Last week, director Martin Scorsese released his first 3D film, Hugo.  Based on Brian Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret and written by John Logan, the film stars Asa Butterfield as a young boy secretly living in a train station in 1931 Paris.  As he attempts to piece together a puzzle that he’d been working on with his father, the results transform not only Hugo, but everyone he comes in contact with.  The impressive cast also includes Chloe Moretz, Sacha Baron Cohen, Sir Ben Kingsley, Jude Law, Ray Winstone, Christopher Lee, Helen McCrory, Richard Griffiths, Frances de la Tour, Emily Mortimer, and Michael Stuhlbarg. You can watch a trailer here.

Anyway, last week I got to sit down with producer Graham King for an extended interview. During our wide ranging conversation, we talked about how Hugo came together, how he determines the budget for each production, and how much 3D added to the cost.  In addition, with King involved in so many other projects, I got updates on the Freddie Mercury biopic that he has in development with Sacha Baron Cohen playing Mercury, the Tomb Raider reboot, the Jersey Boys movie adaptation, The Battle of Britain, and The Vault which he’s developing with Johnny Depp‘s production company Infinitum Nihil.  Hit the jump for more.

Johnny Depp’s Infinitum Nihil label will co-produce an adaptation of the Image comic mini-series The Vault alongside GK Films. The latter acquired film rights to the three-issue property, written by Sam Sarkar and illustrated by Carrie Gastonny, which just debuted last week. While Sarkar and Gastonny’s book may very well be worth the adaptation (I’ve yet to check it out, so I really can’t comment), Heat Vision points out that its acquisition may have been expedited by Sarkar’s place as an executive at Depp’s Infinitum.

In terms of plot, The Vault follows a small team of treasure hunters who, when excavating a legendary treasure pit, unleash an “ancient evil.” Co-producing the film alongside Depp and GK’s Graham King is Infinitum president Christi Dembrowski and Tim Headington of GK. Most recently, GK Films teamed up with Depp on Rango and will release Martin Scorsese’s Hugo on November 23rd via Paramount. The second issue of The Vault is currently slated to hit comic shelves on September 28th.

Brian K. Vaughan, one of the best comic/TV/movie writers out there, is shopping around a script for a post-apocalyptic film called The Vault, which involves a real-world Doomsday vault located in Norway.  Reported by Production Weekly’s Twitter, /Film provides more details:

“A post-apocalyptic heist movie involving the real-world Doomsday Vault in the Arctic, The Vault is Ocean’s 11 meets 2012/Children of Men. When a terrifying plague destroys crops and causes starvation on a global scale, the world’s greatest thief must break into the extremist-controlled Doomsday Vault to steal the one seed that could prevent the extinction of the human race.”

Vaughan’s previous work includes the comic series Y: The Last Man, Runaways, and Ex Machina.  He was also a writer for Lost. Hit the jump to read how Vaughan made me a fan of comic books and learn about an unproduced screenplay he has that needs to be produced now.