Hollywood Reporter has said that negotiations are on with Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, to write the script.

Markus and McFeely are the scriptwriters of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, and Prince Caspian.

First Avenger: Captain America is being produced by Kevin Feige. The movie that will go into production soon, and will be filmed at Raleigh Studios in Manhattan Beach, California.

The movie will be set during World War II.

First Avenger: Captain America will be released on May 6, 2011.

Captain America

Captain America first appeared in Timely Comics, and later in Marvel Comics. The character created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby was very popular during WW II, and is said to represent Kirby and Simon’s angst about Nazi Germany.

Captain America, or Steve Rogers, was a young illustrator who wanted to sign up for the WW II, but was rejected because of his sickly constitution. Given a chance to take part in a hush-hush defence project, Steven Rogers agrees to become a test subject for the Super-Soldier serum. Rogers becomes a super-strong optimal human being, Captain America, and takes on the Nazis, Japanese, and other foes of America.
First Avenger: Captain America is one of the first few independent films that Marvel Studios has planned.

The first two independent films were Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk released in 2008.

In the works, are Iron Man 2, Thor, The Avengers, Ant-Man, Nick Fury, Runaways, Cloak and Dagger, and Doctor Strange.

Directors and screen writers have been attached to some of these projects. Iron Man 2 will be directed by Jon Favreau with no change in cast, except for Terrence Howard being replaced by Don Cheadle.

Ant-Man will be directed by Edgar Wright and scripted by Joe Cornish.

Andrew W. Marlow and Brian K. Vaughan have been attached as scriptwriters for Nick Fury and Runaways, respectively.

Leaves of Grass first photo

In Leaves of Grass, Edward Norton plays identical twins. One is an Ivy league professor, Bill Kincaid, and the other is a genius bad boy marijuana-grower.

Bill Kincaid’s devious twin brother lures him to southeastern Oklahoma where he ends up taking on drug lord (Richard Dreyfuss.)

Leaves of Grass poster

Leaves of Grass has been written and directed by Tim Blake Nelson. The movie also stars Susan Sarandon, Keri Russell, Melanie Lynskey, Maggie Sif and Tim Blake Nelson, who plays a friend of one of the twin brothers.

Susan Sarandon plays the mother of the twins, and Keri Russell will be a love interest.

Leaves of Grass has been produced by Ed Norton and Nelson and has been financed by Barbarian Films with Bill Migliore.

Norton and Nelson recently teamed for The Incredible Hulk with Norton playing the title character. Nelson reportedly wrote Leaves of Grass for Norton’s talents and has been waiting for the right chance for the actor to take the project.

Tim Blake Nelson is known more as a superb character actor than as a director. He has acted in more than 40 movies and directed six movies, Haskett’s Chance, Kansas, Eye of God, O, and The Grey Zone.

Reports say that Nelson had written the script of Leaves of Grass with Ed Norton in mind, with whom he has worked in The Incredible Hunk.

Edward Norton has two Oscar nominations to his name. He was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar award for American History X (1999), and Best Supporting Actor for Primal Fear (1996).

Norton has won the Golden Globe award in 1997 for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture for the movie Primal Fear.

Jean-Claude Van Damme in Double Impact

It would be interesting to see Ed Norton playing twins in Leaves of Grass. At the very least, he will be better than Jean-Claude Van Damme in Double Impact.

Edward Norton will be next seen in Motherless Brooklyn.

Deepa will co-produce the movie with husband David Hamilton.

Deepa Mehta will direct Rushdie' Midnight's Children

Salman Rushdie and Deepa Mehta will work on the screenplay, which is likely to run over 600 pages. Midnight’s Children that will go into production in 2010, is likely to star Shabana Azmi, Nandita Das, and Seema Biswas. Azmi has earlier worked with Mehta on the controversial Fire (1998). Nandita Das has worked with Deepa Mehta in both Earth and Fire (1998).

Nandita Das and Shabana Azmi in Fire

Salman Rushdie has said that he would love to cast Shabana Azmi as the grandmother’s character in the film.

Salman Rushdie and Mehta will write the screenplay from mid-March to mid-April 2009.

Midnight’s Children revolves around Saleem Sinai, one of the 1,001 children born between 12 AM and 1 AM on August 15, 1947.

Midnight’s Children won the Booker Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1981.

Sir Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie has earlier adapted Midnight’s Children for a play and a TV series. The TV series never took off because the Sri Lanka government refused to give the go-ahead to shoot the series.

Deepa Mehta will first film Exclusion, in 2009, and then start production for Midnight’s Children. Exclusion is about the Komagata Maru episode when 300 Indians were denied entry into Canada. Exclusion will star John Abraham, Akshay Kumar, Manisha Koirala, and Seema Biswas.

Midnight’s Children will be filmed in India, though going by Deepa Mehta’s record with shooting problems in India, it may not be easy to do so. While making Water, Mehta had to stop filming due to violent protests. Mehta then secretly shot the movie in Sri Lanka.

The Midnight’s Children project was announced by Rushdie and Mehta in New York at an event organised a day after the annual MIAAC film festival.

Shah Rukh Khan's Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi movie poster

Is the story of RNBDJ - acronyms seem to be getting longer,  at least one should be thankful we don’t have movies with names like Paap Ko Jala Kar Raakh Kar Daloonga anymore - worse or better than that?

One of the popular stories that is being bandied about goes like this:

Shah Rukh Khan is married to a younger woman (newcomer Anushka Sharma) as a result of which they have a “difference of opinion.” About what? Whether she really is a younger woman or he is a older man or whether the grass is green and the sky is blue!

Photo: Model Anushka Sharma

OK, whatever it means, the “difference of opinion” translates into Anushka participating in a reality dance show Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi where she is wooed by a charming, handsome young man (Shah Rukh Khan with spiky hair, an improved version our fuddy duddy older man.) Of course, our heroine doesn’t get it till the end of the movie that the guy serenading her is her husband until he goes down on his knees and informs her, I bet. Talk about show and tell.

Photo: SRK as the dude in Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi

The other stories put forward say that SRK has a double role, one of the fuddy duddy guy and the other of the handsome dude. One of them win the girl, the other gets a consolation prize, who could be Deepika Padukone or Priyanka Chopra. What a punishment.

Imdb has added Preity Zinta, Rani Mukherjee and Kajol to the mix, in their cast list. What is going on? It’s almost like a typist pool with temps.

I guess this another of Yashraj Films’s (YRF) attempts to make “hat ke” cinema. After the debacle of the 2007 Tara Rum Pum and Jhoom Barabar Jhoom, YRF has realized that rehashing the same ol’ mushfest is not really working. It also recognized the fact that many small budget movies like Khosla Ka Ghosla and Pyaar Ke Side Effects were doing very well in the cities. None of these new movies had stuck to the tried-and-tested.

Lesson learnt, YRF came back with Chak De! India in 2007. The movie was refreshing, meaningful, and a superhit to boot. But notice, Aditya Chopra had nothing to do with it, except produce. Chak De was written and directed by Jaideep Sahni (promising writer of Khosla Ka Ghosla) and Shimit Amin (director of the acclaimed 2004 Ab Tak Chhappan.)

YRF also tried to use other successful directors and writers for the movies it produced, like Pradeep Sarkar and Kunal Kohli. However, despite a difference in approach, none of the movies following Chak De! India - Aaja Nachle, Laaga Chunri Mein Daag, Tashan and Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic - worked. The biggest problem with all of these was story selection. If you want to be different, you cannot strut the old stuff. Except for Aaja Nachle, all of the others had a dated storyline.

So now Aditya Chopra wants to make another “different” romantic comedy with Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi. RNBDJ is written and directed by Aditya Chopra. So far, Adi has written and directed two movies - Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (1995) and Mohabbatein (2000), the former a smash hit and the latter a dud.

If the plot of RNDBJ is indeed about a dance reality show, a boring husband, and a fun-loving young wife, Aditya Chopra has drawn from his own Aaja Nachle for the story. In Aaja Nachle, Vinay Pathak plays a humorless, stuffy man to a bored and frustrated Sushmita Mukherjee. When he overhears what she thinks of him he is willing to participate in a dance program to woo his wife. So far so good. As a cameo, it is delightful but as a full-fledged movie I am not too sure, even if it’s SRK.

Will RNDBJ work? I doubt it. The Jassi-loving Junta will be turned on, I am sure, by the whole ugly duckling thingamajig but I am not too sure they want to see a guy do that. Personally, I don’t dislike YRF romances but it’s the treatment that is irritating - lots of lectures and sentimental outpourings. But one can put that down to a “difference in opinion.”

Original High and Low poster

The remake will be directed by Mike Nichols and the movie will be scripted by David Mamet. High and Low will be produced by Scot Rudin and co-produced by Scorsese.

Kurosawa’s High and Low was loosely based on a novel by Ed McBain.

High and Low revolves around Kingo Gondo, an executive who mortgages all he owns to raise money for a the takeover of a company that he thinks he can turn around.

When Gondo’s son is kidnapped, he is prepared to pay the ransom, but he faces a moral dilemma when he finds out that his driver’s son has been kidnapped by mistake, instead of his son.

Should he rescue the boy or use the money for the deal on which he has staked everything?

Akiro Kurosawa's High and Low poster

High and Low is also a fascinating thriller, as a cop hunts down the kidnapper.

High and Low has been on Scorsese’s drawing board since 1999.

Should he touch a masterpiece like High and Low, or rather can the movie be adapted to recent times? And even if it can’t, does it matter? If one doesn’t take it all too seriously, this would be an interesting movie to watch, depending on the casting, of course.

So who is it going to be? Leo, because Scorsese loves Leo? For me, it’s Leo, Leo, Leo because the guy can act and I can easily imagine him as someone who is conflicted over the moralities of a situation.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese

Maybe, I am biased but I can’t think of anyone else, except maybe Denzel Washington, Daniel Day-Lewis
or Guy Pierce, for the lead role. As for the cop, I would like to see Don Cheadle as the one who hunts down the kidnapper.

We had initially reported on the stalled Tintin 3D movie in September

Steven Spielberg has been planning to make the Tintin movies for a long time now, 25 years to be precise but has not found any concrete backers.

Tintin

In September  2008, Universal Pictures backed out of a deal with Paramount Pictures to fund the $130 million project. Reportedly, Universal backpedaled when Spielberg and Jackson demanded 30% of the movie’s total gross receipts, including DVD, TV and ancillary sales. The studio was not willing to take a risk on Tintin, since its bottom line would be under threat unless the 3-D Tintin movies grossed $425 million in global ticket sales.

Subsequently, Spielberg and Jackson put the 3-D Tintin project on hold till they found financiers for the 3-D flick, even though Spielberg had directed parts of the movie. Peter Jackson has also been developing performance-capture technology for the Tintin movie, at a cost of $30 million funded by Paramount.

The first part of the 3-D Tintin series, to be directed by Spielberg, was to go into production in October 2008, with Spielberg being very keen to get started on the project. Peter Jackson will direct the second part of the Tintin trilogy. The third director has yet to be decided.

The 3-D Tintin trilogy will used motion-capture technology that combines animation with real characters.

The first part of the 3-D Tintin trilogy will be released in 2010.

A Single Man novel by Christopher Isherwood

Ex-Gucci designer Tom Ford is going to direct the movie adaptation of A Single Man, a 1964 novel by Christopher Isherwood, says eonline. A Single Man will be Tom Ford’s directorial debut. Ford has acquired the movie rights to A Single Man.

A Single Man may star Colin Firth, Julianne Moore and Jamie Bell.

Julianne Moore and Jamie Bell have been signed on for A Single Man. Colin Firth is supposedly in talks for the role.

A Single Man is the story of one day in the life of a man (George), a gay college professor, who lives in Los Angeles. George’s lover has recently died, and George’s lifelong friend and student, helps him cope with his grief. The story is set in 1962.

Colin Firth is primed to play the role of George.

Jamie Bell will play George’s lover who dies and Julianne Moore will play George’s lifelong friend.

A Single Man will go into production in November 2008.

Colin Firth was recently seen in the lighthearted musical Mamma Mia! where he plays a middle-aged bachelor who discovers he is gay and comes out of the closet.

Colin Firth

Tom Ford, who joined Gucci in 1990, is credited for the turnaround of the nearly bankrupt company. Tom Ford quit Gucci in 2004 and set up his own fashion house, Tom Ford.

Tom Ford has won innumerable international fashion awards. He lives with his partner of 20 years, Richard Buckley.

Tintin 3-D trilogy

Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson’s plan to make a 3-D movie adaptation of the Adventures of Tintin has hit a roadblock. Universal Pictures has refused to foot the $130 million budget for the Tintin trilogy project put forward by Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson.  Tintin has been a pet project of Spielberg, who has been planning to make the Tintin movie since 1983.

The two directors have put the production of Tintin on hold until they find someone else to finance the Tintin 3-D movie. Dreamworks’ owner Paramount -with whom Spielberg has been associated for long - was ready to finance half the movie. The production of the 3-D Tintin movie was supported to commence in October 2008.

Spielberg was to direct the first part of the Tintin trilogy, while Jackson was to direct the second. It was undecided as to who would direct the third part of the Tintin trilogy.

Reports say that Universal backtracked when Spielberg and Jackson demanded 30% of the movie’s total gross revenues, including DVD, TV and ancillary sales. Unless the Tintin 3-D trilogy garnered $425 million in global ticket sales, the studo would wind up with a loss. Universal was not prepared to take the risk to its bottom line.

Peter Jackson - director of The Lord of the Rings trilogy - has been developing performance-capture technology for the Tintin movie, at a cost of $30 million. Most of the money came from Paramount.

Spielberg may have problem getting Paramount to finance the Tintin trilogy, now that Dreamworks’ (Spielberg’s own company) has split from Paramount. Dreamworks signed a $1.2 million deal with India’s Reliance Entertainment company on September 20, 2008.

Inglorious Bastards is produced by Weinstein Co. and Universal. Filming will start in October 2008.

A bit like Alistair McLean’s Guns of Navarone, Force Ten from Navarone, and Where Eagles Dare, Inglorious Bastards in about a bunch of  ragatag soldiers, sent to take down Nazi soldiers. The prisoner-turned-soldiers, led by Brad Pitt, disrupt the Nazi war machine by brutally decimating Nazi soldiers. Meanwhile, a French-Jewish girl, who runs a movie theatre, wants to avenge the death of her parents at Nazi hands.

Nastassja Kinski plays a reigning German movie star, while Simon Pegg plays a British Lieutenant. David Krumholtz and B.J. Novak will play Brad Pitt’s gang members. Eli Roth has been cast as Seargent Donnie Donowitz.

Inglorious Bastards has been scripted by Tarantino in as early as 2002. Tarantino was not satisfied with the script, despite multiple changes. The project was put on hold, while Tarantino went on to make Kill Bill and Grindhouse.

Inglorious Bastards will be set in France, with dialogues in French and Germans, though subtitles will be used.

Burton has worked most with Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter.

Tim Burton is now set to remake Alice in Wonderland, which is expected to release in 2010. Tim Burton will direct two 3-D films for Walt Disney Studios, the first being Alice in Wonderland. The second 3-D movie, which Tim Burton will direct for Walt Disney Studios, is Frankenweenie, a bigger version of his own 1984 short film about a pet dog that his loyal owner brings back to life.

Rumors say that Tim Burton will cast Ryan Nicole Parker, a relatively unknown actress, as Alice. Alice will not be potrayed as a child but as a young girl. Some reports say that Alice in Wonderful will have performance-capture imagery and live-action footage.

Most of the rumors about casting have been culled from message boards and other sources and may not very reliable.

Meanwhile, a film adaptation of American McGee’s action PC video game is in the works. The movie will be scripted by John August and produced by Scott Faye.