Legendary Pictures has spent the last decade taking over the Hollywood scene, co-financing films as varied as The Dark Knight and The Hangover while quickly establishing itself as one of the premiere locations for elevated genre content.  Not satisfied to simply make comic books into movies, the studio has branched out into making comic books. But like, as comic books.

On Friday afternoon at Comic-Con 2012, the newly minted Legendary Comics – which previously released Frank Miller’s controversial Holy Terror! – took to the stage in Ballroom 6A to discuss their new line of graphic novels including The Tower Chronicles from Matt Wagner and Simon Bisley with cover art by Jim Lee and Alex Ross, Shadow Walk from Max Brooks, Mark Waid and Shane Davis, and The Majestic Files by J. Michael Straczynski.  Hit the jump for the details.

In the long line of complications accompanying the adaptation of the Max Brooks’ novel, World War Z, yet another writer has come on to hash out the script.  Damon Lindelof was previously reported to be working on the ending of the troubled picture starring Brad Pitt, but it’s now being reported that his Lost co-writer, Drew Goddard, actually did the majority of the writing.  Lindelof apparently dreamed up the possible ending of the film but ran out of time to do the actual scripting.  That chore fell to Goddard, who recently co-wrote Cabin in the Woods with Joss Whedon and also scripted the Robopocalypse adaptation for Steven Spielberg. Hit the jump for more on the fate of World War Z.

Jack Bender blossomed into a superstar TV director by helming 37 episodes of Lost.  Bender has been trying to parlay that into his feature directorial debut, but he had to drop out of the Jack Ryan reboot, and we’ve heard nothing about 7 Minutes in Heaven since it was announced in 2010.  Heat Vision reports Bender is developing a new project , Devolution, at Legendary.  The studio is keeping the plot details for the thriller.  But the other members of the creative team suggest this will be a genre picture.  Max Brooks, author of zombie novel World War Z, came up with the idea.  David Leslie Johnson, credited writer on two The Walking Dead episodes, will write the script.  The title would be appropriate for a zombie thriller, but we ought to wait for confirmation on that.  I just want Bender to get a feature project in front of cameras soon, to see what he can do with a bigger canvas.

Assuming the world is still around on December 21^st of this year, you may find me in the theater watching World War Z, the Paramount Pictures thriller starring Brad Pitt as a United Nations employee racing to stop a zombie pandemic. Loosely based on the novel by Max Brooks, World War Z was initially thought to be a one-shot adaptation, but it looks as if Paramount has other ideas. In an L.A. Times article about Pitt’s career, the actor discussed his work on the most expensive zombie movie in Hollywood. Director Marc Forster (Quantum of Solace) and the studio both view World War Z as a potential franchise for Pitt, eyeing a trilogy that blends the realism of the Jason Bourne franchise with the undead terror of The Walking Dead. Hit the jump for more.

Director Edward Zwick is going to China. The Last Samurai director is set to helm the inaugural film for Legendary East, The Great Wall. Zwick and his longtime writing partner Marshall Herskovitz will pen the screenplay for the flick that “reveals the legend behind a great mystery of our age: why this magnificent structure came to be.” The script will be based on a story by Legendary Entertainment Chairman and CEO Thomas Tull and World War Z author Max Brooks. Tull is also producing alongside Jon Jashni, Alex Gartner, Charles Roven (The Dark Knight Rises) as well as Zwick and Herskovitz.

The wall itself was originally constructed in the 5^th century BC to keep out nomadic groups from the Chinese Empire, but has a storied history as it has been rebuilt, added to, and maintained throughout multiple culturally significant periods in China’s history. Hit the jump for more, including the full press release.

After years of false starts it appears as though Marc Forster’s big screen adaptation of Max Brooks’ zombie faux-ethnography World War Z is headed to screens in 2012. The book, which details the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse from the perspective of survivors as varied as mercenaries, US government officials, and impoverished Palestinians, was the subject of a heavy bidding war before landing at Brad Pitt’s company Plan B. Now, Pitt has reportedly signed to star as well as produce, according to an MTV interview with Brooks on the floor at Comic-Con.  Hit the jump for more details.