Sci-Fi Storm

Confirming an earlier rumor, Bryan Singer will return to the director’s chair for the upcoming sequel to X-Men: First Class, titled X-Men: Days Of Future Past, with Singer signing the deal with Fox to take over from Matthew Vaughn.

Singer directed the first two X-Men movies to launch the franchise, and helped with First Class by producing and writing the treatment.

WHOA!!!!

In a blockbuster deal just announced, Disney will acquire LucasFilm for $4.05 billion in cash and stock. Kathleen Kennedy, currently the co-chair of LucasFilm, will become the President and report to Walt Disney Studios chief Alan Horn.

The deal appears to be in line with George Lucas announcing earlier this year that he wanted to step away from LucasFilm and go back to “hobby movies”. Lucas said as part of the announcement, “It’s now time for me to pass Star Wars on to a new generation of filmmakers. I’ve always believed that Star Wars could live beyond me, and I thought it was important to set up the transition during my lifetime. I’m confident that with Lucasfilm under the leadership of Kathleen Kennedy, and having a new home within the Disney organization, Star Wars will certainly live on and flourish for many generations to come.”

It is also being reported that there will be a new Star Wars film, to be released in 2015! No details, and it seems a little soon for something no one has heard of yet, but George Lucas has been mulling various ideas for a while…
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It appears that Matthew Vaughn, who directed X-Men: First Class, will not return to direct the sequel, titled X-Men: Days of Future Past. No reason is known, but he also bowed out of Kick-Ass 2 not long ago.

So Fox needs to scramble if it still wants the Summer 2014 release for the film, and the buzz is that Bryan Singer, who directed the first two X-Men movies and wrote and produced First Class, might move from the producer role here to direct, while Vaughn, who wrote the sequel, would step back as producer.

Part one of The Hobbit, An Unexpected Journey, is less than 2 months away! Check out the first 30-second TV spot right here!
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In this trailer, we see that Tony Stark faces a new supervillain, but also struggles with his own identity…Iron Man 3 comes out on May 3rd, 2013, and features returning stars Robert Downey Jr, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Don Cheadle.
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Sony is shifting their release slate a bit. Elysium, the SF thriller from District 9‘s Neill Blomkamp, will be pushed back a couple months to August 9, 2013, which is an upgrade as it places it during the hot summer market. But that date was originally set for the remake of Robocop – so that movie will be pushed back to February 7, 2014.

It was announced at NY Comic-Con that Valiant Entertainment and Sean Daniel (The Mummy) will team with J. Michael Straczynski to adapt Valiant Comics’ Shadowman into a feature film, with JMS writing the script.

Shadowman has sold millions of comics and was adapted as “Shadow Man” for Acclaim’s video game franchise which likewise sold millions of copies, and follows (in the original story) the character who is one day attacked and barely escapes, but then discovers that at night he has supernatural abilities and a desire to rid the world of demons that stalk the night.

Stan Lee Media, Inc. (which isn’t really related to Stan Lee himself, since the company filed for bankruptcy back in 2001), is swinging for the fences. The company filed a $5.5 BILLION lawsuit against Disney, claiming that Disney does not actually own the rights to Stan Lee’s creations, and therefore want all the profits from the massive movie hits that Marvel, and now Disney since they acquired Marvel in 2009, plus a declaration of full control over the characters. This directly affects the Spider-Man, Iron Man and X-Men franchises, and several characters in The Avengers.

This appears to be a continuation of lawsuits that started back in 2007. SLMI claims that when the company was formed, Stan Lee assigned all rights to his characters to the company. But later on, Lee assigned the rights to Marvel, the company he originally created and published all those characters. It all hinges on what Lee actually gave to SLMI – was SLMI created to work on new properties, or to administer the old ones?

Just a reminder – PRometheus is out on both [sfs=1261]Blu-ray[/sfs] and [sfs=1262]DVD[/sfs] this coming Tuesday, October 9th. Order now and you could still get it on Tuesday, and help us pay the bills!

Cloverfield director Matt Reeves will take over the reins from Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes director Rupert Wyatt for the sequel, Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes, according to Deadline.

Rumors were circling recently that Wyatt was unhappy with the production schedule the studio had set and was not likely to return. Fox still expects to meet their May 23, 2014 release date.

Reeves also directed and wrote 2010’s Let Me In, and also wrote many episodes of episodes of Felicity and directed several of them.