It may seem like an odd choice for a company famous for its books with all the pictures, but Marvel has announced they will be taking their most famous superhero creations and putting them into a brand new format: prose novels. The first of these novels will tell the story of Civil War, Marvel’s “event” from a few years back.

From the official press release:

“Releasing our most acclaimed graphic novels as prose fiction not only allows us to reach a different audience with these stories, but also gives us a chance to bring those readers back to the comics that started it all,” said David Gabriel, Senior Vice President of Sales, Marvel Entertainment.

“Civil War is easily our best-selling graphic novel of the past decade and certainly one of the most influential in recent memory, so it was the perfect launch title for this new line. Not only will you get all the action that Mark Millar and Steve McNiven delivered in comic form but no fan will want to miss the new wrinkles we’ve added in this novel. ”

Well then, there you go. You really can’t blame Marvel for trying to find a way to make more money off of its comic book properties. After all, the comic book business is not doing that well and they already have these stories just sitting there so, why not?

Anyone got a problem with it? Sound off in the comments.

With Comic-Con in San Diego kicking off today the announcements of new and exciting projects are going to start coming fast and furious. Sadly, there won’t be anything about Vin Diesel — at least in this case. See what we did there?

Instead, this particular announcement concerns a different star (well two, actually): Director Guillermo del Toro and Dark Horse Comic. That’s right, del Toro is teaming up with Dark Horse Comics to bring his horror novel The Strain to the pages of a comic series.

Written in conjunction with novelist Chuck Hogan, the novel concerns a mysterious airplane that lands at JFK Airport and then goes dark on the runway. The Center for Disease Control, fearing a terrorist attack, calls in Dr. Ephraim Goodweather and his team of expert biological-threat first responders.

However, he isn’t the one able to really solve the mystery. Instead, an elderly pawnbroker from Spanish Harlem, who suspects a darker purpose behind the event, realizes an ancient threat intent on covering mankind in darkness is responsible.

Adapted by writer David Lapham (Stray Bullets, Kull), with art by Mike Huddleston (MK Ultra), the first issue arrives in stores on December 14.

Even as those of us here in the US celebrate our independence day, our friends across the pond are hard at work still bringing the news. One awesome bit that’s surfaced today are the first set photos from the eagerly anticipated film World War Z.

The Daily Mail has a bunch of photos from the Malta set, dressed to look like an Israeli border checkpoint, featuring the film’s star Brad Pitt and the first glimpse of the evil zombie hordes that will menace him, and the world, during the film.

In the film, Pitt will play the author of the World War Z book Max Brooks, and tell the story of his exploits collecting the stories and experiences of those who have survived the human victory over the zombie hordes, also known as World War Z.

Even though we seem to be getting a lot more zombie stories these days, the fact that this book is finally getting the big screen treatment is welcome news. Love the book and can’t wait to see the film. For more, you can check out my interview with the real Max Brooks over at ComicMix.

Click through to check out all the pics. The Marc Forster-directed World War Z is expected sometime next year.

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Normally, when a new trailer for a film comes out we try to give you some context for it and explain a little about what’s going on in it and with the film. We also tend to go on a little about the actors in a particular film or how much we like the director or his/her previous films.

On occasion, we also try to piece together the film’s story from images or scenes in a trailer — which isn’t always easy. Although, with trailer these days it often is. They tend to give away too much. Take the new trailer for Eat, Pray, Love for instance.

In it, Julia Roberts travels from place to place eating, loving and occasionally praying. Well, I might have made up that last one. She definitely eats and loves. . . a lot.

Anyway, check out the new trailer for the film after the jump. Eat, Pray, Love is based on the novel of the same name and also features James Franco, Billy Crudup and Javier Bardem. It hits theaters later this year.

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Yes, you read that headline correctly. With at least one costly yet tepid mini-series and a decent, if somewhat misguided, feature film already out there based on Frank Herbert’s classic novel Dune, it looks like producer Kevin Misher and director Peter Berg are giving a big screen version of the novel another go. According to an interview over at io9, Misher confirmed that he and Berg are indeed working on a script for a “reboot” of the Dune franchise and expect to deliver said script shortly.

According to Misher in the article, Dune is “one of my favorite books of all time, and I made a movie with Pete (Berg) called The Rundown. . . so we decided to get back together. Pete had loved the book as well. It’s a great opportunity for us.” As for the progress they’ve made so far, Misher said: “We’re working on the script right now. We’re going to turn it in shortly. The script is coming in, we’re hoping to get a green light shortly.”

So, apparently all systems are go for a reboot of the Dune franchise. However, as much as I loved the novel and would be interested in  a new, updated feature film version, I’m not sure the guy who directed Very Bad Things and Hancock and the producer who made The Interpreter and The Scorpion King are the right guys for the job.

In my world where I run the studios, I think I would assign this task to a different team. Who would I pick? How about Christopher Nolan and Charles Roven or Zack Snyder and Lawrence Gordon?

I think either of those teams would do a bang up job. Peter Berg and Kevin Misher? I guess we’ll see.