NEWS: Casting, ANOTHER Remake, and The Best Reviewed Film Ever...

Hey guys! Here are your headlines for this Friday, the 31st of October, HALLOWEEN!!!!

- It looks as though Warner Brothers has hired J. Michael Straczynski, writer of Clint Eastwoods new film, Changeling, to pen a remake to the 1956 Oscar nominated film, the The Forbidden Planet. Thanks to /film for the information....

Warner Bros has hired J. Michael Straczynski to write a remake of Forbidden Planet. The original saw a group of Earth scientists who are sent some 17 light years away to investigate what happened to a colony of settlers on Altair-4. They find a man with a secret and his daughter who somehow survived a hideous monster attack on their planet. Gene Roddenberry has noted that Fred Wilcox’s original 1956 sci-fi film was one of the inspirations for Star Trek.

Loosely based on William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the movie was nominated for best special effects Oscar, and was noted for its groundbreaking use of an all-electronic score, and the first appearances of Robby the Robot and the C-57D starship (which was subsequently used in a number of productions, including the Twilight Zone’s “To Serve Man”). The movie’s poster was listed as the fifth best Movie Poster ever created by Premiere Magazine.

Straczynski is probably best known as the creator of Babylon 5, but in recent years he has transitioned into an A-list Hollywood writer. He wrote Clint Eastwood’s most recent film, Changeling, The Wachowski Brothers’ Ninja Assassin, and the big screen adaptation of World War Z. Many names have been attached to the project over the years including James Cameron. Joel Silver is producing the latest try.

Thoughts? Is this needed, or do you think it can work?

- Looks like the ball is rolling early on Spiderman 4. Sony is now in final talks with Pulitzer Prize winning author, David Lindsay-Abaire to write the script...

- Variety is reporting that Hollywood is in the middle of a bidding war over a possible film adaptation of the yet to be ANNOUNCED EA videogame, tentatively titled Dante's Inferno, and will be based around the poem of the same name...

- The 2008 Documentary, Man on Wire, has now been ranked the best reviewed film of all time on Rotten Tomatoes, as it has a 100% rating with 129 reviews, surpassing Toy Story 2, which has the same rating with 125 reviews...

- Finally, it looks as though Samuel L. Jackson and Maggie Cheung have been cast in the upcoming Quentin Tarantino film, Ingolourious Basterds (yes, that's how the films titled is spelled). Jackson will be the narator of the film, and Maggie Cheung will portray Madame Mimieux “the French matron of the Cinematheque that takes in the protagonist Shosanna (Melanie Laurent) when she is homeless and being sought by the Nazis.”

That's all I've got for now, so come back later for more news and notes...

Go see something good! HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!