It’s hard to judge the idea of Ridley Scott returning to make some sort of follow up film to his 1982 classic Blade Runner without any details. And up until now there haven’t been any details to judge from.

However, Twitch is reporting from unnamed sources that Contagion screenwriter Scott Z Burns is Scott’s top choice to script the project. Twitch is also reporting to expect an official announcement of whoever is hired to write the film soon.

It’s easy to see why Burns would be a candidate. Contagion, directed by Steven Soderbergh, opened strong this past weekend with $22 million at the box office and lots of accolades from the critics. Burns has also written the screenplay for Soderbergh’s upcoming The Man From UNCLE big screen adaption and worked on 2007’s The Bourne Ultimatum. He also has an adaption of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea awaiting a greenlight. While there’s not a lot of hardcore science-fiction on his resume, the thrillers he’s written are solid and smart, which bodes well if he’s the writer who gets the job. It seems to me that if Scott picks him, this Blade Runner film is off to a good start.

Meanwhile, Scott is still in production on his latest film, the “Maybe it is an Alien prequel/maybe it’s not” Prometheus, which should be out next year.

Kevin Costner has dropped out of his supporting role in Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming Django Unchained, citing a combination of work and personal reasons.

Costner would have been playing against type his normal good guy screen persona as Ace Woody, the sadistic overseer who trains slaves to fight in a gladiatorial arena run by Leonardo DiCaprio’s character Calvin Candie. Jamie Foxx stars in the film as freed slave Django, who comes to Candie’s establishment to free his wife who is being forced to be a prostitute.

The actor currently has a lot on his plate. In addition to working on Zack Snyder’s currently in-production Superman film Man Of Steel as Clark Kent’s adoptive father Jonathan Kent, Costner is also producing and appearing in the mini-series The Hatfield And The McCoys for the History Channel.

Tarantino seems to be having some trouble assembling a cast for this film and I have to wonder if many who might be interested in participating are balking at the exploitation film tone of the script. Of course, Tarantino has been mining the various exploitation film genres for his last couple of films and they have all exceeded their inspirations. I see no reason to think that Tarantino would not do so again with Django Unchained. Hopefully he’ll be able to find an actor willing to take the risk to play the part that Costner has vacated.

Via Deadline.

The long delayed remake of the 1984 fantasy war film Red Dawn finally has a distributor. We’ll get to see the Wolverines drive back foreign invaders sometime next year, thanks to the folks at FilmDistrict.

Originally shot in 2009, the film sat on a shelf for nearly a year while studio MGM went through a painful financial restructuring. The film, which featured an invasion of the United States by the Chinese, was furthered delayed when first MGM and then other distributors decided that they didn’t want to risk offending the Chinese government with the film.

To make the film a better sale, last winter the producers digitally altered the invaders to make them North Korean. China is fast becoming a very important market for Hollywood, while the government of North Korea allows no foreign films to be shown in their country. Never mind the ridiculousness of a nation as small as North Korea being able to stage a successful invasion of the United States.

Since the film was shot, its star, Chris Hemsworth, has become a much more marketable name thanks to his role in this past summer’s Thor. That, along with the already recognizable name, should help market the movie for FilmDistrict.

Shot on a budget of about $60 million, Red Dawn was directed by Dan Bradley, second unit director on the last two Bourne movies and the upcoming Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.

Via LA Times.

Mandate Pictures has announced that Julianne Hough, who will be appearing in the upcoming remake of Footloose, and Russell Brand will be starring in writer Diablo Cody’s directorial feature film debut. Brand’s involvement was already reported  last month when he was offered a role in the film.

Although the announcement states that the film is untitled, the project was previously known as Lamb Of God. Perhaps the change is to avoid confusion with Christopher Moore’s similarly-titled satirical novel.

The film, scripted by Cody, concerns a religious woman, presumably Hough, whose survival of a plane crash leads her to question her faith. A trip to Las Vegas results in meeting someone who helps her regain it. I’m guessing that that someone will be Brand’s character.

Via Deadline.

An action sequence aboard a train planned to be filmed in India for the upcoming twenty-third James Bond film will now be shot in South Africa. The Times Of India is reporting that plans for the filming fell through due to concerns over safety and security issues.

The Times Of India quotes Railway Minister Dinesh Trivedi as saying, “While the Bond franchise is important for us, so is the safety of people. God forbid if something untoward happened, people would not stop blaming us.”

This is not an entirely surprising development, as we told you earlier this month that India’s Railroad Ministry had concerns over the action sequence, which at one point would involve a motorcycle jumping on top of a moving train. They also voiced concerns over the depiction of Indians riding on top of trains.

According to the Times Of India report, another factor that may have played into the cancellation of the shooting was concern over the production’s request to “lock off the lines for seven-eight hours a day for seven days in a row.” While that seems like a reasonable amount of time to shoot an action sequence, it could have proved a severe inconvenience to those who would normally rely on the service. (India is fairly spread out and rail travel is more common there.)

The train sequence, and possibly other scenes initially planned to be shot in India, will very probably now be shot in South Africa when the film goes into production early next year.

Israeli actress Ayelet Zurer (Angels & Demons, Munich) will be placing Julia Ormond in the role of Superman’s Kryptonian mother Lara in Zack Snyder’s currently in production Man Of Steel.

Deadline is reporting the substitution but has no idea as to why the switch is being made. Zurer is supposed to be filming her scenes this week. Since this will undoubtedly be all indoor, set-bound filming, don’t expect any sneak peeks at her costume in the same way we have been getting for much of the rest of the production while it has been filming on location.

Zurer will be working opposite Russell Crowe, who will be playing Superman’s Kryptonian father Jor-El. It isn’t known if she’ll have scenes with the film’s other Kryptonian characters the villainous General Zod (Michael Shannon) and his right-hand woman Faora (Antje Traue).

Man Of Steel is currently set for a June 14, 2013 release.

I love the smell of a good blu-ray deal in the morning.

Amazon’s Blu-ray Deal of the Week is Frances Ford Coppola’s classic Apocalypse Now: Full Disclosure Edition. The three disc set includes the original 1979 classic as well as the 2001 “Redux” edition. The set also contains co-directos Fax Bahr, George Hickenlooper and Eleanor Coppola’s excellent and Emmy award winning 1991 documentary Hearts Of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, which details the legendarily chaotic production of the film. Other special features include a commentary track from Coppola, deleted scenes and new interviews from co-writer John Milius and star Martin Sheen.

From now until October 1, the set is available for $28.99, which is 52% off the regular $59.99 price. You can order it here.

It still hasn’t been officially announced, but it appears that the third installment to actor Vin Diesel and writer/director David Twohy’s Chronicles Of Riddick series is starting to come together. Bloody Disgusting is reporting that The Chronicles Of Riddick star Karl Urban will be coming back for the threequel to once again play the warrior Vaako.

This is no surprise to anyone who has had a chance to read one of the early drafts for The Chronicles Of Riddick: Dead Man Stalking that have been floating around for a while as his character figures into the story. (We’ll refrain from spoilers as to exactly how.)

So is Universal any closer to giving this film a greenlight? We’ll see.

While most of the Catwoman related news this week has about the character bumping poorly drawn uglies in the closing pages of Catwoman #1 comic book, which was released on Wednesday, there was another bit of Catwoman news that is sexier but quite less purient that might have been over looked.

Just Jared has a number of pictures of Anne Hathaway from the set of The Dark Knight Rises which gives us a better look of her in her Catwoman costume.

While picture of Hathaway in costume have been released, those shots had the costume obscured by the motorcycle she was riding. These shots give a clear view of the costume. And for those of you eagerly awaiting seeing Hathaway in a full body catsuit, well, you are probably not disappointed, are you?

This might be a case where the comic book costume looks more realistic than one in the “real world” setting for the Nolan Batman films. Both costumes are made out of skin-tight pleather/latex/rubber. However, the comic version, seen to the left, would be more like what a real life cat burgular would wear. It features a cowl and goggles in lieu of the more identity-revealing mask and cat ears combo of the film. And although you cant’ see them in the picture to the left, Catwoman shoes are boots with soles designed to provide the most traction. Typically, I’m not one to obsess over women’s footwear, but Selina Kyle’s criminal career would come to a painful, if not fatal, end if she attempted a fourth story job wearing those four-inch stilletos.

There are more pictures from the set below. The Dark Knight Rises is scheduled to open on July 20, 2012.

When we last tuned in to the saga of Disney’s The Lone Ranger, the fate of the film was in doubt as director Gore Verbinski and producer Jerry Bruckheimer were working frantically to get the budget down from a projected $250 million to a more manageable from the studio standpoint $215 million. It appears as if they may have done so as Deadline is reporting from unnamed sources that all issues could be resolved by as early as next week, allowing for the go ahead to begin re-hiring crew members and getting the film in front of cameras next January or February.

Based on the classic radio series and subsequent television show, The Lone Ranger has been in development at Disney for several years with Johnny Depp attached to play Tonto. Depp was so keen to work with his Pirates Of The Caribbean collaborator Verbinski again that he hinted that if the director left the project over the recent budget battle with the studio, he would walk from the project as well. Since Depp’s participation was a key reason in the studio’s eyes for making the film, it appears as if they were willing to work with Verbinski to arrive at a price tag for the project that would be agreeable to everyone.

Armie Hammer is still set to star in the film as the masked Texas Ranger who fights for justice after his lawman brother is savagely gunned down by outlaws.

How the later than originally planned production start will affect Disney’s intention to release the film on December 12, 2012 remains to be seen. It is possible that rather than rush things, they will push the film’s opening back into 2013, though that would leave them without a blockbuster to roll out during the holiday season.

The Lone Ranger is one of three upcoming blockbusters that Disney is heavily betting on. Their live-action adaption of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s pulp hero John Carter which is set to come out next March is looking to cost some $250 million or more while Sam Raimi’s Oz, The Great And Powerful currently in production seems like a bargain with only a $200 million price tag.