Ramayan 3392 AD coming to the big screen

Liquid Comics, which bought out Virgin Comics last month, has struck a deal with Mandalay Pictures to bring Liquid’s graphic novel Ramayan 3392 AD to the big screen.

Per the Hollywood Reporter, John Collee has been tapped to adapt the story about a legendary blue-skinned warrior who in mythology is an incarnation of the god Vishnu fighting to save his love from demonic forces.

The trade also reports that the comic also is being developed as a multiplayer online game by Sony Online Entertainment.

The Ticker

• Splash Page talks to Die Hard scribe Steven de Souza about Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.

• Scifi.com is hosting the latest Watchmen production journal — this one’s about Dr. Manhattan. [Scifi.com]

• Zap2It observes that sophomore TV shows that didn’t come back from hiatus after the Writer’s Strike ended — shows like Chuck and Pushing Daisies — are having a tougher time in the ratings than shows that did. [Zap2It]

• Clone Wars, meanwhile, is doing pretty well in the ratings. [Variety]

• Marvel promoted Simon Philips to president, worldwide consumer products. [Variety]

• Yogi Bear is coming to the big screen. [MTV Movies Blog]

• Tarantino Babies make our dreams come true … or shoot us. (via Rick Marshall … I also have a T-shirt addiction, Rick).

• Spike TV has announced the line-up for their Scream Awards, which air on the cable network Oct. 21. [press release]

Just in time for tonight’s debut of Star Wars: The Clone Wars on Cartoon Network, Lucasfilm has launched a webcomic series that will lead into each weekly episode. This week’s installment is written by Pablo Hidalgo and illustrated by Tom Hodges.

In a post on Digital Webbing, Hodges says the comics will be drawn by a rotating stable of artists: Katie Cook, Jeff Carlisle, Grant Gould and himself.

Artist Lou Romano shares a bunch of early development artwork from the Disney/Pixar film The Incredibles. I wonder if the image posted above, which Romano calls a “gag drawing,” hints at a possible, darker future for the shape-changing Jack-Jack …

Via Super Punch

The Dark Knight swings onto DVD Dec. 9

This year’s No. 1 movie and the second-highest grossing film in the United States ever will be released on DVD just in time for the holiday season, as The Dark Knight will be released on DVD Dec. 9. Per the Hollywood Reporter, it will include the six IMAX-filmed sequences, a production documentary and no doubt a lot of other special features that we’ll hear about between now and then.

Kung Fu Panda sequel due in 2011

Jack Black and Angelina Jolie have signed on for Pandamonium, the sequel to the summer hit Kung Fu Panda. Per Variety, the film will be released June 3, 2011.

The original film, which came out a few short months ago, made more than $626 million worldwide, “making it DreamWorks Animation’s most successful non-sequel film ever,” the trade reports. Kung Fu Panda comes out on DVD Nov. 9.

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The second episode of Warner Bros.’ Watchmen motion comic will debut next Tuesday on iTunes, followed by the third chapter on Oct. 20. The first installment launched in July.

Future episodes will debut every two weeks.

Announced during Comic-Con International, the motion comic is part of a larger initiative by Warner Bros. to deliver DC Comics properties via the Internet, mobile phones and video on demand. Of course releasing Watchmen, chapter by chapter, in hybrid comic-animation form also helps to create buzz for Zack Snyder’s movie adaptation, which is set to open in March.

Reginald Hudlin has left BET Networks after three years as president of entertainment.

Hudlin, who directed such films as House Party and The Great White Hype and served as executive producer of The Boondocks cartoon, helped to relaunch Marvel’s Black Panther title in 2005.

At BET he greenlit the upcoming animated series based on the comic, and serves as an executive producer. The first six episodes are adapted from his “Who Is The Black Panther?” story arc.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, will return to his work as an independent producer.

• Imagi International has released the first footage from Gatchaman, the big-screen adaptation of the influential 1970s anime TV series (also known in the United States as G-Force and Battle of the Planets). The Imagi website is painfully slow, and the clip is blink-and-you’ll-miss-it short, so your best bet is to go to Collider or Coming Soon to view it. Gatchaman is set to be released in 2010. [Collider, ComingSoon.net]

• A rumor made the rounds last week of another live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. Apparently, it’s “complete nonsense and entirely untrue.” [The Movie Blog]

• The latest-behind-the-scenes video for Watchmen focuses on the look of the movie. [IGN.com]

• Rumor mill: Russell Crowe may play Moriarty to Robert Downey Jr.’s Sherlock Holmes in the Guy Ritchie movie. [Latino Review]

• Speaking of Guy Ritchie, the director says he’s still itching to take a crack at an adaptation of DC’s Sgt. Rock, which got bumped on his schedule by Sherlock Holmes. [Splash Page]

• For some reason, these character posters for Heroes Season 3 remind me of the ones for Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. [ComingSoon.net]

Famed animator and director of all those great Peanuts TV specials passed away yesterday. He was 91. Cartoon Brew has a short remembrance and a link to a YouTube interview.

Guess who won’t be playing Catwoman and Jonah Hex

It should come as no surprise that a Warner Bros. representative has shot down the rumor that Cher will play an aging Catwoman in the sequel to The Dark Knight.

I’m a little disappointed, though. Oh, not that it’s untrue — really, did anyone think it was for real? — but that it was shot down so quickly. Four days is an awfully short life span for a casting rumor.

But another, longer-lived rumor also has bitten the bullet: Thomas Jane won’t be playing Jonah Hex in Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor’s upcoming adaptation.

That’s despite Jane’s Sean Young-like effort to convince the filmmakers he’s right for the role.

“He’s a great guy,” the directors said in a video interview with The Movie Blog. “But we don’t see the guy as Jonah Hex, to be quite honest with you. But we like him.”

The Ticker

• Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea has grossed $109.6 million in Japan since its July 19 opening, setting it up to become one of the biggest box-office hits of all time in that country. The Dark Knight isn’t faring quite as well there. [Variety, Slashfilm]

• Sony Pictures is auctioning a Spider-Man 4 “VIP experience,” which includes a set visit, walk-on role, meet-and-greet with cast, and a trip to the premiere. Proceeds to benefit Stand Up to Cancer. Bidding started at $5,000. [Sci Fi Wire]

• Relative unknown Max Makowski reportedly will direct Relativity’s adaptation of Voltron. [Latino Review]

• Robert Downey Jr. is in negotiations to voice a character in DreamWorks Animation’s superhero send-up Master Mind, produced by Ben Stiller’s Red Hour Films. Tina Fey also is expected to join the cast. [Hollywood Insider]

• Shots of a fully rendered CGI Astro Boy and concept art have leaked out from Imagi’s upcoming movie. [Astroboy Online, via First Showing]

A 20-minute LEGO Batman cartoon is being developed using the same engine as the upcoming video game.

Although details are sketchy, a producer for U.K.-based developer Traveller’s Tales tells GameIndustry.biz the cartoon will be a one-shot, at least initially, created “by a separate studio in the States.”

Warner Bros. bought Traveller’s Tales late last year.

“My understanding is that they will use the engine, the Maya files where the characters come to life, but they’ll be creating animated … I think it’s a 20-minute cartoon,” Rich Earl tells the website. “I’m personally quite intrigued to see how it comes out. Lego, every time they’ve had a new brand out, they’ve done some CGI stuff as well, but I think this will be quite different.”

Earlier this month Traveller’s Tales President Jon Burton hinted to Variety that children’s TV shows could be in his company’s future, now that it’s part of Warner Bros.

LEGO Batman: The Videogame is due in stores on Sept. 23.

The Los Angeles Times takes a look at the copyright issues surrounding the cartoon Steamboat Willie and Mickey Mouse, in particular recent allegations of an “imprecision” in copyright claims dating back to the character’s first appearance:

Film credits from the 1920s revealed imprecision in copyright claims that some experts say could invalidate Disney’s long-held copyright, though a Disney lawyer dismissed that idea as “frivolous.”

So does this mean I can finally publish my Steamboat Willie II: Electric Bugaloo comic? Not so fast, says one legal expert:

No one expects Disney, which declined interview requests, to surrender Mickey without an all-out legal brawl. And the cost of what has been an academic exercise would soar if moved into a federal courtroom.

“Law and equity might line up on the side of forfeiture,” said Michael J. Madison, associate dean of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. But “Disney has enough ammunition on its side to dissuade all but the most well-financed competitor, or any but the most committed public-interest advocates, from challenging Mickey.”

Also keep in mind that there’s a difference between copyright and trademark … Jeff Trexler talked a little bit about the differences between the two when discussing the Siegel/Superman case here. You can read the government’s definitions of both, as well as patents, here.

Via.

• How could there be so much confusion over who owns the film rights to Watchmen? At the heart of the dust-up between Fox and Warner Bros. is turnaround, a contractual mechanism that comes with all kinds of strings. Michael Cieply tries to untangle them and, in the process, discovers evidence that Warner Bros. may have settled an earlier rights dispute with Paramount — yet another studio that had planned to adapt Watchmen – by handing over the foreign distribution rights. [The New York Times]

• Fox will stream the premiere of J.J. Abrams’ Fringe and the second-season opener of Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles online at the same time they debut on television — but only on college campuses. Students, who are more likely to have computers than TVs in their dorm rooms, will be able to log in to the Fox website to watch. [Variety]

• The fourth volume of NBC’s Heroes – aka the second half of Season 3 — will be titled “Fugitives.” [io9]

• Kristen Bell has joined the voice cast of Warner Bros.’ Astro Boy. [Variety]

• Nicolas Cage will be the death of Matthew Vaughn’s Kick-Ass, apparently. [Collider]

Marvel is teaming with renowned animation studio Madhouse to re-envision its super-heroes for four anime series set to premiere in spring 2010 in Japan.

According to Simon Philips, president of Marvel International, the characters will have reimagined origins and new looks to reflect Japanese culture.

“It will create an entire parallel universe for Marvel,” he tells The New York Times.

Founded in 1972, Madhouse has been involved in the production of such works as Death Note, Ninja Scroll, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, Paprika, The Animatrix, Batman: Gotham Knight, and the Hellboy animated features.

This is an actual exhibit.

New Fullmetal Alchemist anime series is in the works

Despite earlier suggestions to the contrary, studio Bones will announce tomorrow that a new Fullmetal Alchemist anime series is in the works.

The official word will come via the wraparound jacket band for the 20th volume of Hiromu Arakawa’s hit manga, due out Friday in Japan.

Rumors began circulating earlier this summer about a sequel to the hit series when a list of Bones’ animation staff members leaked online. The spreadsheet, which the studio said was fake, contained references to sequels for Fullmetal Alchemist and Darker Than Black.

The FMA sequel reportedly will be based more closely on the manga, from which the original anime diverged fairly early on in the series.

The Ticker

• Led by the blockbuster Dark Knight, Hollywood studios are heading for a $4 billion summer domestic box office — just about matching last year’s record haul. That’s despite lower attendance. [Reuters, via The Washington Post]

• Robert Downey Jr. says his starring role in Guy Ritchie’s Holmes – it’s based on a forthcoming comic by producer Lionel Wigram — will be “bad-ass”: “In the real origin stories of Sherlock Holmes, he’s kind of a bad-ass and a bare-knuckle boxer and studies the rare art of baritsu [fictional martial art created by Doyle for the final Holmes story, 1901's The Adventure Of The Empty House]. If you look baritsu up, they can’t even really tell you what it is, so it gives us a lot of leeway.” The movie begins shooting on Oct. 6 in England. [Premiere]

• Rumor mill: Is Ghost Rider 2 back on? [Slice of SciFi]

• What went wrong with the second season of NBC’s Heroes? [Time Out Chicago]

Editor’s note: Newsarama contributor and Olympics fan Seth Robison joins Blog@ to highlight “tangentially Olympic-related” comics and pop culture moments. You can read more from Seth on the Olympics at his blog Off The Podium.

By Seth Robison

When a show’s been on as long as The Simpsons — since 1989, or 1987 if you count the original Tracy Ullman Show shorts — you can’t blame them for going to the same well once in awhile for story ideas. So with 12 Olympic Games taking place (six of each season) during that same span, inspiration struck the show’s writers several times, with sexy results.

In the 10th season episode “The Old Man and the ‘C’ Student,” the International Olympic Committee improbably responds to Lisa’s impassioned plea for the Olympics to come to her fair town. The application is accepted, but Bart’s racially charged stand-up routine at the committee’s reception dooms the town’s effort. Tragically this spells the end of the Homer-designed official mascot, Springy the Springfield Spring.

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MGM wants to bring Jonas Moore comic to TV

MGM Domestic Television Distribution has optioned the U.K.-based multimedia online comic The Many Worlds of Jonas Moore for development as a series.

The comic, created by Howard Webster, blends photography, music, live-action footage and comics art to tell the story of Jonas Moore (portrayed by Colin Salmon), a video-game player in a future where the British Empire still reigns supreme and America is just one of thousands of virtual worlds.

Variety reports that Jonas Moore is part of MGM’s push to restart its television-production business.

The Ticker

• All of the hand-wringing about the future of Watchmen is probably unnecessary, according to entertainment attorneys: “Fox has no financial risk here in a movie that could produce revenues for it,” Dinah Perez says. “As such, I doubt that Fox is going to force Warner Bros. to shelve the movie. In all likelihood, a settlement will be reached whereby Warner Bros. gets to distribute the movie, and Fox gets a piece of the action.” [Underwire]

• Watchmen co-creator Dave Gibbons has seen a two-hour and 45-minute rough cut of the movie, which he says is “very sexy, very violent.” The addition of the Tales of the Black Freighter segments to the DVD will push the release past three hours. [Blockbuster Buzz]

• Iron Man director Jon Favreau is at work on the sequel — and on a political cause. [Hero Complex]

• The Lord of the Rings writing team is back together for The Hobbit and its sequel: Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens will collaborate with Peter Jackson and director Guillermo del Toro. [The Hollywood Reporter]

• Rumor mill: Is there turmoil on the set of X-Men Origins: Wolverine? [Splash Page]

• “After Watchmen, Hollywood Should Tackle These ‘Unfilmable’ Comics.” [SciFi Scanner]

• A timeline tracing the history of anime. [Variety]

• As expected Tropic Thunder unseated The Dark Knight this weekend, grossing an estimated $26 million. Don’t cry for Batman, though: Although it fell to No. 2, The Dark Knight has earned $471.5 million domestically, making it the second highest-grossing movie of all time, behind Titanic. Star Wars: The Clone Wars came in third this weekend, with $15.5 million. [Variety, The New York Times]

• Relativity Media is negotiating to pick up Voltron: Defender of the Universe after Fox’s New Regency put the project into turnaround. Relativity is shooting for a lower budget by making use of cost-effective “green-screen” technology used in movies like 300. Justin Marks, who wrote Greyskull and Supermax, penned the adaptation of the 1980s anime series. [Variety]

• Rumor mill: Apparently Punisher: War Zone will be rated R after all? Eh, I don’t care anymore. [FirstShowing.net]

• “5 Manga Movies We Want to See After Akira Blows Everyone’s Mind.” [io9.com]

• Warner Bros. is resurrecting Hanna-Barbera’s weird ’60s TV series The Banana Splits in a “multiplatform effort” that includes shorts and music videos and Cartoon Network. DVD and CD releases, as well as live performances, are planned to follow. Can Skatebirds be far behind? [Variety]