'Jurassic Park IV' for 2014; 'Robopocalypse' delayed; New Line's 'Y' and Nolan to go 'Interstellar'

Much like the Disney purchase of Lucasfilm and the announcement of a new Star Wars trilogy, Universal surprised everyone by announcing Jurassic Park IV for June 13, 2014. The original film is being released in March for its 20th anniversary and has been converted into 3D. But will it, considering Steven Spielberg's announcement that Robopocalypse (see below) was put on hold "indefinitely," be the director’s next film? While Universal says there is no director attached, they did say Spielberg will produce. For 10 years now, studio has kept their biggest franchise in developmental hell with various writers attached, including Oscar winner William Monahan (The Departed) and John Sayles. But the deaths of original novel author Michael Crichton and creature designer Stan Winston seemed to stall the project as well. Back in 2011, Mark Protosevich was the latest writer brought in, but that went nowhere. Back in June of last year, Universal brought in Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, who wrote the hugely successful Rise of the Planet of the Apes, to pen a new script for Jurassic Park IV -which is the one they're going with. Director Joe Johnston has long been attached to the project, but now that Spielberg is free to helm it, will he or will Johnston -who has not helmed a film since Captain America- get a second chance at making a better dinosaur flick? Say what you will, while Jurassic Park III was not a great film, I felt it was better than The Lost World: Jurassic Park. But if Spielberg is going to direct and they're just getting underway, it gives them only an 18-month lead time to go through pre-production and then all way through to production to get those CGI dinosaur's ready for 3D (and probably IMAX).

Steven Spielberg has put the brakes on the sci-fi film Robopocalypse, which was to go into production in the spring. Based on the novel by Daniel H. Wilson, the Drew Goddard script (Cabin in the Woods), was to star Chris Hemsworth and Anne Hathaway and concerns a battle for survival after mankind generates its first mass intelligence computer brain only to see it escape. Much like the forthcoming Guillermo del Toro film Pacific Rim, Robopocalypse features some battle scenes between giant robots (and maybe someone pointed out to him how much last summer’s huge bomb Battleship resembled a cheap knock-off of Transformers so maybe the director should put some distance between del Toro’s film) -though a spokesman for Spielberg said that “the script is not ready and it’s too expensive to produce.” Spielberg told Deadline.com that he has “found another way to tell the story. I had an epiphany and I only have had these a couple of time during the course of my work and whenever those voices occur, I need to listen to them. I found another way to tell the story; it’s a much more personal story for me. I let my cast and crews go make other movies, while I take a half a year to get it to the place that I need it.” So the director is not dropping the film altogether, just delaying it for a while. But consider this as well, it took him twelve years to bring his 12 times Academy Award nominated Lincoln to the cinemas, as well as 11 years for his Oscar winning Schindler’s List. 

 Dan Trachtenberg is a director that comes from a commercial background, but when he produced his own trailer for a faux movie based on the videogame Portal, he got noticed by the right people. Now New Line Cinema has hired him to helm an adaptation of graphic novel Y The Last Man.  Based on the original comic book series by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra, this dystopian tale focuses on the only man to survive the apparent simultaneous death of every male mammal on Earth.

Christopher Nolan will write, produce and direct Interstellar, based on an original screenplay written by his brother, Jonathan Nolan and is a story that involves a group of explorers traveling through a wormhole. It will also deal with time travel and alternate dimensions.  The script is said to be inspired by the work of Kip Thorne, a physicist at Caltech. Originally presented as a film for helmer Steven Spielberg, who set the project up in 2006, it became property of Paramount when the studio bought DreamWorks, and Nolan has a long standing deal with Warner Bros, so now it’ll become a co-production.