This is a four-minute short called Panic Attack from Uruguayan director Fede Alvarez, reportedly made for just a few hundred dollars.  He was supposedly getting calls from Hollywood producers the same day he posted it, and now he has a deal with Sam Raimi’s production company.

The deal, in the six- against seven-figure range, will see Ghost House hire a writer for the project, which is based on an idea by Alvarez. [THR via Collider]

People are comparing the deal to the arrangement Peter Jackson had to produce Neill Blomkamp’s District 9.  As for the short film that inspired the deal, there’s really not much to it.  Some giant robots attack Montevideo (that’s the capital of Uruguay, genius), and that’s pretty much it, though the visuals are impressive.  It kind of looks like if Michael Bay and JJ Abrams had a butt baby who grew up in Uruguay, and it definitely seems like it cost more than a few hundred dollars.  With seven figures, I expect a few more crotch shots and the finest record scratches money can buy.

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Spider-man director Sam Raimi is making a World of Warcraft movie, and MTV recently broke the news that Robert Rodat will be writing the script  — if this project doesn’t eventually go through at least three different writers, I’ll eat my top hat and poop some spats.  Rodat is best known for writing Saving Private Ryan (he wasn’t involved with the spinoff, Shaving Ryan’s Privates), and he also wrote The Patriot, but his family doesn’t talk about that.

“We want to be really faithful to the game,” Raimi says. “We would have our writer, Robert Rodat, really craft an original story within that world that feels like a ‘World of WarCraft’ adventure. Only obviously it’s very different ’cause it’s expanded and translated into the world of a motion picture.”

Video game movies are never good because the games rarely have a storyline, so the screenwriter basically has to write an entirely original script, all while his bosses say things like “We want to be really faithful to the game,” — you know, that thing that doesn’t have a story.  But I don’t know much about World of Warcraft, probably because I’ve had sex with women.  What I do know is that when I used to work in an office, I remember vividly some guys from IT standing around one time and one of them said, “Hey, did you guys hear about Bill?  Bill reached 20,000 nerd points (I’m paraphrasing here) over the weekend.”  Then the guys all slapped Bill on the back and shook his hand as if it were the birth of his child.  Anyway, I’m gonna have to plead ignorance on this one.  But if you wanna write up a detailed report, I can grab it when I pick up your sister in my IROC and maybe I’ll give it a look. (*pops collar on letterman jacket*)
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(an artist’s rendition of what Sam Raimi’s version will hopefully look like)

No matter how many times I get drunk and shout it at strangers, Hollywood doesn’t make nearly enough yeti movies.  Thankfully, Sam Raimi (Spider-Man, Army of Darkness) is trying to change that.

The genre maestro has signed on to produce a supernatural horror pic, based on a pitch from up-and-coming British director Corin Hardy [a music video director]. The project has been set up at Mandate, where Raimi’s Ghost House Pictures has a deal.  “Refuge” centers on a remote town terrorized by a Yeti, the mythological creature native to the mountains of the Himalayas. Hardy will direct from a script by fellow British writer Tom De Ville.

Jason Blum, Nathan Kahane and Steven Schneider will produce. Meanwhile, Blum’s Blumhouse Prods. will finance a short film with the same premise as the “Refuge” feature. The idea is to offer a teaser that can help Hardy refine his vision even as the script is being developed. [THR]

A yeti terrorizes a town, you say?  I liked this better when it was called I Hate Valentines Day.

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(The Bruce Campbell mammogram machine made preventative cancer check-ups fun and sexy.)

For the record, I hate giving superheroes cutesy nicknames like they’re my frat bros, but I gotta keep these headlines down to one line so there you go.  Anyway, Sam Raimi favorite and all-around awesome guy Bruce Campbell recently told Access Hollywood that he’ll have “a major part” in Spider-Man 4, which is set to start filming in January.  A fourth Spider-Man isn’t the best idea, but it’s hard to go wrong with more Bruce Campbell (who’s previously had cameos as a wrestling announcer, a waiter, and theater usher).  Bruce Campbell is like a cross between Robert Downey Jr. and Patrick Warburton, and I would f’ck both those guys.  Wait, what?  Who typed that?

No word yet on what role he might play, but might I suggest the obvious?  Bruce Campbell should play Bruce Campbell with an evil hand.  It would make it awesome and meta-fictional, like JCVD but less Belgian.  And with more webbing.

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After Spider-Man 3, it was nice to see Sam Raimi go back to his roots with Drag Me to Hell.  But his return to smaller films won’t last long as he’s now signed to direct World of Warcraft, perhaps the ultimate no-win project for a director.

The plan is for Raimi to supervise development of “Warcraft” and shoot the picture after he completes work on “Spider-Man 4,” which gets under way early next year.  The “Warcraft” universe [and by "universe" they mean "video game"] features an epic conflict between the Horde and the Alliance. The game has developed a global following since its launch in 1994 and shows no signs of slowing. Its most recent expansion, “Wrath of the Lich King,” sold more than 2.8 million copies in the first day of release and more than 4 million its first month. [Variety]

Something tells me the movie will be more like the wrath of suck king, amirite?  Haha, good one, Jay.  Anyway, every video game movie so far has been tremendously sucky, but this time they’ve got an unquestionably huge-name game paired with an established, respected director.  If this still ends up sucking, can we all agree that movies based on video games are a bad idea and stop attempting them forever?  Haha, of course that’ll never happen, now get off my lawn.  LIGHTNING BOLT!  LIGHTNING BOLT!

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