemyst is being adapted for the movies. It's no more the next Harry Potter than those Unfortunate Events were.

- Jan Cvitkovik's Gravehopping won the Critics Award at the LA South East European Film Festival. I wonder what would win South East Europe's LA Film Festival?

- Gary Cole, Jennifer Coolidge and Agnes Bruckner are all pretty darn good. They're also all in David Moreton's Say Hello to Stan Talmadge. Promising - but the film does sound a little too like Little Miss Sunshine for comfort.

Rebello Book On Hitchcock To Be Filmed

Stephen Rebello's book Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho is to be filmed. More than that, I cannot tell you - but let the casting specualtion commence. Who will play the big man? Who will be Janet Leigh, or Tony Perkins?