It is in fashion right now to bash on remakes and reboots. That line of thinking may or may not be warranted, but you should hear none of it when talking about the upcoming Evil Dead reboot.

Of all the horror franchise that have been revived in the last decade, none more than the Evil Dead series is more malleable. The franchise has always reinvented itself with each new installment, so a new, modern reboot shouldn’t cause immediate concern.

The movie is going to begin filming in a few months and Bloody Disgusting has the scoop on the first bit of casting:

Bloody Disgusting has learned exclusively that Lily Collins (The Blind Side, Priest, Mirror Mirror) is in final negotiations to play “Mia” in FilmDistrict’s reboot aiming for release on April 12, 2013.

In this version, the story centers on five friends (David, Natalie, Eric, Olivia, and Mia) holed up at a remote cabin where they discover a Book of the Dead with a demonic force unleashed possessing each until only one is left to fight for survival.

Lily Collins is a great young actress who shined in The Blind Side and even in the otherwise horrid Priest. We don’t know which of the characters is going to be the “Ash” archetype, but rumors have bubbled up that Raimi wanted a girl to fill that role. Could that be Lily Collins’ Mia? Only time will tell.

Bryan Singer is determined to relaunch a classic show from his youth. First, he was connected with attempts to bring Star Trek back to television, and more recently he has talked about rebooting Battlestar Galactica as a feature film. Well, third time seems to be the charm as a Singer directed Munsters pilot has been ordered by NBC.

The Hollywood Reporter reports:

“[The Munsters] is billed as an imaginative reinvention of the classic comedy series as a visually spectacular one-hour drama.

Singer will executive produce alongside Bryan Fuller (Dead Like Me, Pushing Daisies), who also is writing the Universal Television-produced project.

Fuller and NBC first made an attempt to revive the 1960s CBS sitcom last year, with the network ultimately passing. His newer version is said to be an edgier and slightly darker take exploring origins of Herman and Lily Munster (originally played by Fred Gwynne and Yvonne De Carlo) and how they arrived at the famed 1313 Mockingbird Lane address.”

Singer does have good experience in the TV world, he also executive produced and directed the pilot of the hit show House. However, it is the other executive producer that inspires the most intrigue from us. Bryan Fuller’s Pushing Daises was an incredible show, packed with larger than life characters and situations. If anyone can turn The Munsters into a “visually spectacular one-hour drama,” odds are Fuller is that man.

Remakes get a bad reputation in the fan community. Mostly for good reason, but a few bad eggs like Gulliver’s Travels or The Honeymooners ruin the concept for the whole group, which is just unfortunate. These days, a few remakes are welcome with the current technological advances we have in CGI or, heaven forbid, 3D.

That’s where a remake like The Thing comes into play. Some call it a remake, others a “prequel/reboot hybrid”. All we know is that we’re getting to see some pretty badass scenes that we never got in the original from 1982. For all 8 of you who haven’t seen the original or need a refresher, here’s the premise of the film.

Taking place three days before the events of the John Carpenter film, paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) joins a Norwegian scientific team that has stumbled across a crashed extraterrestrial spaceship buried in the ice of Antarctica. They discover a creature that seems to have died in the crash eons ago.

When an experiment frees the alien from its frozen prison, Kate joins the crew’s pilot, Carter (Joel Edgerton), to keep it from killing and imitating them one at a time, using its uncanny ability to mimic any life form it absorbs through digestion, and potentially reaching civilization.

The trailer manages to keep the film’s creepy and shock-tastic tone while still looking like an intriguing science-fiction piece. Check it out after the jump and be sure to catch The Thing in theaters October 14th.

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Machinima’s Mortal Kombat: Legacy, the live action web series rebooting the epic fighting game and it’s universe, has really taken off. Each week, we’re getting more of our favorite characters broken down and retold in new and innovative ways.

Yesterday marked the brand new, fourth episode, and it’s an epic two-parter about the deadly twinsKitana and Mileena. Here’s the synopsis.

Beautiful, athletic, and trained as highly skilled assassins, Kitana and Mileena have grown up thinking that they are sisters. Shao Kahn, Emperor of the Outworld, has tricked Shang Tsung into becoming his servant for Mortal Kombat by making him clone Mileena as a Tarkatan clone of Kitana, out of Shao Kahn’s fear that Kitana wouldn’t love him enough if she ever found out the truth about her Mother and Father.

This may be the first episode where the budget was a bit obvious, as half of the story is told using a classic “storybook” style with animated imagery and a God of War-style voiceover.

Take a look at the new episode after the jump, and try not to get too angry at the cliffhanger, we only have to wait six days for the next episode.

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This is something that should be filed under “?”, as some alleged test footage of the once shelved Thundercats project out of Warner Bros has surfaced on the web and it looks….good? About a year ago, the project was announced to be dead (or at least “postponed”) due to budget constraints. A new anime-style cartoon reboot is currently in the works over at Cartoon Network, but it looks nothing like this.

Flixter first had the video, saying that it’s an official CG test from the project back when it was still in the works, and we have to admit, it doesn’t look half bad. Sure, it’s appealing to a younger crowd, with a comical, puerile Lion-O, but it’s got the action, and the animation looks quite impressive.

We’ll be pretty upset if this turns out to be a fake, but at least we know that fans everywhere are still thinking about Lion-O and his band of butt-kicking cats. Check out the footage after the jump.

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Though February is considered Black History Month, this year it seems that Hollywood is turning it into “Reboot Month”. Less than two weeks into the month, and we’ve already gotten word on a reboot for Daredevil, The Thing, Gunsmoke, Hawaii Five-0, and word that the Spider-Man reboot will be in 3-D.

It seems that Tinseltown and New Line Studios is setting their sights on another classic franchise, in National Lampoon’s Vacation. The original, which started in 1983, beget 4 sequels, including the direct-to-DVD film Christmas Vacation 2: Cousin Eddie’s Island Adventure. From Variety:

The latest project, which will no longer carry the National Lampoon credit, is being described as more of an update than a sequel and will be closer in tone to “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” than the previous chapters. Story will focus on Rusty Griswold, now a grown man, who decides to take his own wife and kids on a road trip to Wally World before it closes forever. Chase is not attached at this time to reprise his role as Clark Griswold, now a grandfather.

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To many studios and producers in Hollywood, the word “reboot” seems to have magical properties. To them, the word means “take a failed property and wash away all the bad with a new film.” It doesn’t always end that way, when the “bad” in this instance is something as bad as Ang Lee’s Hulk, and even a Robert Downey Jr. cameo can’t wash that away.

Relentlessly, studios don’t seem to care and continue to “wash away” failed films with shiny new projects. With that in mind comes news that Warner Bros. is planning a reboot of the 1995 adaptation of Mortal Kombat. The original was certainly no Street Fighter, but it’s in no way a “classic” either.

The plan is to have newcomer Oren Uziel pen the script, with no set date on production. A reboot may not be a bad idea, considering the bad press that video game films got in the 90s, and how that seems to be changing lately with the Resident Evil and Tomb Raider films doing well financially.

The question now is “What ever happened to the third Mortal Kombat film that was set to begin production last September?” The film was originally rumored to be a reboot, with cartoon writer Sean Catherine Derek writing the script.

No word on whether that film fell apart or not, but with the recent news of Warner’s involvement, you can believe that the original project is dead.

Coming directly from the “that didn’t take long” department comes word that Sony has already confirmed a new director for its next Spider-Man film and that person is (500) Days of Summer helmer Marc Webb. Representatives of Columbia Pictures and Marvel Studios made a joint announcement today regarding the decision.

In a joint statement by Amy Pascal, co-chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment, and Matt Tolmach, president of Columbia Pictures, the studio highlighted what went into the decision: “At its core, Spider-Man is a small, intimate human story about an everyday teenager that takes place in an epic super-human world. The key for us as we sought a new director was to identify filmmakers who could give sharp focus to Peter Parker’s life.”

“We wanted someone who could capture the awe of being in Peter’s shoes so the audience could experience his sense of discovery while giving real heart to the emotion, anxiety, and recklessness of that age and coupling all of that with the adrenaline of Spider-Man’s adventure,” continued the statement. “We believe Marc Webb is the perfect choice to bring us on that journey.”

Let’s hope so.

With lots of new and wacky things going on over at Marvel right now, there was one somewhat bizarre decision that was actually made before Mickey Mouse got his paws in the door. That  decision was to reboot Fantastic Four a mere 4 years after the first film hit theaters.

The plan is for Fox to reboot the franchise with all new actors and probably a new origin story for theaters in 2013. What do the first set of actors have to say about their roles being wiped from continuity? Well, Joblo.com recently got a chance to talk to Chris Evans, the first Human Torch, and he didn’t seem very happy about the idea.

“I don’t think I’m going to be involved with it. I’d imagine the reboot, it would be a reboot. I think they’re going to start from scratch. And that’s the way those movies…it seems like sometimes they happen quicker than others, you know. BATMAN, there was a big chunk of time, but the new BATMAN movies are fantastic.

SUPERMAN, you know, THE INCREDIBLE HULK — sometimes there’s a big gap and sometimes there’s a small gap. If there’s room to reinvent a franchise in a different tone and they can make a good film out of it, then so be it. I have nothing negative to say about it.”

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Its reboot and remake week here at The Flickcast and this time around we’ve got another one for you. According to a report at IESB, director, writer, producer, editor and steadicam operator Robert Rodriguez announced plans today that he will be helming a re-boot of the Predator franchise called Predators.

Rodriguez made the announcement at a press conference in Texas for the signing of a new bill to help bring more film production into the state. Here’s the multi-talented hyphenate’s own words on the subject, as quoted in the article:

“I’m going to be able to shoot my upcoming Machete here, a sci-fi action film called Nervewrackers, a re-boot of the Predator series called Predators, and a couple of smaller movies called Sin City 2 and The Jetsons.”

So, it seems there’s going to be a lot of production going in in the Lone Star State in the coming months and years. Maybe its time to consider that move to Austin I’ve been thinking about? Of course the real question is do we actually need a reboot of the Predator franchise?

Update: There’s new information surfacing today from ERC that there is, in fact, a new Predator movie in the works but Robert Rodriguez has not taken on the role of writer/director — at least not yet. Instead, he’s producing the film and Fox has already given it a release data: July 7, 2010. Be careful what you wish for.