
Screenwriter Evan Spiliotopoulos (The Lion King 1 ½) has been brought in to work on the script for Universal’s adaptation of the board game Quija. Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz (Tron: Legacy) were initially set to pen the screenplay, but Heat Vision reports that Spiliotopoulos will be doing a rewrite.
McG (Terminator Salvation) is set to direct the flick, which is said to be a family adventure story in the vein of The Mummy and Indiana Jones. However, with the addition of Spiliotopoulos, it sounds like this could very well end up being much closer to Jumanji. The scribe has worked on a number of Disney straight-to-DVD releases in the past, with his most recent being Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure. However, Spiliotopoulos also did a draft of Wanted 2 and worked on the comic book adaptation Agnes Quill. Ouija is set to be released on November 9th, 2012.

A few weeks ago, we reported that McG (Terminator Salvation) and Breck Eisner (The Crazies) would duke it out for the Ouija director’s chair. Tonight we can confirm that McG has emerged victorious and will helm Universal’s adaptation of the Hasbro board game. Per Heat Vision, the studio is now in negotiations with the director who will helm a script by Tron: Legacy scribes Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis.
While Universal and Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes are keeping plot details for Ouija close to the vest, it is believed that the film will be akin to adventure films such as The Mummy and Indiana Jones. Maybe it’s just me, but this vague description keeps making me think that Ouija will come out looking a lot like a sequel to 1995′s Jumanji (a film that nine-year old me was none too fond of). Again, it’s probably just me. As for McG, his next directorial effort is the romantic comedy This Means War starring Reese Witherspoon, Chris Pine, and Tom Hardy. Ouija currently has a release date of November 9, 2012.

At the Los Angeles press junket for TRON: Legacy, I got to interview screenwriters Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz. Since I knew I wouldn’t have a lot of time with them, I decided to try and have some fun with my questions. Also, since we ran a more in depth interview with Kitsis and Horowitz a few weeks back, I didn’t want to ask the same things.
Anyway, during the interview they talked about how they pitched the story to the studio, writing the light cycle battle, what props they got to take home, what’s it like for them with the way Disney is pushing the movie at Disneyland, what’s the one thing they’re really proud of in TRON: Legacy, their upcoming TV project, and more. Hit the jump to either read or listen to the interview:

With Disney’s long awaited sequel Tron Legacy hitting theaters in a little over a month, fans are foaming at the mouth for everything Tron related. Even after the movie gets released, audiences will have something new to look forward to on the grid as Variety reports Disney XD has ordered Tron: Uprising an animated series being developed for release in the summer of 2012. Charlie Bean (Samurai Jack) will executive produce and direct the series, so you know the action will be amazing, and Tron Legacy writers Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz will serve as consulting producers. For more on the new series including the interesting list of cast members, hit the jump

The other day I had the opportunity to watch the twenty minutes of “Tron Night” footage and then participate in a round table interview with the writers of Tron: Legacy, Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz. Tron: Legacy, the sequel to the cult classic Tron, follows Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund) as he searches for his missing father Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges – protagonist of the first film) into the depths of a digital computer world. What stuck out most about the twenty minutes of footage shown wasn’t the oft talked about dazzling action scenes, of which you can see glimpses of in the trailer and the recently released short clip, but rather the focus on character and relationships. Often times in big budget tent-pole films, the set pieces take precedence over the characters within them. This does not appear to be true of Tron: Legacy. It is revealing that the climax of the Tron Night footage was not something blowing up or people fighting one another or a razzle dazzle chase scene but instead a reunion between father and son. It is this emotional core at the heart of the Tron sequel that gives me hope as to its possible merit.
During the interview, scribes Kitsis and Horowitz, best known for their work on the television show Lost, expanded on the emotional core at the heart of Tron: Legacy as well as discussed how they pitched the film to Jeff Bridges, what Tron and The Wizard of Oz have in common and the potential for a Tron 3.0 — among many other topics of conversation. Hit the jump to check out the interview.

Apparently over the past couple pilot seasons, ABC has ordered contemporary versions of Romeo & Juliet set in New York and Chicago but nether of them came to fruition. Now it looks like the network is in the romantic tragedy market again, but this time the setting will stay in Renaissance Verona as Deadline reports Catherine Hardwicke is in talks to direct the pilot for the series that will follow the seminal couple star-crossed lovers as they attempt a romance despite belonging to clans that are at odds with each other. I’m pretty sure Hardwicke already did a similar story by directing Twilight, but perhaps that’s the appeal. This would be Hardwicke’s first venture into TV if she ends up directing the script from Andrea Berloff (World Trade Center). Period dramas have been all the rage lately with Mad Men, The Tudors and Boardwalk Empire, but do we really need another telling of Romeo & Juliet?
Hit the jump for details on a couple new series’ from Samuel L. Jackson and executive producers from Lost.

As Disney positions Tron: Legacy as the major tentpole of the holiday season, the studio wanted to make sure they utilized all available to make the film something special. Enter Ratatouille writer/director Brad Bird and Toy Story 3 writer Michael Arndt. Disney had scheduled Tron re-shoots for June to beef up “character, emotion, and theme.” In preparation, the studio screened a very early working cut of the film for Brad, Arndt, and fellow Pixar colleagues John Lasseter and Ed Catmull. Subsequently, Disney hired Arndt and Bird to write some pages in collaboration with original writers Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz (Lost) for the re-shoots, which lasted six days. More after the jump:

Tron Legacy is still nine months away from hitting theaters, but Disney has commissioned the film’s screenwriters Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz to gas up the light cycles and write a sequel. According to Heat Vision Blog, Horowitz and Kitsis (who also write for Lost) are looking for a way to round Tron Legacy into a trilogy, although it’s unknown whether or not the new films will be directly tied to the upcoming film or if they’ll be spin-off stories.
Disney has yet to make any deals with Legacy director Joseph Kosinski or the members of the cast, but they all had options placed in their original deals. Clearly, Disney thinks they have a big hit on their hands and they want to have a script ready to go if Legacy meets their box office expectations. The studio needs a screenplay ready at the moment they flash the greenlight because of the lengthy post-production required to create the 3D Tron world. This way if Legacy is a success, Disney could conceivably have the sequel in theaters by 2012 or 2013 as opposed to the studio wasting time waiting on a script.

After speeding through the 80s arcade games of the “Tron” universe, “Tron Legacy” writers Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz are going lo-tech with an adaptation of “Ouija” based on the popular board “game”. Since I haven’t read the script for “Tron Legacy”, I’m not sure what made Kitsis and Horowitz the men for this job. My best guess is that their agent and a movie executive whipped out “Ouija” and when the agent asked if Kitsis and Horowitz should write the movie, the spirits moved the pointer to “Yes”. The spirits then used the numbers at the bottom to determine their quote. The spirits seem to like the number “0″.
To read more about the project, hit the j…u…m…p…
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