'Who' titles; Biel scores a 'Wolverine'; Radcliffe grows 'Horns' and 'Fantastic' gets a writer

The Doctor Who panel at Comic-Con in San Diego today confirmed only a few things about the upcoming 7th season. And that was the titles to episode 2 and 3. We know that the season launches with Ayslum of the Daleks, now we also know episode two is to be called Dinosaurs on a Spaceship followed by the western themed episode A Town Called Mercy. Showrunner Steven Moffat joked with the standing room only crowd that like Clint Eastwood’s spaghetti Westerns, “We did the one thing you always have to do when shooting iconic American culture, we went to Spain." Beyond that, not much new information came out. And no one would confirm that Doctor Who will launch its season on August 25th, instead of November as many have speculated.This maybe logical in the sense that you have five new episodes through September, then wait until Christmas to introduce Jenna-Louise Colman as Cora and then start 2013 with the back eight. But we won't know anything until a week or so before. The BBC schedule plans, it seems, are kept in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard."

Jessica Biel has been cast as Viper in 20th Century Fox’s The Wolverine. The Victoria/Viper character has a long arc in the X-Men mythology and is a juicy role. It will be the second Marvel project for Biel, who also starred in Blade II.

Daniel Radcliffe has been cast as suspected murderer and rapist in Mandalay Pictures adaptation of the Joe Hill novel, Horns. So, coming off his turn in The Woman in Black, Radcliffe is seemingly playing against type, which is good for him. The story follows Ig Perrish (Radcliffe), who not only wakes up with a raging hangover to find out that he not only is suspected of murdering his girlfriend -but has a pair of horns growing out of his head. He discovers his new head-gear has the power to make people confess their sins and give in to their most unspeakable impulses.  Alexandre Aja will direct from an adapted screenplay by Keith Bunin. 

Just days after announcing that Chronicle director Josh Trank was going to helm 20^th Century Fox’s reboot of The Fantastic Four, they announced that they’ve hired Jeremy Slater to write the script.  Slater appears to be the newest wunderkind in Hollywood after his horror spec Tape 4, centering around the mythology of writer H.P. Lovecraft, got taken up at Lionsgate. He also wrote My Spy, a teen spy comedy that Universal will produce with Jake Kasdan attached to direct. The next step is: are they going to reboot it to an origin story (and really, do they need to every time a studio decides to reboot a franchise? Older ones, like James Bond and Star Trek make logical sense, but I saw no reason to do that with The Amazing Spider-Man, though it does speak volume on how Sony sees its viewing audience; dumb and unable to process that Spider-Man is being played by a new actor) or just continue on, sort of ignoring the whole Tim Story version of the four superheroes?