For a while, James McTeigue was just one of the guys behind the scenes on great movies like The Matrix, which translated to a his first directing job on V for Vendetta — another wonderful film. Now that some positive feedback has come out of the Comic Con screening of his latest film, Ninja Assassin, this man is well on his way to becoming one of the top talents in the industry.

While Ninja Assassin is still a little ways off with a November release date, the director spoke to /Film recently about some of his upcoming projects, including the official confirmation of his next film: The Raven.

The movie will be loosely based on the final five days of the dark and legendary Edgar Allan Poe, adding a fictional tale about the author trying to track down a dangerous killer who is murdering people based on the writings of Poe himself. [...]

It is somewhat of a slow news day, but here’s a little more information on Scream 4 and the proposed trilogy that it may be the start of. Writer Kevin Williamson was out talking about his new show, The Vampire Diaries (which has a challenge in front of it, coming out in an already vampire overloaded time period and also being one of the shows that knocked off the fantastic Reaper), and ended up talking quite a bit about the newest chapter in the Scream franchise.

Williamson got back into the fact that it was really exciting to know that David Arquette and Courtney Cox were coming back and that their story ten years after the events of the first trilogy would be the “heart and soul” of the new movies. He also revealed that the Ghostface mask would be back, but that it might be “another one,” whatever that might mean. Speaking of picking up the story a decade later, there was even mention of the wonderful Stab movies — the horror movie within the movies that basically parodies Scream — and how absurd that franchise would be. [...]

Tomorrow night marks the season finale of the USA Network show Burn Notice, starring Jeffrey Donovan, Gabrielle Anwar, Bruce Campbell, and Sharon Gless. In conjunction with the conclusion of Season 3, we here at Geeks of Doom have a Burn Notice prize pack to give away to one (1) lucky reader! Note, the contest ends tomorrow night and we will be picking a winner soon after, so be sure to enter right away for your chance to win.

One (1) winner will receive:

• One (1) Burn Notice Season 1 & 2 DVD
• One (1) Burn Notice T-Shirt
• One (1) Burn Notice Novel
• One (1) Burn Notice Beach Umbrella
• One (1) Burn Notice Beach Boogie
  Board
• One (1) Burn Notice Frisbee

What do you have to do to get a chance to win? Glad you asked ’cause it’s really easy. Just make sure you’re a subscriber to our email digest, and then go ahead and fill out the handy dandy form below. Done.

Good luck!

RULES: One entry per person. All entries must be in by Thursday, August 6, 2009 at 11:58pm PST* [...]

It’s still Tuesday somewhere right now and I said I’d finish up my Comic-Con coverage by today, so here it is! My San Diego Comic-Con 2009 SWAG round up.

In Hall H, which is the biggest auditorium at the convention center, there’s typically volunteers handing out items at the very beginning of the day. Sometimes it’s freebies, while other times it’s a ticket you can use to redeem a bag of swag from one of the exhibit floor booths. Thursday was a Tron coin, which led to a scavenger hunt that resulted in a trip to Flynn’s Arcade; Friday was a ticket to redeem a bag of Warner Bros. freebies at the WB booth; and Saturday was a poster and pencil for Lost and I found out that those entering the Hall later in the day got a ticket to get Iron Man 2 items (I was there bright and early, so I missed out on this last ticket).

I feel like I snagged a lot more swag last year, but there were still a few goodies to be had this year [...]

An updated version of DCU Online — DCUO — pre alpha demo was available to all attendees at the San Diego Comic-Con, showing vast changes to the version shown at the event during the previous year. Some of the more recognizable features plucked elements from both World of Warcraft and City of Heroes, yet adapting them to improve the user experience, at least in concept, anyway.

It’s impossible to know until a beta version is released since so much of a good MMO (Massively Multi-Player Online) game relies on the entire experience. The developers seem to understand this concept and they’ve done a hell of a job integrating the 70-plus year history of the DC Universe into the recognizable elements of an MMO. I’ve listed a few notable occurrences from the revised demo at Comic-Con…

High Level “Instances”
It’s nearly impossible not to refer to the epic battle areas of an MMO that requires a load screen as anything but “Instance” — as they’re called in WoW [...]

Hollywood mega-producer Jerry Bruckheimer has picked up the rights to turn the graphic novel World War Robot into a feature film. The title is written by Ashley Wood, who is a well-respected artist and has worked on various comics and graphic novels from Silent Hill, 30 Days of Nights, and Zombies vs. Robots. World War Robot is distributed by IDW Publishing.

The story takes place in the middle of a battle between humans and robots that is raging on Earth, the moon, and Mars. The graphic novel tells the stories of this battle in a diary fashion, with members of both sides offering up their situations and their stories.

World War Robot actually sounds similar to two other properties in World War Z and a one Battlestar Galactica. World War Z is a fictional novel about an alternate history a decade after a war with zombies that tells its story in a similarly unique fashion with its accounts coming from interviews with the main characters of the story. [...]

David Tennant’s last final episodes as the Tenth Doctor were the main topic of discussion in Ballroom 20, which hosted the packed Doctor Who panel at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con. So much so, they showed the teaser trailer for his last episode, “The End of Time,? twice during the hour-long panel. Although not airing until Christmas Day 2009, fans went wild as this was the first glimpse of the much anticipated episode. Which you can watch here below.

Tennant was joined by producer Judy Gardner, director Euros Lyn, and executive producer/writer Russell T. Davies for this most interesting and enlightening panel. One of the most talked about rumors spreading across Doctor Who fans has to do with a possible film version based on the long-running BBC program. This was among the first rumors dispelled by the panel during the presentation. Even though a film is not in the works, they did give fans some hope by saying they thought it was a good idea. Sadly, neither Tennant nor his producers would comment further. Another rumor Mr. Tennant shot down was regarding him being cast in film adaptation of the J.R.R. Tolkien classic, The Hobbit. According to the actor himself, he “hasn’t even gotten a phone call about it yet.” [...]

Marvel has released a couple of new images from Jon Favreau‘s Iron Man 2 to accompany a massive report of their recent set visit. Two of the four images we’ve seen before, but the other two are new. One shows Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) looking down at a scale model of Stark Expo; the [...]

The Discovery Channel‘s most popular week of the year is without doubt the massive Shark Week. Even though the hugely-popular traditional summer event began last night, we wanted to send a quick little reminder to all of you who may still be unaware that it’s going on right this moment!

Shark Week is now on its 22nd annual broadcast, and just like every other year, they have some vicious and awesome new shows that the shark fan in all of us just can’t miss.

Their main event of the week is a special called Blood in the Water. The two-hour show tells the story of a multitude of shark attacks in New Jersey in 1916. These events were the actual events that inspired Steven Spielberg’s classic ocean horror movie, Jaws. The events were also at a time when people just didn’t know anything about these sea monsters, so as you can imagine, mass chaos ensued. [...]

We already brought you coverage of the Twilight Saga: New Moon panel from the San Diego Comic-Con. Now, here’s some images from the New Moon items that were on the exhibit floor. You can see all the pictures of the items here below.

Hallmark set up an area with their Twilight-themed items, once of which was a sneak peek at their 2010 Bella and Edward Keepsake Ornament, which showed the sculpt in progress. Along with the new ornament was an array of New Moon party supplies, but I didn’t see up them on the Hallmark site yet, though they are they are available for pre-order at Birthday Direct and include paper cups and plates and plastic utensils. Judging by how Bella’s birthday party turned out in New Moon, I’m not sure how well a New Moon-themed party would go over, but hey, if you dig the movie, here’s the theme for you [...]

Quite the interesting little catch by MTV Movies Blog yesterday, who picked up on a small little bit in a New York Times feature on Tom Arnold. In the very last part of the story, they mention and offer quotes from Tom himself about an upcoming project that will involve himself, director James Cameron, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. That’s right, Tom Arnold claims that the team behind the fantastic action/spy comedy True Lies will be joining up for a new project, while being a bit cryptic as to whether it will be a sequel to the 1994 movie, or if it will just be the same kind of premise.

Here’s what Tom had to say about it:

All I know is Jim Cameron’s making it and Arnold [Schwarzenegger] and I are going to be in it, and it starts shooting in 14 months, the day after Arnold stops being governor of California. It’s not going to be called ‘True Lies II,’ but it might as well be. I can live with that.

The main thing to note here is that little thing about the 14 months. We all know James Cameron isn’t a film-a-year kind of guy — in fact, he seems to go more for the film-a-decade order. [...]

The Unborn
Unrated DVD Edition
Written and Directed by David Goyer
Starring Odette Yustman, Gary Oldman, Idris Elba, Meagan Good
Universal Studios Home Entertainment
Release Date: July 7, 2009

Casey (Odette Yustman) seems to have a great life. She has a great good looking boyfriend (Cam Gigandet), a hot friend (Meagan Good), and a nice dad (James Remar). Plus, she is terribly good looking, too. She seems to have it all but I doubt you would want to trade places with her. It seems that this pretty little lady is haunted in her dreams by her unborn twin brother. Apparently during childbirth, her umbilical chord wrapped around her bro’s neck, killing him in the womb. Turns out her undead brother holds a grudge and is bringing some demonic buddies to exact revenge on his sis in this horror movie written and directed by David S. Goyer.

Goyer, best known for the Blade movies and Batman Begins, weaves a by the book horror movie. Hottie girl plagued by a supernatural evil? Check. Scary monsters and demons? Check? Finale with exorcism and high body count? Check and check. It is not anything that you haven’t seen before and Goyer never once tries to reinvent the genre, but that is not the point. The whole point of the movie is to deliver a story that is interesting and scary at the same time and it more or less fills those requirements on more than one occasion [...]

It’s being reported that the classic 1935 pirate movie Captain Blood, which starred Errol Flynn in the title role, is on its way to a remake of sorts. Don’t worry too much, though — it’s more of a re-envisioning than anything else, and actually might not be as crazy as it sounds. Warner Brothers has hired brothers Michael and Peter Spierig to direct a brand new version of the film, with John Brownlow tapped to write the script. The Spierig brothers haven’t done much yet, but they wrote and directed the upcoming vampire movie Daybreakers and are starting to gather plenty of attention.

While looking for ideas on what to do with the property, the Spierig brothers made a pitch to WB that took them a while to embrace, but which now has the project in motion. Their pitch: bring the story to outer space.

Captain Blood tells the story of a respected doctor who tries to help a wounded enemy soldier. Even though it’s his duty as a doctor to try and help any human who needs care, he is tried and enslaved for his actions. He eventually finds a way to use his skills and smarts to escape his captors, and take control of a pirate ship as the feared Captain Blood [...]

If there’s one thing we’ve learned in all of the highs and lows of the production of Spike Jonze‘s Where the Wild Things Are, it’s that this right here is how to faithfully adapt a book. From the very beginning, the movie was a passion project that saw the director working closely with the book’s author Maurice Sendak to make it a beautiful and fitting adaptation, while also making it his own. This pure love for the material is showing in what we’ve seen so far, and the movie is shaping up to be something truly, truly special.

The Wild Things crew made an appearance at the recent San Diego Comic Con as part of the gigantic Warner Brothers panel, and while the panel didn’t have any big announcements or anything like that, they did bring a lot of wonderful footage and videos to watch. The clips were introduced by young Max Records, who plays Max in the film. The boy came out and stood strong, though he was a little nervous, which lead him to write some things on his hands so he didn’t forget. [...]

The Book of Eli is still relatively unknown to those who do not follow movies regularly. It’s a post-apocalyptic movie starring Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman, and Mila Kunis. While Kunis fits the scene perfectly fine, it is a bit jarring to see people like Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman at San Diego Comic Con — like gods of cinema visiting the people.

The movie is directed by the Hughes Brothers (From Hell), who admitted that Book of Eli was actually inspired by Planet of the Apes, though not in a literal way… more of an obscure inspiration. The movie’s tone is being compared to The Road Warrior, and Washington even trained in martial arts so that he could do all of his own fights. Very cool.

We’re told that the movie is set 30 years in the future where a major war has left few people behind and a lot of environmental changes. The main character is Eli (Washington), who’s on a mission of hope and is protecting a special book that is said to offer its owner large amounts of power to guide, lead, control, and manipulate with it. As it turns out, Mr. Oldman is once again playing the villain, and he’s out to get his hands on this book [...]

No one can deny that Robert Downey Jr was the hit of Hall H at the San Diego Comic-Con last weekend at both the Iron Man 2 panel and the one for the Warner Bros. upcoming reboot Sherlock Holmes, directed by Guy Ritchie.

Check out the images from the panel, as well as a description of the new footage shown here below.

Foregoing the usual introduction by the moderator, Downey strut onto the stage unannounced, a most pleasant entrance for the audience, and began to explain the Sherlock Holmes character, created 122 years ago by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Downey explained the Holmes was actually the first superhero and an intellectual one at that, and has grown to become most of the most recognizable figures on Earth.

Downey was joined on the panel by producers Joel Silver and Susan Downey (also Robert Downey’s wife), producer/co-writer Lionel Wigram (who created the comic book spec for the film), and Downey’s co-star Rachel McAdams, who plays Irene Alder, Holmes’ love interest and the only women to ever bested the detective.

The panelists made it clear that while making the film, whenever they were in doubt about a situation, they would always go back to Doyle’s source material to see what Doyle said the characters said and how the characters described one another [...]

Those of us lucky enough to check in on the smaller panel “Cartoon Books and Abstract Studios Happy Hour” at the San Diego Comic-Con last weekend by Jeff Smith (Bone) and Terry Moore (Strangers in Paradise, Echo) were privy to some exciting news from both of the artists, as well as just a fun discussion.

The first news of the day was that Terry Moore’s newest book, Echo has been given a film deal by producer Lloyd Levin (Watchmen, Hellboy II) which means that we will be seeing a film adaptation at some point in the future. Echo is a sci-fi tale that tells the story of Julie Martin, a young photographer whose life gets turned upside down when she gets coated in a layer of metal that gives her strange powers. The series is currently on issue 14, with a planned run of 30 issues. Moore also said that his next goal is to get Strangers in Paradise produced as a TV series.

The other big news of the day came from Jeff Smith, who revealed much to the enjoyment of every Bone fan, that two new books will be coming out in the next two years [...]

In this time of taking the beloved movies of our past and remaking every single one of them (some successfully; most in painfully failing fashion), it goes with all common logic that the titles that aren’t being remade, would go ahead and make a sequel. After years of talking about a third Ghostbusters movie that we assumed would never come, it’s now in motion, and now comes word that the sometimes talked about Gremlins 3 may be on the way, as well.

As we all know, Gremlins is about little creatures called Mogwai that have strict rules against sunlight, feeding them after midnight, and getting them wet. Breaking these rules can either kill them, or cause a terrifying transformation into little green monsters that will terrorize whoever them come into contact with. The first film is a classic in which the creatures destroy a little town at Christmas, while the sequel was a little less classic and had them taking over a gigantic business complex along with new, genetically mutated Gremlins who can speak and fly.

Both creator Chris Columbus, and director Joe Dante chimed in on word that the movie might take place. [...]

The Hurt Locker
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow
Starring Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Evangeline Lilly
Rated R
Released date: June 26, 2009

“When I was here, I wanted to be there; when I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle.” — Captain Benjamin L. Willard from Apocalypse Now

“Life sure has a sick sense of humor, doesn’t it?” — Bodhi from Point Break

The Hurt Locker: The Ultimate Adrenaline Junkie

The ecstasy of war is at the heart of Kathryn Bigelow’s brilliant new action thriller, The Hurt Locker. We only need to read the now famous quote from journalist and author Chris Hedges that precedes the film, “War is a drug”, to realize that Ms. Bigelow is the right person to bring Mark Boal’s screenplay to life. If anyone knows about an addiction to violence and an addiction to the rush of pure adrenaline, it is Kathryn Bigelow. Her previous films such as Near Dark, Blue Steel, Strange Days, K-19: The Widowmaker, and most importantly Point Break deal with adrenaline junkies of one sort or another. She has a natural ability to strip away the fat from subcultures to provide us with a crystal clear acumen of her fascination with them. Her examination of the Army’s elite Explosive Ordinance Squad (EOD) is an exercise in exhilarating and harrowing tension [...]

In one of those very interesting and very unexpected announcements, it appears as though Rob Marshall will be the man to replace Gore Verbinski for the fourth installment in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Reports state that Disney had been looking at many different directors, but for the moment, unless the bottom completely falls out on this deal, Rob Marshall is the guy.

For those of you who aren’t so familiar with Mr. Marshall, the announcement comes as a shock because the director is best known for his musical work. He’s only got a few jobs on his resume, but the big one is the 2002 Best Picture winner Chicago, which starred Catherine Zeta-Jones, Richard Gere, and Renee Zellweger. After that, he moved on to a less-musical period drama in Memoirs of a Geisha — which also pulled in some Oscar gold. His next due film is another musical based on an earlier screenplay written by the legendary Federico Fellini. The film is called Nine and it has a juggernaut cast including Daniel Day-Lewis, Nicole Kidman, Penelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, Kate Hudson, Dame Judi Dench, and Sophia Loren. [...]