[USA Today]

The next Aliens Vs. Predator game isn't due out from Sega until next spring, but some fans on the Sega forum discovered what appears to be new concept art. Besides the lovely spaceport above, there's a lush jungle. And a scene of a poor Colonial Marine getting dragged away while an Alien and Predator prepare to throw down — which is almost worthy of one of the Old Masters, what with the Marine's uplifted face, filled with horror.

The fact that the AVP movies are dead remains a very Good Thing. But maybe one more AVP game could be worthwhile? We can hope, anyway. More art at the link. [SEGA Forums]

Antal's involvement was confirmed by Rodriguez - who's "overseeing" the movie, as well as co-writing - on Ain't It Cool, where he also spilled a small amount of beans about what'll be happening in it:

I can't go too much into the story right now, because we're still writing. But it still involves a very intense group of people stranded on a Predator planet discovering unspeakable horrors (that are not always from outside their group). So like the original movie, the title does have a double meaning. Aliens was a different take on the Alien idea, and an original movie in it's own right, and that's what we want to do with this.

So, let's see - Aliens made the original movie's title plural and upped the ante by taking characters to (potentially) the home planet of the first movie's monster, whereas Predators will make the original movie's title plural and up the ante by taking characters to (potentially) the home planet of the first movie's monsters. Hey, I've got a great idea for a sequel to The Thing - I'm calling it The Things. Anyone want to guess what the plot is?

Snark aside, Rodriguez explained what we should expect from the new movie:

When I was hired to write the original draft back in 1994, i was only brought on as a writer. I never thought I'd get to work on it in any other capacity. So a few months ago, when Alex Young at Fox contacted me about re-inventing the franchise using my original draft as a template for getting as far away as possible from the AVP movies, I jumped on it... Alex came down and saw Troublemaker Studios, and the facilities and crew that I've built up over the past 12 years, and he felt right away that this is where the movie should be made and that doing it down here would be the best way to protect it from the studio system. He was keen on making a very "non-studio" picture... As to how this movie will be viewed, one of the guys at Fox told me "No one is ever going to talk about AVP again after this film, I will stake my life on it." And he's a really nice guy, so I don't want to see him dead. Now that lives are at stake, it's no longer a job it's a mission. Failure is not an option.

A non-studio studio relaunch for the franchise to make people forget all about Aliens Vs. Predator? We can get behind that... as long as it's much less of an Aliens rip-off than it currently sounds.

Nimrod Antal is directing Predators - Q&A with Robert Rodriguez reveals more!!! [Ain't It Cool]

Dark Horse Comics, which has been publishing various Aliens and Predator comics since the 1980s - and which created the Aliens Versus Predator franchise - is relaunching each franchise this year with new series, all written by Hellboy-spinoff BPRD writer John Arcudi.

Series editor Chris Warner talked to Newsarama.com about what to expect:

I don't want to get too much into the stories, since we're throwing in some new angles to the mythos that we hope will be surprising and fun. John Arcudi will be writing all three series, which will give them a nice sense of cohesion, and he's a terrific writer. The art that's coming in from Zach Howard on Aliens and Javier Saltares on Predator is kicking major ass, so I'm confident the fans are going to dig it. As a huge fan myself, to whom these books have played a large part in my career, it's important to me that we do this stuff right.

One thing that you can expect is a return to the classic takes on the series; the Aliens series - launching in May - is advertised as following a group of prospectors who discover something dangerous lurking within archaeological ruins...

Aliens launches in May, with Predator launching in June, and Aliens Vs. Predator due towards the end of the year.

Aliens & Predator Factor Big Into Dark Horse's 2009 Plans [Newsarama.com]

Each side of this board is also themed. Here you're seeing the "alien" side, with all the cool Giger-style pipes. On the other side, it looks like a human-made spaceship.

Alien movie chess board [via The Contaminated]

AVP Chess Board [via Raving Toy Maniac]

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The series, created and written by screenwriter David DiGilio, takes place in a future frozen Los Angeles following environmental meltdown and centers around frostbitten citizens leading a revolution against the dictator who's taken over the city. The five issue series launched at the start of the year, and gained a certain amount of attention when publisher Boom! Studios then offered the comics for free on MySpace simultaneous to their paper release.

The movie rights have been purchased by Davis Entertainment, which seems to have a thing for genre projects - In addition to I, Robot, they're also the producers behind Aliens Vs. Predator and fantasy dragon porn Eragon. The movie will be co-produced by Boom!'s Ross Richie and Andrew Cosby.

Davis acquires 'North Wind' [Hollywood Reporter]

It's hard to top the death scene in Jack Frost where it seems that ole Frosty is humping a naked girl to death in a tub (pictured above). Still, award for most freakishly inappropriate holiday fare has to go to Elves, which brings together Nazi science with elf-conjuring and incest. Plus, nubile ladies being menaced with forced breeding by Nazi scientists and the aforementioned conjured elves. Here's a great moment from the movie, when the bad guy explains his evil plot to impregnate his own daughter and give birth to an army of elves.

Nothing says holidays like Nazis, science, and forced breeding.

• Emily will keep getting closer to Jake on Jericho now that her city-slicker fiance Roger is out of the picture, judging from this new preview pic. Plus Emily bakes a cake to console Jake's mom over his dad's death. Thrilling. [Televisionista]
• Fox confirmed it won't screen Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem for critics, a surefire sign of toxic buzz in the making. [Cinemablend]
• The X-Men's Wolverine spin-off lost a little bit of its appeal when Gerard Butler [300] said he was definitely not co-starring. [MovieHole]
• Another movie nobody has high hopes for: video game adaptation Tekken, directed by Dwight Little (Anacondas: The Hunt For The Blood Orchid.) Near-future scifi, man against evil corporation, martial arts, you get the idea. [Slashfilm]
• Rhona Mitra (Boston Legal) stars in May's Doomsday as a leader of an elite military squad sent into a quarantined Scotland to find a cure for a deadly virus. [Actress Archives]
• The Cloverfield monster bites emo dudes' heads off and rubs its body against buildings, and then little creatures crawl away from its body and fuck things up. [AICN]

You guys come from a special effects background, and this is your first feature film. Has that helped prepare you to direct a feature?

Colin: Yes, I mean we've also shot a lot of music videos and commercials, so we're used to directing projects, dealing with talent, and so on. But also because of our visual effects background, we're used to the endurance. We've been on this film for over a year and a half now, whereas on a commercial the shoot is a week or two, and then maybe a month or two for post. So the visual effects work definitely prepared us for how long these projects take.

How tied into the mythology of the original films is this movie? For instance, in the last AVP movie, we saw Lance Henriksen, who also played the android Bishop in Aliens.

Colin: The way we try to see the movies is that the AVP franchise serves as the bridge between the Predator franchise and the Alien franchise. So, we do a lot of things that are specific tie-ins to the Predator movies, and we also try to to specifically lay things into the chronological history of the Alien films.

You said that you want this science fiction horror story told with characters that the audience really cares about. How did you go about that, and is it a bit of a dig at the original AVP film?

Greg: The cast of human characters is a lot more compelling than in the first movie. We really worked hard at making them relatable people that could be your cousins, your sisters, your relatives, your neighbors, and so on.

Colin: Unless your cousin is a billionaire or a mercenary, then you aren't going to have a lot in common with the characters in the first movie.

Greg: These are regular everyday working American people, and having that sense of connection with them is what makes it a little more horrific when we see them getting picked off. We do spend a bit of time in the beginning of the film setting these people up and introducing them in a more classic fashion, so you do care about them when they start getting killed.

Recently an image was released online that was the first view of the Predator homeworld. What went into that design?

Colin: That was a really challenging conceptual thing to work on. You don't want to just do the pyramid design because that's such an easy way to go with these. What we wanted to do was establish that, even though they are great hunters, there's also a level of sophistication to them. If you think about it, they're very primal, but they have cloaking technology, they have spaceships, they've been around for thousands of years. We wanted to somehow give a level of industrialness to their planet, but also stay true to other designs we've seen, like the interior of the ship in Predator 2. We thought that was a really great reference point because it was sort of Aztecian architecture, but with a lot of bizarre round curved shapes. The color palette in there was all orange because of their vision, since they don't see visual light. There were a lot of things we saw in the other movies that helped shape our Predator homeworld sequence.

Greg: It was especially fun to explore the idea of urban sprawl in a Predator city. You'll see that in the film, but it was a cool thing to try and convey.

So which species is more kickass, the Alien or the Predator?

Greg: Colin is already known as a Predator fanboy all over the internet.

Colin: Well the thing I like about the Predator is that you can relate to him more, just because he's got tools, he has weapons, there's culture there. With the Alien I like them just because they scare the living crap out of you.

Greg: In our film the most powerful one is actually the Predalien hybrid.

So what's next for you guys?

Colin: We're in negotiation on a couple of things already, plus we hope to possibly work on the next part of the AVP franchise if they ask us.

Greg: Yeah, we feel like the series has run the cycle of the Earthbound part of the story, and we'd like to get things back out in space where it started.

Also, Easter Island or Eater Island? You make the call, but to us the Easter Island statues bear more than a passing resemblance to those looming figures on Predator Planet. Maybe our version here on Earth is a pale imitation of the original up on the Predator world.