HLTam has kindly given us per­mis­sion to post the shots that he took dur­ing Batman’s brief film­ing spell in Hong Kong. You can see more of his pho­tog­ra­phy here.

Flickr user 070758 has also granted us per­mis­sion to repro­duce these two pho­tos depict­ing prepa­ra­tion for the “bat­man base jump” and a nicely posed police offi­cer extra:

CliffyB has been talk­ing to the media about the sta­tus of the Gears of War movie again, which is some­thing we are always very happy to see. The good news? The film is very much alive (despite the writ­ers strikes it seems), so he tells Cine­plex Enter­tain­ment:

“We are cur­rently at the point where we have had a cou­ple drafts of the script and now we are talk­ing to dif­fer­ent direc­tors and try­ing to feel out who would be the best fit for it,”

“It has been a really fas­ci­nat­ing process to learn how Hol­ly­wood works. […] I just hope that what­ever comes out of this is com­pelling enter­tain­ment and is very rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the ‘Gears of War’ uni­verse.”

Thanks Damien for send­ing this one in.

Vari­ety have stated that the rel­a­tively inex­pe­ri­enced Greg Berlanti (writer for char­ac­ter dri­ven shows such as Ever­wood and Broth­ers & Sis­ters) shall both direct and script write the live action film adaptation.

Marc Guggen­heim and Michael Green will also be involved in the script writ­ing process, with Don­ald De Line pro­duc­ing and Andrew Haas as exec­u­tive producer,

Both Guggen­heim and Green have worked with Berlanti before and each has Comic Hero writ­ing expe­ri­ence. Guggen­heim wrote the Mar­vel comic books “Amaz­ing Spider-Man,” “Wolver­ine” and “Blade.” Whilst, Michael Green, cur­rently the “Heroes” co-executive pro­ducer, was a writer-producer on “Smal­l­ville” and was involved in the “Superman/Batman” pub­li­ca­tion.

The project is offi­cially under way, under the guid­ance of Warner Broth­ers and DC Comics

Wiz­ard recently sat down with Sam Raimi to talk with him about the Spider-man tril­ogy, the DVD release and most impor­tantly, what the future holds for him­self and the spidey franchise:

Look­ing back, you’ve worked on Spider-Man in some way for nearly eight years. Has the excite­ment stayed with you?

RAIMI: I’m just as excited about the char­ac­ter, and so in that sense, yes. Although the phys­i­cal energy level between how I felt before I started shoot­ing ver­sus what was left of me on the last day of pho­tog­ra­phy, I was so exhausted at the end of “Spider-Man 3″ I can’t tell you. My love for the char­ac­ters and my pas­sion for the sto­ries are the same, but I was just a shell of the per­son that I was after all of those movies.

If you had to take a break and pick a direc­tor to replace you on the fran­chise, is there any­one at the top of your list?

RAIMI: Because I love Spider-Man I would just say—I don’t want to pick some­one. I don’t know if I’ll be direct­ing the pic­ture or not, but I’d like to say that it would be some­body that was the best gift I could give to Spider-Man—someone who under­stands him and loves him and could bring his pas­sion and love to the char­ac­ter. A char­ac­ter direc­tor prob­a­bly; no one else.

Orig­i­nally posted at Latino Review (with poor audio qual­ity).

Reelz Chan­nel will soon be post­ing a video inter­view with Mike Newell con­cern­ing the Prince of Per­sia Movie adap­ta­tion. In the mean time, Reelz report:

From the way he was talk­ing, Newell made it clear that he plans to make this movie. The only thing that is hold­ing up progress is indeed the writ­ers’ strike that has ground Hol­ly­wood to a hault. […]

When asked if and how the ‘dag­ger of time’ would fig­ure into the movie, Newell affirmed that it will be the main focus. ‘It’s all about the dag­ger of time,’ he told us.

Thanks West­ley!

After the com­mo­tion and issues that Michael Bay under­went dur­ing pro­duc­tion and film­ing for the first Trans­form­ers film, Bay has decided that the best way to fight these unavoid­able leaks is to cre­ate “fake ones”, to put peo­ple off the scent and prob­a­bly reveal the source of the leaks:

“One thing I do know is I know how to screw them up more. […] We’re going to leak a lot of false infor­ma­tion all over the place. I now know their game. They’re going to get a lot of script treat­ments that they think are going to be the script. They will never see the script. We’ve got scripts and treat­ments writ­ten up that we’re going to leak. No one’s going to know.” — Rot­ten Tomatoes

Vari­ety are run­ning an update on exactly how the cur­rent Writer’s Guild strikes shall affect the big bud­get Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­tions, specif­i­cally Michael Bay’s Trans­form­ers 2 and the Wolver­ine X-men spin off:

DreamWorks/Par’s “Trans­form­ers 2″ is far enough along to pro­ceed with pre-production, loca­tion scout­ing and advance VFX work, but will face seri­ous issues if the strike con­tin­ues for sev­eral months. Michael Bay’s megabud­get sequel isn’t set to start film­ing until June.

[…]

Fox is mov­ing full speed ahead with its “X-Men” spin­off “Wolver­ine,” even though many roles are still uncast. Unlike “X-Men,” “Wolver­ine” rests solidly on Hugh Jackman’s shoulders.

If you don’t under­stand the cause of these strikes, I rec­om­mend watch­ing this video which explains every­thing you need to know: