We have tracked the entire life cycle of Steven Spielberg’s relationship with Gods and Kings, a Moses biopic written by Michael Green (Green Lantern) and Stuart Hazeldine (Exam).  Warner Bros. asked Spielberg in September 2011.  The director entered negotiations in November 2011.  He was reportedly near a deal in January 2012.  And now, according to Deadline, Spielberg has decided to drop the project.  This is sad news for Warner Bros., but now they are free to move on—after all, time is an issue, because ideally the studio would like to beat Ridley Scott‘s competing Moses biopic (now titled Exodus) in the race to the multiplex.  WB has reached out to Ang Lee to direct, now that he’s caught up to Spielberg’s two Best Director Oscars with his Life of Pi win.  Lee is said to be interested, but hasn’t taken a formal meeting yet.

This is sure to be a high profile project once it gets the engine running, so we’ll keep you posted.  In the meantime, hit the jump for a rundown of the major events in Moses’ life.

“So Ang Lee, you’ve won the Oscar for best director what are ya gonna do now?” “I’m going to direct and executive produce a TV show!”  Once again cluing us all into just how the TV landscape has changed over the last fifteen years from second-tier to top notch storytelling, the Life Of Pi director is set to helm the pilot of Tyrant, a new show that is being set up at FX which will follow an American family caught amidst the inner workings of a Middle Eastern nation.

Hit the jump for the lowdown.

For proof that 2012 was a nutty year for awards contenders, look no further than the Best Director category.  Over the past few days, we’ve been looking back how the ebbs and flows of the past 12 months have shaped the awards race in a number of categories, and one of the most dynamic shifts came with Best Director.  After the jump, we run down how the race for Oscar glory progressed over the past few months to give us the five nominees who will be vying for the gold on Oscar Sunday.  Hit the jump to read on.

Before I dive headfirst into what could be considered overselling to the “nth degree”, I have a disclaimer: I’m a total sucker for nostalgia-inducing, high school-centric, coming of age films. With that out of the way, I cannot recommend enough that you watch author/writer/director Stephen Chboksy‘s adaptation of his own novel, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, as soon as possible. The pic hit Blu-ray/DVD this past week and over the course of 24 hours I rented it, watched it, loved it, returned it (yes, somehow late fees are still a thing…), and purchased it for my own collection. I could go on and on about the emotional note the movie hit for me at every turn but I’ll spare you the fanboy torment. Suffice to say that I’ll be looking back fondly on this one for quite a while.

My “Blu-ray/DVD pick of the week” aside, this week’s installment features a week of Die Hard that includes Matt revisiting the entire franchise and A Good Day to Die Hard interviews with Bruce Willis and more, coverage from Steve’s visit to the set of The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, a slew of video interviews from this year’s VES Awards including talks with Ang Lee and Wally Pfister just to name a few, Beautiful Creatures interviews with Emmy Rossum and more, and a healthy amount of images from the floor of Toy Fair 2013. Yep, you guessed it, a brief recap and link to each of the above can be found on the other side.

There was a time when everyone said Life of Pi couldn’t be made.  Most said trying to adapt Yann Martel’s novel was a fool’s mission.  And back in May, 2010, after almost reaching the starting gate, the adaptation was put on hold when the studio demanded a lower budget.  But that didn’t stop director Ang Lee, and after some compromise and with a lot of perseverance, he eventually got the green light and the film has now made over $500 million at the worldwide box office and it’s nominated for 11 Academy Awards.  Not bad for an unfilmable movie.

At tonight’s VES Awards I spoke to Lee on the red carpet.  We talked about the awards season experience, the reaction of fans around the world, the believability of the computer-generated tiger, Richard Parker, visual art vs. visual effects and how they contribute to a cinematic story, and more.  Hit the jump to watch.

The nominations for the 85th Academy Awards have been announced, and it’s quite a whirlwind of nominees.  As expected, Lincoln landed the most nominations with 12, followed with Ang Lee’s Life of Pi which nabbed 11.  The big story here, though, is the Best Director category.  Shockingly, only two (two!) of the DGA nominees for Best Director made the Oscar cut: Ang Lee and Steven Spielberg.  The rest of the category was filled out by Benh Zeitlin for Beasts of the Southern Wild, David O. Russell for Silver Linings Playbook, and Michael Haneke for Amour.  It was almost guaranteed that Ben Affleck and Kathryn Bigelow would be landing nominations for Argo and Zero Dark Thirty, respectively, but shockingly neither made the cut.  Apparently those films just directed themselves.  Based off today’s nominations, it now looks like it’s (surprisingly) down to Lincoln vs. Silver Linings Playbook for the big win.

Hit the jump to check out the list of nominees, and click here to check them against my predictions (somehow I predicted the Best Picture and Supporting Actor categories perfectly).  The 85th Academy Awards will take place on February 24th.

The long-gestating biopic Cleopatra may have finally found a director, and it’s a good ‘un.  The project has been in development for a number of years with Angelina Jolie attached to star as the Egyptian queen.  Both James Cameron and Paul Greengrass flirted with the idea of directing before ultimately moving on, and most recently David Fincher was attached to the project before dropping off last summer.  The pic has a script by Eric Roth (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), based on Stacy Schiff’s book Cleopatra: A Life, and now another top-tier filmmaker is eyeing the gig: Ang Lee.  Hit the jump for more details.

The Directors Guild of America has just announced their nominations for “Outstanding Direction in Feature Film” for the 65th Annual DGA Awards.  The nominees are as follows:

• Ben Affleck for Argo
• Kathryn Bigelow for Zero Dark Thirty
• Tom Hooper for Les Miserables
• Ang Lee for Life of Pi
• Steven Spielberg for Lincoln

These nominations, as well as the omission of certain other directors, carry certain implications heading into the Academy Awards contest.  Hit the jump for more DGA-related news.

If you hadn’t already noticed, we’re knee-deep in Oscar season now.  Though many are put off by the awards race in general, one of the highlights of the year is always THR’s roundtable interviews with “the contenders.”  This year’s directors roundtable is really something, as the one-hour conversation involves Quentin Tarantino, Ben Affleck, Ang Lee, Tom Hooper, David O. Russell, and Gus Van Sant.  Though the entire interview is well worth watching, we figured our readers would be interested in a particular nugget from Tarantino in which he describes Death Proof as the “worst” film he’s ever made.

Hit the jump for more on that comment and to watch the full roundtable interview.

Here’s where things get interesting.  Over that past few days we’ve been taking an early look at the 2013 Oscar race, running down the contenders in a number of categories including Best Supporting Actor and Actress, Best Actor and Best Actress, and Best Animated Feature, Screenplay, and technological category quick picks.  We’ve now come to our final installment, Best Picture and Best Director, and these two races are shaping up to be incredibly interesting. Hit the jump for the full rundown.

Director Ang Lee’s Life of Pi presents a tough sell for mainstream audiences: the main character is oddly named, the cast is not comprised of instantly-recognizable faces and the bulk of the story strands the viewers in a small boat with a boy and a tiger in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. But if people take a chance and put their faith in the Oscar-winning director, they’ll experience a beautifully told story about survival, self-discovery, the triumph of the human spirit and the quest for meaning in life, all wrapped up in a well-paced film in which the gorgeous special effects and responsible use of 3D are actually quite complementary.

Based on the novel by Yann Martel, Life of Pi stars Suraj Sharma, Irrfan Khan, Adil Hussain, Tabu, Rafe Spall and Gerard Depardieu and is in theaters now. Hit the jump for my review.

Two new featurettes for director Ang Lee’s ambitious adaptation of Life of Pi have been released.  Lee has stated many times that this is the hardest film he’s ever had to make, and it’s obvious that’s not an understatement when you realize that the premise involves a young boy and a tiger lost at sea for the majority of the film.  The featurettes released today focus on the meticulousness that went into creating the CG tiger Richard Parker, and choosing to shoot the film in 3D.  The latter featurette includes 3D guru James Cameron talking about Lee’s use of 3D in the pic and how it enhances the story, naturally.

Hit the jump to take a look at the featurettes.  Life of Pi opens in 3D on November 21st.

Check out the offerings from our latest poster round-up:

• The U.K. poster for Ang Lee’s Life of Pi, starring Suraj Sharma, Rafe Spall, Gerard Depardieu, Irrfan Khan and Adil Hussain. Life of Pi opens in 3D November 21st.
• A huge banner poster for Cloud Atlas, from directors Lana and Andy Wachowski and Tom Tyker.  Starring Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugo Weaving, Hugh Grant, Jim Broadbent and more, Cloud Atlas opens October 26th.
• A teaser posters for Warm Bodies, a zombie romance (zomance? zom-rom?) starring Nicholas Hoult and Teresa Palmer, which opens February 1st, 2013.

Hit the jump for the posters and synopses. 

The first clip from visionary director Ang Lee’s Life of Pi is now available.  The scene in question is an extension of the stunning trailer for the film, which was adapted from Yann Martel’s novel by David Magee. Life of Pi follows an Indian boy named Pi (Suraj Sharma), a zookeeper’s son who finds himself in the company of a hyena, zebra, orangutan, and a Bengal tiger after a shipwreck sets them adrift in the Pacific Ocean.  Viewed in 2D, the clip can be a bit distracting as there are obvious places where the 3D will be played up; it entertains just the same.

Also starring Rafe Spall, Gerard Depardieu, Irrfan Khan and Adil Hussain, Life of Pi opens in 3D November 21st.  Hit the jump to see the clip.

Director Ang Lee’s adaptation of Yann Martel’s “unfilmable” novel Life of Pi has been a long time coming, and the film finally premiered late last month at the New York Film Festival to a largely positive response.  Many critics were taken with Lee’s incredibly ambitious use of 3D and visual effects to bring the larger than life story to the screen, and now a featurette for the film has been released that focuses on how Lee tackled the adaptation.  We see a few bits of new footage interspersed with Lee and Martel talking about the difficulties the production faced, including having a CGI tiger as one of its main characters.

Hit the jump to take a look, and be sure to check out Steve’s extended interview with Lee in which the filmmaker talks about how tough it was to get the film made and his thoughts on 3D as a new art form.  Life of Pi opens in 3D on November 21st.