With­out a fiz­zle or a PoP for nigh on three years the project seemed almost dead. Or maybe it was just because of Jerry Bruckheimer’s busi­ness in a mul­ti­tude of suc­cess­ful pro­duc­tions, oh, take for instance the Pirates of the Caribbean tril­ogy (every­thing is a trilogy!).

But alas! In April 2007 we have some announce­ments. A direc­tor has been assigned — the man behind The Rock and Bad Boys, but also the Pearl Har­bor atroc­ity (just the film) — Michael Bay is set to direct; we can all judge for our­selves his present form when The Trans­form­ers movie lands this sum­mer. As a result, shoot­ing for this movie will be unlikely to com­mence until the Fall.

Shack­news also reports that Jef­frey Nach­manoff, screen­writer for  “The Day After Tomor­row”, is devel­op­ing “revi­sions” of Mechner’s script. Who knows where this could leave us — though the sto­ry­line is meant to be along the lines of “retain­ing the ele­ments of the evil vizier seek­ing to con­trol the sands of time, and the pres­ence of the princess-turned-sidekick Farah”.

With this news comes a pro­jected Sum­mer 2009 release date.