Sony just has purchased a spec script titled White House Down from Jamie Vanderbilt. The studio is rumored to be paying the princely sum of $3 million, which could make it the biggest spec sale on record. Vanderbilt is the chief author of Sony’s Spider-Man reboot, The Amazing Spider-Man as well as their remake of Total Recall. He also has just finished a production rewrite on the upcoming Robocop remake for MGM. No director is attached to the project yet.

This is the second White House-related action project to be announced in the last couple of weeks. Millennium Films recently announced that they have attached Gerard Butler to a White House related action film titled Olympus Has Fallen. Depending on whether both of these get made, we could be seeing another concept showdown at the box office similar to the summer that both Armageddon and Deep Impact graced screens within weeks of each other or how movie goers will have their choice of two different Snow White films this year.

1. Wrath Of The Titans (Warner Brothers, More Than 3,500 Theaters, 99 Minutes, Rated PG-13): Well, here’s something you don’t see everyday–a sequel to a remake. 2010′s Clash of the Titans was one of the first films where international grosses played a part in making it a hit. It made a paltry $163 million domestically versus a $125 million budget, but its $330 million take overseas is what help bring this sequel around.

Sam Worthington is back as Perseus, who is back in the Titan fighting business when Hades and Ares conspire with the Titans to capture Zeus in order to wrestle power from him. Perseus is tasked with trying to free Zeus and save the world.

Jonathan Liebesman replaces Louis Leterrier as director, but many of international cast that compose the main players, including Liam Neeson and Ralph Finnes, return.  This should mean that the film will have as good a run overseas as the first one did. FYI, Liebesman will be directing that controversial Ninja Turtles film, so if you TMNT fans want to start your boycotts early, start them here.

2. Mirror Mirror (Relativity, @3,200 Theaters, 106 Minutes, Rated PG): In case you haven’t been reading FilmBuffOnline as much as you should, there will be two Snow White themed films being released this year. Both feature twists on the fairy tale where Snow White a more active role in opposing the evil queen and both feature an Academy Award-winning actresses playing the queen.

This film hits first and features America’s sweetheart Julia Roberts playing said queen and Lily Collins playing Snow. Snow White and the Huntsman open June 1st and features Kristen Stewart playing Snow White and Charlize Theron as the Queen.

Which one should you see? Well, that depends on what kind of new take on Snow White suits your fancy. This one is the lighter of the two, and might skew closer to the Disney film in tone.  Snow White and the Huntsman appears to be darker and more violent of the two. Something to consider if you are taking the kiddies with you.

Warner Brothers has released a new promotional image for next summer’s Superman film Man Of Steel on the film’s Facebook page. It is a textured and slightly redesigned S-Shield as you can see above.

And, that’s about it. Does the design hint at some design elements that we’ll see in the film? It’s probably too early to tell though I expect that we’ll be seeing more over the next 17 months.

Director Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel starring Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Russell Crowe, Kevin Costner and Michael Shannon flies into theaters on June 14, 2013.

It’s looking as if that Johnny Depp/Rob Marshall collaboration to remake the classic The Thin Man is moving forward. Deadline is reporting that Marshall will be meeting with several actresses for the lead role of Nora Charles. Among those on the reported shortlist are Eva Green, Amy Adams, Emma Stone, Carey Mulligan, Rachel Weisz, Kristen Wiig, Emily Blunt and Isla Fisher.

Johnny Depp will be starring in the mystery comedy story of former private investigator-turned-socialite Nick Charles who gets pressed back into his old detective job by his wife Nora after a friend of the family disappears. William Powell and Myrna Loy created cinematic history by playing the Charleses for six films for MGM in the 1930s and 40s.

Honestly, well, I do like some of these actresses, I don’t think that any of them can hold a candle to Loy and her portrayal of Nora in the original film series. But if I had to pick, I would probably narrow my choices down to Eva Green, Amy Adams, and Carey Mulligan. Let’s see what Marshall comes up with.

As he has been doing the interview rounds for his new book Tough Sh*t: Life Advice from a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good, Kevin Smith has been talking about his plans to retire from filmmaking once he completes in his planned hockey picture Hit Somebody. And for long time fans of the director that pronouncement has left them wondering about the Smith’s previously announced possibility of doing a third Clerks movie. Thanks to an enterprising fan who asked him exactly that question at a book signing, and then forwarded the video to Slash Film, we know what his intentions are – a stage play.

Smith launched his career in 1994 with the low-budget indie Clerks, in which two convenience store counter jockeys pass their workday dealing with surly customers and discussing pop culture. Part of the film’s success was Smith drawing on his own experiences working in the exact store that the film was shot. And while a majority of films were all set within the same “universe” as Clerks, he didn’t devote an another entire film to Dante and Randall until 2006′s Clerks 2. At the time and since then, he has stated that he always felt a kinship towards the characters and wanted to check in with them every so many years whenever he felt he had something personal to say about his own life.

Honestly, putting a third Clerks installment up on stage, as crazy as it sounds, does make a certain amount of sense. One of the criticisms Smith acknowledges that has been leveled at Clerks and to a lesser extent most of Smith’s films, is that the heavy amount of dialogue and little action made the film seem more stage-bound then cinematic. I’ve had discussions with friends who do regional theater about what it would take to mount a stage production of the first film. And it would make a rather interesting twist on the usual film-to-stage translations we have been seeing over the last several years.

Additionally, as Smith points out, Clerks star Brian O’Halloran has plied most of his acting career on the stage, so he would definitely be able to handle the differences between this and film work. Jeff Anderson and Jason Mewes might be more questionable as to how they would take to the repetition of a long stage run, and I imagine that their participation would be contingent to making this happen.

By the beard of Zeus!

The story just broke a few minutes ago over at Deadline, but the Hollywood gossip site is stating that a deal came together today greenlighting the long hoped for (by me at least) sequel to Will Farrell’s 2004 comedy Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy. Reportedly, Ferrell will be joined by at least castmates Steve Carell and Paul Rudd and director/screenwriter Adam McKay. There are no other details as of yet, though I expect that we should get them when Paramount officially announces the project in the next couple of days.

Ferrell confirmed the news during the taping of this evening’s Conan.

Ferrell has been trying to get an Anchorman sequel off the ground for several years and it looked like it was actually dead last May. But I guess you just can’t keep a good local anchor down.

Some fans of the classic Japanese manga and anime Akira may have been disappointed that the recent attempt by Warner Brothers to turn it into a live-action franchise came to naught, but judging from some recent comments by one of the actors who was in contention for a lead role, it looks as if they may have avoided a bullet.

Last fall while the project was casting, British actor Toby Kebbell was in consideration for the part of Tetsuo. As a fan of the original manga, Kebbell was psyched to be up for the part. However, after meeting with the studio about the project, he began to have second thoughts. Speaking to IFC while doing publicity rounds for the upcoming Wrath Of The Titans, Kebbell spoke about the impression he got for what Warners wanted to do with the film.

They were like, ‘This is going to be a big franchise!’ So I said, ‘Then in that case, understand that I’ve read the comics, and I’ve read the comics that got turned into the annuals, and then the annuals that got turned into the one-off anime. So if you really want to do it, then why don’t you look at the six comics and just put two into each film?’

That way my character, Tetsuo, is not the lead. He’s not the second lead, and he’s not the third or the fourth lead, because there are eight major characters there. You’ve got great young actors, and you could get them in there. That’s the way to do it if you want to do sequels.

Warner Brothers had been attempting to develop the near-future set story in which a secret military project kidnaps a motorcycle gang member in order to turn him into a weapon by enhancing his latent psychic powers, unaware that the experiment will lead to disastrous results for nearly a decade. At various points in the projects long stay in development hell, such creatives as Stephen Norrington, Gary Whitta and Albert Hughes had worked on trying to get the film before cameras while Leonardo DiCaprio, Zac Efron, Joseph Gordon Levitt and Morgan Freeman were all said to be possible players in the film at one point or another. When the film was shut down over budgetary at the beginning of the year, Jaume Collet-Serra had been signed on to direct, Garrett Hedlund was in talks to portray Kaneda while Helena Bonham Carter and Gary Oldman were already in the cast.

Kebbell felt that the studio did not have the same enthusiasm for maintaining fidelity with the manga source material that he had.

They were like, ‘Welllll…’ So I told them, ‘Then this is a remake [of the animated movie], and I don’t want to do a live-action remake of the cartoon, because [the cartoon] is perfect and you’re not going to do it dark enough — so therefore, I don’t want to do it. I was desperate to play Tetsuo, but Tetsuo in the comic and annual form. He’s brilliant in the anime, but if you know anything about the comics, they cut so much of the story out. You care about him, because it’s brilliantly done, but you don’t really care about Kaneda, who isn’t.

Considering how he viewed the importance of the relationship between Tetsuo and Kaneda to the overall story, Kebbell understandably had some reservations about some of the changes that were brought to the two characters.

The other thing they wanted to do was make [Tetsuo and Kaneda] brothers. I was like, ‘The point is that Tetsuo can’t comprehend how someone who isn’t his brother could love him so much — and that’s where his wrath and his rage come from. Do you not see that? Why have you made them brothers? What the f–k are you doing?’

Now there’s always some transformation of material when a book or graphic novel is translated to film. While some of those changes are understandable due to the differences in each storytelling medium, making Tetsuo and Kaneda brothers sounds more like a shortcut to generate an easy relationship between the two characters more than a change to accommodate a cinematic telling of the story. And such a change also robs Tetsuo’s character of much of his drive.

Hopefully, if the project gets revived at Warners, it will be in the hands of someone who is a bit more familiar with the character dynamics that lie at the heart of the film’s storytelling engine.

It’s not often that a filmmaker finds himself in the position of having to defend his film before a frame of it has even been shot, but that’s the unenviable position Michael Bay is in following the recent news reports that the new live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film he is producing will have its title truncated down to simply Ninja Turtles.

You can almost feel his frustration over the turn of events as he responded today on his website to the rising tide of criticism over the shortened title.

Paramount marketing changed the name. They made the title simple. The characters you all remember are exactly the same, and yes they still act like teenagers. Everything you remember, why you liked the characters, is in the movie. This script is being developed by two very smart writers, with one of the original creators of Ninja Turtles. They care VERY MUCH about making this film for the fans. Everyone on this team cares about the fans. Just give them a chance. Jonathan [insert last name] the director, is a major fan of the whole franchise. HE’S NOT GOING TO LET YOU DOWN.

Well, I can see the thinking of the marketing types who might want a shorter, snappier title that also allows them to differentiate their film from the live action ones of the late 80s/early 90s. But the recent computer animated film TMNT certainly didn’t bring in the bucks despite the name change. Does moving away from your well known title perhaps indicate a lack of faith in one’s own product? And let’s not forget that some people have blamed the rather generic title John Carter as having contributed to Disney’s adaption of Edgar Rice Burrough’s John Cater, Warlord of Mars series of novels bombing at the box office. It should be interesting to see what impact this will have on the film.

Chloe Moreitz has been offered the lead in MGM’s in adaption of Stephen King’s first published novel Carrie. Moreitz will now go into negotiations with the studio to portray the shy and socially awkward teenager who uses her newly developed psychic powers to lash back at the classmates who taunt her.

Moretz reportedly beat out a number of other contenders for the role including Dakota Fanning.

Previously, the book was adapted to film by Brian DePalma, earning both Sissy Spacek, who played Carrie, and Piper Laurie, who played her mother, Academy Award nominations. The film also served as early career vehicles for Amy Irving, Nancy Allen, John Travolta, Betty Buckley and William Katt. The film’s box office success set off a seemingly unending parade of King film adaptations, though a majority of them did not reach the level of critical or financial success that Carrie earned.

This new version will be directed by Kim Peirce, who will set out to cast the rest of the film once Moreitz’s deal is set.

Cameras have yet to roll on Jose Padihla’s Robocop reboot for MGM, but we are starting to get an idea of how the titular human cop-turned-cyborg-by-his-corporate-overlords will look.

In an interview with MTV, Joel Kinnaman, the actor hired to play Officer Alex Murphy/Robocop, described the new look thusly -

RoboCop is going to be a lot more human. The first movie is one of my favorite movies. I love it. Of course, Verhoeven has that very special tone, and it’s not going to have that tone. It’s a re-imagination of it. There’s a lot of stuff from the original. There are some details and throwbacks, but this version is a much better acting piece, for Alex Murphy and especially when he is RoboCop. It’s much more challenging… [The helmet is] not going to be jaw action. They’re still working on the suit and how it’s going to look, but the visor is going to be see-through. You’re going to see his eyes.

In the original film, after Murphy is shot up by the bad guys, he is thought to be dead by his friends and family and considered to be nothing but parts for their new project, the one that creates Robocop, by the corporation that runs the Detroit police, OCP. The public gets to see very little of his face and once it is revealed in the precinct house, Murphy’s former fellow officers are aghast at what they see, especially in the face of the OCP representative stating that Robocop really isn’t Murphy anymore.

But I think that by exposing more of the human face under Robocop’s helmet, the film runs the risk of minimizing the original film’s theme of corporations’ dehumanization of their employees. Now I understand the need to make the new film stand out from its predecessor and to try and replicate director Paul Veerhooven’s satirical tone from the first Robocop would be a fool’s errand. And the desire of an actor to have his face visible as much as possible is a strong one. Look at how many times superheros loose their masks in all the various comic book movies, usually during the finale.

Granted, we are still early in the pre-production process and this could be just one of many looks that Padilha is exploring. Actually, I am hoping that it is just one of many options on the table, because I think that this one is a bad way to go.