The Ninja Turtles have been shuffled around a lot over the past couple years, most recently the whole IP enchilada got bought by Nickelodeon for $60 million last year.  Now Nick’s parent company Paramount has handed over the development of a new feature film to Michael Bay and his Platinum Dunes company.  Platinum Dunes has cornered the market in horror remakes over the past couple of years, most recently the new Nightmare on Elm Street but they have been acquiring and expanding their interests like with The Monster Squad remake and the Ouija Board movie.  I wonder what direction they would go with the Turtles?  Personally, I would want a comic based take on the Turtles, the comic Turtles were awesome in Turtles Forever and I would love to see their gritty and violent world in a live action movie.

When you think of action heroes I’m sure you naturally immediately think of Leonardo Da Vinci.  Well, Warner Brothers is and they’re tasking Mark Guggenheim, writer of the Green Lantern movie and a former showrunner of Flash Forward to write this ass kicking take on the Renaissance master of all trades.  The movie entitled “Leonardo Da Vinci and the Soldiers of Forever” finds Da Vinci as a member of a secret society that has to deal with demons and other supernatural happenings.  There’s also secret codes, lost civilizations and hidden fortresses and they’re comparing it to National Treasure or Raiders of the Lost Ark in terms of tone.  It sounds like it could actually be ridiculous fun, along the lines of say Abe Lincoln: Vampire Hunter but personally my action hero/inventor of choice would be Nikolai Tesla. Have David Bowie reprise the role and have him fighting aliens and shit with Tesla coils.  Box office gold.

One of Spider Man’s biggest villains is gearing up for a spin off movie courtesy of Sony.  The co-writers of Zombieland, Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese, recently turned in a script to Sony and they’ll probably get things going fairly soon.  Venom has always been a popular villain/anti-hero in the comics universe but was pretty botched in the atrocious Spider Man 3.  Trying to cram the whole black costume Spidey to Eddie Brock/Venom story along with plots concerning Harry Osborne/New Goblin and Sandman just resulted in a big mess.  There aren’t any plot details about the Venom movie but Wernick mentioned he hopes that it connects up Spider Man 4 like the other Marvel movies are doing.  It’s also unknown if Topher Grace would come back to play Eddie Brock or if Sony would look for someone else. What would be awesome is if they could work Carnage in somewhere as well but if Spidey 3 is any indication, simpler is better.

First up is that another Bad Boys movie is in development.  The franchise is the one that launched Michael Bay to action director stardom and also helped launch the careers of Will Smith and Martin Lawrence.  Colombia is hoping to get everyone back for the third movie, including producer Jerry Bruckheimer, but money could be the main issue considering how big everyone has gotten, especially Will Smith.  I enjoy the Bad Boy franchise even though 2 was probably too long and gave us our first taste of unrestricted, insane, Michael Bay.  Argueably one of the best car chases ever though.

Moving on we have the news that Rambo 5 has been greenlit by Nu Image/Millennium Films.  Sly will be back to star and direct the new Rambo.  A rumored plot was that Rambo was going to head to Europe to rescue his newly found daughter but a new plot from Variety says that Rambo is going to head south of the border to help rescue a young girl from drug dealers and human traffickers.  Shooting is supposed to start in the spring, probably around the same time as Sly’s latest movie, The Expendables, hits theaters.

The Uncharted movie is being written by Kyle Ward.  Ward also wrote the script for a movie adaptation of the game Kane and Lynch, a Heatesque action/crime game.  He is also set to write a script for Hitman 2.  Yes, you heard right, a sequel to the absolutely atrocious Hitman.  I don’t remember that movie making that much movie but apparently it made enough to warrant a sequel.  No word on whether Timothy Olyphant will be back as Agent 47 but I kind of hope not as he was not the slighest bit intimidating or believable as the bald assassin.

http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=25130

http://chud.com/articles/articles/19977/1/UNCHARTED-SEEKS-ITS-FORTUNE-ON-MOVIE-SCREENS/Page1.html