Empire Magazine’s December 2010 issue is giving us our first look at Stephen Spielberg and Peter Jackson’s collaborative effort, ‘The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn,’ which is due in theaters in late 2011. The outrageously popular ‘Tintin’ series by Hergé is being adapated by the duo into a feature-length motion-captured 3D flick.

In case you’re not familiar with the inspiration for the film, ‘The Adventures of Tintin’ series is one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century, with translations published in more than 50 languages and more than 200 million copies of the books sold to date. Created by Belgian artist Georges Rémi, who wrote under the pen name of Hergé, the series follows the adventures of Tintin, a young Belgian reporter and his fox terrier Snowy. The duo are involved in many swashbuckling adventures with elements of fantasy, mysteries, political thrillers, and even science fiction.

Jackson commented on the transition to CGI and what that might look like for fans of the popular comic. ”It’s not really going to feel like the Tintin Hergé drew. It’s going to be somewhat different. With CGI we can bring Hergé’s world to life, keep the stylised caricatured faces, keep everything looking like Hergé’s artwork, but make it photo-real.”

Be sure to hit the jump for some more insightful quotes from the creators as well as a couple of amazing production stills from the flick.

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The rule is to “never say never” in the comic book world. When a writer or publisher vows that they’re killing off a character, never to bring them back, 9 out of 10 times they end up resurrecting him. Same goes for storyline stunts.

Back in 1996, in a ploy to pull themselves up from bankruptcy, Marvel revealed a new cross-universe villain called Onslaught, created by Mark Waid, Andy Kubert, and Scott Lobdell. The books were filled with continuity holes and plot devices meant to engage even the most causal reader. The end result left a bunch of fans alienated, and hardly any newcomers to show for the work.

Now, with the help of Heroes Reborn artist Rob Liefeld, Onslaught Unleashed is making it’s way to shelves this February, with a brand new storyline that takes place in an alternate universe, and promises not to “shake things up” with the normal universe like the last one.

In getting ready for the release, Marvel has unveiled two new variant covers for the book, by Liefeld himself. Check out the full sized covers after the jump, and be sure to pick up Onslaught Unleashed on shelves this February.

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The Devil in the White City has been a wildly successful book, and now word comes that it is finally being developed into a movie, with Leonardo Di Caprio attached to play the role of serial killer H.H. Holmes.

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair That Changed America (by Erik Larson) is the bizarre true story of an infamous serial killer who used the 1893  Chicago World ‘s Fair as a device to procure his victims. It is estimated that Holmes murdered anywhere from 27 to 200 men, women and children.

Holmes built an elaborate killing chamber that included a self-contained cadaver disposal in a hotel near the fairgrounds.  His story is woven with that of Daniel Hudson Burnham, an architect who was responsible for designing and building the elaborate fairgrounds “aka The White City.”

According to Deadline, Di Caprio’s Appian Way and Double Features jointly acquired screen rights to Larson’s book.  The movie will be written prior to shopping a studio. Di Caprio will produce and star.

Recently, Di Caprio helped bring another beloved book to screen when he played Teddy Daniels in Shutter Island.

iPhone users get ready for a brand new operating system for your shiny devices. This week Apple released the GM (Gold Master) of the next version of its OS for iPhones to developers to test and that can only mean one thing: It will hit for the rest of you very soon.

In earlier statements, Apple had promised iOS 4.2 by early November and it looks like they are probably on track. If you have developer access (Like some of us here at The Flickcast) and like being on the “bleeding edge” of iOS releases, head on over to Apple’s Developer Site to get what you need.

Two of the new features expected to be included in this update include Air Print for remote printing via a networked Mac or compatible HP hardware and Air Play which will allow user to hand off video playback to the iOS-based Apple TV. Pretty slick.

If you end up installing this update let us know your results in the comments.

Halloween is officially over for 2010, and if you’ve walked into a department store or supermarket since Sunday, you know that Christmas is just around the corner. Just because the jolliest of holidays is on it’s way, that doesn’t mean you still can’t enjoy a good old fashioned scary movie.

Introducing Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale. We don’t want to diminish it’s amazing premise by rehashing it, so here’s the official plot:

It’s the eve of Christmas in northern Finland and an “archeological” dig has just unearthed the real Santa Claus. But this particular Santa isn’t the one you want coming to town. When all the local children begin mysteriously disappearing, young Pietari and his father Rauno, a reindeer hunter by trade, capture the mythological being and attempt to sell Santa to the misguided leader of the multinational corporation sponsoring the dig.

Santa’s elves, however, will stop at nothing to free their fearless leader from captivity. What ensues is a wildly humorous nightmare – a fantastically bizarre polemic on modern day morality.

It’s all of your favorite holiday classics like Black Christmas and Ernest Saves Christmas all in one Finnish bundle! If the synopsis didn’t sell you on the film, the tagline in trailer most certainly will.

He sees you when you’re sleeping. He knows when you’re awake. He knows if you’ve been bad or good. And he doesn’t give a F***.

Check out the trailer after the jump and head over to the official page for the official US release dates.

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This undead body still has life! For those who caught the amazing premiere of AMC’s newest show, The Walking Dead, we salute you. The show broke records for the network, bringing in the highest ratings ever for a premiere, surpassing the ratings of some of the network’s most popular shows.

The Walking Dead premiered Sunday night (Halloween) at the tail-end of a zombie and horror movie marathon hosted by director Frank Darabont. Not only did the 90-minute episode break network records, but cable-wide networks as well. From THR:

AMC’s The Walking Dead premiere ratings are enormous: The 90-minute Halloween night debut delivered 5.3 million viewers and a 3.3 adults 18-49 rating. That’s the largest demo audience for any series premiere on any cable network this year.

It’s also the highest numbers for any series in AMC’s history, and beat most non-sports programs on broadcast Sunday night.

At this rate, you had better believe the network is planning a second-and maybe even third season. With a story as rich as the one laid out in Robert Kirkman’s comic series, there’s no ceiling on what Darabont, producer Gale Anne Hurd, and the rest of the crew can do with this live action series.

Be sure to keep the momentum going and watch episode 2 of The Walking Dead next Sunday night at 10/9C.

This weekend may be a tough choice at the box office for most theater-goers. But if you’re looking for a film that will blow your eyeballs right out of your sockets, it looks like Rogue Pictures’ Skyline may be that film.

Directed by the team of Colin and Greg Strause, the SFX brothers who have worked on films like Avatar to Iron Man 2, the film is setting itself to be an epic alien invasion movie in the vain of Cloverfield, Independence Day, and War of the Worlds. Just imagine if Roland Emmerich or Matt Reeves knew, from personal experience, what was possible in the scheme of digital effects.

There isn’t much to the story that we haven’t seen before, but the element to keep an eye out for here is the use of CG effects and how an entire film can play into that world. We’ve got two spoiler-free clips for you to check out after the jump.

Be sure to catch Skyline in theaters everywhere this Friday.

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Though it may not feel like very long, Conan O’Brien has been off the air for quite some time now. Over at NBC, it’s like we’ve already forgotten that red-haired man that took over The Tonight Show for a brief stint while Leno had his experimental phase. On the web, however, CoCo has been thriving. For 8 weeks, O’Brien and his team have been putting out web videos via TeamCoco.com in which he addresses the fans, takes questions, and keep entertaining. Now, in the dawn of his brand new show on TBS, Conan brings us his first talk show-like format since he was taken off of NBC.

In Show Zero, Conan invites a group of real-life Conan fans to sit in his conference room as the audience as he puts on the fastest talk show in the history of the world. Need legitimacy? His first, and only guest is The Big Bang Theory’s Jim Parsons.

A great idea from Team Coco as they get ready for next Monday’s premiere of Conan on TBS. In the meantime, check out SHOW ZERO after the jump.

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Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (1964) is the ultimate black comedy, war movie which pokes fun at the absurdity of nuclear war and those responsible for escalating tensions throughout world during the Cold War. The film stars the great Peter Sellers as three of the film’s major characters, Group Captain Lionel Mandrake of her majesty’s R.A.F., U.S. President Merkin Muffley, and as crippled ex-Nazi scientist Dr. Strangelove who tries to educate the president and his staff as to the intentions of the Soviets, and how America can survive World War III.

Other talents include Sterling Hayden as Gen. Jack D. Ripper, (the commander of Burpelson A.F.B.), and George C. Scott as General Buck Turgidson, a fanatically anti-Soviet member of the president’s staff, and loosely based on actual American Air Force Gen. Curtis “bombs away” LeMay who was one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a veteran of the Pacific Theater during World War II.

Dr. Strangelove was based on the novel Red Alert written by Peter George. The screenplay was written by Kubrick, George, and satirist Terry Southern as a film which shows just how crazy and simple it truly is for the super powers to plunge the world into nuclear Armageddon. As tensions flare around the world due to Soviet and western policy expansion, Gen. Jack Ripper (a stellar performance from actor Sterling Hayden) orders the air wing of his B-52 bomber squadron to initiate “Wing attack plan R”, a plan which gives lower echelon commanders the authority to launch a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union if the normal chain of command is disrupted, e.g. if the president and Washington D.C. were taken out by a sneak attack.

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We recently got the chance to get our first hands on with Red Dead Redemption’s DLC pack Undead Nightmare. Now, after its full release, Undead Nightmare has proven itself to be one of the most fun and valuable pieces of DLC to be released in recent memory.

The events of Undead Nightmare follow those of the regular Red Dead Redemption storyline so be warned. There are some minor spoilers about the fate of certain characters if you decide to play Undead Nightmare before going through the full RDR story.

Unlike some pieces of DLC like the quests in Fable II or The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion which add new missions to your current game, Undead Nightmare is its own separate story so players can skip back and forth between a regular Red Dead save file and an Undead save file without the two affecting each other. The only negative to this is certain items and steeds then don’t come back with John to Read Dead proper which is a shame since riding through the desert on the steed of War can make someone feel pretty bad ass.

After seeing the outbreak first hand, our hero heads out to find a cure only to find the undead plague has spread throughout the frontier with all cities being overrun and even animals being infected. After seeing bodies reanimate themselves from grizzly deaths, John uses his gun to put them back down with some well placed headshots. What follows is a screwed up path through memory lane as John encounters friends and acquaintances from Red Dead who are now all being struck by the zombie plague as he searches for a cure.

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At its heart, Eastbound & Down is about the redemption of Kenny Powers. On the surface he’s vulgar, crude, and clearly delusional. But deep down there is kind of a decent person Kenny can drag out when he needs to. And even though he can screw over others without looking back, he still deserves some sympathy—after all, he did used to be Kenny Powers!

Following last week’s first-rate (and my personal favorite of the series so far) episode, Chapter 12 has a lot to live up to…and it does, right in the first few minutes, which bring back Pat (guest star Adam Scott), the agent who screwed Kenny over in last season’s finale. Pat’s finishing up a 12-step program and is on whatever step has you make amends to all the people you’ve wronged (the most egregiously wronged being Pat’s sponsor, whose wife Pat slept with…while his sister watched).

Pat heads down to Mexico to seek out Kenny, the second-most-wronged on the list, who’s in the process of packing up his gear in preparation for his departure. But Pat’s arranged for a Mexican talent scout to stop by one of the Charros games and see if Kenny still has his stuff.

Meanwhile Kenny’s tying up loose ends, which includes severing ties with Vida (Kenny is, after all, a tit man, not an ass man), settling the score with Aaron, and apologizing to the Charros for his grandstanding antics. It’s heavily backhanded and full of rather strange expressions (George Washington is never gonna cut down that beanstalk), but, like the rest of the episode, there’s sweet sincerity to it. You can’t help but smile when Stevie asks Kenny’s permission to marry Maria.

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Here we go. Another week and more new comics hitting store shelves from our friends at Marvel. This week we’re looking forward to some Iron Man/Thor #1, Wolverine #3, Punisher: In the Blood #1 and Chaos War #3.

As they usually do, comics hit stores on Wednesday this week. So, head over early to your favorite comics shop for best selection.

Don’t know where your nearest comic shop is? Use this handy guide to find one.

Check out the list of comics you can get below.

Comics On-Sale:
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #647
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #647 MCNIVEN VARIANT
AVENGERS ACADEMY #6 (HA)
AVENGERS ACADEMY #6 MCKONE VARIANT
AVENGERS, THOR & CAPTAIN AMERICA: OFFICIAL INDEX TO THE MARVEL UNIVERSE #7
BULLSEYE: PERFECT GAME #1
CAPTAIN AMERICA: MAN OUT OF TIME #1
CAPTAIN AMERICA: MAN OUT OF TIME #1 ADAMS VARIANT
CHAOS WAR #1 2ND PRINTING VARIANT
CHAOS WAR #3
GENERATION HOPE #1
GENERATION HOPE #1 DJURDJEVIC VARIANT
GENERATION HOPE #1 LAND VARIANT
HAWKEYE & MOCKINGBIRD #6
IRON MAN LEGACY #8
IRON MAN/THOR #1

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