The plan for Marvel, according to president of animation Eric Rollman, is to release an animated series behind the live-action movies that they release — this is now confirmed for the upcoming live-action film version of Thor.

The series will consist of 26 episodes that run 30 minutes each. These will be released in Fall of 2010.

Here’s the premise for this animated series…

Tropic Thunder
Blu-ray
Directed by Ben Stiller
Starring Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr, Jack Black, Nick Nolte, Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride
Paramount Home Entertainment
Release date: November 18, 2008

Have you ever watched a movie that your conscious mind continually told you that you shouldn’t be enjoying? That the premise was thin, the majority of the acting was way overblown, and that teetered it on the edge of “Scary Movie 15” lameness, yet somehow you found yourself laughing and having a good time? That is exactly the movie that Tropic Thunder is to me.

In order to discuss my thoughts on this film, I’m going to have to delve into some character details that may be considered spoiler territory, so be warned.

Still with me? Cool. Here we go.

Tropic Thunder is one of those “high concept” films that tells the story of the making of a film within the film itself. The idea is nothing new, and neither is Ben Stiller’s desire to skewer the profession he loves. It’s well worn territory. And while I’d love to say that Stiller, who wrote, directed, and stars in this film, walked this well worn territory in a fresh and interesting way — I can’t. The truth is, this film offers us very little that we haven’t seen before.

The official full-length version of the trailer for JJ Abrams‘ Star Trek is now online in all its crystal clear glory.

This highly anticipated trailer debuted in theaters this weekend in front of screenings of the new James Bond flick, Quantum of Solace. As expected, several bootleg versions appeared online soon after. Now, I usually don’t bother posting those, but there are some movies, well, I just can’t wait for ‘em and I’ll take any glimpse I can get. Plus, descriptions of this trailer have been online for weeks now, so anyone who wasn’t afraid to be “spoiled” by all that, has already gotten their full share of this new footage.

But let me tell you, you HAVE TO watch it in high-definition. I would have posted this sooner had I not be watching it in high-def slo-mo for an hour now. I just can’t get enough of it, so go ahead and watch it now while I slo-mo it for another hour and maybe right up some more thoughts on it later.

Wall•E
3-Disc Special Edition Blu-ray
Directed by Andrew Stanton
Starring Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin, Fred Willard
Walt Disney Home Entertainment
Release Date: November 18, 2008

The states of bewilderment and wonderment that was colonized in characters and stories involving toys, fish, cars and rats isn’t as powerfully conceived with robots. That is not to say Wall•E falls flat on its face either. There is truth to be told in a post-apocalyptic animated film that echoes a kids version of An Inconvenient Truth. Yet, as the ego unceasingly begins to swell at the studios of Pixar, they should realize that conquering space is much more arduous than conquering a boy’s bedroom, a French restaurant, a run down Route 66, and the Atlantic Ocean.

There is something magnificent lurking in the first half of Wall•E, the half that winces at the use of any dialogue for the first 40 minutes and magically pulls it off. The camera comprehends the same magnificence as well as it journeys down from space playing the tune “Put On Your Sunday clothes,” only to find itself coming through the clouds to meet a desolate Earth where the human race is no longer present. We glimpse massive skyscrapers that aren’t made of metal but of neatly packed squares of rubbish. They are neatly placed atop of each other courtesy of the last trash clean-up robot on Earth named WALL•E. He continues his normal routine everyday not really knowing that he’s all alone save for his best friend, a cockroach.

As we all know, Guillermo del Toro has enough projects lined up to last him the rest of his life. You’d think that this would stop him from adding more, but now it looks like he’ll have his hand in another project; this one will be a feature-length stop-motion version of the cherished tale of Pinocchio based on a book illustrated by Gris Grimly.

This version of the tale — whose main character gained popularity with U.S. audiences thanks to Disney’s animated version in 1940 — would be brought to life by the puppets created by the Jim Henson Company, or at least that’s what Del Toro’s is working on having.

Author Stephenie Meyer has spawned a worldwide phenomenon with her Twilight Saga novels, and fans of the books have been on pins and needles waiting for the first film adaptation from the series, Twilight, to be released. There’s been a lot of talk about what elements from the novel will make the theatrical cut. Screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg has said that she had to condense some aspects of the story, as well as combine some supporting characters. Hopefully, Rosenberg’s vision of the story will be true enough to the book to be acceptable to fans, while also expanding upon scenarios that were not thoroughly described in Meyer’s tale.

Twilight is the first tale of the teenage Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) who moves to the cloudy small town of Forks, Washington, where she meets the intriguing Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson). Bella soon finds out that the pale, handsome boy is really a 108-year-old vampire, but unlike the creatures of legend, Edward’s clan does not feast on humans, only animals. Initially, Edward tries to stay away from Bella for her own sake, but the twosome find that they can’t deny their love, which puts Bella in danger when the vampire tracker James (Cam Gigandet) catches her scent and will stop at nothing to get her.

In the novel, the story is told as a first-person narrative by Bella, which means there are times where events are talked about to her, but never played out. There’s several instances where Bella is either in another location than the Cullen clan during a dangerous mission or she’s injured and rendered unconscious, which means we don’t get her firsthand perspective.

Below are the 5 most anticipated scenes from Twilight, which comes to theaters this Friday, November 21. NOTE: To those of you who haven’t read the book, there’s some spoilery material, so be warned.

Quantum of Solace
Directed by Marc Forster
Starring Daniel Craig, Gemma Arterton, Judi Dench, Mathieu Amalric, Olga Kurylenko, Jesper Christensen
Rated R
Release date: November 14, 2008

Casino Royale for me was the definitive James Bond. It took author Ian Fleming’s British super spy back to his rough-and-tumble roots while giving him a 21st century makeover and a new direction for a darker post-September 11 world lacking in operatic villains with stylish bases and magnificent science-fiction weapons. Under the direction of Martin Campbell, Daniel Craig became the best cinematic portrayal of James Bond since Sean Connery was first fitted for Agent 007’s tuxedo in 1962’s Dr. No.

Craig had previously been best known as a intense actor specializing in playing characters who existed in the grayest of areas in films like Road to Perdition, Love is the Devil, Layer Cake, and Munich. Born with piercing blue eyes and a distinctly roguish charisma reminiscent of Steve McQueen, Craig was the perfect choice to play a James Bond reborn into a world where the terrors we read about everyday in the newspapers and online far exceed the evils of the would-be world conquerors the suave MI6 agent has faced before on the big screen.

Now two years after Casino Royale brought Bond blazing back to theaters in top form comes Quantum of Solace, the first Bond film that continues the story from the previous one and builds on it, expanding the secret agent’s world beyond the pulp novels that gave birth to him into a bleaker and more dangerous world. Now we have a Bond who sports more than his fair share of scars both on his face and his soul. Quantum, in a way, is like an extension of the third act of Casino, and in the end some of Bond’s questions have been answered but more have been raised. This is a James Bond for a different time. He won’t be sipping champagne on a yacht in bed with a beautiful lady when the curtain closes on this tale. This is the movie where he truly becomes Bond… James Bond.

Tropic Thunder
Unrated Director’s Cut
Directed by Ben Stiller
Starring Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr, Jack Black, Nick Nolte, Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride
Paramount Home Entertainment
Release date: November 18, 2008

Tropic Thunder, the first full-on comedy directed by Ben Stiller since his sublime tribute to airheaded male models Zoolander, is both a love letter and a poison pen middle finger to the increasingly overblown business of moviemaking. It’s a measure of the amount of serious guts and brains that it would take a major Hollywood studio (in this case Dreamworks) to green-light an expensive action-comedy that’s also a savage satire of the industry itself. But a movie like Tropic Thunder has been a long time coming. Having your cake and eating it too has rarely been this hilarious.

Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) is only a few days into the shooting of his directorial debut, the mega-budget Vietnam War epic Tropic Thunder based on an acclaimed memoir of the same name by veteran Sgt. John “Four Leaf” Tayback (Nick Nolte, giving great grizzle), and the production is in an unprecedented state of chaos.

HBO has called for a pilot episode of a show based on George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series.

If successful, the hopes are that each book of the seven total would become seasons of the show. The pilot — and hopeful first season — would be based on the first book, A Game of Thrones. Executive producers on the pilot will be David Benioff (Troy) and D.B. Weiss (Halo).

Unfortunately, HBO has about 10 pilots ordered, so no one knows which will actually become full series; so this by no means guarantees that a full season of this show will come to fruition, but it is great news for fans of the series and fantasy alike.

I am a massive fantasy fan and would really love to see a fantasy TV series out there, especially if it’s through HBO and adult-aimed (meaning, not shitty). To have a fantasy genre show with the raw nature of HBO’s typical programming would be amazing and would likely add a whole new aspect to the genre that we’ve not really seen before.

Freddie and Me: A Coming of Age (Bohemian) Rhapsody
Written and drawn by Mike Dawson
Bloomsbury Publishing/Macmillan
Cover price: $19.99; Available now

Ever have a favorite band? You have all their albums and seen all their concerts? For this reviewer, it is the Wallflowers and for writer/artist it was and sill is Queen. The mega popular band, led by lead singer Freddie Mercury, was young Mike Dawson’s favorite band and a huge influence in his life. Just how big of an influence is the subject of his autobiography, Freddie and Me.

Freddie and Me reads a lot like a love letter to the popular band, mostly known for their hit “Bohemian Rhapsody,” even though much of it showcases the life of Dawson. From his first encounter with the band when he was just a small child in England with the help of an cassette tape given to him by his brother, Dawson was hooked the minute he heard them. His love for them stayed with him later on in life, when he moved to the United States the love for the music and Mercury lasted even when Mercury died in the early nineties. Along the way, readers gets a chance to view and experience Dawson’s life, his hardships at school, dealing with feelings as an outsider, falling for his best mate’s girl, and the death of his grandmother. Most importantly, it showcases how Queen changed the life of one boy from Britain.

By ScarletScribe

Night Watch
Discworld series
Mass Market Paperback
By Terry Pratchett
HarperTorch
Published: September 30, 2003

Time travel, as a story premise, can be a slippery slope. While some creators go to great lengths to describe how the Grandfather Paradox can be overcome, others find themselves backed into a corner, waving a magic wand at logical thinking and asking the audience to take it on good faith that the hazards of time travel can be easily overcome.

Meanwhile, Terry Pratchett’s comic fantasy Night Watch — the 29th novel within his Discworld series — takes it at face value and has everyone run with it. When Sam Vimes, commander of Ankh-Morpork’s police force, is thrown back through time while chasing a psychopathic killer, there’s hardly a moment to spare for either Vimes or the reader to ruminate upon the logistics of it all. Instead, Pratchett’s time-travel is a set-up for much larger questions — and we’re talking more than just, “What would happen if he killed his grandpa?”

That’s where the subtle strengths of Pratchett’s writing come in. Though written in the third-person, Night Watch’s story unfolds more like a stream of consciousness. Rather than being bogged down in thoughtful monologues, the story actually takes off as Vimes spends his time observing other people and contemplating how he can play to their emotions and instincts. The novel is less about asking what one would do with time travel, and more about how you would have to do it. For his part, Vimes is forced to go through the motions of the past while still hunting down a notorious killer that no one in the past has even heard of — without upsetting the reality they’re used to or the future he came from.

Paramount has signed Marc Forster to direct their big-screen adaptation of World War Z, the novel by Mel Brooks’ son Max Brooks. Forster has quite the résumé, having directed Monster’s Ball, Finding Neverland, Stranger Than Fiction, and most recently the new James Bond movie Quantum of Solace.

World War Z is a zombie story, but not your typical zombie tale. It details the events of the zombie apocalypse about 10 years after they took place from the viewpoint of various survivors of the infection.

J. Michael Straczynski (Changeling, Ninja Assassin) is writing the screenplay for Brad Pitt’s B Plan, which is producing the film for a hopeful 2010 release date.

A brand new trailer for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has been released for all of us to oogle!

Watch it here below!

Unfortunately, as good as the trailer is it has difficulty being effective. See, the truth is, the movie should have been coming out next week. We should all be buzzing with Harry Potter glee right now, and we’re not. Instead, we still have 9 months left before that joy that we crave arrives on July 17th, so it’s tough times.

The trailer shows a good amount of footage we’ve already seen paired with a lot more new lighthearted moments. It definitely gives a strong idea of where this movie is going and the tone is will have — basically, the main story will be dark intersperses with some fluff (like Ron becoming lovesick). These more “silly” moments are nice to see, considering the previously released trailers made it a point to let us know that this sixth film installment will be dark.

By Tarsonus

2 weeks after first infection. A dark ally way. 4 unlikely survivors banded together. The faint sound of a woman crying. From there about 30 seconds passes until all hell breaks lose. This is how the demo for Left 4 Dead starts and it’s probably going to be one of the lighter moments of your gaming experience.

In case you’ve been spending all your time preparing for the real zombie apocalypse, Left 4 Dead is the newest brain child of Valve, the team behind such projects as Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike, and Portal, just to name a few. So before you go back to boarding up the windows, try downloading the demo and it may let you know if you are just wasting your time, or preparing to one day single-handedly help save humanity.

As you may have heard, the first full Star Trek trailer and the new one for Watchmen are both attached this weekend to theatrical showings of the new James Bond movie Quantum of Solace. The only difference between the two is that an official version of the Watchmen trailer is already online, while the Star Trek trailer will not be officially available to view online until Monday.

Thankfully (and as expected) a not so official [at all] version has shown up online and you can check it here out below!

Hurry, as we don’t know how long it will be available or if/when it will be pulled. Worst case scenario we’ll get the good version on Monday, but for those who just can’t wait, here it is!

In a turn of events, apparently Brett Ratner is now NOT directing Conan at this time and now it’s not even definite that he’ll be doing it at all.

Ratner spoke out recently after reports that he was in final negotiations direct the new version of Conan for Nu-Image, Millennium Films, and Lionsgate.

Now, Ratner says the announcement was premature.

With the Twilight movie release fast approving, Summit Entertainment has announced that they’ve acquired the rights to the sequels to author Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight novel.

The studio has already hired Twilight screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg to script New Moon (Book 2) and Eclipse (Book 2). The fourth book in The Twilight Saga, Breaking Dawn, does not have a screenwriter at this time.

When writing the first screenplay, Rosenberg reportedly chose not to read the Twilight sequels so that it wouldn’t influence the natural development of the characters.

The time has come for 11 million World of Warcraft subscribers to bid farewell to their significant others, social lives, and good decent hygiene as they embark on a voyage through icy Northrend in the Wrath of the Lich King game expansion. And then, provided they fulfill all the requirements, these players will immediately create at least two Death Knight characters.

Why two Death Knights? Because one will be a serious ‘toon’ you’ll actually strive to play for, while the other will be a mighty Gnome — yes that’s correct, you can now create an ultra powerful tank-like Emo-looking Hero Gnome with hot pink hair. You will name this character something laughable and ridiculous like “Pedognome” or “Dethsneeze” because it’s novel to have an overpowered little person.

For Dino Andrade ["Dinoandrade"], the only thing novel about a Death Knight Gnome is the voice he lent to breath vibrant life into the vertically challenged new Hero Class.

Earlier this week, Geeks of Doom reported that about the first full look at the USS Enterprise from JJ Abrams‘ upcoming movie Star Trek.

Few images are so immediately identified with the heart and soul of the Star Trek franchise. Few images have also changed so little over the intervening years; there was one major design for Star Trek: TOS (which changed slightly over the course of the series) and another design introduced in Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1978 that lasted almost unchanged until Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country in 1991.

Mr. Abrams is delivering the first major change in Enterprise design in 30 years, and the first not approved by Trek creator Gene Roddenberry himself. He had to know that anything he and his creative team changed in the profile of the USS Enterprise would be controversial. This is why we are seeing it now, not when the movie comes out — so the Star Trek fan base can talk all this through and figure out if we really like it.

So do we really like it?

As promised — short and simple sweet — the brand new Watchmen trailer that’s attached to Quantum of Solace has been unleashed upon the Internet world.

Watch it here below!

This is easily the best trailer that’s been released so far, especially if you’re a fan of the graphic novel. This right here shows you exactly what to expect in the movie. It shows you tone and lays out a bit of the story. It begins to create the world.