The Walt Disney Company is preparing to reinvent one of their own titles. They’ve hired Tron: Legacy director Joseph Kosinski and producer Sean Bailey to develop a new version on 1979′s The Black Hole. Travis Beacham will handle the script writing duties. Beacham doesn’t have a ton of experience, but he was one of the writers on Louis Leterrier’s Clash of the Titans.

The original Black Hole featured many big names for the time including Maximilian Schell, Robert Forster, Joseph Bottoms, Yvette Mimieux, Anthony Perkins, Ernest Borgnine, and Roddy McDowall and Slim Pickens in voice acting roles. It told the story of a space fleet that discovers a lost ship floating near a black hole (think Event Horizon, but with Disney!). On the ship, they find a scientist who has been missing for twenty years commanding a crew of faceless droids that turn out to be the former crew who tried to form a mutiny. They have received a procedure similar to what we know as a lobotomy in order to ensure their faithful service. The crew attempts to bring the missing team home, but the scientist has no plans to leave or let his servants leave as he plans to enter the black hole and explore where none have explored before. [...]

Crank 2: High Voltage
Directed by Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor
Starring Jason Statham, Amy Smart, Clifton Collins Jr., Bai Ling, Efren Ramirez
Lionsgate

Crank, the Red Bull and crystal meth-fueled 2006 action epic, became a minor classic of its time but failed to connect with moviegoers despite the presence of rising celluloid badass Jason Statham in the lead role of unstoppable contract killer Chev Chelios. It wasn’t until the movie hit DVD the next year that it began to find its audience. The sales must have been strong because they were more than enough for Crank‘s distributor Lionsgate to approach the movie’s writer/director team of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor for a sequel. The problem is that the finale of Crank found Chelios dropped from a helicopter over Los Angeles and fought his nemesis to the bitter end. Then he became a street pancake. The end, or so we initially thought. Hey this is Hollywood baby, and in this land of cocaine wishes and Vicodin dreams anything’s possible, even surviving a plummet to the earth from 30,000 feet. And with that in mind, Neveldine/Taylor gives us Crank 2: High Voltage, as boldly over-the-top as a sequel can possibly be.

On our last episode of Crank Chelios was injected with a special Chinese poison by his enemy Verona and in order to keep from kicking the bucket before he could take his revenge Chev had to keep his heart pumping. After a day-long battle that spanned almost all of the City of Angels Chev finally exacted a bloody and satisfying vengeance upon his archnemesis, and then he died. Crank 2 picks up immediately where the original left off with a group of Chinese gangsters scooping the dead Chelios off the asphalt with a snow shovel and spiriting him away to a brothel/makeshift hospital where his powerful heart is surgically removed and placed in the hands of spastic Triad thug Johnny Vang (Art Hsu) [...]

For those of you who are unaware (this included myself), a brand new re-imagining of George Romero‘s Night of the Living Dead is being made, and it will be completely computer animated, and in fabulous 3-D.

The movie will be called Night of the Living Dead: Origins, and it aims to do things that haven’t been able to be done in live-action films. Directing duties will be handled by Zebediah de Soto, a true fan of the original film. The 1968 film was the first movie he ever saw after a strict childhood that had him forbidden from TV.

The latest Living Dead has now also begun casting its roles, and you will not be able to deny the loyalty that they show to the zombie genre in their casting. Names that have high association with the horror and zombie genre are getting the jobs, and horror fanboys will surely have to take a peek, even though the thought of a CGI zombie film must be a tad infuriating. [...]

The Gold Box spotlight deal of the day over at Amazon today is the Stargate SG-1 – The Complete Series Collection for only $97.99 (that’s 70% off the list price of $329.98; and much lower that the last sale price of $131.99).

This is a 54-disc set with all ten seasons of the scifi series, with four of those discs being hours’ worth of bonus features like commentaries, video diaries, behind-the-scenes footage, and much more.

Also, there’s currently an A&E Boxed Set Sale, with heavily reduced prices — up to 60% off — for complete series DVDs for shows like Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Farscape, The Kids in the Hall, Benny Hill, and much more [...]

Terminator Salvation, the fourth installment in the Terminator franchise, is out on DVD and Blu-ray this week, and we here at Geeks of Doom have two (2) Blu-ray editions to give away to some lucky readers!

Two (2) winners will each receive:

– One (1) Terminator Salvation on Blu-ray

Become a fan of the Warner Blu-ray Facebook Community at http://www.facebook.com/WarnerBlu for the latest info on WB movies and home video releases, contests, and exclusive video clips.

About Terminator Salvation:

In the aftermath of Judgment Day and the machine takeover, resistance leader John Connor (Christian Bale) must counter Skynet’s plan to terminate mankind. Rallying his underground street fighters for a last, desperate battle, he realizes that to save the future he must rescue his own father Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin). But the most shocking discovery comes with the arrival of Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), a mysterious loner from the past who challenges Connor with an impossible choice and leads them both on a brutal journey into the heart of the enemy [...]

It’s being reported that director Paul Greengrass has decided not to direct Bourne 4, the next movie in the series that has featured The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, and The Bourne Ultimatum. The Playlist was the first to break the news to us and the information was later confirmed by the trades complete with a full statement from Greengrass.

Details of the departure aren’t completely clear yet, but it looks as though many different reasons came into play. First of which was Universal’s decision to bring in a new screenwriter to pen a “parallel” script when the original screenwriter became busy with another project without discussing it with Greengrass first. The other reason that the director has given is that he’s just not feeling it anymore and that he’s ready for something new. Whether this is true or if he is just extinguishing flame is anyone’s guess.

Continue reading to check out Greengrass’s full statement. [...]

Fight Club
10th Anniversary Edition – Blu-ray
Directed by David Fincher
Starring Edward Norton, Brad Pit, Helena Bonham Carter, Meat Loaf
Twentieth Century Fox
Release Date: November 17, 2009

The tail end of the 90s was branded with a profound exclamation point, dealing with existentialism, fractured identities, and mindsets that were convoluted and shifty. People asked questions such as who are we? What good are we? Are we constructed socially or does man possess the capability of reasoning? Weeding out all impurities that blockade us; insulating us from conceptualizing what and who we truly are, and trying to summon back the primitive man by exhibiting symptoms of commercialism (IKEA) and materialism (khakis), Fight Club is sending crushing blows to the entire consumerist establishment that claims they know what is best for humanity. By anesthetizing society? Or by genetically breeding humans to behave like wild consumers who negate their true passions to conform to what society wants them to be? As audacious as this all sounds Fight Club is direct and impactful in its way of conveying this message. Uncompromising in its ability to take us to uncharted territories, a raw and unforgettable experience is dished out.

This vicious, yet revolutionary, assault is not presented in a soft and snug manner. The spokesperson for this radical movement, revolutionist Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), acknowledges consumerism with arms outspread. Once within his grasp he turns it into a burden, making a materialistic individual, our narrator (Edward Norton), realize that materialism has the tendency to make the human soul rot, decay and then wither away. Not fulfilling or sustaining it as the ads claim to do [...]

Director David Yates has confirmed that Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe will appear nude in a scene in one of the installments of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

The 20-year-old actor, who’s played the title role of the young wizard for six movies so far, will be in the nude for a scene with longtime co-star Emma Watson, who plays Hermione Granger.

No word whether the 19-year-old actress will be nude in the scene as well.

Yates gave Video Business a brief description of the scene.

In one scene, “a horcrux [carrying a piece of Voldemort’s soul] defends itself by producing nightmarish visions, and one shows Hermione and Harry embracing and kissing,” explained Yates. “It’s something intriguing and sensual for Rupert to react to, and Dan will be bare for that.”

It’s unclear whether the scene will occur in Part 1 of Deathly Hallows, due out in November 2010, or in Part 2, scheduled for July 2011 [...]

Disney’s The Princess and the Frog
Original Motion Picture Soundtrack CD
Composer: Randy Newman
Walt Disney Records
Release Date: November 23, 2009

Disney’s The Princess and The Frog is coming out in just a few days…could I be more excited? Not likely, as a new Disney Princess is more exciting here in my house than the impending coming of the world’s most famous jolly old elf. And what better way to await the arrival of Princess Tiana? Listen to the soundtrack of course! It’s filled with music from Disney’s newest animated feature, and is a great way to get to know Princess Tiana and her friends before meeting them in the movie.

A nice feature of this CD is that it not only includes the vocal tracks from the movie, but also the instrumental score. With everything from strings to brass, the score seems to carry you along with Princess Tiana and her friends on their New Orleans adventures. Not having seen the movie yet, I can’t wait to place the tracks with the scenes and see if I’m close in my imagination as to the goings on!

The opening track, “Never Knew I Needed” by Ne-Yo, is sweet and catchy and sure to be a radio hit. While its musical flavor is much more pop/R&B than the rest of the more New Orleans/gospel/blues tracks, it’s still a nice addition to the entire collection. And it follows in the Disney tradition to include a theme song by a current popular artist [...]

In an effort to spur sales, Universal Studios Home Entertainment announced it will being offering movies in both Blu-ray and DVD formats on a single disc starting in January 2010. The company stated that these dual-format discs, which they’re calling “Flipper” Discs, will allow consumers to upgrade their media collection at their own pace.

At first I really didn’t understand this decision. I mean, if studios plan on offering both formats of the same media as one package why would they start by releasing a movie based on a 60′s television show about a charismatic porpoise that’s essentially a poor man’s Lassie set in the ocean. I wasn’t ever crazy about the classic series and the feature film must have been absolutely horrid because I don’t even remember it.

Then I read paragraph No. 2 of the press release and realized “Flipper” was just the wildly creative marketing team’s name for the new media disc format.

The first films to get the “Flipper” Disc treatment are actually The Bourne Trilogy (Matt Damon). Each individually packaged film in the series will have a Blu-ray format on one side and a DVD format on the other. Both sides will still contain bonus features and extras like you’d expect to find in single-format discs [...]

The Mobile Art Lab is a Japanese organization that is researching the effects of combining the technology of touchscreen mobile devices with old-fashioned paper bound children’s books, which they’re calling PhoneBook.

As the video below clearly shows, this process doesn’t demonstrate anything new or innovative with technology but rather it utilizes the iPhone hardware’s capabilities in new and different ways. Parents simply access an interactive application on their device and slide it into a book that is fashioned with a hole large enough for the touch screen.

The organization is less focused on the value of the story and much more concerned with the communication effects between the parent and child — making their justification for using iPhones over digital paper technology all the more interesting. The Lab argues that in today’s world, more and more displays have been embedded in magazines and books such as electronic paper, but this is more marketing than practical use since displays using rare metals like LC /organic EL (which I assume are necessary for tactile sensory media*) are not very compatible with the disposable periodicals. The advantage of an iPhone is its versatility. It can be both a necessary business tool and a narrative device without much fuss [...]

As we’ve all known was a very likely possibility, it is being reported that Summit Entertainment is deciding whether or not to split The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — the final movie in the franchise (supposedly) — into two movies.

When Twilight was first peeking its head out, many said that it was going to be the next Harry Potter franchise, and to this many giggles (myself included) were had. And while the movie have been no where even close to as good as the Harry Potter films thus far, with The Twilight Saga: New Moon approaching $500 Million worldwide, you just can’t deny that it’s throwing down the same numbers.

With Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, they decided to split it in two in order to cover a lot more of the story, and of course, to make a whole new un-godly amount of money that they would never have made if they only did one film. This is also being done with The Hobbit. Naturally, it has always been a question as to whether Twilight would take the same path once they reached their final film. Now that they have established themselves as a heavy hitter, it comes as no shock that Summit Entertainment has this choice to make. [...]

If you thought the sales were over, then think again. Amazon is offering even more deals in DVDs and Blu-ray selections, including a mega-sale of DVDs for $5.79.

Check out a sample of the selections currently on sale, which include new movies like Terminator Salvation and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince for under $10; the aforementioned $5.79 DVD sale; several other DVD selections for as low as $2.99; and Blu-ray editions for under $11.

Oh, and don’t forget today’s Gold Box deal of the day — How I Met Your Mother: Seasons 1-4 on DVD for only $59.99 [...]

Just a day after the first official Iron Man 2 poster was released, showing off War Machine to us all (Read: War Machine Appears In First Official ‘Iron Man 2′ Poster), Paramount has now put out a few new images to dust it with powdered sugar, so to speak. The images aren’t mind-blowing or anything, but we do get a couple of new looks at Tony Stark doing Tony Stark things and a pretty cool new picture of Whiplash in what looks like a fairly uncomfortable room decorated with Tony Stark news articles scattered about.

No one quite knows what the exact storyline will be yet, but it will definitely include the trials and tribulations of Tony Stark after he came out publicly that he’s Iron Man. This attracts unbelievable attention — of both good and bad varieties — to the already recognized Stark, including the scary Whiplash and Justin Hammer, who is now the main man when it comes to weapons dealing after Stark Industries stopped manufacturing them. As mentioned in the War Machine poster story, the Government will also likely be on Stark’s back to hand over the secrets of his incredible suit technology. However, until an official synopsis is put out, these are all mostly assumptions. [...]

The Western genre is a 50/50 one. Many people love it passionately, and many others just can’t seem to get into it. The same goes in the world of video games: whether it was the awesome Wild Gunmen or maybe even Gun Smoke on Nintendo, up to the more recent GUN and Call of Juarez games, you either dig them or want nothing to do with them. The latest video game effort that will take us to the wild old west is a game called Red Dead Redemption, and it now has a great new trailer.

Red Dead Redemption is a sequel of sorts to one of the not-so-good Westerns of the past, Red Dead Revolver, and both are developed by the masterminds behind the Grand Theft Auto series, Rockstar Games. While the first game didn’t have a whole lot to offer, this new game is not only looking to join the party, it’s looking to take over the genre. Not much is known of gameplay and what to really expect, but if you watch this video, you will surely see that they may have gone and created the most impressive and authentic old western world that we’ve seen so far. [...]

Whenever a new project from Alan Moore is released I’m always shocked because it feels like some ancient relic has just been uncovered — similar to a hypothetical last album from The Beatles or an additional Tolkien novel that no one knew existed — and now I get to read it.

Dodgem Logic, Moore’s new self-produced underground magazine, sort of blows my mind. I say this without even experiencing the 48-page periodical that contains articles written by such notable individuals as Graham Linehan (creator of the The IT Crowd), a comic strip written and illustrated by Moore himself, artwork from former League of Extraordinary Gentlemen co-creator Kevin O’Neill, and a free CD of music.

The description alone will probably blow the minds of all hard-core fans.

The magazine’s editorial staff states “the intention has always been to have fun with this print and to essentially ‘Keep it Real’. As we are not bound by regulations, red tape or political shit, we endeavour to satisfy our readers’ needs with Dodgem Logic.” They also have a slightly longer, period-less description of the magazine on the about page of their official site [...]

USA Today has posted the official first look at Part 1 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

The premiere image (here at right) shows the teenage wizard (no longer a ‘boy’) Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) with his best friends Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) in casual attire out in London near Piccadilly Circus, aka the Muggle world of non-magic.

The seventh and final book in the JK Rowlings’ Harry Potter series will be broken into two film adaptations, with Part 1 scheduled for November 2010 and Part 2 in 2011.

In the Deathly Hallows story, the young wizards go on the lamb in the Muggle world when the magical realm comes under attack by the evil Lord Voldemort and his minions, the Death Eaters. For the first time we’ll see the teens outside the protection of Hogwarts, their magical boarding school, and its headmaster Professor Dumbledore, vulnerable to the dark forces [...]

Doctor Who spin-off television series Torchwood will get 13 new episodes on the BBC, according to actor John Barrowman, who appeared on a radio program to talk about the show’s future.

“Most definitely Torchwood will come back to the BBC. We’re not sure when because we have to work out the logistics of the filming and it’s already been said that it’ll be 13 episodes rather than five,” said Barrowman, who plays Captain Jack Harkness on the show.

Torchwood wrapped up the 5-episode Children of Earth story arc in July 2009 with an ending that left fans to speculate about the show’s fate.

Barrowman also briefly mentioned Captain Jack’s involvement in the new Doctor Who series under new showrunner Steven Moffat who will take over from current Doctor Who and Torchwood mastermind Russell T. Davies [...]

The Gold Box deal of the day over at Amazon today is How I Met Your Mother: Seasons 1-4 on DVD for only $59.99 (that’s 62% off the list price of $159.92).

This offer bundles up all four seasons of the CBS comedy, which stars Jason Segel, Alyson Hannigan, Neil Patrick Harris, Cobie Smulders, Josh Radnor, and is narrated by Bob Saget (yes, that Bob Saget).

As always, time to do the math: $59.99 divided by 4 = $15; translation: crazy deal, as the individual DVDs typically run from $15 – $25 each (at Amazon; there’s $35 or more at other stores).

This is one of the funniest shows on television today, so I HIGHLY recommend this series — you will NOT be disappointed [...]