It has been a bit quiet as of late in the long, continuing saga of Ghostbusters 3‘s development. Everyone has been waiting since last year at this time for Bill Murray to get around to reading the proposed script, but he seems to be taking his time in doing so. But now franchise co-star and co-creator Dan Aykroyd has hinted that they might just move forward without Murray’s participation.

In an interview with the British genre magazine Empire, Aykroyd denied the recent rumor that Murray shredded a copy of the proposed script and sent the remains back to him with a note saying to the effect that no one wants to see a bunch of old men chasing ghosts.

Bill Murray is not capable of such behaviour. This is simply something that would not be in his nature. We have a deep, private personal relationship that transcends business. We communicate frequently and his position on the involvement in Ghostbusters 3 has been made clear and I respect that. But Bill has too much positive estimation of my writing skills to shred the work.

But the real takeaway from their interview was this comment-

Even more intriguingly, Aykroyd hinted that Bill Murray may not return as Peter Venkman, and that the character could be played by a different actor, a la Jack Ryan.

Now I’ll admit that I wish Empire had a direct quote here, but even without one this is still an interesting development. Aykroyd may be entertaining going ahead with a different actor in Murray’s part, but will folks find another an actor in the role as entertaining as Murray has been? Will studio executives even give us a chance to find out if a different actor in the role would be accepted by the public.

Murray has been such a key component of the two films that it would seem like suicide to continue without him. But the same thing was thought about Sean Connery leaving the James Bond franchise, but that seemed to continue on just fine. Who could takeover for Murray and still do a credible job in the role? Murray’s Caddyshack role was recast  for the sequel, but the actor who stepped in was Aykroyd, so he’s out. I am at a complete loss as to who the role could be given to. It would seem that the more prudent thing to do, if you recklessly want to go ahead without Murray, would be to write an explanation as to why Peter Venkman isn’t around and continue your story from there.

But let’s not forget that this would not be the first time that the role of Dr Peter Venkman has been recast. Originally, Aykroyd had written the film with his good friend John Belushi in mind for the part and it was only after Belushi’s death did Murray get the role. Additionally, for the Real Ghostbusters animated series veteran voice actor Lorenzo Music supplied the voice of the character for the first two seasons before being replaced, by the far inferior in my opinion, Dave Coulier.

At the beginning of the year, we mentioned that cult favorite Bruce Campbell was working on a sequel to My Name Is Bruce called Bruce Vs. Frankenstein. While it is looking extremely doubtful that the hoped for filming start date this fall will be met, Campbell is still looking forward to getting the project rolling as soon as he  could.

In a new interview with the LA Times’ Hero Blog, Campbell stated that they were still working on a script for the film, and that he wanted it to be “the Expendables of horror”-

Yeah, The Expendables, or more like the It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World of horror. I want to get so many horror movie stars that people can’t possibly not see the movie. I want to give them other stuff to do. I want to have Kane Hodder be very particular about what he eats. I want Robert Englund to be a tough guy, like he knows tae kwon do or something. I want to find out the hidden sides of all these people. Some will play themselves, some will play alternate characters as well. I may approach Kane Hodder to play Frankenstein. He could be Kane Hodder himself fighting himself as Frankenstein. It could be crazy. It’s a silly concocted story that we hope to do maybe in a year or so. My breaks between Burn Notice have been getting tighter because they’ve been adding episodes. They’re trying to trap me like a rat in the TV world, and I might just let them. There’s a script, it just kind of blows right now, so no one’s really seeing it. We gotta work on it. Definitely shoot in Oregon all on a stage. It’s like the 300 of horror comedies. We want to make it a whole world. Someone’s gotta take Frank down for good.

I have to admit that this certainly sounds like a fun idea if Campbell can get his horror film contemporaries to come out to play for this. Here’s hoping he can.

A long while back in was announced that director John Boorman was working on an animated version of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz, and then very little was heard of the project since then. So little in fact, that when I wrote up our rundown of the various Wizard Of Oz-based projects currently in development, I hesitated before adding in Boorman’s project, unsure if it was still an on-going concern or not.

While we still don’t have much in the way of new news on the project, a short animation test from the project has surfaced. It’s set fairly early in the story and shows us a portion of the scene where Dorothy first meets the Scarecrow along the Yellow Brick Road to the Emerald City. Note that this is just a render test, to see how the designs look, rather than a full-on animation test.

Via Bleeding Cool.

Last month, we reported that director Terry Gilliam had encountered a small “hiccup” with the financing for his long planned project The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.

Unfortunately, it now looks as if either Gilliam was downplaying the “hiccup” or it has grown to a size where it has scuttled the project for the time being… again.

Variety caught up with the director this past weekend at the Deauville American Film Festival and asked him what the status was of the off-again on-again project-

The financing collapsed about a month and a half ago… I shouldn’t be here. The plan was to be shooting ‘Quixote’ right now.

But Gilliam remains optimistic that this latest version he had all ready to go will still move forward.

Robert Duvall is Quixote, Ewan McGregor is also there, and we are looking for new financing right now. Don Quixote gives me something to look forward to, always. Maybe the most frightening thing is to actually make the film.

I have to admire Gilliam’s continued optimism in the face of yet another set back. Sometimes it is the only thing keeping this fan of his movies in believing that he will one day see it.

Max Brooks’ classic zombie apocalypse novel has been heading towards the big screen for a couple of years now, but the project is shifting in to high gear. According to Brooks, who spoke to MTV Movies Blog at the San Diego Comic Con yesterday, said that Paramount Pictures and production company Plan B was moving forward with the project and that Brad Pitt was attached to star.

I can’t believe how cool Paramount has been to me and these projects, and how cool Plan B has been… I’m glad they took their time, and are trying to make the best zombie movie they can. I’m so glad they stayed with the project and so glad they found the right team.

It comes as no surprise that Brad Pitt has attached himself to the film. Plan B is, after all, his production company. Plan B won the film rights to the book after a bidding war with Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way shingle.

Additionally, Brooks revealed that Paramount has optioned his original zombie book, The Zombie Survival Guide as well as The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks graphic novel which he wrote. Will these factor in to a new rewrite of the project’s script by J. Michael Straczynski with rewrites by Matthew Michael Carnahan?

Working Title Films have picked up the rights to comics creators Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson and Alex Ross’s graphic novel series Astro City. Deadline is reporting that writer Busiek gets first crack at the screenplay.

When it debuted in 1995, Astro City was hailed by critics as one of the best superhero comics to come along in a long time. With an ongoing series, a number of mini-series and one-shots, Astro City plotted the history of its titular city and its interactions with superheroes. Some stories focused on the heroes like Samaritan, The Hanged Man, The Apollo Elevenand The First Family and their exploits, while others focused on the city’s residents and how they cope with living in an environment that includes superpowered heroes and villains slugging it out on a regular basis.

Many of the characters were seen as analogs for famous superhero characters, such as Samaritan being a viewed as a stand-in for Superman. However, free from the corporate considerations that often straightjacket stories featuring those corporate-owned characters, Astro City is free to explore and deconstruct those archetypes.

Additionally, Busiek includes many place names that reference comic and pulp creators of the past. Binderbeck Plaza portmanteaus famous Captain Marvel’s writer and artist team Otto Binder and CC Beck. A section of town known as Kanewood is a tribute to Batman creator Bob Kane.

Busiek writes the series, Anderson illustrates and Ross contributes covers and character designs.

In all the times that I’ve seen the Rogers & Hammerstein musical South Pacific, be it the 1958 film version, a community theater production or playing lead trumpet in the pit orchestra when it was staged my senior year of high school, I have never once thought, “You know, I think this needs to be a grittier, more realistic portrayal of the war in the Pacific during World War Two.”

But Ileen Maisel and Bob Balaban have thought that perhaps South Pacific does need a bit of a make over. According to Variety, the pair are starting to develop a “harder-edge version of the iconic musical,” through their production company Chicagofilms. But this new version will keep all of the original musical’s upbeat songs. So no matter what kind of character makeover they put nurse Ensign Nellie Forbush through to give her that hard edge, she’s still at some point going to be belting out “A Cockeyed Optimist.”

So what exactly will a “harder-edged” version of South Pacific look like? Lt. Cable being shot down in a hail of bullets in a scene similar to Saving Private Ryan? If they stick closer to Michener’s original material, the short story collection Tales Of The South Pacific, the Emil de Becque character meets a grisly end with his severed head impaled on a stake, which doesn’t sound like a very enchanted evening to me.

If you’re waiting for pop culture satirist “Weird Al” Yankovic’s second film, you are going to have to wait a little longer. Of course, since it has been 21 years since his first film, UHF, hit theater, you may be used to waiting.

This past January, Yankovic announced that he had a deal with Cartoon Network which in part had him developing a live action feature film. Over the year, though, the execs at the cable channel have had a change of heart about how much they want to push their brand out of animation into live action and called a halt to all feature film development. Al blogged about it-

I’ve mentioned the situation with Cartoon Network in a few interviews and podcasts, but I never formally addressed it, so… here’s what happened.  As I had previously reported, after years of negotiation, I was able to sign a major production deal with Cartoon Network to provide content for them.  They were primarily interested in live action features, so I pitched them on a movie idea.  They loved it, and gave me the go-ahead to start working on the screenplay.  I worked closely with them for several months, and after submitting my 4^th draft, just when I was just about to get the official green light… Cartoon Network let me know that they were no longer in the feature film business.  It was a major policy change that affected not only me, but also the dozen or so other movies of theirs that were in various stages of development.  Everything just stopped.  So, bad news for me, but good news for all the Cartoon Network fanboys that already hated my movie without seeing it (because apparently any live-action programming on that network would be sacrilegious).  Anyway, it’s not entirely bad news – the script went into turnaround, which means I’m free to sell it somewhere else.  (Come to think of it, that was pretty much the exact thing that happened when I was trying to get UHF made.)  So maybe it’ll get produced at some point, maybe it won’t… all I know is, I’ll have a lot more free time this fall.

Hopefully, some other studio will step in and pick the untitled project up. Yankovic’s got a solid and supportive fan base who would certainly come out for his first film in two decades.

Would the film be a flat out parody of films the way UHF goofed on television? Who knows, but if it were, I would love to see Al school those people behind the last several years’ worth of weak parody movies. If instead it is some other peek in to Yankovic’s decidedly skewed view of the world, I would welcome that too.

Most everyone can agree that The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable are the two best films on writer/director M. Night Shyamalan’s filmography. And a big part of their success can possibly be attributed to the work of actor Bruce Willis in the lead roles for each film. Although known for a succession of wisecracking characters, Willis’ work in The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable were departures, with the actor presenting far more contemplative and complex protagonists than he usually played. With Shyamalan’s more recent films disappointing audiences more than entertaining them, can we take it as a good sign that Shyamalan is currently shopping a project around Hollywood that would reteam the two?

The Hollywood Reporter‘s Heat Vision blog is reporting that the Philadelphia-based Shyamalan has a new, untitled script currently making the rounds of movie studio executive suites in Los Angeles. As has become the norm when he begins shopping a new script, Shyamalan insists on almost ridiculous security. An assistant to the director shows up at an executives with a copy of the script, hands it over to be read and then waits until the exec finishes it and then takes it back.

Needless to say, no one knows or is talking about what the script could be about. It is supposedly strong enough to not only get Willis interested in attaching his name to the project but Bradley Cooper and Gwyneth Paltrow as well.

I am honestly a bit surprised that Shyamalan is able to insist and have honored his security conditions for reading this new script. His last three films – The Village, Lady In The Water and The Happening – were all disappointments on both critical and box office levels. I would think that he doesn’t have the clout in Hollywood that he had back at the turn of the century when The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable were released.

It probably won’t be until after the July 4th weekend and everyone gets a look at the opening box office receipts for Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender before we hear if any studio puts out an offer for this script. Will a bidding war be sparked or will the director have to take whatever deal is offered?

The more I write about Warner Brothers planned Logan’s Run film, the more I am starting to believe producers Joel Silver and Akiva Goldsman insistence that this film will be more an adaption of William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson’s original 1967 novel rather than a straight up remake of the 1976 film version. I’ve got not real solid reason for believing what they say, so maybe it’s more of a hope. I read the original book years ago and was struck by the differences between it and it’s cinematic equivalent. I’m not saying it’s better, just different and with plenty of untapped material for a writer to incorporate into new film version.

That’s the assignment 28 Days Later scripter Alex Garland has in front of him. The Hollywood Reporter is stating that the writer is in final negotiations to adapt the book for Warners and director Carl Rinsch. Garland also has Sunshine and The Beach to his credit.

The studio has been developing the remake for several years now, going through a couple of writers and directors already. Will this be the magic combination to get the film in to production?