From HeatVisionBlog.com

After spending the last two years developing “The Hobbit” as his latest directing project, Guillermo del Toro has announced he is leaving the helm of the J. R. R. Tolkien adaptation. 

“In light of ongoing delays in the setting of a start date for filming “The Hobbit,” I am faced with the hardest decision of my life,” Guillermo wrote in his announcement on “Lord of the Rings” fansite TheOneRing.net. “After nearly two years of living, breathing and designing a world as rich as Tolkien’s Middle Earth, I must, with great regret, take leave from helming these wonderful pictures.”

He said he would continue to co-write the screenplays with Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Phillippa Boyens.

Guillermo del Toro

The walls started to crumble for del Toro in recent weeks as the uncertain future of MGM put the project, which was to have been two movies, in a limbo state. The producers had been hoping to be in production this summer but no greenlight was forthcoming. 

“There cannot be any start dates until the MGM situation gets resolved because they do hold a considerable portion of the rights and it’s impossible to make a unilateral decision by New Line or Warner,” he reportedly said last week promoting “Slice,” an upcoming horror movie he is also producing. “We really believe that dates will be known after the fact of MGM’s fate…We’ve been caught in a very tangled negotiation.” 

But insiders at New Line say the sale of MGM is not holding up the production and the first movie will meet its target release date.

The delays put pressure on del Toro, who has a laundry list of development projects set up at Universal that will keep him busy for the next 10 years, in a position of cutting bait or staying on for more uncertainty. The director moved his wife and children to New Zealand for the shoot, and the first movie was aiming for a December 2012 release.

“The blessings have been plenty, but the mounting pressures of conflicting schedules have overwhelmed the time slot originally allocated for the project,” said del Toro in his statement. “Both as a co-writer and as a director, I wish the production nothing but the very best of luck and I will be first in line to see the finished product. I remain an ally to it and its makers, present and future, and fully support a smooth transition to a new director.”

Jackson stated he understood del Toro’s position: “We understand how the protracted development time on these two films, due to reasons beyond anyone’s control – has compromised his commitment to other long term projects. The bottom line is that Guillermo just didn’t feel he could commit six years to living in New Zealand, exclusively making these films, when his original commitment was for three years.”

Jackson said development on “Hobbit” would continue apace, although his statement did not specifically address any possible postponement of the release date.

“New Line and Warner Bros. will sit down with us this week, to ensure a smooth and uneventful transition, as we secure a new director for ‘The Hobbit.‘ We do not anticipate any delay or disruption to ongoing pre-production work,” he said.

By Todd – BeyondHollywood.com

If you want to get me excited about a movie, all you have to do is mention the name Yoshihiro Nishimura. The man (read: genius) responsible for bringing “Mutant Girls Squad” and “Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl” to the masses is ready to give you another installment of his patented cinematic insanity with “Hell Driver”.

The plot: Japanese schoolgirls battle wave after wave of the undead in Tokyo. I know it doesn’t sound like much on virtual paper, but Nishimura is working with a considerably bigger budget this time around, which means the on-screen debauchery should reach spectacular new heights. Bloody Disgusting was nice enough to post several production photos from the upcoming gorefest, which we have carefully included. Not surprisingly, I’ll be following this project very closely.

Make-Up Special Effects Artist and Director Yoshihiro Nishimura

For more info about “Hell Driver”, check out Nishimura’s official blog.

Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes will oversee the live-action reboot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

John Fusco (The Forbidden Kingdom) was hired last year to write the script for TMNT co-creator and executive producer Peter Laird, but Deadline reports Dunes will begin meetings with new writers next week.

Bay’s production company, along with partners Brad Fuller and Andrew Form, have focused primarily on remaking horror classics like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th, and recently A Nightmare on Elm Street, so pizza-eating, ass-kicking turtles are certainly a change of pace for them.

Platinum Dunes has a track record for producing modestly-budget productions that turn an easy profit based on name recognition.  This appears to be no different.

Viacom’s Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon are also involved after the latter’s $60 million acquisition of the property rights last October to revive the characters in movies and a new, computer animated TV series for 2012.

In previous discussions, executive producer and Turtles co-creator Peter Laird hinted at the use of “face replacement technology” seen on the Where the Wild Things Are creatures.  This is further evidenced by Wild Things‘ Scott Mednick’s involvement as a producer.

Michael Bay

 by Peter Sciretta – SlashFilm.com

ComicBookMovie.com got their hands on the official plot synopsis of the Martin Campbell-directed big screen adaptation of Green Lantern. Not that there are any surprises and below we have  the whole plot synopsis and cast/crew details.

Blake Lively plays Carol Ferris in The Green Lantern

‘Bringing the enduringly popular superhero to the big screen for the first time, “Green Lantern” stars Ryan Reynolds (“X-Men Origins: Wolverine”) in the title role, under the direction of Martin Campbell (“Casino Royale”).

In a universe as vast as it is mysterious, a small but powerful force has existed for centuries. Protectors of peace and justice, they are called the Green Lantern Corps. A brotherhood of warriors sworn to keep intergalactic order, each Green Lantern wears a ring that grants him superpowers. But when a new enemy called Parallax threatens to destroy the balance of power in the Universe, their fate and the fate of Earth lie in the hands of their newest recruit, the first human ever selected: Hal Jordan.

Hal is a gifted and cocky test pilot, but the Green Lanterns have little respect for humans, who have never harnessed the infinite powers of the ring before. But Hal is clearly the missing piece to the puzzle, and along with his determination and willpower, he has one thing no member of the Corps has ever had: humanity. With the encouragement of fellow pilot and childhood sweetheart Carol Ferris (Blake Lively), if Hal can quickly master his new powers and find the courage to overcome his fears, he may prove to be not only the key to defeating Parallax…he will become the greatest Green Lantern of all.

Campbell directs “Green Lantern” from a screenplay by Greg Berlanti & Michael Green & Marc Guggenheim and Michael Goldenberg, story by Greg Berlanti & Michael Green & Marc Guggenheim, based upon characters appearing in comic books published by DC Comics.

George Romero

by Eric Spitznagel – VanityFair.com

Zombies, as any cultural critic who’s ever written about zombie movies will tell you, are metaphors. They represent our societal and generational fears, or something. Take George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, that seminal zombie masterpiece from 1968.

The zombies aren’t just reanimated corpses who can’t resist bum-rushing a Pennsylvania farmhouse. They symbolize Cold War paranoia and homosexual repression and mainstream tensions about the counterculture and Vietnam War anxiety and a bunch of other stuff too, depending on who you ask.

But whatever you think inspired them, Romero’s hippie-era zombies are undeniably the stuff of nightmares. Sure, they’re lurchy at best, and relatively easy to outrun if you just walk at a slow pace in the other direction, but something about their unrelenting “can do” determination and flash mob–style team efforts makes them legitimately terrifying.

There’s a palpable tension among the non-zombified heroes, a growing realization that doom is inevitable and the zombies will likely prevail in the end. And any brains they don’t eat will probably be on the receiving end of a bullet, thanks to a redneck posse with orders to shoot first and ask if they were black… er, a zombie later.

 Read the rest of this great article by Eric Spitznagel of VanityFair HERE

Director Alex Graves

by Lynette Rice – Hollywood Insider

Terra Nova – the high-concept series that Fox picked up for midseason – just hired a director for the show’s much-anticipated debut, EW has learned exclusively. Alex Graves, who helmed the pilots for ABC’s The Whole Truth, Fox’s Fringe and NBC’s Journeyman, will now direct the drama about a family 100 years in the future that travels back to the prehistoric era.  The project received a 13-episode commitment from Fox and filming will likely begin in Australia at the end of the summer.

The show’s auspices read like a who’s who in Hollywood; the executive producers include Brannon Braga (24), Steven Spielberg, ex-Fox Chairman Peter Chernin, agent-turned-producer Aaron Kaplan, Craig Silverstein (Bones) and Kelly Marcel, among others.

Meanwhile, EW obtained the script for Terra Nova, which begins in 2149 A.D. The scene: a large group of settlers are preparing to leave the apocalyptic world they live in to time travel back millions of years via a massive, high-tech contraption. Their goal is to see trees, enjoy a blue sky, eat real food – basically, to start over in this so-called Eden. But what they find is unlike anything they were expecting.

Tom Savini and..umm..Tom Savini

from Shock Till You Drop

Irene Miracle (Midnight Express, Inferno) and students from The FACTORY Digital Filmmaking Program at the Douglas Education Center will team up to produce The Baggage Claim in late July 2010.

Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark by Tim Lucas

The film is based on a screenplay by Tim Lucas, Saturn Award-winning writer/publisher of “Video Watchdog” magazine and the epic biography “Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark.” It was announced today that Tom Savini will star.

Savini’s ties with the FACTORY run deep, as the film school is part of the Douglas Education Center in Monessen, PA, alongside the Tom Savini Special Make-up Effects Program. “Whenever possible I try to work alongside the students at DEC, but in this instance it was the material that attracted me – it was simply too good to pass up. Viewers are going to see a different side of me as an actor,” said Savini, whose next big-screen appearance is in Robert Rodriguez’s Machete alongside Robert DeNiro.

Savini will be joined by Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni of Dario Argento’s Opera and Mother of Tears.

Lucas notes: “I sat down and wrote The Baggage Claim in a single sitting, in longhand, hardly changing a word as I typed it up. Irene loved it, and when Robert Tinnell came aboard and we saw what was possible with his resources at DEC, we revised it together with an eye to those possibilities. It was one of the happiest writing experiences I’ve ever had.”

Timothy Olyphant in Hitman

By Garth Franklin – DarkHorizons.com

Spanish filmmaker Daniel Benmayor (“Paintball,” “Bruc”) has been hired to direct a sequel to the 2007 video game-based action feature “Hitman” for 20th Century Fox reports Deadline.

Xavier Gens directed the original $30 million film which starred Timothy Olyphant as the bald assassin Agent 47, a film which went on to gross $100 million worldwide. Whether or not Olyphant will return is still unclear but there’s an option on him to return.

Story details will borrow from the video game “Hitman 5″ in which a beaten Agent 47 must build himself back psychologically and physically to reclaim his mantle as world’s most feared assassin.

Daniel Casey has penned the most recent draft of the sequel, taking over scripting duties from Kyle Ward. Adrian Askarieh, Alex Young and Chuck Gordon will return as producers. Shooting could kick off as early as this Fall.

Timothy Olyphant and Olga Kurylenko in ‘Hitman’

The package claims the meat is aged to dead perfection in the Haunted Graveyards of Japan. And it’s juicy!  So far it’s only available in Japan. At last, Humans can now eat zombies!

mmmmm....Zombie Meat!

The Real House in the filming of The Amityville Horror

from ContactMusic.com

The creepy house which inspired 1979 movie THE AMITYVILLE HORROR is up for sale.

The five-bedroom property, situated in Long Island, New York, was the scene of a grisly multiple murder in 1974 which saw six members of the DeFeo family killed as they slept. Eldest son Ronald DeFeo, Jr. was later convicted of the killings.

The film, starring James Brolin and Margot Kidder, was based on the story of a family who moved into the house after the murders, and went on to allegedly witness paranormal activities.

And now horror fans have the chance to own the infamous house – it was put up for sale on May10 for $1.15 million (£766,667).

Amityville Horror - 1979 - staring James Brolin and Margot Kidder