Movie Minesweeper - The Drawing Pins Edition

- Stan Bush may not be on the Transformers soundtrack, but Transformers are on his new album.

- Codemonkeys might be a nice stopgap until Scott Pilgrim gets off of the ground.

- Principal photography on Iron Man is over. And it seems like the Hilary Swank cameo rumours are true.

- The Jordanian animation outfit Rubicon is going into production on a new Pink Panther TV series. This time, the approach is a Muppet Babies come Tiny Toons one with the Panther and his 'pals' rendered as kids. As part of the deal, Rubicon get to license MGM properties in the Middle East.

- Righteous Kill - the De Niro/Pacino team-up movie - is to be distributed by Overture Films in the North American territories. And it also seems that 50 Cent is joining the cast. Has anybody got Russell Gerwitz' script for this one? I've been told it's a real winner.

- Shia LaBoeuf is reteaming with his Disturbia director D J Caruso on Eagle Eye. From that title alone it sounds like the plot could be virtually identical, but apparently not. The original premise comes from Steven Spielberg, apparently. Here's Variety's summation: [LaBeouf will play] a young slacker whose overachieving twin brother has died mysteriously. When the young man returns home, both he and a single mother find they have been framed as terrorists. Forced to become members of a cell that has plans to carry out a political assassination, they must work together to extricate themselves. Not only does this put Caruso out of the running for the Wolverine gig, it might mean LaBeouf won't be taking the lead in Death and Me after all...

- Former porn auteur Gregory Dark has wrapped Little Fish, Strange Pond a curious-sounding serial killer comedy with Matthew Modine, Adam Baldwin, Liza Weil and Zach Galifinakas.

- Tom Cruise's links to Scientology (to put it mildly) have led to the German government prohibiting the filming of Valkyrie at any military locations. Paula Wagner has gone on the record saying "Aside from his obvious admiration of the man he is portraying, Mr. Cruise's personal beliefs have absolutely no bearing on the movie's plot, themes or content". Nice to know he admires a Nazi general so much. Ahem.
- Chimps in Spa -sorry, Space Chimps - is to be advertised via stickers on 100 million bananas, pineapples and salad packages.

- Gerard Butler, Idris Elba, Tom Wilkinson, Thandie Newton and Ludacris have all signed up to appear in Guy Ritchie's RocknRolla. Poor souls.

- Ian Shorr's Exempt spec script has a very interesting premise: a problem kid sent to a private school falls in with a bunch of 'diplobrats', foreign kids with diplomatic immunity from the law. No wonder Benderspink are putting it into production. Another year at these two colleges and I'll probably have seen everything that could possibly happen in this film, but it certainly does make for an interesting milieu.

- M.I.A fantasy film Neverwas is to crawl out straight to DVD in July.

- A YouTube clip promoting the next six months or so of Focus Features releases has popped up. All manner of interesting stuff gets plugged, not least of which is David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises but least of which is Atonement. I'd recommend you check the full clip out.

- Gary Oldman might quit acting. Perhaps. One day.

- You can see the Tumb... er, Batmobile. In action. The video is called Batman for Mancow.

- Queen Latifah and Adam Shankman seem to want Steve Martin for their All of Me remake. Will he do it again?

- I think we already knew Oliver Platt was going to be in Frost/Nixon but his role in Nip/Tuck is news. He certainly likes those /s.
- Nicole Kidman is the new spokesmodel for Nintendo.

- The US Masters of Horror season one box set is limited to 20,000 copies. More than enough?

- The Wizard of Gore is getting good notices. Good. I like Glover, I love magic and I'm okay with gore - I want this to work.

- Kreacher is somehow essential to the last Harry Potter book.

Movie Minesweeper - The Snow On The Roof Edition

- Ron Perlman and Barbara Hershey have signed to star in Kenny Golde's Vacuuming the Cat. What on earth is that going to be about?

- John Waters' former agents at CAA quit, so he did too: now he's signed to the William Morris Agency. One of his former CAA agents, Kevin Iwashina, has remained in the family though, and will be producing Fruitcake, Waters next film as a director. According to the same piece, Cry-Baby is en route to Broadway at the moment, also with Iwashina involved. Perhaps it will end up as a movie all over again, ala Hairspray?

- David Goyer is to write and direct an Invisible Man remake-come-sequel for Universal. This one will see the nephew of the original 'badaged one' working for MI5 during the second World War.

- Giuseppe Tornatore's next is to span five decades in the history of one Sicillian village. This has placed his English-language epic Leningrad back on the shelf - again.

- Dave Stewart and The Blue Man Group are creating the soundtrack to an animated film about chimps in space called - you guessed it - Space Chimps. I'd prefer a film about space chimps called Chimps in Space, personally, but I'll settle. With those musical talents attached, this is already looking like quite the odd biscuit. Barry Sonenfeld is producing. The Hollywood Reporter have quite a detailed synopsis: Andy Samberg will play Ham III, the ne'er-do-well grandson of the first chimp astronaut sent into space (loosely based on NASA's real-life space chimp Ham). Seeking to capitalize on the Ham family name, a senator (Stanley Tucci) recruits Ham III to travel through a black hole to a planet where he and his simian colleagues (Cheryl Hines, Patrick Warburton) help rid the local aliens of an evil leader (Jeff Daniels). Kristin Chenoweth will play a helpful alien, and Kenan Thompson will play Ham III's mentor.

- According to The Hollywood Reporter, Justice League of America is far ahead of The Avengers in the race to the box office (I was going to say silver screen as if that's the goal they have in sight, but let's face facts, this is a race to the cash registers, every step of the way). Justice League of America is a laughable title, I'm afraid - and that's only partly the fault of Team America. If you take the Reporter piece at face value, Ant Man is almost certainly to be the next film from Edgar Wright. We'll see.

- Collin Chou has joined the cast of The Forbidden Kingdom.

- The Corkscrew Hill themepark ride is being developed as a 3D animated movie.

- Christine Vachon's Killer Films are to develop TV series.

- The Posh Spice reality show will now not be a series, just a one hour special. I suppose that's a good thing - but no show at all would probably be less of a time waster.

- John Cusack wants to play Dan Dreiberg. I want him to play Dan Dreiberg too. Will Snyder yield to our desires?

- Tarantino has only just wrapped his scene in Sukiyaki Western: Django.

- Fox are adapting R. L Stine's Rotten School and Goosebumps series as feature films. Goosebumps was already a popular TV show, if I recall, but the Rotten School books only date back a couple of years.

- Variety have the first look at the US trailer for No Country for Old Men. Of course, they're presenting it in the incorrect aspect ratio and it looks awful as a result.

- The special features are coming together for the next attempt at a My So Called Life DVD set.

- Is Tobin Bell just playing a dead body in Saw IV? It really is starting to look that way. They'll let him walk and talk in flashbacks, but most of the time, he'll just be on the slab..?

- A projectionist has lost his job for sending an early Fantasic Four 2 review to AintItCool. He says that Fox were behind the suspension.