It was 2009 when we first heard about Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, a film starring Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton, whose plot you can guess from the title. If it was a Michael Bay or Paul WS Anderson production I’d say it sounded like the worst thing ever (and Michael Bay did indeed want to make a gritty Hansel and Gretel movie at one point), but when it’s Will Ferrel and Adam McKay’s production company Gary Sanchez producing a film by Tommy Wirkola (of Død Snø fame), you hope that it’s well-directed satire. Of course, Hollywood has a way of turning a send-up into a straightforward movie about the thing you were trying to send up (The Change-Up, Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter). You can decide whether that’s happened with Hansel after the jump. It looks slightly more tongue-in-cheek than Abe Lincoln Vamp Hunter, but not overtly comedic either, and the fact that it’s being dumped into theaters in January seems to indicate that the studio doesn’t think too highly of it. But Karl Hungus gets head butted in it, so there’s that.

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SORRY FOR PARTYYIIIINNGG BROOOOOO....

If you know anything about Hollywood, you know that if there’s one thing they LOVE, it’s “name recognition” (even if that name happens to be recognized as board game or an inanimated object). If there are two things they love, it’s name recognition AND properties that don’t cost royalties. If you can turn something like Snow White into a movie that looks like Clash of the Titans took a Rockstar enema during a Papa Roach concert, congratulations! You’re the smartest exec in town! On that note, Paramount just picked up a spec script about Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn cage fighting Affliction dragons or something.

MOTORCROSS!

The studio has picked up a spec by Andy Burg titled Huck, with Peter Chernin and Dylan Clark producing along with Matt Lopez.
The storyline is being kept under wraps, but the project is described as a re-imagining in the vein of Snow White and the Huntsman, focusing on Sawyer and Finn as adults. There also are supernatural elements to the script.
Lopez is a screenwriter whose credits include Bedtime Stories and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. [THR]

So, how do you think this compares to Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday teaming up to stop a powerful shaman, or Edgar Allen Poe helping detectives stop a serial killer, or Abraham Lincoln hunting vampires? Will Tom and Huck team up to stop a serial killer? A gang of eco-terrorists? Are they out for revenge against the man who molested N-word Jim? Or maybe they won’t team up at all, maybe Huck Finn has to infiltrate Tom Sawyer’s street bike gang a la Fast Furious/Point Break, but before long he finds that he’s IN TOO DEEP with a crime lord’s sexy ethnic daughter! Ooh! Ooh! Or maybe a powerful warlock has opened a portal to hell, and demons have kidnapped Tom’s daughter, but he needs Huck’s raft to carry him down the river Styx to save her! But the only problem is that Huck’s retired, seen too much, he says. But then one day Tom shows up at his house and he’s like, “They told me you’re the best.” Ooh, or Dane Cook could play “Good Luck Huck,” and Jessica Alba would be Tom’s slutty aunt B-Cups. THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS!

Black Swan, Darren Aronofsky’s elegant farthouse feature about lesbo scissoring, made $315 million on a $12 million budget, so he’s earned himself the right to at least one esoteric period piece set in the world of renaissance calligraphy or whatever. Which is why studios were so delighted to have him onboard for Wolverine 2, a loser of an unwanted sequel for which they’d normally have to hire Joe Johnston or Stephen Sommers.  But no one really expected him to direct that.  Surprisingly though, the story he’s pitching now is perhaps the only kind more industry-trends approved than an unnecessary sequel of a second-tier comic book movie. It’s an epic adaptation (a “reimagination”, in dipsh*t insider parlance) of a royalty-free fairy tale.  Noah’s Ark, to be exact.

I’m told that town is tantalized by a package circulating with Darren Aronofsky directing. Noah, an edgy…

HE SAID THE SECRET WORD! HE SAID THE SECRET WORD!  (*turns on siren, runs around room with arms above head*)

…re-telling of the Noah’s Ark story. Aronofsky wrote a script that is getting a rewrite by John Logan [Rango, The Aviator, The Last Samurai, Gladiator, Any Given Sunday]. I’ve heard he wants $130 million [a huge budget -- Iron Man's reported production budget was $140m -Ed] to make it and that New Regency is eyeing a co-financing role.  It was described to me as a big fantasy epic, and an opportunity for Aronofsky to create a world. He’s very passionate about it and wants to make it [his ] next film. His move toward Noah comes after Aronofsky recently flirted with Exodus, the 20th Century Fox and Chernin Entertainment-produced telling of the story of Moses, his defiance of the Pharoah and delivery of the Hebrews from enslavement. [Deadline]

So, he was barely finished flirting with Exodus and already he’s tantalizing the whole town with his circulating (helicoptering?) package? Darren Aronosky sounds like a real slut.  But I’m excited for an Aronofsky-directed Noah’s Ark story.  Probably because of the image I get of Mickey Rourke giving his “I’m a broken down piece of meat” speech to a family of giraffes.

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Ever wonder what a Papa Roach cover of “Under the Sea” might sound like?  You may still find out, now that Sony is moving forward with a reimagining of The Little Mermaid.  If you guessed that this reimagining involves making the source dark™er and more gritty^®, congratulations, you’ve read a Hollywood trade before.  It’s funny, it doesn’t seem like making something dark and gritty would take much imagining at all, let alone RE-imagining.

Incidentally, Firefox spellcheck still doesn’t recognize the word “reimagining.”  I envy you, Firefox, I really do.

Hans Christian Andersens’ The Little Mermaid is the latest fairy tale to follow into the studios thirst for reimaginings*. [How do you "follow into" a "thirst"?  Oh nevermind. -Ed]
Sony has picked up Mermaid: A Twist on the Classic Tale, a book by Carolyn Turgeon, for Country Strong filmmaker Shana Feste to write and direct [yes, the woman who tried to make Gwyneth Paltrow a country singer. -Ed]. Tobey Maguire and Jenno Topping, who worked with Feste on Country Strong, are producing.
The story gets its point of view shifted and the tone is definitely not Disney. It centers on a princess who, in order to save her ravaged kingdom, sets out on a dangerous journey to marry the prince of her rival kingdom, not knowing that a beautiful mermaid has fallen for the same man and has sacrificed everything to be with him. [HollywoodReporter]

At least it’s based on a book.  Usually producers of dark reimaginings of fairy tales aren’t into books, because the covers clash with their graphic t-shirts of energy drinks.  Wait, did you say one of the producers was Tobey Maguire?  Why, this doesn’t sound like a Tobey Maguire project at all.  He’s such a nice boy.  In fact, I suspect this might be the work of… EMO TOBEY MAGUIRE!

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