Director Roland Emmerich is gearing up to promote his latest film, the White House actioner White House Down, but it sounds like he plans on heading back to our nation’s most famous residence again sooner rather than later.  A sequel to Emmerich’s 1996 blockbuster Independence Day has been rumored for years, but the project finally gained some traction recently when Emmerich confirmed that he and producer Dean Devlin were poised to sit down and write two back-to-back follow-ups.  Emmerich has now offered a new update on ID Forever Part 1 and ID Forever Part 2 (let’s hope they change those titles…), providing some fairly intricate story details and revealing that Part 1 will take place 20 years after the events of the first film.  Hit the jump to read on.

White House Down is making its case as an early contender for the best (or at least most entertaining) action movie of Summer 2013.  Jamie Foxx plays the President of the United States, while Channing Tatum is the secret service agent who protects him during a terrorist attack on the White House.  Add director Roland Emmerich to the fun premise and likeable stars, and you have a trifecta of promise.

Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jason Clarke, Richard Jenkins, Lance Reddick, James Woods, Garcelle Beauvais, and Rachelle Lefevre co-star.  White House Down opens on June 28, 2013.  Check out a new behind-the-scenes photo that highlights Foxx’s presidential look after the jump.

Warner Bros. is reportedly “quietly exploring the possibility” of a prequel to The Shining.  A WB spokeswoman told the LA Times that the project is at a very early stage and not even formally in development.  But now that the report is published, it will be difficult for the studio to explore the idea quietly, and it is hard to believe that you all will react positively to the news.  At first glance, it sounds like a terrible idea.  The Shining is about a relatively normal writer who takes his family to an isolated hotel and slowly descends into madness.  The prequel will be set before this character journey begins, and so will tell the story of… what, exactly?  To be fair, the presence of a psychic son should offer some plot possibilities.  [Edit: A commenter brings up a possibility that I stupidly overlooked: the movie follows other characters during their stay at the Overlook Hotel rather than the Torrance family.  That is indeed a more viable premise.]

The bright spot is the team in charge of development: writer/producers Laeta Kalogridis (Shutter Island) and James Vanderbilt (Zodiac) with their producing partner Bradley Fischer (Black Swan).  There are solid psychological horror credits in those parentheses, so if there is a story to be told, they’ll find it.  More after the jump.

Today’s cast additions include two White House themed pictures for the price of one:

• James Woods (Casino) is in early negotiations to join Roland Emmerich’s White House Down, starring Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx.
• Chris Cooper (American Beauty) is in talks to board the John Wells‘ adaptation of August: Osage County, with Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts.
• Cole Hauser (Good Will Hunting) has joined the Antoine Fuqua actioner, Olympus Has Fallen, opposite Gerard Butler and Aaron Eckhart.

Hit the jump for more details on each picture.

Hot off a killer past 18 months with darker turns in Young Adult, Snow White and the Huntsman and Prometheus, Oscar winner Charlize Theron is looking to do something a bit lighter in tone.  THR reports that Theron is in talks to star in director John Madden’s (Shakespeare in Love) comedy whodunit Murder Mystery.  The project, written by James Vanderbilt (Zodiac, The Amazing Spider-Man), has actually been in development for several years with State of Play director Kevin Macdonald attached to helm at one point.  Hit the jump for more.

It’s commonplace nowadays for studios to get a jump on the sequel to big budget properties before the first film hits theaters, and Sony got a very good head start on the follow-up to The Amazing Spider-Man by setting James Vanderbilt to pen the sequel back in March of last year.  The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is already dated for May of 2014, and now it appears that the studio would like another pass on the script.  So who do you get to pen a high priority, big-budget summer movie?  Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, of course.  Hit the jump for more.

Last week, we reported that Sony had acquired the spec script White House Down from The Amazing Spider-Man scribe, James Vanderbilt.  Now it looks like doomsday director Roland Emmerich (Independence Day) is in talks to helm the studio’s $3 million purchase.  The action/drama picture focuses on a paramilitary hijacking of the White House and has been compared to Die Hard and Air Force One in equal measure. Emmerich, famous for his disaster films like Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow and 2012, will make White House Down his next project with production scheduled to start this fall. Hit to see where Emmerich’s other projects stand.

Sony has recently acquired two action-oriented spec scripts. Here they are at a glance:

• First up from The Amazing Spider-Man scribe, James Vanderbilt, comes White House Down, an actioner that is said to be a combination of Die Hard and Air Force One.
• Secondly, Sony acquired The Royal Honours Society, a literary-themed action-adventure from Ernest Lupinacci. The plot concerns the adventures of some of England’s greatest authors of the late 19th century.

Hit the jump for more on each project.

Hannibal Lecter returns! Kinda. Anthony Hopkins, who won the Oscar for his chilling role in The Silence of the Lambs, is set to return to the serial killer genre with Solace. Variety reports that Hopkins is in final negotiations to star in the film, though this time he’ll be the good guy. The thesp will play a former doctor with psychic abilities who works for the FBI. He gets drawn into a serial killer case where his gift is put to good use (because a psychic doctor/FBI agent is a terrible thing to waste). A director has yet to be set, but the script has a nice pedigree. Sean Bailey and Ted Griffin wrote the first draft, which was subsequently rewritten by James Vanderbilt (Zodiac, The Amazing Spider-Man). Peter Morgan (The Queen) made the most recent pass, and production is now set to begin sometime early next year.

Even though Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man only recently completed filming, Sony has already gotten a jump on the sequel as they’ve dated The Amazing Spider-Man 2 for a May 2^nd, 2014 release. While this seems a bit ridiculous, it makes sense. Screenwriter James Vanderbilt wrote Webb’s reboot, and this past March he was hired to pen a script for the sequel. Apparently Sony liked what they saw (in both Webb’s film and Vanderbilt’s sequel script), as they’ve gone ahead and dated the follow-up. Hit the jump for my thoughts on this move, including the studio’s plans for an inevitable trilogy.

Back in 2009, when Columbia acquired the rights to the gritty British crime drama series Red Riding, director Ridley Scott was thought to be teaming up with writer Steven Zaillian (American Gangster) once again. Though Zaillian is still producing along with Scott, it seems Columbia will go with the hot hand for a screenwriter. Heat Vision reports that James Vanderbilt (Zodiac) will write the adaptation of the popular British TV movie series.

Red Riding is based on four novels by author David Peace. The series, and upcoming adaptation, follows a large cast of characters related to serial killings and police corruption that span the years from 1974 to 1983. After his work on Zodiac, Vanderbilt should feel right at home in this genre. (And for those of you playing 6 Degrees of Separation, Andrew Garfield, who plays Peter Parker in The Amazing Spider-Man, was featured in the original Red Riding series. Perhaps we’ll see him again, working off of another Vanderbilt script?)

For more on Vanderbilt’s upcoming slate of movies, hit the jump.

We’re still over a year away from Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man, but Sony knows that the best way to kick off a sequel is to make sure you have a script ready to go.  With that in mind, they’ve hired The Amazing Spider-Man screenwriter James Vanderbilt to start work on a sequel.  Heat Vision reports that Vanderbilt outlined his take for the sequel to studio execs yesterday and received the go-ahead to start work on the script.  Of course, there’s no guarantee that Sony will use Vanderbilt’s script, especially if their upcoming 3D Spider-Man reboot tanks.  But the studio clearly has a lot of faith in the screenwriter whose past credits include Zodiac and The Rundown.  Not only did he write Amazing Spider-Man, he also worked on Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 4 before the studio decided the project was taking too long to go into production and it was better to start from scratch.

There’s no word on what the sequel will be about (we’re still not even sure what The Amazing Spider-Man is about), but hit the jump for some of my amazing speculation.  The Amazing Spider-Man stars Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, and Rhys Ifans.  It’s due out July 3, 2012.

Yes, director Marc Webb’s reboot of Spider-Man just got a little angrier. According to Heat Vision, Denis Leary, the popular Rescue Me actor and admitted asshole (seriously, he wrote a song about it), is about to step into the role of George Stacy, police captain and father of main Spidey squeeze Gwen Stacy.

Leary joins a cast that already includes Andrew Garfield as the titular web-slinger, Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy, Rhys Ifans as Dr. Curt Connors (a.k.a The Lizard), Martin Sheen as Uncle Ben, and Sally Field as Aunt May. The as-yet-untitled flick is slated for release in 2012. Hit the jump for more on what you can expect out of George Stacy.

It’s a bit of surprise, but we now have news that the character of Mary Jane Watson will not be appearing in director Marc Webb’s (500 Days of Summer) upcoming 3D Spider-Man reboot.  We’ve been hearing that the new film would feature two love interests for Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) for awhile now, but that Mary Jane Watson would not be the lead female role, and that she would be a minimal role in the film if she were to appear at all. We’ve since learned that Emma Stone (Easy A) has been cast as Gwen Stacy and would be both the lead female role and main love interest in the film.

I’ve since assumed that Watson would be appearing in the film in a minimal role, which would be enhanced in the inevitable sequel, but The Wrap is now reporting that Watson will not be appearing in the film at all since “the character is not currently featured in James Vanderbilt’s (Zodiac) screenplay, and apparently never was.” Spider-Man without Mary Jane Watson to me is like Superman without Lois Lane, so I’m curious to see how fans of the comic book character will react to this news.  You can hit the jump to leave your thoughts in the comments below and to get a recap of what we know about the upcoming Spider-Man reboot.

Ever since Sony announced that the next entry in the Spider-Man franchise would be a reboot rather than a sequel to the Sam Raimi films, speculation has been rampant as to what young actor might fill Tobey Macguire’s boots as a teenage Peter Parker.  Alvin Sargent (Spider-Man 3) is currently in the middle of re-writing James Vanderbilt’s (Zodiac) script, which is said to be “a more gritty, contemporary redo of the series” with a high school setting.  Meanwhile, director Marc Webb ((500) Days of Summer) has reportedly been meeting with potential candidates for months now.

Hit the jump for details on the potential spider-men, including Jamie Bell, Alden Ehrenrich, Frank Dillane, Andrew Garfield, and Josh Hutcherson.