Universal Pictures really, really wants to get their reboot of The Mummy going.  Last September the studio tapped Underworld and Total Recall helmer Len Wiseman to direct the redo of the classic monster movie for a possible 2014 release.  The film will be set in present day and is described as “epic,” and Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (Star Trek, Transformers) are on board to produce the pic with Jon Spaihts (Prometheus) working on the screenplay.  However, Universal is now taking out a bit of an insurance policy by commissioning a separate, competing script for the film by The Hunger Games and State of Play scribe Billy Ray.  Hit the jump for more details on this atypical approach.

[With A Good Day to Die Hard set to open this Thursday, we'll be taking a look back at the first four Die Hard movies.  These reviews will contain spoilers since the movies have been out for years.  Click on the respective links for my look back at Die Hard, Die Hard 2, and Die Hard with a Vengeance.]

The longest gap between Die Hard movies was the 12 years between Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995) and Live Free or Die Hard (2007).  In the interim, the world had drastically changed most notably because of 9/11 and developments in communications technology.  No longer could terrorism be casually mentioned as a guise for a heist, and John McClane (Bruce Willis) wouldn’t be running around looking for the nearest pay phone.  As Live Free villain Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant) says to McClane, “You’re a Timex watch in a digital age.”  It’s a crappy metaphor since Timex has been making digital watches for decades, but the sentiment is noteworthy: Is John McClane a relic?  The question doesn’t really matter since Live Free or Die Hard barely qualifies as a Die Hard film, especially with Willis’ bored performance and the PG-13 rating.  Instead, Live Free is best explored as the way a Die Hard movie would approach terrorism if a Die Hard film was directed by a hand-tied fan who didn’t understand the essence of the franchise.

Though by no means is it a good movie, Total Recall, the 2012 remake of the Arnold Schwarzenegger/Paul Verhoven action classic, is also not the disaster that some might have expected or hoped for.  For the most part it’s a slightly stupid action movie with a number of big set pieces, but nothing all that memorable about it.  Colin Farrell stars alongside Jessica Biel and Kate Beckinsale in Len Wiseman’s update, and our review of the film on Blu-ray follows after the jump.

Earlier this year, we learned that Universal was rebooting The Mummy franchise with Jon Spaihts (Prometheus) to write the screenplay, and Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman on board to produce.  In September, director Len Wiseman (Total Recall) joined the project, and now he has provided some brief details on how his movie will differ from the recent Brendan Fraser flicks.  The character originally found popularity on the screen in 1932 when it was played by the legendary Boris Karloff.

Hit the jump for more.  The Mummy reboot is set for a possible 2014 release.

The last time we reported on the possible Gears of War adaptation, the picture was a mess, citing a search for a new writer and director, as well as toning down the lofty scale of the treatment and its resulting budget. New Line, which has had the project under its roof since 2007, recently put it into turnaround to focus on The Hobbit films. But with the video game franchise generating over $1 billion in sales and a fourth installment due out next year, Creative Artists Agency is reportedly enthusiastic about meeting with producers to find a new home for the feature adaptation.

Exclusive to the Microsoft 360 console, Gears of War is a military sci-fi third person shooter which centers on the soldiers of Delta Squad in their last-ditch efforts to save the human inhabitants of the planet Sera from unstoppable subterranean creatures known as the Locust Horde.  Hit the jump for more on the fate of the Gears of War movie adaptation.

Things are moving rather quickly on Universal’s reboot of The Mummy.  It was announced back in May that Star Trek screenwriters/prolific producers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman would be developing reboots of both The Mummy and Van Helsing, with Tom Cruise attached to star in the latter.  In subsequent interviews Kurtzman hinted at approaching the reboots with a darker tone than their original counterparts, and sure enough, Underworld and Total Recall director Len Wiseman is now being lined up to take the helm of The Mummy.

Hit the jump for more, including Wiseman’s thoughts on the monster redo.

Now playing in theaters is director Len Wiseman‘s remake of Total Recall.  Based on the short story We Can Remember It for You Wholesale by Philip K. Dick, Total Recall stars Colin Farrell in the role originated by Arnold Schwarzenegger.  In the film, Farrell stars as Douglas Quaid, a man who is bored with his life (even though he’s married to Kate Beckinsale) and seeks to have adventurous memories implanted in his brain.  However, after visiting Recall, both friends and family are after him for different reasons.  But the big problem is he doesn’t know what’s real.  The film also stars Jessica Biel, John Cho, Bill Nighy, and Bryan Cranston.

The other day I got to speak with Len Wiseman here in Los Angeles.  We talked about the challenging shoot, the production design and building a new world, and deleted scenes.  In addition, at last month’s Comic-Con, Wiseman revealed to me that the Total Recall Blu-ray will have a director’s cut that’s 17 minutes longer.  During the recent interview Wiseman confirms that all the additional footage has been finished and talks about some of the scenes. Hit the jump to watch.

Director Len Wiseman’s remake of Total Recall hits theaters next weekend, and Sony has released five clips and 15 minutes of behind-the-scenes footage from the film in anticipation of the release.  Colin Farrell takes over the role originated by Arnold Schwarzenegger, and judging by these clips and previous trailers, Wiseman’s got a whole lotta sci-fi action in store for moviegoers.  So much so that the director recently revealed to Steve that he put together a director’s cut for the Blu-ray that includes 17 minutes of extra footage.

Hit the jump to check out the clips and behind-the-scenes footage, and be sure to check out Steve’s Comic-Con interviews with stars Jessica Biel and Bryan Cranston.  The film also stars Kate Beckinsale, Bill Nighy, and John Cho.  Total Recall opens on August 3rd.

Over the past two years, Total Recall director Len Wiseman has been very nice to Collider at Comic-Con by giving us two extended video interviews.  Last year, Wiseman revealed that the three-breasted woman would be in the movie and talked about the differences between his remake and the original.  This year, Wiseman told us that while he’s very happy with the theatrical cut of Total Recall that runs around an hour and fifty minutes long, the Blu-ray will have a director’s cut that includes 17 minutes of additional footage.  Per Wiseman, the director’s cut spends more time on “the fantasy vs. reality and the kind of chess game that is played.” He adds:

“There are scenes where it really comes into question about questioning his whole reality: I love that game, that’s why I did this movie.  So there’s a lot more of that, so it often can feel like, ‘Is it repeating?’  I personally don’t feel like it is, I feel like it’s really diving in and really just chewing on it for a while, so I’m fascinated by that.”

Hit the jump for more.

A Legend of Sleepy Hollow series is in the works for the 2012 pitch season.  The project will be written by Transformers scribes (it had writers?) Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, who are adapting it from a Phillip Iscove script.  Len Wiseman (Underworld) is set to direct.  The trio also worked together on the Hawaii Five-0 pilot.

The project is reportedly being shopped to Fox, CBS, ABC and NBC.  Given the recent popularity of reworking fairy tales and mystery stories, Sleepy Hollow shouldn’t have trouble finding a home.  But it may need to add some zombies, werewolves and/or aliens to really look attractive.  Ichabod Crane: Vampire Hunter has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? For more on the project, hit the jump. 

Returning to Comic-Con for a big Hall H presentation, with its August 3^rd theatrical release imminent, Total Recall is now finished and ready for audiences, and the fans were able to get a good idea of what to expect when it hits the big screen. The film is about a factory worker, named Douglas Quaid (Colin Farrell), who begins to suspect that he is a spy after a visit to Rekall – a company that provides its clients with implanted fake memories of a life they would like to have led – goes wrong and he finds himself on the run.

During a press conference with director Len Wiseman and actors Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel and Bryan Cranston, they spoke about how they decided what to keep from the original, identifying with such over-the-top material, what excited them about the script, Cranston’s horrible case of pink eye in both eyes (that had to later be digitally removed from the film), the theme of paranoia about the invasion of technology in our society, building a futuristic world, and whether the sci-fi genre still has a lower level of respect than other genres. Jessica Biel also said that it’s still a bit too early to say that she’s signed on as Viper for the Wolverine film. Check out what they had to say after the jump.  Also, check out our recap of the Total Recall panel.

It’s rare for a film to come to consecutive Comic-Cons, but Total Recall showed up last year at the beginning of production, and now it’s returned with its theatrical release only weeks away.  We’ve seen multiple trailers, TV spots, images, and featurettes, so I was curious what a panel would have to offer.  It’s return to Comic-Con is part of a final big push.  Having seen both panels, and being less-than-impressed the first time around, I was curious to see if a sneak peek at the completed footage would get me on board.

Hit the jump for my recap, and click here for all of our Comic-Con coverage.

With director Len Wiseman’s Total Recall reboot less than a month away, a new clip has popped up online.  Unfortunately, the clip just rehashes the same extended action sequence we’ve seen in the trailer.  Colin Farrell stars as Douglas Quaid, a man who is bored with his life and seeks to have adventurous memories implanted in his brain.  In the clip, we watch as Farrell’s plans go awry and he goes all Jason Bourne on a number of faceless federal police. It’s much less sexy than Farrell vs co-star Kate Beckinsale, which we saw in this earlier clip.  The only thing tempting me to see the movie at this point is some Beckinsale vs Jessica Biel action.  Total Recall, also starring Bill Nighy, John Cho and Bryan Cranston, debuts August 3rd.  Hit the jump to watch the new(ish) clip.

The Top Cow comic series The Darkness is getting the big screen treatment.   Sources tell us that Regency is nearing a deal to obtain the feature film rights to the comic with producers David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman (The Fighter, The Muppets).  Moreover, Total Recall director and “godfather” of the Underworld series Len Wiseman would produce the film.  Mandeville’s David Manpearl will also be involved and Top Cow’s Marc Silvestri and Matt Hawkins will be Executive Producing.

Created by David Wohl, Marc Silvestri, and Garth Ennis, the mythologically dense comic first appeared in 1996 and centers on an ageless power called “The Darkness.”  The primordial force has been at war with its equal and opposite, The Angelus, since creation, and takes root in male hosts.  Awakened at the host’s 21st birthday, The Darkness allows its host to create and control anything he desires, including sentient beings.  Hit the jump for more.

A new theatrical trailer for director Len Wiseman’s Total Recall remake has been released.  This trailer includes quite a few nods to the 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger-fronted iteration of the story, with everyone’s favorite three-breasted woman making an appearance (kind of).  There are a couple of groan worthy one-liners that are apparently a requirement for 90% of action movies, but I’m hoping Colin Farrell’s charisma will outweigh the dialogue flaws.  The sci-fi world that Wiseman’s built here looks impressive, and we definitely get the sense that there are going to be a lot of action sequences to marvel at.  I’m interested to see what makes Wiseman’s remake a story worth telling and not just a rehash of the original, so hopefully this Total Recall’s a fun ride.

Hit the jump to watch the trailer, and if you missed any of Steve’s set visit coverage click here.  The film also stars Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel, and Bryan Cranston.  Total Recall opens on August 3rd.