If you’re as addicted to Instant Netflix as the rest of us, you’re probably glued to the New Releases feed to see what the benevolent Netflix gods will bring you to enjoy from the comfort of your bed/couch every night. One company who has helped aid in their vast streaming library is Starz, which expands to original series and films that make it to their movie channels.

It looks like that deal won’t last much longer, as it’s been announced that Starz will choose to discontinue their deal with Netflix and Instant Netflix, pulling their content from the servers. Here’s the press release from Starz.

ENGLEWOOD, Colo., Sept. 1, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Starz, LLC, President and Chief Executive Officer, Chris Albrecht, issued the following statement today regarding the status of affiliation agreement renewal discussions with Netflix.

“Starz Entertainment has ended contract renewal negotiations with Netflix. When the agreement expires on February 28, 2012, Starz will cease to distribute its content on the Netflix streaming platform. This decision is a result of our strategy to protect the premium nature of our brand by preserving the appropriate pricing and packaging of our exclusive and highly valuable content.”

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In the interest of full disclosure, I have to reveal I’ve had Stephen King’s Under the Dome on my Kindle for about a year and still haven’t gotten around to reading it. Not that I think it won’t be good, it’s just that other things have come up.

Fortunately, it seems I may not ever have to bother reading the book. Why? Well, today it was announced Showtime is partnering with Steven Spielberg and Stephen King for an Under the Dome drama TV series, which will be produced by DreamWorks Television.

In case you haven’t had the time either and don’t know the story of Under the Dome, it’s a supernatural thriller which revolves around locals at a Maine vacation spot who battle one another when a force field suddenly surrounds their town and cuts them off from the rest of the world. Wasn’t that the premise of an old Twilight Zone episode? Huh.

Anyway, now that the deal appears to be done with Showtime, the search is now underway for a writer (or writers) to adapt the novel into series form. No word yet on who that may be.

However, if I may make a suggestion, I hear Frank Darabont is available. I think he would be a great choice.

Showtime, you listening?

Thought of as a pretty massive production for years, it seems that Disney is finally getting wind of the potential stack of cash it will cost to make the Gore Verbinski’s Lone Ranger and they aren’t too happy.

Back in 2008, it was announced and promoted that Johnny Depp was attached to the project as Tonto, and more recently The Social Network’s Armie Hammer was attached to play the lead role. It seems that if the film can’t get to a more reasonable budget, there may not be a Lone Ranger–at least not for a while.

From what Variety has to say, it looks like the film isn’t completely dead, just in a state of adjustment.

Despite reports that Disney has pulled the plug on the bigscreen adaptation, the pic is far from dead at the studio, sources close to the production told Variety.

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It was less than a week ago that Syfy announced its long running series Eureka would get a six episode season six order and that those six episodes would be the last for the series. Then, Syfy apparently had a change of heart and announced Eureka would not get six episodes for a final season and instead would end after this season.

Now, things have apparently changed yet again. Syfy has announced, and Deadline has confirmed, that Eureka will get one more episode after current episodes air to properly wrap up the series.

According to reports, Syfy executives called the cast to apologize for the conflicting decisions over the past week, which included a six-episode final-season order, followed by no-final-season announcement and then the additional episode pickup. Well, at least they apologized, which is nice.

Reports are that the six-episode order was overruled by the new post-merger management as the series was getting expensive after 5 seasons and has enough finished episodes. Most affected are some crew members who turned down job offers last week when Eureka was picked up for 6 more episodes only to find out later that wasn’t happening. I bet they didn’t get a call from Syfy executives.

At least the network still has other cool shows like Warehouse 13 and Alphas which, after a bit of a slow start, is getting better and better.

Johnny Depp doesn’t seem to ever want to stop. The man’s been going strong since his first appearance in Nightmare on Elm Street in 1984. Now he’s taking a slightly more controlling role in his films, as his production company, Infinitum Nihil, has been obtaining the rights and working on several new things.

They blew the lid off the roof with this year’s Rango, which grossed over $240 Million worldwide in theaters, and now they’re looking to go slightly more science fiction with an adaptation of the original comic The Vault. Here’s the scoop from THR:

Films has picked up film rights to The Vault, an Image comic book written by Sam Sarkar, an executive at Johnny Depp’sInfinitum Nihil production shingle. Depp and Nihil’s president Christi Dembrowski will produce the movie adaptation along with GK’s Graham King and Tim Headington.

Written by Sarkar and drawn by Garrie Gastonny, the underwater sci-fi story centers on a group of divers who, off the coast of Nov Scotia, uncover a sarcophagus with unusual remains and inadvertently unleash an ancient evil. Sarkar and Gastonny previously created the supernatural Western graphic novel Calberfor Radical Publishing.

The film has the potential to be a modern Indiana Jones, and could just be the perfect vehicle for Depp now that the Pirates of the Carribbean films are all over. We’ll have to see who Nihil decides to go with as a lead when the film goes into production in the coming months.

The online content streaming landscape just got a bit more interesting as Amazon announced late Thursday it has made a deal with NBCUniversal to provide 1,000 Universal Pictures movies to its streaming customers. The new content includes films such as Being John Malkovich, The Jetsons, Flipper, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Billy Elliott. Well, that’s quite a cross-section of content.

This new deal is in addition to the one Amazon recently made for it to offer CBS shows such as Star Trek and Cheers to its customers. All these deals for content make perfect sense if you think Amazon is about to release a tablet in the next few months.

It’s widely been speculated that said tablet would be coming out and give users access to the company’s Amazon Unbox, Amazon Mp3, Kindle, Cloud Music and Cloud Drive services. All of that and a well done tablet powered by Android could, potentially, take a bite out of Apple’s iPad dominance. We’ll see.

Check out the full press release after the jump.

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This one comes directly from what we like to call the “Meh” department. Sure, some people may be huge fans of the Captain Planet and the Planeteers cartoon show, believe in its positive message and think it should be made into a live action feature film. And really, that’s fine. Positive messages are good.

However, some others, and a few around The Flickcast offices, see this news as yet another in a series of developments where it just seems like Hollywood has compleely run out of ideas and is now grasping at anything that even remotely seems to have the smallest chance of being made into a film. Yes, that’s a long sentence but you get the idea.

I supoose it could have something to do with the producer of the proposed live action Captain Planet adaptation: Don Murphy. In case you’re not familiar with his work he produced, most recently, Transformers: Turn off the Dark (or whatever its called). Obviously, the fact that his last movie made a butload of cash probably has something to do with his being able to get most anything (even a Captain Planet movie) greenlit.

Says Mr. Murphy: “We are extremely excited about bringing the good captain back to life. [The Captain's] adventures are known worldwide and he is recognized across generations.”

Ah hell, what do I know? I’m sure it will turn out to be the greatest movie since, well, the last Transformers. Although, that’s not much to live up to.

Portland, OR based Oni Press is probably most well know for it Scott Pilgrim Versus the World comic series and feature film. They also have many more projects in what Hollywood likes to call “various stages of development” so that means they need a bit of help getting those set up.

Enter the William Morris Agency which has just signed Oni Press for (here’s another Hollywood term for you) “Representation in all areas.” What does that mean? Well, it means the agency will work with Oni and its sister company Closed on Mondays Entertainment to develop more Oni properties into film and television shows.

At the moment, those projects include feature film adaptations The Last Call with producer Barry Josephson, The Leading Man with producer Marc Platt, Frenemy of the State with Imagine Entertainment, The Return of King Doug starring Ben Stiller and produced by Red Hour Films and Ciudad with Joe and Anthony Russo writing and directing.

Closed on Mondays also has what’s called a “first-look deal” with CBS TV Studios to adapt Oni properties for the small screen. That means Oni takes its stuff to CBS first and if CBS decides to make it, great. If not, they can take it somewhere else. In exchange for that right, CBS pays Oni some sort of fee and more if the projhect actually goes into development, is made or ends up on the air.

As someone who’s spent some time with the guys and gals at Oni, I’m always happy when I hear they are doing well. They have some great comics and it would be nice to see more of them brought to the small or big screen.

While he’s obviously more of a household name for creating and running 3 years of Fox’s hit high school musical series Glee, before that Ryan Murphy was known as the man who created Nip/Tuck. That series, obviously very different than Glee, was his real masterpiece, bringing 100 episodes of drama, horror, and intrigue.

Now that things look to be settling down for his series on Fox, their raunchier network sister station, FX, has picked up 13 episodes of Murphy and his co-creator Brad Falchuk’s American Horror Story. THR has the scoop on the premise and who we can expect to see on the show:

From 20th Television, the mysterious drama revolves around Ben and Vivien Harmon (The Practice’s Dylan McDermott, Friday Night Lights’ Connie Britton) who move their family from Boston to a haunted San Francisco home in an attempt to rebuild their family after a miscarriage and affair.

Murphy is said to be revising the initial script to increase the role of the nosy neighbor once Jessica Lange (Grey Gardens) signed on to the project in April. Denis O’Hare (True Blood) co-stars as Larry the Burn Guy, a former resident of the haunted estate; with Frances Conroy (Six Feet Under) and Alexandra Breckenridge (Life Unexpected) both playing Moira O’Hara, a housekeeper who has worked at the home for years and appears as a young woman to Ben and an older woman to Vivien.

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Even as Netflix raises its prices and changes its plans, networks are continuing to make new deals with the service. Today, NBC/Universal announced it is re-upping its deal with Netflix and making more episodes available from programs such as 30 Rock, The Office, Parenthood and more.

Although you will see more episodes of shows on Netflix for streaming, you still won’t be able to see current season episodes for some dumb reason. Check out all the details from the official press release:

NEW YORK and LOS GATOS, Calif., July 13, 2011 — Netflix, Inc. (Nasdaq: NFLX) and NBCUniversal Domestic Television Distribution today announced a multi-year renewal of their licensing agreement expanding the selection of non-exclusive NBCU film and TV library titles available to watch instantly streaming from Netflix.

Programming under the deal includes prior-season series across multiple NBCU networks, including NBC hits “The Office,” “30 Rock” and “Parenthood.” All future seasons of these shows will be available on Netflix on a one season delay basis. Under the deal, Netflix members will also be able to enjoy prior season episodes of “Law and Order: SVU” and “The Event.”

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Okay, let’s pretend for a minute that your Johnny Depp. You’ve made quite a few movies, are respected as an actor, recognized around the world as a big star and brought Disney a boatload of money for your work as Captain Jack Sparrow in the Pirates franchise. With all that, what do you do?

If you’re Johnny Depp, it seems one of the things you do is get Disney to buy the rights to one of your favorite 70′s TV series with an eye to turning it into a feature film for you to star in. That series? Kolchak: The Night Stalker.

According to reports, Depp is a fan of the series and got Disney interested in a feature version with Depp to star as tabloid reporter Carl Kolchak, a role originally played by the awesome Darren McGavin in the TV movie and subsequent series. Could be interesting with Depp in the role.

In case you’re not familiar with the show, it centered on McGavin as Kolchak, a dogged investigative journalist with a nose for the macabre and supernatural. Even though his investigations often started out normal enough, in most cases they ended up leading him down a dark path into the world of vampires, zombies, werewolves and aliens.

The show was pretty cool, especially for its time, and is often cited by various insiders, including creator Chris Carter, as one of the main inspirations for TV’s The X-Files. I loved the show as a kid and look forward to seeing what Depp and company can do with it.

The project will soon go out to writers. More on this as is develops.

It’s kinda funny. I was just watching Rodney Dangerfield and Keith Gordon in Back to School only days ago and now, some Keith Gordon news pops up. Internets, you’re got my number.

And what interesting news it is. It seems Christopher Nolan, who’s only done this one other time with Zack Snyder’s upcoming Superman reboot Man of Steel, has decided to shepherd a project and produce a film for another director. That director? None other than keith Gordon. I know, right?

Nolan’s company, Syncopy, has reportedly set up a supernatural thriller at Warner Bros and hired Gordon to write and direct it. Nolan’s former assistant Jordan Goldberg is apparently the guy responsible for bringing the project to Nolan so he can produce with partner Emma Thomas.

The project is reportedly based on a novel who’s title has yet to be revealed. However, knowing the movies Gordon likes to do (Including A Midnight Clear and Mother Night) I would expect it to be something cool and a little weird. As a fan of Gordon’s work, I’ll be following this one closely.