Several outlets are reporting today that director Doug Liman will be directing the adaptation of a popular Japanese anime novel by Hiroshi Sakurazaka.

All You Need Is Kill was released in the states last year, and is about an alien invasion in which the protagonist sets off to battle, and dies.

He is reborn every morning to fight another day, only to perish again.  A female soldier named Bitch of War makes an appearance as well. The book is referred to as being video-game inspired.

Chances are, you are familiar with Liman’s work. He has directed Swingers, The Bourne Identity, and Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

His latest movie Fair Game stars Naomi Watts and Sean Penn and will be hitting theaters November 19.  The movie tells the politically charged story about Valerie Plame who was outed by the White House staff as being a CIA operative.

So far, Liman has been able to smoothly transition from one genre to another, which makes us excited to see what he can do with this.

USA Networks’ new series Covert Affairs doesn’t premiere until July 13, but The Flickcast was invited to Toronto to check out the set and talk to some of the cast.  There’s too much content to put in one post so we thought it was best to break this up over several articles.  Getting things started is this interview with Covert Affairs Executive Producer Doug Liman.

Even if you haven’t heard of Liman but are into the spy genre there’s a high probability you’ve seen one of his films.  Liman directed the first of the Bourne trilogy films and produced the other two.  He also produced Mr. and Mrs. Smith and is currently working on Fair Game; the true story of CIA spy Valerie Plame Wilson whose identity was revealed by the White House to allegedly discredit her husband.

With all that on Liman’s film resume it’s no surprise he was drawn to a TV series about spies.  Ultimately, however, it was working on Fair Game that became the driving force behind Covert Affairs. According to Liman:

“…in doing the research for Fair Game, we got access to a lot of current and former covert officers with the CIA. And most of the material that we were learning about had no place in the movie, unless I wanted the movie to be 10 hours long. And so we had this huge treasure trove of just sort of cool factoids.

And you know, that stuff is, you know, it was just like the perfect timing to be developing a TV show in the same arena at the same time, because we’ve just taken all the research that, you know, wasn’t appropriate for Fair Game and just channeled it right into Covert Affairs.”

While at their core Covert Affairs and Fair Game are about the CIA both spin the material in completely different directions. While Covert Affairs plays to the strengths of the CIA and what they do to protect the nation, Fair Game definitely represents the Agency in a moment of weakness.

This distinction was not lost on Liman as he explained the differences:

It looks like Fox’s long in development reboot of the classic Sci-Fi film Fantastic Voyage may be closer to getting a director attached. According to THR, Paul Greengrass, late of the Matt Damon starrer Green Zone and United 93, is in talks to take on the project.

The pic, which is being produced by James Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment, tells the story of a team of scientists who are shrunk to atomic size and sent on a minature submarine to save the life of a defecting Soviet scientist who holds the key to stabilizing the shrinking process. Once inside the scientist, the team struggles to perform surgery to save the man’s life and also must battle to save themselves from his body’s defensises and a traitor in their midst.

The reboot will reportedly stick close to the original story and will, of course, up the ante with state of the art visual effects as well as eventual delivery in 3D. Color me surprised about that last development. Gotta say I’m a fan of Greengrass’s work so him taking on a reboot of Fantastic Voyage is not the worst thing that could happen.

No word yet on a start date or potential casting for the film (especially who’s taking on the roles made famous by Raquel Welch and Donald Pleasence) but when their is, we’ll bring it to you.