MakingOf have posted a great inter­view with Harold Ramis with exclu­sives on the Ghost­busters 3 project. A very insight­ful look into the devel­op­ment of the poten­tial sequel.

Back in March we com­mented on the pos­si­bil­ity that Natalie Port­man might play a “strong female lead” in the Thor movie adaptation.

An offi­cial state­ment from Mar­vel reports that Natalie Port­man has been cast as Jane Fos­ter, Don­ald Blake’s nurse. With such a big cast­ing set in present day planet Earth, it’s pos­si­ble that a good pro­por­tion of the movie may take place here, rather than Asgard — giv­ing us a lot of the human ver­sion of Thor.

Mar­vel comments,

Even the Mighty Thor can be thun­der­struck by affairs of the heart!

Mar­vel Stu­dios announced today that Acad­emy Award® nom­i­nated actress Natalie Port­man has been cast to star as Jane Fos­ter in the studio’s highly antic­i­pated movie “Thor.”

In the early “Thor” comics, Jane Fos­ter was a nurse who became Thor’s first love. The char­ac­ter will be updated for the fea­ture adaptation.

Port­man will star oppo­site Chris Hemsworth who will play Thor and Tom Hid­dle­ston who will play the vil­lain Loki. Ken­neth Branagh will direct the film.

Mar­vel Stu­dios expands its film uni­verse with a new type of super hero: “Thor.” This epic adven­ture spans the Mar­vel Uni­verse; from present day Earth to the realm of Asgard. At the cen­ter of the story is The Mighty Thor, a pow­er­ful but arro­gant war­rior whose reck­less actions reignite an ancient war. Thor is cast down to Earth and forced to live among humans as pun­ish­ment. Once here, Thor learns what it takes to be a true hero when the most dan­ger­ous vil­lain of his world sends the dark­est forces of Asgard to invade Earth.

Thanks Leroy!

After sev­eral rounds of cast­ing rumors that fea­tured Bradley Cooper, Chris Pine and Ryan Gosling, we have the semi-official announce­ment that Ryan Reynolds (The Pro­posal, Wolver­ine) is Hal Jordan.

Appar­ently Reynolds, who looks the part, screen tested along­side Bradley Cooper and Jared Leto, but the deci­sion between the three proved dif­fi­cult with direc­tor Mar­tin Camp­bell, pro­ducer Don­ald De Line and the stu­dio each hav­ing dif­fer­ent favorites.

We pre­vi­ously reported that shoot­ing would begin as early as Sep­tem­ber this year, it seems this has been pushed back to Jan­u­ary 2010, though still plan­ning on main­tain­ing the announced June 17th 2011 release date. The bud­get hasn’t yet been final­ized but is believed to be around $150m, the movie is set to film in Syd­ney, Australia.

A fan made image

This is fan art cre­ated by Josh MC. This is not real, it is fan art!

Thanks Greg!

We’ve seen Tony Stark and Whiplash in Iron Man 2, now’s our first look at the next major new char­ac­ter, the Black Widow (also known as the Russ­ian spy Natasha Romanoff), played by Scar­lett Johans­son. These shots come cour­te­ous of EW and Leroy.

Plot details

The arti­cle also offers up some very inter­est­ing plot details.

As we already know, Sam Rock­well is play­ing the weapons man­u­fac­turer Justin Ham­mer, “who fan­cies him­self the next Tony Stark”. Rourke plays the new vil­lain Whiplash, aka Russ­ian crim­i­nal Vanko — Vanko cre­ates his first suit whilst impris­oned, his final suit fires “dev­as­tat­ing, whip-like beams.”

Whiplash and Ham­mer join forces to take on Iron Man. Mean­while Natasha Romanoff is hired as Stark’s assis­tant (to replace Pep­per Potts, now CEO of Stark Indus­tries). This ulti­mately leads to roman­tic tensions.

Rourke also reveals that his char­ac­ter enjoys talk­ing to a cock­a­too whilst drunk.

Via Jon Favreau’s twit­ter feed and “Road & Track”, we’ve got a pic­ture of Tony Stark’s Grand prix racer. This will form part of the Monaco action scene, which pre­sum­ably also fea­tures Whiplash (Mickey Rourke). We’ve pre­vi­ously seen set pic­tures from Downey Stu­dios, Cal­i­for­nia, which show a replica Monaco race­track being built. Astute fans have also noticed the shape of the Mon­cao GP track on Tony Stark’s com­puter screen in the first offi­cially released Iron Man 2 image.

RT @ironmanarmory: @Jon_Favreau I see Road & Track has pics up of Stark’s GP racer. http://​bit​.ly/​S​a​3Qh

Live action writer Peter Craig gave an inter­view to Animé Vice, which revealed a few reas­sur­ing details about the Bebop adap­ta­tion; at least par­tially putting fans at ease — some are still out­raged at Keanu Reeve’s cast­ing as Spike.

On the movie’s progress

AV: It’s been reported that the staff who made the animé– the stu­dio Sun­rise –is going to remain involved in the film. Do you know at this point if this will include sig­nif­i­cant involve­ment in the script?

PC: Yes, they’re very much involved. I met with all of them in Tokyo in Decem­ber — at a long meet­ing with Keanu in the room. I thought there was an imme­di­ate rap­port between all of us, par­tic­u­larly Shinchiro Watan­abe and Keanu. I asked ques­tions, pre­sented sce­nar­ios, and they were very spe­cific about their vision for the series, and how it might con­vert to a live-action film. They’ve con­tin­ued to be in touch since then; and last month I received a very detailed let­ter, which I’ve con­sulted reg­u­larly. I’m close to fin­ish­ing an early draft, and I believe they’ll be very happy with it. Not only does the script stay extremely true to the show — I also know that Erwin and Fox are already dis­cussing pro­duc­tion design­ers that can repro­duce the “look” of Cow­boy Bebop as closely as pos­si­ble. They’ll be read­ing the script soon… so my fin­gers are crossed.

On get­ting the gig

I’m obvi­ously not the most likely writer to land a great project like this. I began as a nov­el­ist, and was steered into writ­ing screen­plays when I adapted two of my own crime nov­els after they were optioned. Even­tu­ally, I earned a decent rep­u­ta­tion for writ­ing cer­tain kinds of char­ac­ters: dis­af­fected men, dys­func­tional fam­i­lies, poker-playing con-women, weath­ered ex-cops. A cou­ple of things I’ve writ­ten are going into pro­duc­tion this sum­mer — but they’ve been cir­cu­lat­ing much longer. So stu­dios and pro­duc­ers were famil­iar with my work here.

Even though I’d never writ­ten Sci-Fi, Emma Watts and Erwin Stoff really believed that I might relate well to Spike, Faye, and Jet — as well as many of the minor char­ac­ters from the episodes. When I heard I might have a chance for the job, I was thrilled. Fox sent me every episode of “Cow­boy Bebop,” includ­ing a few that had never aired in the U.S. I think I watched all of them con­sec­u­tively one night until the sun came up — and by the end, I was obsessed with the show. I loved how it mixed gen­res, how it blended noir, Jazz, Yakuza movies, West­erns, and so much else into a vision of the future that worked. And so I entered that process of going after the job, giv­ing my “take” on the movie, com­pet­ing with other writ­ers. Ulti­mately, I got the job because Erwin Stoff and Emma Watts had liked my work in the past — and they saw that I was pas­sion­ate about it.

Some rumors started cir­cu­lat­ing the net that Dar­ren Aronof­sky was off the Robo­Cop reboot project, AICN quickly con­tacted Dar­ren for some confirmation:

So I put the ques­tion to Dar­ren, and promptly got a response from him say­ing sim­ply, “No, Still on it.” — he also stated that he’d let me know as things pro­gressed, but there were no new details at this time.

The team at Time Out have writ­ten an open let­ter to Bond 23 writer Peter Mor­gan, with a cou­ple of Dos and Don’ts. Included are — find inter­est­ing and excit­ing loca­tions, do not copy the Bourne series, make the Bond girl a piv­otal role, give char­ac­ters room to breathe.

The let­ter openly praises Casino Royale’s approach, but is quick to point out the flaws in Quan­tum of Solace.

Dear Peter,

While we at Time Out are thrilled that you, one of our country’s most tal­ented and inquir­ing screen­writ­ers, have accepted the chal­lenge of pen­ning the next James Bond movie, there are a few salient points we feel you might like to keep in mind while writ­ing what will inevitably become one of 2011’s most impor­tant and, we hope, enjoy­able movies. We trust you accept our advice in the friendly spirit with which it’s intended…

Please give the char­ac­ters room to breathe
Per­haps the great­est stride writ­ers Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and erst­while col­league Paul Hag­gis made with ‘Casino Royale’ was giv­ing Bond and his com­pan­ions a real sense of life, depth and emo­tional con­flict. We’re used to Bond the wise­crack­ing automa­ton, but with an actor like Daniel Craig in the role this approach is a ter­ri­ble waste. ‘Quan­tum of Solace’ reduced Bond to lit­tle more than grunts and sneers – a smart thug who faces off against a loqua­cious but rather pathetic vil­lain. You’ve already proved your worth as a mas­ter of ver­bal spar­ring in your pre­vi­ous scripts, so we’re sure you’ll have the mur­der­ous ban­ter down pat. The chal­lenge will be to make us care about Bond again.

Please respect your audi­ence
There’s no doubt that the best of Bond is revealed when there’s a strong sto­ry­line packed with twists, switch­backs and dou­ble crosses: just think of Sean Bean’s decep­tion in ‘Gold­en­eye’, or Vesper’s betrayal in ‘Casino’. As long as your action sequences are grip­ping and your char­ac­ters con­vinc­ingly moti­vated, there’s no crime in keep­ing the viewer guessing.

Please don’t waste your Bond girls
Another of the great plea­sures offered by ‘Casino Royale’ was the chance to see Bond con­fronted by female char­ac­ters who could hold their own: not just Eva Green’s schem­ing Ves­per, but Judi Dench’s frac­tious, com­mand­ing M. Dench was the best thing in ‘Quan­tum’, but she was let down by Olga Kurylenko’s fiery but under­used Camille. It’s a les­son the mak­ers of Bond have been long in learn­ing: these women can be more than just eye-candy. A strong female lead doesn’t just cen­tre the film, she allows writ­ers and audi­ences a chance to get to the core of Bond himself.

Please don’t remake the Bourne series
Both ‘Casino’ and ‘Quan­tum’ were clearly inspired by the down­beat real­ism of the Bourne tril­ogy, but while the for­mer bal­anced gritty action sequences with a wry streak of self-deprecating humour, the writ­ers and direc­tor of ‘Quan­tum’ seemed con­tent with an end­less parade of repet­i­tive shaky­cam punch-ups in grimy locales. So, while action is clearly the lifeblood of the series, remem­ber that Bond always ben­e­fits from a moment of lev­ity amid the mayhem.

Please show us some­thing we haven’t seen before
It’s hard to think of any­where Bond hasn’t been (Antarc­tica? Ever­est? Leam­ing­ton Spa?), but one of ‘Quan­tum’ direc­tor Marc Forster’s bet­ter accom­plish­ments was pick­ing some stun­ning inter­na­tional loca­tions, from the seedy streets of Panama and the bar­ren Ata­cama Desert in Chile to the grandiose opera house at Lake Con­stance in Aus­tria. While the old Bonds were increas­ingly con­fined to traips­ing between MI6 and Moscow bat­tling the same face­less, jab­ber­ing Russkies, the global nature of the new films’ mys­te­ri­ous con­spir­acy means that Bond can now head just about any­where, and beat up just about anyone.

Finally, we await the Bond pro­duc­ers’ choice of direc­tor with bated breath. Some inter­est­ing names have been rumoured, though we under­stand Danny Boyle has offi­cially denied all knowl­edge and Christo­pher Nolan is busy with all that Bat­man busi­ness. But the Bond films have never been about the big-name direc­tors; in fact, with names like Ian Flem­ing, Roald Dahl and Paul Hag­gis, you could say it’s one of the few major film series where the choice of writer actu­ally mat­ters more than the choice of direc­tor. Which is where you come in, Mr Morgan.

Good luck!

Yours in anticipation,

Tom