– Peter Berg’s “Battleship” will begin principal photography on August 16th in Baton Rouge (how Hollywood loves New Orleans’ tax incentives). Taylor Kitsch will play the lead.
–Vincenzo Natali, the fringe horror director behind “Cube” and the upcoming “Splice,” is apparently a big fan of “Swamp Thing.” Joel Silver is attached to produce a 3D movie of the cult comic character, and Natali nerded out with MTV about Alan Moore‘s ’80s reinvention of the mythos. No filmmaker is attached to the project, which previously saw big screen immortality in Wes Craven‘s “Swamp Thing,” the beginning of a downward slope of multimedia adaptations for the ecologically-themed antihero.
-“Ong Bak 2 “and its production troubles may have driven Tony Jaa into the wild, but he has returned with a vengeance in “Ong Bak 3.” The new trailer paints the film, a direct continuation from the second installment, as essentially being a Muay Thai version of “The Crow” but with more elephants. Jaa’s public meltdown, which led to his being replaced in the director’s chair, was the highlight of the second film’s production, but he’s once again directing solo, and Thai audiences get to see how many new ways Jaa has found to elbow someone on May 5th.
