Just a few things that came up last night and this morning.
1. Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski has been tapped to write the script for a remake of Forbidden Planet (1956). So we’ve got this and the upcoming remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). Are there any other remakes of 1950s robots-and-spaceships movies in the works? — Hollywood Reporter
2. Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire has been tapped to write Spider-Man 4. — Hollywood Reporter
3. Sony may step in and co-produce the Tintin movies with Paramount, now that Universal has backed out for financial reasons. Steven Spielberg, who is producing the films with Peter Jackson, apparently still hopes to start shooting the first film “as early as this year”, for release in 2010. However, because the franchise has been in limbo these last few weeks, Thomas Sangster will no longer be playing the lead role. — New York Times, Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Anne Thompson
4. The “definitive edition” of The Passion of the Christ (2004) is coming to Blu-Ray in February. I wonder if this new edition will fix that typo. — High-Def Digest
5. Roger Ebert has published a new article on The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), excerpted from his new book Scorsese by Ebert. In it, he cites an influential essay on the film by my colleague Steven D. Greydanus, which I and one other critic also cited in our essays for the book Scandalizing Jesus?. — Roger Ebert
6. Allegedly, the kid who can see ghosts in The Sixth Sense (1999) was inspired by a real-life guy named Michael Jones, who is now 20 years old and has been featured in a couple of documentaries. — FilmStew.com
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