Sam Rami to direct World of Warcraft film

Sam Raimi has signed on to direct "Warcraft," the live-action film adaptation of the fantasy videogame franchise World of Warcraft. Exciting news. I just hope he brings his Army of Darkness and Spider-Man 2 skills to the film and not Spidey 3!

Legendary Pictures and vidgame publisher Blizzard Entertainment are mounting the film, and Warner Bros. will co-finance and distribute. The team boasts an impressive pedigree: In addition to the director of "Spider-Man," the partners have added "The Dark Knight" producer Charles Roven to the creative mix.

The plan is for Raimi to supervise development of "Warcraft" and shoot the picture after he completes work on "Spider-Man 4," which gets under way early next year for Columbia Pictures.

The movie will be financed under the Legendary Pictures' co-production and co-financing deal with WB, in a manner similar to the Todd Phillips-directed "The Hangover" plus the Roven-produced "Batman Begins" and "Dark Knight."

The "Warcraft" universe features an epic conflict between the Horde and the Alliance. The game has developed a global following since its launch in 1994 and shows no signs of slowing. Its most recent expansion, "Wrath of the Lich King," sold more than 2.8 million copies in the first day of release and more than 4 million its first month.

"Warcraft" is "emblematic of the kind of branded, event films for which our studio is best known," said Warner Bros. Pictures Group president Jeff Robinov. The deal revives a long-dormant pact made by Legendary and Blizzard for a film adaptation of the game (Daily Variety, May 8, 2006).

"At its core, 'Warcraft' is a fantastic, action-packed story," Raimi said in a statement.

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Voltron film moves forward

Atlas Entertainment’s Charles Roven, Richard Suckle and Steve Alexander are ready to form Voltron.

The producers behind "Get Smart" and "The International" (and Roven of course also produced "The Dark Knight) have acquired the rights to make a live-action feature based on the robot-lion property, pushing the project forward after several years in development with the Mark Gordon Company.

Roven and his partners acquired rights to the Japanese title from World Events Prods., a St. Louis-based company that has held those rights for more than two decades. “Wanted” producer Jason Netter of Kickstart Entertainment and World Events’ Ted Koplar are joining the Atlas trio in producing.

"Voltron," a television hit in the 1980’s that has retained a loyal fan following, features a “Transformers"-like conceit, in which a band of five robot-lions combine to form one super lion. A group of five pilots control the lions, which are charged with defending the planet Arus from villain King Zarkon, who dispatches evil creatures called Robobeats to fight the Voltron robots.

No doubt the success of Transformers at the box office has helped push this through. I always felt that the Power Rangers basically ripped off Voltron regarding the lion robots combining to form the giant Voltron.

Are you a Voltron fan? Who and what do you want to see in the film?

Source: RiskyBusiness
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Remo is coming back. He's still Unarmed and Dangerous.

Producers Charles Roven (The Dark Knight)and Steve Chasman (Transporter) are teaming up to produce The Destroyer. This is the hopefully the first of a franchise that brings back ’80s action hero Remo Williams.

Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir wrote the initial batch of “Destroyer” adventure tomes, which centered on Williams, a New Jersey cop convicted of a crime he didn’t commit. Williams is sentenced to the electric chair, but his death is faked so he can be reborn as the vigilante character the Destroyer, joining a top-secret assassin squad set up by the government to operate outside the bounds of the law.

With the help of an Asian assassin named Chiun, Williams also then wreaks havoc on the criminal underworld as well as on those who framed him.

Like me, you probably know of the character through the film Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins that came out from Orion in 1985. It starred Fred Ward as Remo Williams and I loved it. Lots of martial arts training, fights, and it was funny.

Murphy and Sapir wrote scores of Destroyer paperbacks in the 1970s and ’80s, with other writers eventually taking over scribe duties. New installments of the series — more than 100 have been written all told — continue through this decade.

So many books and I haven't read any of them. Think I'll have to get hold of some.

Source: RiskyBusinessBlog

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The Flash - Fan made trailer

The bit about this being screened before a sneak look at Watchmen is all smokescreen. No footage for a big screen Flash movie has been shot. At the Scream Awards, producer Charles Roven admitted that the project hasn’t had much movement in the last few months.

Plus it's not that good a trailer for such an iconic DC character, but it is still fun to see it.

What do you think of it?

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