As the director of the film with the second highest grossing opening weekend of all time, Iron Man 3 co-writer and helmer Shane Black has likely been inundated with a number of offers over the past few days.  However, it appears that the Kiss Kiss Bang Bang director will be making his next project a property that he’s already been developing for some time.  Sony Pictures Entertainment announced today that Black will co-write and direct Doc Savage as his next film.  The pic is a feature film adaptation of a popular character from the 1930s and 40s.  Doc Savage has been described as “a mix of Sherlock Holmes’ deductive abilities, Tarzan’s outstanding physical abilities, Craig Kennedy’s scientific education, and Abraham Lincoln’s goodness,” and so it provides a nice adventure avenue for which Black to imbue with his distinctive sensibilities.

Black recently told Steve that he was still planning on making Doc Savage and seemed to hint that it could be his next film, and this press announcement from Sony confirms that the director is eyeing Savage as his follow-up to Iron Man 3.  Hit the jump to read the full press release.

Universal has just announced the next Fast and the Furious movie will hit theaters May 24, 2013 (which is Memorial Day weekend). You might remember that Universal showed a Fast and Furious 6 promo poster at the Licensing Expo in Las Vegas last week, so the 2013 release date was already known.  What we didn’t know was the date.

According to the studio, Neal H. Moritz and Vin Diesel return to produce, and director Justin Lin is again helming the franchise.  According to Variety, Vin Diesel, Paul Walker and Dwayne Johnson will all be back and we already knew Fast Five screenwriter Chris Morgan was writing the 6th installment.  With Fast Five set to cross $600 million at the worldwide box office in the next few days, it’s no surprise Universal wants the next installment in less than two years.  Since Fast Five did a great job at reinventing the franchise, I’m ready for the next installment.  What about you?

For the first time, the official synopsis for Fast Five is available for our viewing pleasure.  While you may be thinking to yourself, “What’s there to know?  Buff dudes drive amazingly sweet cars in cool locations,” the truth is that this synopsis is important for a couple of reasons:

• It features what is (to the best of my knowledge) the first “official” full confirmed cast list for the film.
• It seems to sure up any debate as to where Fast Five would fall in the time-line with regards to its predecessors.  It clearly tells us it takes place after the last film.

Officially, Fast Five stars Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Tyrese Gibson, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.  To check out the synopsis, hit the jump.  Fast Five is currently aiming for a June 10th, 2011 release.

Director Len Wiseman (Underworld) is in final negotiations to helm a remake of the 1990 sci-fi flick Total Recall.  Based off the Philip K. Dick short story “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale”, the original film was directed by Paul Verhoeven and starred Arnold Schwarzenegger.  The first half of the movie is a fantastic mind-bender, but once Schwarzenegger gets to Mars, it ditches the mindgames and becomes a B-action movie mixed with the delightfully bizarre (Kuato!).

Producer Matt Tolmach said in the press release, “Len has an incredible love of the genre and a great gift for action.  He’ll bring a contemporary feel to the film while taking care with everything we love about Philip K. Dick’s original story.”  Hit the jump for the press release and my thoughts on the announcement.

About two weeks ago, I sat down with producer Neal H. Moritz for an awesome interview where we talked about everything he has in development and how he got into making movies.  Due to how long the interview was, I ran many articles under the headline “Seven Days With Neal Moritz”, and broke up each part by what movies we covered.

Due to how successful the articles were, I figured some of you might want to read the entire interview as it actually happened.  Also, I’m a huge fan of listening to what people have to say and not reading it as a transcript, so besides the full interview, after the jump you can also get the audio.

During the interview we talked about 3D, R.I.P.D., the Highlander reboot, Fast and the Furious 5/6, Shane Black’s Doc Savage, his remake of Total Recall, Flash Gordon, Battle: Los Angeles, Green Hornet, Jack the Giant Killer, Preacher, S.W.A.T. 2, the remake of Escape From New York, Man-Witch, The Boys, Sinbad, and so much more.  It’s an awesome interview and one I cannot recommend enough:

Continuing my “Seven Days with Producer Neal Moritz” series, tonight I’ve got updates on Jonathan Liebesman’s Battle: Los Angeles, Michel Gondry’s Green Hornet, Bryan Singer’s Jack the Giant Killer and a lot of 3D talk.  Some of the highlights are:

• They are thinking about turning both Battle: Los Angeles and Green Hornet into 3D movies
• He’s seen Battle: Los Angeles and calls it groundbreaking.  Says it’s “an incredible visual experience.”
• The first posters/trailer for Battle: Los Angeles will hit this summer and they’ll be at Comic-Con promoting the movie

Green Hornet

• They recently showed the studio the first hour.  Sally Menke (the editor of Inglourious Basterds) is cutting the film. Says “we saw a very early version of a fight scene that he’s {Gondry’s} doing where we do a thing called Kato Vision where Kato can kind of see things before it happens in fight scenes so he knows how to take people out. And it was amazing.”

Jack the Giant Killer

• They haven’t decided if they are shooting in 3D or doing it in post.
• Bryan Singer recently went to all the 3D production houses to look into it.  They might shoot some of the live-action in 3D and other stuff in 2D.
• Says the story is “it’s really a movie that takes the Jack and the Beanstalk legend and then the great idea of humans against giants and combining that and having a war between humans and giants.”

Much more after the jump:

Over the past few months I’ve landed interviews with a few movie producers (Mike De Luca, Dan Lin) that have a lot of projects in development.  Since the interviews cover so many movies, I’ve called the series “Seven Days With…” so I can break down each interview into smaller sections.  While you may have thought the series was over…it was only because I’ve been trying to land my next interviewee and today begins “Seven Days With Producer Neal H. Moritz.”

If you look over Moritz’s IMDb profile, you’ll see he’s producing some huge projects like Doc Savage, Man-Witch, Hench, 21 Jump Street, Jack the Giant Killer, xXx, Battle: Los Angeles, Green Hornet, Flash Gordon, and so many other movies it would be impossible to list them all here.  All you need to know is…over the next week, you can expect tons of updates on almost everything he’s involved with and what he thinks about 3D, how he got started as a producer, and so much more.

While I debated where to start “Seven Days With Neal Moritz”, I went with his very popular franchise and a another franchise that’s about to get a reboot:  Fast and the Furious and Highlander! So if you’re curious about either series, hit the jump for info on Fast and the Furious 5 and 6 as well as what’s up with the reboot of Highlander:

Opening on March 19 is director Andy Tennant’s The Bounty Hunter.  The film stars Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler and it’s more of an action comedy than a rom com.  Here’s the one liner:

A bounty hunter learns that his next target is his ex-wife, a reporter working on a murder cover-up. Soon after their reunion, the always-at-odds duo find themselves on a run-for-their-lives adventure.

From the synopsis you know what kind of movie this is…but for fans of Jennifer Aniston, they’ll probably eat it up.  Personally, I’m still waiting for Gerard Butler to make another cool rated  R action flick and move away from this romantic stuff.  Hit the jump to check out the clips:

While many thought “The Green Hornet” would never get made due to all the problems finding a director and Kato, thanks to a press release from Columbia Pictures, we know filming has actually begun!

I know some of you aren’t excited to see “Green Hornet” and to those…I’m sorry. Because any film directed by Michel Gondry is worth seeing and this is going to be the biggest budget he’s ever had. Come on…aren’t you a little bit curious? Anyway, I’ve posted the press release after the jump so take a look: