The offbeat, swirly, Gothic-lite, snow-filled reign of Tim Burton will never let up. According to Deadline Hollywood Daily, Universal’s Illumination Entertainment has snagged the rights to Charles Addams’ original The Addams Family cartoons with an eye to letting Burton direct a stop-motion feature out of them. Why yes, the term “3D” is also being tossed around. Yay.

I love The Addams Family. I was unhealthy obsessed with the Barry Sonnenfeld film as a pre-teen, and I used to hang out at the bookstore reading the original cartoon collections. It was the closest I got to becoming a Goth.  While I’ve enjoyed a lot of Burton films over the years, I’m not sure I want to see the Addams sent through The Burton Factory, and made out to be a family with a penchant for swirls and black and white stripes.

DHD notes that Burton will ignore the previous films and television show, and return straight to the source.  Apparently, he’s quite drawn to the sharp wit of the original comics. And they are funny. Much funnier than Burton’s Addams imitation, The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy which is just kind of gross and painful to read.

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It may not have taken home a lot of Oscar gold, but many might argue that the jangly coins in Avatar’s pocket might mean a lot more to Fox and James Cameron.  But despite the massive success they’ve enjoyed in theaters, Cameron and Fox want a little more of your hard earned cash.

They noticed that the demand in digital 3D immediately went up when the IMAX run was up. They’re concerned that giving up their screens to Alice in Wonderland may have cost them, in Cameron’s words,  “a couple hundred million dollars.” They know people will eat up more Avatar. So they’re planning a summer re-release.

According to The Hollywood Reporter,  discussions are underway to bring the film back this summer with additional footage. Cameron feels that he was forced to rush the film into theaters to make its December 18 date, and had to leave too many scenes on the cutting room floor.

There’s actually some debate as to how much extra footage there is — Cameron claims there’s about 10 to 12 minutes of scenes that he could toss right back into the film, whereas IMAX CEO Richard Gelfond claims there’s 40 extra minutes. However, an IMAX analog theater can’t handle a film over 170 minutes, so even if Cameron has 40 minutes of unused footage, he can only add 10 or 12 to come in under the IMAX limitations.

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Though Avatar didn’t pick up the best picture award at the Oscars on Sunday, the filmmakers can console themselves by sobbing into the ridiculous pile of money the film is still making and a few technical awards. Even without a big Oscar win, the 3D juggernaut in Hollywood keeps rolling along, as word is now coming in that Warner Bros. is planning on rebooting the holiest of classics: The Wizard of Oz.

And yes, it will be in 3D. From The LA Times:

The studio is examining two existing “Wizard of Oz” projects, with an eye toward giving one of them a modern gloss and moving it toward the screen.

One project, called “Oz,” currently lives at Warner’s New Line label. It’s being produced by Temple Hill, which is behind a little franchise called “Twilight,” and has a script written by Darren Lemke, a writer on the upcoming “Shrek Forever After.”

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In what is surely great news for fans of director Neil Marshall and those who love movies where armored gladiators kick lots of ass (I count myself in that group, btw), Magnet Releasing has acquired the U.S. rights to Marshall’s latest film Centurion. The film, which features Michael Fassbender (Inglourious Basterds, 300), Dominic West (300, The Wire), David Morrissey (Red Riding Trilogy), and super hot Bond-girl Olga Kurylenko (Quantum of Solace) tells the story of Roman soldiers and Pict teribesmen who battle for control of Britain.

Fassbender stars as Quintus Dias, a fearsome gladiator who leads a group of soldiers on a raid to rescue a captured general (West). The son of the Pict leader is killed during the raid, and the Romans find themselves hunted by a seemingly unstoppable group of the Pict’s most vicious and skilled warriors. The group, led by a beautiful and deadly tracker (Kurylenko), are hell bent on revenge and will stop at nothing to see it done.

And yes, along the way a lot of blood is spilled and there are fight scenes galore. Sound awesome. As someone who’s a huge fan of Marshall’s work, particularly Dog Soldiers, I couldn’t be more interested in this film.

Magnet is launching Centurion as the 6th entry in the second “Six Shooter Film Series,” a collection of six worldwide action films which also includes Bronson, Red Cliff, Ong Bak 2, District 13: Ultimatum and The Warlords. A summer theatrical release for Centurion is planned. Rest assured, I’ll be there.

One would think that the overwhelming success of Summit Entertainment’s Twilight series would spark a resurgence of the classic Universal monsters, but in the end it took Universal itself to get things back into the public eye, with this weekend’s release of The Wolfman.

First, news comes that a new Frankenstein project is in the works. Now Summit has decided to drop their their hat into the vampire ring again with a new Dracula project.

The studio has been planning this remake of the Dracula story for some time, but they’ve now made things serious by hiring The Machinist writer Scott Kosar to clean up the script. The original screenplay comes from Sons of Anarchy star Charlie Hunnam, who had never written a feature script until now.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the story takes an “action-oriented look at Dracula, or Vlad the Impaler, as a young prince.” With music video director Anthony Mandler signed on to direct, Brad Pitt’s production company Plan B producing, and Summit taking the helm, expect to see this film make plenty of waves when the time comes.

While he may look to be beating a dead horse with the upcoming spy comedy Day & Knight, Tom Cruise has announced that he’s returning to the Mission Impossible franchise for a fourth film. From Variety:

Cruise and J.J. Abrams — who co-wrote the “Mission: Impossible III” screenplay — will produce from a screenplay by Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec, a writing duo hired last summer to pen the script from an idea hatched by Cruise and Abrams. Appelbaum and Nemec spent four seasons with Abrams as co-exec producers of “Alias.”

Paramount made the announcement yesterday, along with news that the film’s planed release date will be next Memorial Day. This will put the film out on the same weekend as the planned Hangover sequel, and on the second weekend of the fourth Pirates Of The Caribbean film.

The previous Mission Impossible films pulled in just over $1.3 billion, but Cruise’s cost was far too high for Paramount to continue any further films at the time. It seems, with this news, that the studio has decided Cruise is well worth the money spent.

With the film set to hit theaters in just 15 months, you can expect to see casting and script details to leak online by the droves in the coming weeks. We’ll be sure to keep you updated with any information as it comes our way.

With the internet community and a few studio execs hinting that this current season of 24 may be the last, big news is now coming out of Twentieth Century Fox’s camp, as they have just announced a film adaptation of the series.

The studio was allegedly blown away by a pitch from screenwriter Billy Ray (State of Play, Flightplan), in which Jack Bauer goes to Europe, and they have already hired him to finish the script for production. From Variety:

Script is said to have come through “24″ star Kiefer Sutherland, who’s also an exec producer on the series — and is said to be eager to turn the long-running TV skein into a feature franchise.

Feature would be produced by the TV show’s key exec producers, including Sutherland. Series was created by Robert Cochran and Joel Surnow, while exec producer Howard Gordon runs the show through his Real Time Prods. banner.

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While Universal is ramping up their marketing for the upcoming Wolfman reboot, and Summit is rolling around in giant piles of cash thanks to angsty teen vampires, there are still a few classic monster franchises left to be tapped. That’s where Lakeshore Entertainment and Death Ray Films come in.

The studios have teamed up and optioned the comic book I, Frankenstein, originally written by Kevin Grevioux. The book mashes up the genres of classic movie monsters with crime noir in an epic miniseries. In the book, Frankenstein’s monster has learned to control his anger and now stands as the only hope for humanity against an army of supernatural forces. Meanwhile, Dracula is a kingpin of crime and the Invisible Man lives his life as a secret agent.

With Universal and other studios revving up their use of the latter two franchises, you can expect them to not make the final cut, and focus on Frank. The film has been on the shelf for nearly a year, until genre studio Lakeshore Entertainment, who presented other cult faves as Gamer and Underworld, recently purchased the rights to turn I, Frankenstein into a film.

Original creator Grevioux, who penned all of the Underworld films will be taking on the script, while Patrick Tatopoulos, who directed the same, will be stepping in to direct. Production is set to begin this July, but there hasn’t been any rumblings as to who could play the gigantic green detective. Our choice? Tony Danza Mickey Rourke.

According to Variety, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, the prolific writer-producers involved with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Star Trek and Fox’s series Fringe, have signed an exclusive three-year deal with 20th Century Fox TV. As part of the deal, which officially starts March 1, the duo will bring in show ideas, recruit writers to work with them and also create their own projects, either by themselves or with others.

According to the article, 20th Century Fox TV chairman Dana Walden couldn’t be happier with the deal. “We’ve been pursuing this deal for quite some time,” said Walden. “They would elevate any type of development. But they were very thoughtful about the kind of commitment they were making. They didn’t want to overpromise.”

As for the writer/producers themselves, they are equally as excited. “We’ve been excited about going back into TV, but wanted to wait until the feature side of our company was on its feet,” Kurtzman said.

“One of the things that drew us back to TV was the idea that we could do the kind of stories that we’re not known for in features,” said Orci. “From sci-fi to procedurals to medical genres, those are all the kind of shows that we love.”

For TV, the prolific pair are already overseeing CBS’ reboot of Hawaii Five-O, which recently got a pilot order. They are also producing a new animated version of Transformers for the Hub, the new Discovery/Hasbro joint venture that is set to replace Discovery Kids later this year. Even though they are still involved with Transformers, let’s hope their TV projects during this new deal are more like Fringe and less like Transformers.

While Adult Swim may just be a subdivision of Cartoon Network, a cable network that bases itself on mainly animated programming, they seem to be doing quite well for themselves. They’ve been able to stack the deck with highly watched syndicated shows, and outrageously funny original programming. One original show in particular is doing better than even the show creators were expecting is Robot Chicken.

The show, which is a 15-minute comedy done entirely with stop-motion animation and old MEGO dolls, was created back in 2005 by Seth Green and partner Matt Senreich. Since then, the show has grown in leaps and bounds, popularity-wise.The network has just ordered a whopping 40 new episodes (roughly two new seasons) of the show, and according to Variety, the creators are more surprised than we are.

“It’s kind of amazing,” Green said. “We never expected to do a second season, let alone a fifth and sixth. We’re really busy, but we’re still having a lot of fun making it.”

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