– Nikki Finke, via CHUD, are reporting that the Weinstein Company has shut down pre-production on the Patrick Lussier-directed “Halloween 3-D,” which was being pushed for a November start date. Finke reports that the principle reason for the delay was that the script was felt to be “rushing too fast,” although the company’s financial instability may have also played a part. Rob Zombie’s second film in the franchise will be re-released for midnight showing on October 31st, to coincide with the titular holiday.
– Because God hates you, Paul W.S. Anderson began filming “Resident Evil: Afterlife” this week in Toronto. Anderson returns to the director’s chair for the first time in the franchise since the first film. Milla Jovovich will star again, alongside Ali Larter and Spencer Locke, who apparently were in the last film in the series, “Resident Evil: Extinction”. New to the cast are Wentworth Miller (“Prison Break”), who plays a fighter pilot, and the brother of Larter’s character, Boris Kodjoe (“Surrogates”), Kim Coates (“Sons of Anarchy”) and Shawn Roberts (“I Love You, Beth Cooper”), who will play the villain.
– Thomas Haden Church (who said he was involved in the project back in June), James Purefoy and perennial villain Mark Strong have joined Andrew Stanton’s adaptation of geek favorite “John Carter of Mars,” based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ series of novels about a Civil War soldier transported to the red planet. They join the bland leads and “Wolverine” survivors Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins, and an impressive supporting cast featuring Willem Dafoe, Dominic West and Samantha Morton. According to the Hollywood Reporter, “Church plays Tal Hajus, an ambitious and vicious Thark warrior…Purefoy plays Kantos Kan, the captain of the Xavarian, the kingdom of Helium’s grand warship. Strong is Matai Shang, the ruler of the Thems with godlike status,” which suggests that we’re going to need actors of this calibre to pull off the dialogue…
– Mandy Moore, in the U.K. to shoot the romantic comedy “Swinging With the Finkels,” talked to Empire about her upcoming stint as a Disney princess in “Rapunzel,” alongside Zachary Levi. She told the site of her character “She’s sort of the quintessential sassy, feisty Disney heroine. She’s quite modern, quite a curious girl as well. She’s just coming into her own and is anxious to figure out a way to see the world around her that she’s been kept away from for so many years.”
