And despite rumors that Josh Hartnett would play Thor’s nemesis Loki, the role has gone to another unknown, Tom Hiddleston.  Hiddleston, who initially screen-tested for Thor, is a British actor who has yet to make one American movie.

The comic books followed mild-mannered med student named Donald Blake, who discovered that he was actually the titular Norse god, complete with the Viking helmet and giant hammer.

Aside from the stand-alone movie, which recently pushed its release date back from July 2010 to May 2011, Thor will also be part of the superhero team in The Avengers (along with Iron Man, Captain America, and possibly the Incredible Hulk), which is scheduled to open in May 2012.

Mirage also produced 2007’s computer-animated TMNT movie.  It was a relative success, making more than $50 million, but it left them wondering whether they should make a direct sequel or go for a different type of reboot.

Producer Scott Mednick says the movie will draw from the original set of Ninja Turtle comic books by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, and that it may use “face replacement technology” — hinting that the turtles would be guys in costumes (as in the three 1990-1993 movies) but with CGI faces.  (I believe a similar thing was done with the upcoming Where the Wild Things Are).

Meanwhile, of course, Fox News’ sibling company Twentieth-Century Fox and parent company News Corp were in major damage control over the leak — which could conceivably cost the studio millions in lost box office revenue — and had declared they were working with the FBI to find the source of the leak and prosecute the offender to the fullest extent of the law.  And here was some shmuck from inside their ranks advocating to go watch it.

Twentieth-Century Fox responded swiftly with this statement:

We’ve just been made aware that Roger Friedman, a freelance columnist who writes Fox 411 on Foxnews.com - an entirely separate company from 20th Century Fox - watched on the internet and reviewed a stolen and unfinished version of X-Men Orgins: Wolverine. This behavior is reprehensible and we condemn this act categorically - whether the review is good or bad.

While News Corp also weighed in:

Roger Friedman’s views in no way reflect the views of News Corporation. We, along with 20th Century Fox Film Corporation, have been a consistent leader in the fight against piracy and have zero tolerance for any action that encourages and promotes piracy. Once we learned of Roger Friedman’s post we asked Fox News to remove it, which they did immediately.

It was a no-brainer that Friedman, who must either be completely oblivious or have a really mistaken sense of job security (probably both), had to be fired.  According to Deadline Hollywood Daily, Fox News overseer Roger Ailes fired Friedman, which was followed up on Sunday with another statement from News Corp:

Roger Friedman’s views in no way reflect the views of News Corporation. We, along with 20th Century Fox Film Corporation, have been a consistent leader in the fight against piracy and have zero tolerance for any action that encourages and promotes piracy. When we advised Fox News of the facts they took immediate action, removed the post, and promptly terminated Mr. Friedman.

However, in this morning’s Variety article about the situation, they state that on Sunday afternoon, Friedman told them he hadn’t been fired yet, and a Fox News spokesperson called it “an internal matter that we’re not prepared to discuss at this time.”

That most likely means that News Corp is pressing Fox News to fire Friedman but some of the Fox News higher-ups are fighting back because Friedman’s column is popular.  If he ends up staying on, it will be an enormous slap in the face to Twentieth-Century Fox and an embarrassment to News Corp in general.

The latest news on that front is that Australian visual effects company Rising Sun Pictures — whose logo appears in a caption a few minutes into the leaked copy — has denied being the source of the leak, claiming that “neither Rising Sun Pictures or [sic] its staff members have ever been in possession of a full-length version, so it would have been impossible for the movie to have been leaked from here.”

A day earlier, Fox sent out an official statement about the leak to news outlets:

Last night, a stolen, incomplete and early version of X-Men Origins: Wolverine was posted illegally on websites. It was without many effects and had missing scenes and temporary sound and music. We immediately contacted the appropriate legal authorities and had it removed. We forensically mark our content so we can identify sources that make it available or download it. The source of the initial leak and any subsequent postings will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law - the courts have handed down significant criminal sentences for such acts and the last person who committed such a crime is still in jail. The FBI and the MPAA also are actively investigating this crime. We are encouraged by the support of fansites condemning piracy and this illegal posting and pointing out that such theft undermines the enormous efforts of the filmmakers and actors, and above all, hurts the fans of the film.

Meanwhile, as the hunt goes on, the Hollywood Reporter has posted an interview with Wolverine director Gavin Hood refuting the months-old rumors of behind-the-scenes fighting with Fox head Tom Rothman over whether or not the movie was too dark.  (Random timing — taking people’s minds off the current disaster by bringing up negative press that died down a while ago?)  Anyway, Hood says:

We didn’t always agree, [but] we certainly never yelled at each other.  Some of these fan sites have really been upsetting in that way.  I have never had a stand-up argument with Tom Rothman.  Never, ever…and that is a fact.

At this point, Fox execs probably just want to sleep for the next two months and have their interns wake them up after Wolverine has left theaters.  Talk about business headaches.

Ghostbusters 3 had already been announced; Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky, writers on The Office, are currently drafting the screenplay, which would feature the original Ghostbusters crew mentoring a brand new crew.  (Rumors have abounded that the new crew would be some combination of Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, Romany Malco, Craig Robinson, Justin Long, or other actors in the Judd Apatow gang, but offers won’t start going out until the script is finished.)

This is the first real news anyone’s heard of Men in Black 3, however.  The original Men in Black was a classic, and the sequel was a disaster, so let’s hope they can regain some of the mojo they had on the first movie.

Note that just because these projects are in development doesn’t mean they’re greenlit; any hiccup along the development process (say, Will Smith deciding he doesn’t want to do another Men in Black) could potentially derail either one.

Early reports indicated that it was the final cut of the film, but trolling a few message boards will tell you that it’s a workprint with many special effects unfinished and some re-shot material also not included.

Still, it’s apparently high quality, un-watermarked, and un-timecoded, meaning whoever was responsible for the leak was somebody pretty deep into production.  Or maybe their thieving, internet-savvy fourteen-year-old son.

Either way, it’s a nightmare at Fox headquarters today.  At least if the movie opens below estimates they’ll have a really good excuse.

There’s a popular rumor going around the web that Chris Pine, a.k.a. Captain Kirk in the upcoming Star Trek movie, has been targeted to play the Green Lantern in the upcoming film slated for a Christmas 2010 release.

Martin Campbell (Casino Royale) will direct the movie for Warner Bros.  Previous casting rumors have indicated that Ryan Gosling and Sam Worthington have both turned the role down.

Branagh is a veteran of Shakespeare — he starred in and directed adaptations of Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, and Hamlet, among others — so it’s perhaps unsurprising that he’s going with actors mostly known for their serious roles.

Deadline Hollywood Daily reports that Natalie Portman is Branagh’s first choice for the female lead, while Josh Hartnett is the top candidate to play Loki, the movie’s villain.  Reportedly, Hartnett impressed Branagh back when he played the villainous Iago character in the teen Othello movie O.

This wouldn’t be Hartnett’s first flirtation with a superhero movie.  Before Bryan Singer signed onto direct Superman Returns, another Superman project was in the hands of Brett Ratner, who pursued Hartnett for the lead role.  Hartnett declined, which led to Ratner leaving the project, which lead to Singer then taking it and Ratner taking the Singer-less third X-Men film.  It’s one of Hollywood’s long and complicated what-if stories.

Back to Thor: as for the title role, Branagh is apparently looking at a lot of semi-unknowns, including Charlie Hunnam (Children of Men) and Alexandar Skarsgard (True Blood).  Don’t be surprised if you hear “officially in negotiations” stories soon.

Still promising that each movie would be set within the same “Marvel Universe” leading up to the superhero team-up flick The Avengers, Marvel pushed the release date of Thor from July 16th, 2010 to nearly one year later, on June 17th, 2011.  Captain America, which was set to be released on May 6th, 2011, has been moved to July 22nd, 2011 — one month after Thor’s release.

The Avengers will kick off the following summer with a May 4th, 2012 release date. And finally, Iron Man 2 will keep its May 7th, 2010 release date.

The shuffle was done for two reasons: first, because neither Thor (which has Kenneth Branagh attached to direct) or Captain America (which has Joe Johnston attached to direct) could be made in time for a 2010 release, and second, because Sony decided to release Spider-Man 4 on May 6th, 2011 (the former release date of Captain America).

That means summer 2011 will bring three major Marvel superheroes within a few months of each other: Spider-Man, Thor, and Captain America.

It’s unclear whether or not Spider-Man 4 will be folded into the “Marvel Universe” continuity.

Watchmen screenwriter David Hayter has written an open letter to fans of the original Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons graphic novel, begging them to see the movie again this weekend.

Please go see the movie again next weekend.

You have to understand, everyone is watching to see how the film will do in its second week. If you care about movies that have a brain, or balls, (and this film’s got both, literally), or true adaptations — And if you’re thinking of seeing it again anyway, please go back this weekend, Friday or Saturday night. Demonstrate the power of the fans, because it’ll help let the people who pay for these movies know what we’d like to see. Because if it drops off the radar after the first weekend, they will never allow a film like this to be made again.

Last weekend, Watchmen made $55 million, which was solid but on the low end of Warner Bros.’ expectations.  A good second weekend hold will make the difference between whether the film will be remembered as a hit or a disappointment.

The only problem is, audiences are wildly mixed about the flick.  Reports of walkouts have abounded (partly due, let’s be honest, to parents not realizing they’re taking their kids to a violent R-rated movie) and over eight thousand Yahoo! Movies users have given the film a lukewarm B-.

Box Office Guru predicts that the film will crumble by 60% this weekend.

Compared to other superhero films, Watchmen came in about even with the first X-Men and Fantastic Four movies, although ticket prices were significantly lower in 2000 when X-Men was released.  It didn’t, however, reach the height of Zack Snyder’s last film, 300, which also debuted in March (and with an R-rating) but to a larger $71 million gross.  (Interestingly enough, the female audience for 300 was significantly bigger than the female audience for Watchmen.)

Warner Bros. was probably wise to release the film in March, against no competition, rather than the blockbuster-filled summer months.  Iron Man wasn’t a universally known property either, but it was far more commercial (and PG-13) and kicked off last summer with a $98.6 million debut — almost double Watchmen’s.

Whether these comparisons are fair is up for debate.  Watchmen’s real test will come next weekend, when we’ll see how well it can hold up now that the built-in audience has already rushed out.

Not wanting to be outdone by its mutant rival, Star Trek also just came out with a new trailer, which you can check out below.  It’s much busier than the first version, and only gives us cursory glimpses of the supporting crew of the Enterprise.  We do get a lot more from Eric Bana’s villain Nemo, however.  If you liked the first trailer for the plot, then enjoy this one for the action:

Trek and Wolverine truly open the floodgates: afterwards, on consecutive weekends, moviegoers will be bombarded with Angels & Demons, Terminator Salvation, Up, and Land of the Lost.  And remember, new Transformers and Harry Potter movies are coming down the pipeline after all those.  If you’re not getting excited yet, you should be.

You may notice all of those guys are white — a big hint that the version of the Green Lantern appearing in the film will be Hal Jordan, and not African-American John Stewart, who appears in the current Justice League animated series.

The producers are apparently eying Anton Yelchin (who appears this summer in both Star Trek and Terminator Salvation) and trying Gosling again.

Yelchin is still not yet twenty years old.  Hirsch is twenty-three.  Heck, why not go after Freddie Highmore?  He just turned seventeen.

From THR:

[Director Zack] Snyder and writers David Hayter and Alex Tse never find a reason for those unfamiliar with the graphic novel to care about any of this nonsense. And it is nonsense. When one superhero has to take a Zen break, he does so on Mars. Of course he does…Looks like we have the first real flop of 2009.

Variety is more charitable, but its main point is just as much of a downer:

[T]he movie is ultimately undone by its own reverence; there’s simply no room for these characters and stories to breathe of their own accord, and even the most fastidiously replicated scenes can feel glib and truncated. As “Watchmen” lurches toward its apocalyptic (and slightly altered) finale, something happens that didn’t happen in the novel: Wavering in tone between seriousness and camp, and absent the cerebral tone that gave weight to some of the book’s headier ideas, the film seems to yield to the very superhero cliches it purports to subvert.

The box office remains a massive question mark: on the one hand, it’s a heavily hyped superhero movie — and on the other, most people don’t know anything about it, it’s rated R, and it’s more than two and a half hours long.  How much will bad reviews dissuade people from spending their money?

Jackson had cast doubt on his involvement in mid-January, saying “There was a huge kind of negotiation that broke down.  I don’t know. Maybe I won’t be Nick Fury…There seems to be an economic crisis in the Marvel Comics world.”  Since then, word has gotten out that Marvel also gave a drastically lower-than-normal offer to Mickey Rourke to play a villain; those negotiations are currently stalled.

But Marvel has now ponied up the money for Jackson in a long-term nine-picture deal.  That means we’re likely to see Nick Fury make appearances in Thor and Captain America as well as his expected roles in Iron Man 2 and the eventual Avengers film.

The comic follows a group of incarcerated supervillains forced by the government to do the dirty work deemed too dangerous for superheroes.  Different iterations of the group have appeared in a number of different D.C. comics lines, and its membership has been a revolving door of some of the lesser known villains in D.C.’s rogue’s gallery.

They’ve just firmed up release dates for their two major projects.  The first, Jonah Hex, which stars Josh Brolin as a Wild West bounty hunter based on the comic by John Albano, is set for an August 7th, 2010 release.

The second, The Green Lantern, will aim for a December 17th, 2010 release, making it one of the big Christmas 2010 tentpoles.

Given that Warners just gave themselves a ticking clock on these projects, expect cast information for Lantern to surface rather quickly.

Gondry is hardly an obvious choice to direct a tentpole action comedy.  A former music video director, he helmed 2004’s award-winning Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and last year’s offbeat comedy Be Kind Rewind.

The flick stars Seth Rogen, who also wrote the screenplay with Evan Goldberg, as the classic masked crimefighter.  Chow has stayed onboard to play his sidekick, Kato.

Hiring Gondry keeps the production on track to meet its targeted release date of June 25, 2010.

That means the role could go to Scarlett Johansson, who was rumored to be in the running.

As for Mickey Rourke, both Favreau and Robert Downey Jr. were quoted as saying that they’re big fans of Rourke’s and are still trying to work out a contract.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan — of Grey’s Anatomy, Watchmen, and Javier Bardem look-alike fame — is in negotiations to star in The Losers, an adaptation of the DC/Vertigo comic book.

James Vanderbilt (Zodiac) wrote the screenplay, which follows a group of black-ops commandos who barely escape a hit by their own government and set out for revenge.

I had worked for 20th Century Fox before, and I was fully under the belief that they had the potential to shut down the movie and remake it themselves out of pure spite and meanness. They’re a rough group of people … and somewhat ethically challenged.

Many producer friends of mine said…that they’re just going for money or whatever — but I was like, ‘Yeah, okay, but there’s something beyond money going on at that studio and it has to do with…Satan.’

Despite this opinion, Hayter apparently experienced no moral dilemma when he cashed the checks Fox gave him to co-write the first two X-Men movies.

In other Watchmen news, the total running time of the theatrical version will clock in at two hours and thirty-six minutes, the eventual Director’s Cut DVD will be three hours and ten minutes, and the “ultimate Watchmen experience DVD”, which splices in the companion story Tales of the Black Freighter, will run three hours and twenty-five minutes…the latter two of which succeed in making the theatrical version seem downright short by comparison.

Things haven’t gotten any better, it seems.  New York Magazine quoted Rourke as saying “right now, we’re not doing Iron Man 2.”

Which means negotiations fell apart — or at least are looking very bleak as of now.  Which means Marvel isn’t easing up on their imposed budgetary restrictions.  Frugality is necessary in these times, but only when you know when to spend and when to save — and right now, it looks like they’re hurting the project more than they’re helping their bottom line.

Hey Fox, let’s officially release these three TV spots ASAP, okay?

The move was rather shrewd because Fox, as part of their settlement with Warner Bros. from the Watchmen lawsuit, gets a percentage of Watchmen’s gross, giving them no reason to try to open their own movie that weekend.  Plus, with Confessions of a Shopaholic and He’s Just Not That Into You both doing well, the studio had a hunch that its potential female audience would be out of the moviegoing mood by the time March 6th rolled around.

In other release date news, Paramount basically gave up on its Wayans Brothers spoof movie Dance Flick by moving it to May 22nd — opposite titans Terminator Salvation and Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian.

The second of three 60-second previews for X-Men Origins: Wolverine, called “Brothers”, debuted last night on Fox and this time focused on Wolverine’s relationship with Sabertooth (Liev Schreiber) and his time in the army.  We also get glimpses of Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool and Lynn Collins as Silver Fox.

They took the first preview down from YouTube and are rapidly taking down all copies of the second, but you can follow the breadcrumbs here or here.

If you’d rather just watch tonight’s third preview on TV and not hunt around for it the next day, it’ll be shown at some point during American Idol.

Or you could just watch them on the Internet the next day, like you’re doing right now.  This first video, called “Outcasts”, focuses on Wolverine’s childhood.  I always liked not knowing his history — I thought that was kind of the point of his character — but the movie seems to be taking its origin story straight from the Marvel comics canon, so it gets points for that.  Check it out:

Yep, the cool action figure with stretchable arms is going to be a live-action film hero.  Think Fantastic Four meets Inspector Gadget.

The prolific but inconsistent Steve Oedekerk (The Nutty Professor, Jimmy Neutron, Kung Pow) has been hired to write the screenplay, which will be a superhero action comedy.

First up is an “exclusive” series of three sixty-second trailers for the movie airing on Fox from February 15-17.  If you watch Family Guy, House, and American Idol, you’ll see them all.  (Do any of those shows really need the ratings boost?)

More excitingly — because you get to see them now — are three new still photos from the movie, featuring young Logan (Kodi Smit-McPhee), Gambit (Taylor Kitsch), and a cool Wolverine vs. Sabertooth claw-off.  Click on each one below for a better look:

Fans might notice that the first picture confirms that Wolverine had claws long before he signed up for Stryker’s adamantium skeleton.

Adams will play a woman traveling to Dublin to propose to her boyfriend on February 29th.  When her flight gets canceled due to the weather, she enlists a cynical Irish innkeeper to drive her cross-country.

Since the project enlisted the talents of Adams and Goode, I’m going to go ahead and assume it’s actually a much better script than that synopsis makes it sound.

Adams next appears in this spring’s Sunshine Cleaning, while Goode stars as Ozymandias in Watchmen, out three weeks from today.

Variety describes it as “a contemporary sci-fi actioner set within the architecture of the mind.”  So in other words, we don’t know much about it.

Between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, Nolan made The Prestige, so it’s not entirely surprising that he wants to take a Batman break again.  But even with The Prestige, Nolan was able to get The Dark Knight out three years after Begins, which is unlikely to happen again.  The Variety article mentions that Warner Bros. hopes to get Inception out by summer 2010 — which would realistically position a third Bat movie for a release no earlier than summer 2012.

And that’s if Nolan decides to do it at all.

Still, this is exciting news, since Nolan’s non-Batman movies (which include Memento and Insomnia) have all been terrific in their own right.

The story, based on the graphic novel series by Rob Liefeld, follows a superhero team working for the U.S. government.

It’ll be Ratner’s second superhero movie after the fanboy-despised X-Men: The Last Stand.  Ratner also helmed all three Rush Hour movies.

They’ve just hired Martin Campbell, the director of Casino Royale and the upcoming Mel Gibson vehicle Edge of Darkness.  There’s still no word yet on which version of the Green Lantern, and which version of the Green Lantern’s mythology, the movie will use.

Warners attempts last year to move forward on a Superman Returns sequel or a Justice League movie both faltered, which might be why they’ve turned their sites to smaller-profile heroes — especially since Iron Man proved one could be enormously successful when executed correctly.  They’re also making DC’s Jonah Hex, with Josh Brolin set to star as the titular disfigured gunslinger.

He-Man is coming back.

Warner Bros. and producer Joel Silver (The Matrix movies) have hired Kung Fu Panda’s John Stevenson to direct a remake of Masters of the Universe as his first live-action gig.

The original 1987 Masters was based on the popular mid-80s Saturday morning cartoon He Man and the Masters of the Universe, and starred Dolph Lundgren as He-Man and Frank Langella — currently an Oscar nominee for his portrayal of Richard Nixon — as the evil Skeletor.  Courtney Cox also co-starred.

If Stevenson can choreograph live-action fight scenes as well as he can choreograph animated ones, this will be something to see.

The latest news — perhaps leaked on purpose to give the film some good press — is that Adam Sandler is set to make a cameo in the film playing a “surprise” superhero.  Sandler and Rogen already know each other well: they just co-starred in Judd Apatow’s latest directorial effort, Funny People, which comes out this July.

However, this new tidbit of news actually comes from producer Michael Uslan, so consider it as close to “official” as we’re going to get.  In an interview with the Courier Post, he let slide the following:

Uslan will be onboard as executive producer for the “Dark Knight” sequel, which he estimates will be theaters by 2011. As for the identity of the next round of Batman’s supervillains and love interests, Uslan remains tight-lipped. “It’s one of those deals where if I told you, I’d have to kill you,” he says with a chuckle.

A 2011 release would follow the three-year pattern established in between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, but that’s if everything goes well.  The only other thing we know is that director Christopher Nolan has been quietly developing ideas for the script, and if he decides he’d rather do another movie during the break — like he did with The Prestige in 2006 — that could push a new Batman movie back to 2012.

As for the villains, with the Scarecrow, Ra’s al Ghul, the Joker, and Two-Face already down, there’s still plenty of room for the Riddler, the Penguin, Catwoman, Poison Ivy, and Mr. Freeze, not to mention slightly less-well-known characters like Clayface or Bane.

The big question remains what Nolan will do with the Joker, who’s still very much alive at the end of The Dark Knight.  With Rachel dead, there’s an opening for Catwoman to appear as a new love interest/villain, although I’d also love to see a Nolan version of Harley Quinn or the Riddler.

Despite already coming out on DVD and Blu-Ray, The Dark Knight returns today to 143 IMAX theaters here in the U.S. and 29 more abroad in the wake of its eight Oscar nominations.

This has been the plan ever since Warner Bros. realized Knight would be a major Oscar contender.  (It would’ve helped if it had actually been nominated for Best Picture, Director, or Screenplay like it should have been, but I digress.)  With a little luck, the film might now pass the $1 billion mark worldwide (its total currently sits at $997 million), becoming only the fourth film to ever do that after Titanic, the third Lord of the Rings, and the second Pirates of the Caribbean.

So why should you pony up the money for a trip to an IMAX screen when you can sit at home and watch it on your fancy widescreen TV and your fancy Blu-Ray player?  Because IMAX is HUGE.  And six sequences in the movie were specifically shot with IMAX cameras — the first major motion picture to do so.  In other words, that’s where it’s meant to be seen.  I saw it on an IMAX and ended up calling it the best movie of 2008.

This press release features all the locations at which you can see it.

Apparently Marvel Studios is feeling the pinch, however, and the reports don’t sound good.  When Iron Man 2 was still not yet a go-ahead, they tried to sign director Jon Favreau back on for less money.  Then they fired Terrence Howard, partly because they overpaid him the first time.  Then came word last week that Samuel L. Jackson might not return as Nick Fury because they said no to his asking price.

The latest news, from Variety, is that they’re offering Mickey Rourke a piddling $250,000 to play the Crimson Dynamo, the main villain in the film.  Yes, some movie stars may be overpaid, but Rourke isn’t, and $250,000 is drastically low for a film that’s guaranteed to make $100 million in its opening weekend alone.  So low, in fact, that it’s cast doubt to whether Rourke will sign on at all.

C’mon, Marvel!  We know you don’t have any movies coming out this year, but you’ve got a guaranteed blockbuster on your hands for 2010!  Don’t screw it up!

We’re no experts — okay, we are, but strictly in a “beat all our friends in the annual Oscar pool because we read Oscar blogs” kind of way — but the Best Picture category is going to look something like this:

Slumdog Millionaire — the frontrunner.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button — the big-budget competitor.

Frost/Nixon and Milk — the two political movies with great performances.

The Dark Knight — the phenomenon that can’t be ignored.

Those are looking to be the top five, despite cries from critics everywhere that Wall-E should be seriously considered.  (It won’t be, but it will win the Best Animated Feature category.)  The biggest likely spoiler — possibly stealing The Dark Knight’s spot — is Doubt.

Since it’s always a bad idea to underestimate Clint Eastwood, I should also mention that Gran Torino is the dark horse/wild card.

And yes, Heath Ledger will be nominated for The Dark Knight, and is currently the frontrunner to win.

-Gross participation between 5% and 8.5%, depending on Watchmen’s overall performance at the box office.
-Future gross participation rights to any future Watchmen-related properties, including prequels, sequels and spinoffs (god forbid).
-An upfront payment in the $5-$10 million range, which will cover Fox’s costs while previously trying to develop a Watchmen movie, as well as the cost of the legal fees in the studio’s suit against Warner Bros.
-Other conciliatory favors from Warner Bros. that haven’t been officially announced as of yet, but are rumored to include moving Terminator Salvation from its original release date of May 22nd, 2009, in order to open up the box office for Fox-owned movies like Night at the Museum 2.
-Attempting to get certain Fox movies that in some way conflict with Warner Bros. contracts greenlit, including the comedy movie Date Night, which Fox wants Steve Carell and Tina Fey to star in.

An upfront payment of $5-$10 million isn’t that huge.  But 5-8.5% of the gross could turn out to be huge.  If the movie makes $200 million worldwide — and it could make that in the U.S. alone — that’s another $10 million dollars if Fox gets 5%.

The “conciliatory favors” shouldn’t be underestimated, either.  Moving Terminator Salvation away from the Night at the Museum sequel’s opening weekend could be another $10 million net worth or more.

Meanwhile, now that the March 6th release date will stand, Warner Bros. has revamped the Watchmen website and released a new TV spot:

“A lot of the DC movies at Warner Bros. are all on hold while they figure out, they’re going to come up with some new plan, methodology, things like that so everything has just been pressed pause on at the moment,” says Goyer.  “It was the double header of both Iron Man and The Dark Knight coming out, so more than ever I think they’ve realized…I think DC was responsible for 15% of Warner Bros.’s revenue this year, something crazy like that, so they realized that comic books, it’s become a new genre, one of the most successful genres.”

This hold includes his own DC projects The Flash and Super Max.  Another superhero project Goyer is attached to write and direct that is on hold for much different reasons is X-Men Origins: Magneto.  Previously scheduled for release in 2010, Twentieth-Century Fox recently shelved the film pending the success of the upcoming X-Men Origins: Wolverine film starring Hugh Jackman scheduled to hit theaters May 1st.

Despite the tremendous success of The Dark Knight, Warner Bros. has had little success with some of DC’s other superhero staples.  Superman Returns was unable to recoup its $270 million budget at the North American box office and other high-profile titles like Wonder Woman have long been gestating.  For DC Comics to share in the overall success that Marvel Comics has had, it might be best for them to rethink their strategy for upcoming films.

Warners is particularly desperate because they’ve already lost the first round: on Christmas Eve, a judge declared that Fox has “at the very least” the right to distribute Watchmen.

Fanboys have been crying foul since the lawsuit began, saying it’s a case of sour grapes: Fox didn’t bother telling Warners they owned the rights to Watchmen until after filming was finished and the first trailer had been well-received when it was attached to The Dark Knight this summer.

Fox currently has the upper hand, but the release date could still hold if Warner Bros. hands out a massive settlement (tens of millions of dollars at minimum), which is probably what Fox was gunning for in the first place.

On a lighter note, Warners continues to pour money into Watchmen advertising, which now includes a series of soon-to-debut viral websites.  Check out the first one at TheNewFrontiersman.net, the site of a fictional newspaper that appears in the Watchmen graphic novel.

So the advance word on the highly hush-hush opening of Iron Man 2 is flying as fast and furious as the early jet boot tests.  You remember those, right?  Funniest parts of the movie.  But anyway, there’s plenty of interesting news and character bits going on with this one, which just goes to prove that in Hollywood these days, there’s really no such thing as hush-hush.

First off, advance word is that Downey will be coming back to handle Tony Stark.  I think we’re all okay with this one being as he did such a bang-up job in the first place wavering between pretentious rich jackass and actual humanitarian.  It’s safe to say they’re not even compatible roles, so doing both at once shows incredible range.

Second, new developments show that MIckey Rourke is at least potentially slated to play Crimson Dynamo, which is basically the Omega Red of the Iron Man series–a Russian Iron Man for those of you what don’t habla comics.  Russia was a popular source for comic villains back in the seventies through much of the 20th century.  This is probably a good development, as I don’t think Crimson Dynamo is going to be too big a stretch for the guy who handled Marv from Sin City.

Lastly, and perhaps most strangely, is that Sam Rockwell, formerly of Charlie’s Angels, is slated to play Stark rival industrialist Justin Hammer.  Now, sure, he’s just come off the highly successful Frost / Nixon concept, but seriously–do we want to put Justin Hammer in the hands of the guy who played GUY FLEEGMAN on Galaxy Quest?  Isn’t that a smidge of a stretch?  Oh, sure, Galaxy Quest was a long time ago, and Rockwell could’ve easily grown since then, but I remain skeptical.

Thus, there’s a lot to like going into the 2010 release of Iron Man 2, and giving us plenty to look forward to.

Fast-forward to 2009: August has just announced on his blog that the project is dead.  Warner Bros. inherited it after New Line went under, but wanted to give it a darker tone rather than the “Big, but with superpowers” style of the first draft.  After August obliged with a re-write, Warner Bros then decided they weren’t interested at all.  That doesn’t mean a Shazam movie won’t ever get made, but it does mean you can write off the current iteration.

Last week a Los Angeles judge ruled in favor of Fox and stated that the film directed by “300’s” Zack Snyder violated Fox’s copyright.  A trial has been set for January 20th.  An attorney for Warner Bros. has said that a settlement in the case was unlikely and that Fox has no rights to the distribution of the film.

The trailer also gives the audience glimpses of some new mutants to the film world including Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool, Kevin Durand as The Blob, Will.i.am as Wraith, Daniel Henney as Agent Zero, Lynn Collins as Silver Fox and Taylor Kitsch as Gambit.

Wolverine is apparently holding the weight of any future X-Men films on its shoulders.  The studio is reportedly holding off on plans for X-Men Origins: Magneto until the box-office receipts are counted on Wolverine.  Despite a script from Batman Begins writer David S. Goyer and the huge success of The Dark Knight and Iron Man (and even The Incredible Hulk to a smaller extent), the studio is cautious about any future X-Men films.  From the looks of the first trailer and the response from the fans, the studio should have little to worry about and we should see a Magneto story on the big screen soon.