In a recent interview with GameDaily, Hollywood producer Adrian Askarieh talked video game movies in great detail. On the list, he spoke on big projects like Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, Hitman 2, and Just Cause — all of which have movies in the works.

From the very second that a Kane & Lynch movie was announced, superstar Bruce Willis was rumored to be up for one of the starring roles. It’s been a long time since these rumors started swirling, but staying nice and chaos free, Askarieh confirmed in this interview that Willis is indeed attached and confirmed for the movie, and that he will be playing Kane (the one on the left) of the duo.

He also confirmed that the movie will be directed by Simon Crane, who is mostly known for his stunt work, but who has also done a lot of Second Unit Directing and Assistant Directing. It will finally begin production in March of 2010, which is still a long ways off, but considering this thing has been coming for years now, it’s good to have an actual date. Lionsgate will be handling the distribution, and Millennium is financing it. [...]

If you haven’t seen anything from Joe Johnston‘s (Jumanji, Hidalgo) The Wolfman, then you are missing out big time. A remake of the classic monster movie from 1941, the movie looks like it keeps a lot of that old school charm while utilizing today’s technological advancements to bring some fantastic tones and realism to the party.

Most second trailers have a nasty habit of using almost the entirety of their initial first trailer, with a few small new bits sprinkled in from time-to-time. This new Wolfman trailer is having none of that, they make sure that you get your money’s worth before you even have to pay for anything with a trailer composed of almost all new images and clips that we haven’t seen yet. Another thing the trailer does is use modern music to a period setting with some guitar melodies accompanying the old Victorian setting — always a cool little mix.

Click over for a full, detailed new synopsis and to watch the trailer, which was released via Apple. [...]

In an interview with GameDaily, producer Adrian Askarieh talked about the Hitman series, including both the movie sequel, Hitman 2, and even more importantly, the extra-long-awaited video game, Hitman 5.

As for the movie, it looks like they’re still waiting for a script at the moment, but are hoping to start filming by the middle of next year. The question was asked if star Timothy Olyphant would be returning now that he has a new TV show (Damages) going. Askarieh explained that they would definitely want him back, but it all balances on timing. As we all know, Olyphant would have to go bald as bald can be again in order to return to the role of Agent 47, and as simple as that sounds, it could have a big effect on his show and bring complications to the table. Askarieh was also asked if the rumor that it would involve 47 losing everything and having to get it back was true, to which he replied “That’s a part of it, yes, but that’s all I’m going to say on that.” [...]

Brian Kibler was victorious in the final match to win the Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour-Austin, which means he has the recognition of being the top player in one of the largest competitions and takes home a nice $40,000 in prize money. Also, there was a trophy I’m told.

For those of you who don’t play Magic, it’s a Collectible Card Game that has been around for decades. For those of you who have played Magic, yes, you read that headline correctly.

The second place winner, Tsuyoshi Ikedaat, who lost in the final matchup against Kibler, took home a modest $20,000 and the others in the top 8 were awarded anywhere from $15,000 to $9,500.

Why am I telling you all this? Partially because I think it’s cool that a nontraditional competition has gained enough steam over the years to do pro tournaments and offer up prize money. This is a game that lives in the local comic shops of the world and is very much a part of geek culture [...]

If you love movies like we do, then you’ve all been in this position before: you’re sitting in a crowded theater (sometimes right in the middle and surrounded by strangers you’d have to crawl over), and you suddenly have to go to the bathroom really, really bad. You sit there quietly, squirming in your seat, trying to figure out when the very best time to make your move would be. You hope the scene where everyone is sitting in a room talking out a gameplan will be the perfect moment, but deep down you fear that you will return to find out the zombies came in and ate everyone’s face right when they figured out the perfect strategy!

Well, fear not, someone got the brilliant idea of making a website where you can go and find the ideal moments for your much-needed potty break, right down to the very second. The site is called RunPee, and it knows your pain and is here to help. [...]

The Mirage Group, who owned the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and brought us the all CGI TMNT, has sold the entire global property rights to children’s brand Nickelodeon for $60 Million. The deal includes the movies and shows, as well as the rights to all merchandising.

It’s been in a news a few times recently, but in case you haven’t heard, a brand new Ninja Turtle movie is on the way. The movie is to retract from that CGI style that they tried and move back into the glorious world of live-action. To ensure an even greater realistic quality, it is expected that they will use the same methods used in Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are in which people are put into highly-detailed costumes and only the facial expressions are created using computer effects. Hopefully, the end result will be similar to the Ninja Turtles we saw in the ’80s and ’90s, but with a whole lot more realism to them. [...]

The emergence of popular CCG’s like Magic: The Gathering and a plethora of MMOs have all but killed the player base for old school tabletop games, but that could change in the future.

A digital version of tabletop RPG Dungeons and Dragons that uses Microsoft Surface technology was recently developed by a group of students from the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University, who uploaded a demo video of the project. [Scroll down to watch it.]

The students created the demo as part of the SurfaceScape project that is “taking traditional tabletop role-playing games to the next level, adding a new layer of immersive and intuitive gaming to the Microsoft Surface Table and assisting both GMs and players in enjoying exciting and engaging adventures,” according to their Web site [...]

In the same interview with the LA Times that revealed Marvel topper Kevin Feige’s view of Batman & Robin as the most important comic book movie ever to be made, screenwriter Akiva Goldsman spoke about all of his other upcoming projects for DC Comics. Covered here is some new bits from the revamping of Swamp Thing and the movie adaptation of Lobo. They also talk about other projects such as Jonah Hex, which you can follow their link to read about.

The best part of everything talked about was easily Swamp Thing. At first this was just another of many remakes which actually sounded pretty cheesy, but with this interview, some excitement has begun to build up. Goldsman explained that they “want a film with real Southern, dark horror overtones, a little bit like a classic Universal horror film,” and that they actually want to make the movie closer to Alan Moore‘s popular comic book vision of the character and not based on the 80s movies.

With these two things, this new Swamp Thing has a lot more potential than it once had, though there is still a long way to go before we really see what they try to do with the property. [...]

One of the busiest screenwriters working today, Akiva Goldsman, spoke to the LA Times recently about many, many big upcoming projects. The writer is one of the few rare cases we’ve seen that makes a case for giving people second chances. He wrote the scripts for Joel Schumacher‘s Batman Forever and the passionately-hated Batman & Robin, but went on to take home an Oscar for Best Picture winner A Beautiful Mind. In an around these two highest and lowest points, he’s done many other well-known movies that received varying response such as I, Robot, Cinderella Man, The Da Vinci Code, and I am Legend.

When the topic of Batman & Robin came up something was mentioned that stuck out. It came from the mouth of Marvel’s main man, Kevin Feige, who was quoted as saying that the loathed comic book movie may actually be the most important movie to be made for that genre. And why would he say such things? Well, because of how horrid the movie was, of course. Feige explained that the sheer awfulness of that film forced open new eyes, which in-turn laid the groundwork for the much more accepted style of comic book movie making seen in franchises like Spider-Man and X-Men [...]

Everybody ready for some more Battlestar Galactica?

We thought so! That’s why we’re giving away five (5) copies of the new direct-to-DVD movie, Battlestar Galactica: The Plan, the prequel story that will give us the Cylons’ point of view and finally reveal their “plan” for humanity.

– Each winner will receive one (1) DVD copy of Battlestar Galactica: The Plan.

For this giveaway, made possible by the good folks at Universal Studios Home Entertainment, we’re asking you the reader to give us your guesses as to what the plot of The Plan is. See full details on how to enter here below. Battlestar Galactica: The Plan will be released on DVD and Blu-ray on October 27, 2009.

Good luck!

TO ENTER: There’s just two simple steps:

(1) Make sure you’re subscribed to the Geeks of Doom email digest. If you’re not then click here and sign up. (If you’re already a subscriber, then go right to the next step.)

(2) Fill out the form here below and in the “Contest Answer” field, tell us what you think The Plan’s plot is (you don’t have to be right, you just have to take a guess), then Submit the form [...]

OK, so that title may have been a little out of line considering the immense popularity that Napoleon Dynamite found in its theatrical run. However, new information has come around from writer/director Jared Hess and his wife, writer Jerusha Hess after a screening for their newest movie, Gentleman Broncos, that states that they initially had other plans for Napoleon when they were making it.

The initial plan for the movie was apparently to have Dynamite as some kind of small town wannabe paranormal investigator who studies crop circles, has alien conspiracies, and even gets chased by government agents. I think it’s safe to assume that it wouldn’t be a serious hobby, either, but much more Napoleon accidentally stumbling on to something big and just sort of being a goof. These plans were Jared’s and his wife was the one to tell him he’s crazy and to kill the entire idea off, but it has to be assumed that many would have preferred this, no? [...]

Out on DVD and Blu-ray today is Michael Bay’s blockbuster sequel Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. On behalf of Paramount Home Entertainment, we here at Geeks of Doom have two (2) prize packs to give away to some lucky readers!

Two (2) winners will each receive the following:

– Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen Two-disc Special Edition DVD
– Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen Poster
– Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen T-shirt

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 fill out and submit the handy form below. (Form is here after the jump.)

Good luck!

TO ENTER: There’s just two simple steps:

(1) Make sure you’re subscribed to the Geeks of Doom email digest. If you’re not then click here and sign up. (If you’re already a subscriber, then go right to the next step.)

(2) Fill out the entry form and submit [...]

Robot Chicken: Star Wars – Episode II
Directed by Seth Green
Featuring the voices of Seth Green, Billy Dee Williams, Donald Faison, Carrie Fisher
Adult Swim

Some things in life just go really well together. Peanut Butter and Jelly, and Chocolate Chip and Mints are just some of the prime examples, but now you can add Robot Chicken and Star Wars into the mix as well. When the popular stop-motion series Robot Chicken decided to parody the mega popular Star Wars franchise the first time around, the reviews for the show was overwhelmingly positive. Even George Lucas approved so you can only imagine that it wouldn’t be long until the sequel Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode II showed up.

Nothing has changed much since the first special. The folks at Robot Chicken, led by bite-sized star Seth Green, are still offering up their hilarious and often times, insane, fanboy interpretations of key moments in the Star Wars franchise. Ever wonder what happens to Boba Fett moments after he meets his fate in Return of the Jedi or what was going through the mind of Luke during his key battle with Darth Vader? All those questions are answered and even some random ‘what if’ scenarios are touched on in this funny special [...]

Boy, we’ve got a good one today! How many of you out there would like the opportunity to win a virtuametric ton of cool-ass G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra swag packaged up with a nifty Nintendo DSi hand-held game system? Well, if you live within the continental United States you’re in luck.

The goodly folks from whence magic arose have seen fit to grant us the aforementioned Nintendo DSi along with a copy of the new G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra DSi game, as well as a load of awesome The Rise of Cobra goodies to ply you with.

What are you waiting for? Video games, hats, posters, figures, and a surprise pack of awesome await [...]

Lauren Shuler Donner is a producer on all things X-Men related, past and future. While at a junket for the X-Men Origins: Wolverine Blu-ray, Empire Magazine was able to talk to Donner and dig up a treasure chest of updates on all of the big projects that are currently piled up on the stove top, including X-Men Origins: Magneto, Deadpool, X-Men: First Class, and of course, the Wolverine sequel that’s being developed.

The first chunk of information comes from Wolverine. Donner explains that this is the furthest along in its production, and that it will likely be the next film released from that world. The sequel will see Wolverine heading to Japan for his Samurai storyline, and she explains that to be as faithful as possible, filming will actually be done in Japan, and they’re even planning on working with Fox’s division in Japan so they don’t do or say anything ignorant to the culture, which is obviously a very smart move. [...]

Viewers on the West Coast were treated to the first half of the Venture Bros. Season 4 premiere twice last night, but were denied the last 15 minutes of the program, according to a comment thread on the Adult Swim message board.

The error was experienced by only the Western region regardless of cable provider and was corrected during the 4 AM encore show. [Most of Geeks of Doom's editorial staffers are based on the East so we lost no sleep.]

So in other words, you weren’t drinking too much last night and did not actually experience a temporal shift in time.

For those of you who may have missed it, Adult Swim has uploaded the episode in its entirety to their Web site [...]

On Tuesday, October 27, The Gathering Storm, the newest edition to Robert Jordan‘s bestselling fantasy series Wheel Of Time, will be released. In conjunction with this grand event, Tor has given us three (3) prize sets to give to our U.S., UK, and Canadian readers!

The Gathering Storm, which is the first of three novels to conclude the Wheel of Time series, was written by Jordan and Brandon Sanderson, so to get you all ready for the new book, each prize set will have two of Tor’s best “Fantasy Firsts” by the authors.

Three (3) winners will each receive:

– The Eye of the World (Book 1 of Robert Jordan’s the Wheel of Time series)
– Mistborn: The Final Empire (Book 1 of Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn series).

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 simply leave a comment on this post. Done [...]

Earlier this month, I was lucky enough to visit this year’s Baltimore Comic-Con.

Now I can go on and on about how great the convention was. I could say how awesome it was to meet Terry Moore, Steve Lieber, and Marc Silvestri. I tell you how nice it was to see Cliff Chiang, Khoi Pham, and JG Jones again. I could also tell you how great of an artist colorist Laura Martin is but why not show you guys in a series of photographs?

Enjoy! [...]

30 Rock
Season 4 Premiere
Starring Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, Tracy Morgan
NBC, Thursdays at 9:30pm

Last season, I tuned into the 30 Rock premiere with high expectations, only to be met by the awkward-and-not-in-a-good-way SeinfeldVision. After a consistently hilarious second season, everything in SeinfeldVision felt off, as if the writers had suddenly changed focus. The episode proved to be the harbinger of a disappointing season that, while still occasionally brilliant, relied far too heavily on big-name guest stars while letting its strong supporting cast fall to the wayside.

Fortunately, this season’s premiere — the cutely named Season 4 — was a happier beginning. We got a good amount of time with all of the secondary characters, including the oft-forgotten Josh, as well as all the clever one-liners we could possibly expect from a half-hour of comedy (my favorite: Pete’s “Another actor? Why? They have so many feelings and opinions!” Okay, it’s in Scott Adsit’s delivery. It’s not as funny written down). Plus, Steve Buscemi! It had its flaws, however. The theme of the episode — drawing in more mainstream viewers — may be a bit too on-the-nose for some, considering 30 Rock‘s notoriously low ratings. And it wasn’t a standout episode for any of the main cast, Kenneth in particular. But I’ll get to that later [...]

We all know about Spawn creator Todd McFarlane‘s hopes to bring a dark and twisted new vision of the classic L. Frank Baum story, The Wizard of Oz, to the big screen, but so far, as he talked to MTV recently about, no one has been able to construct a script that has gained the approval of McFarlane’s vision. The latest to attempt the project was by A History of Violence screenwriter Josh Olson, but even his finished product was what McFarlane referred to as Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory — meaning far too light for his dark vision. The purpose in all of this is to aim at young people, mainly in their 20s, and McFarlane’s pitch to executives clearly stated “Number one: you have to turn off the switch to the [1939] MGM movie. If you don’t turn off that switch, almost everything I’m about to say will not make sense to you.”

This isn’t to say that he wants nothing to do with the classic film; he ensures people that there will be plenty of recognizable elements to his movie, even though it will be so incredibly different and unique. As the source story best put it, McFarlane is not out to turn the story into a movie — that’s been done before — but to be inspired by it. [...]