Daniel Wilson is angling to be the Max Brooks of robots, having written How to Survive a Robot Uprising and How to Build a Robot Army: Tips on Defending Planet Earth Against Aliens, Ninjas and Zombies (he also happens to have a PhD in robotics from Carnegie Mellon). His latest manuscript, Robopocalypse, sounds like the robotic answer to Brooks' World War Z, describing human life after a robot uprising.

DreamWorks and Doubleday have snapped up the movie and publishing rights respectively, and it sounds like it won't be too long before we're fleeing from swarms of nanobots and our household appliances. DreamWorks spokesman Mark Sourian cited the manuscript's "frightening level of realism," so hopefully we'll get a richer view of the robot apocalypse than we saw in Terminator Salvation.

[Variety]

Sad news for the playful and clever collection of CG pals cast in Dreamworks Monsters Versus Aliens. While taking a conference call, Jeffey Katzenberg explained why the monsters needed to be put down:

I'd like to tell you there's a perfectly rational, clear and easy answer as to why not, but there isn't. There was enough of a consensus from our distribution and marketing folks in certain parts of the world that we would be pushing a boulder up a hill.

In my humble opinion, nobody knows how to market animation anymore, except Disney/Pixar. This makes me sad because I was dearly hoping for an Insectosaurus stuffed animal, and it was all but impossible to find. Still haven't seen it in stores. But besides the marketing the movie fared pretty well in theaters and was wildly entertaining. So this is sad news.

Sadly this will be the last time we spend with our dear Monster friends, in this brand new Halloween special clip, on Tonight! That is until they get their own TV show...

[via Slashfilm]

In Xombie, a zombie named Dirge has somehow managed to retain his human consciousness, though not his memories, and tries to live a quietly life with his undead dog Cerberus until he eventually decays into oblivion. But when a human girl, Zoe, falls from a helicopter into zombie-infested territory, Dirge takes it upon himself to perform one last good deed before he falls apart and guide her to the city of human survivors. The task puts them both in the path of a millennia-old Egyptian mummy woman and a reanimated Velociraptor. Xombie creator James Farr began the story as an online Flash cartoon, then penned a comic book sequel, Xombie: Reanimated.

The Hollywood Reporter reports that Farr, a homicide detective, is currently in negotiations with DreamWorks for the rights to Xombie, with Kurtzman and Orci in talks in produce. No word yet on whether the pair could write the screenplay as well, nor whether the planned adaptation would be animated or live-action.

'Xombie' getting the Kurtzman/Orci treatment at DreamWorks [The Hollywood Reporter]
[Xombie Online]

Variety reports that Bay and Dreamworks have brought Smallville creators Alfred Gough and Miles Miller on board to script I Am Number Four, the Bay-produced adaptation of A Million Little Pieces author James Frey's new novel (co-written with Jobie Hughes) announced a couple of months ago.

Four, due to be published later this year by HarperCollins, is the first novel in a young adult series about a group of aliens who escape the destruction of their home planet and disguise themselves as teenagers on Earth, only to discover that those responsible for the destruction of their homeworld have followed them and are hunting for them on their adopted planet. It's still unknown if Bay will direct the movie, although it's expected that Steven Spielberg will come onboard to co-produce.

Gough, Millar Adapt SciFi for Bay [Variety]

Bay and Dreamworks have pre-emptively picked up the movie rights to unpublished novel I Am Number Four for an undisclosed sum "somewhere in the high six figures," according to the Hollywood Reporter. The book, the first of a six part series rumored to be co-written by controversial author James Frey (the identity of the authors is being kept secret at present), deals with nine teenaged aliens hiding in human society following the destruction of their home planet, only to find that the being responsible for the destruction has followed them to Earth.

The rights were offered to studios Thursday afternoon before being quickly snapped up by Bay and the studio; as with Transformers, Dreamworks exec Steven Spielberg is expected to act as co-producer on the movie.

Michael Bay in 'I Am Number Four' deal [Hollywood Reporter]

There are a lot of conflicting reports regarding Oobermind, which probably has something to do with the multiple changes to its cast, crew, and even title in the two years since it was first announced. Oobermind began life in April 2007 as Master Mind, written by first-time screenwriters Alan Schoolcroft and Ben Simons, with Ben Stiller attached to play the title supervillain. At the time, the story was said to be about "Master Mind, a baddie who goes into a depression when he accidentally kills off his archrival Uberman."

The project seemed to remain in stasis for over a year until August 2008, when it was announced that Robert Downey Jr., fresh from his career-revitalizing success in Iron Man and Tropic Thunder, was taking over the Master Mind role. Tina Fey also joined the cast around this time. Stiller, who was now also a producer on the film, had apparently switched to a different role.

An interview Stiller gave around the time of Downey Jr.'s casting shed some light on the project's history - including its origins as a live-action film - and provided a very different summary of the film's premise:

"It's a script that my company Red Hour got that was written as a live action movie but we thought it would work as an animated movie so we brought it to Jeffrey Katzenberg and now we're in pre-production.

"I'm in it and Robert Downey Jr. plays an evil superhero villain. Basically it's about a bad guy who loses to the good guy that he's fighting all the time, so he has to create another good guy for him to fight."

It's hard to know whether Stiller simply botched his explanation of what Master Mind was about. Certainly, it doesn't really fit with either the 2007 or 2009 versions of the story, both of which concern a villain who vanquishes his archenemy. Even so, it would appear the idea of a villain making his own hero did take hold at some point, as can be seen in the most recent synopsis, released last week:

When super villain Oobermind defeats his archrival Metro Man, the world should be his oyster. But instead, Oobermind falls into total despair. It turns out that life without a rival is life without a point for him. So he creates a new superhero rival. Unfortunately, the new hero wants to be a super villain too. Who can we turn to? Who has what it takes to stand up to this menace? Who will defend the innocent? Oobermind! That's who.

Master Mind also went through its fair share of directors as it evolved into Oobermind. Dreamworks animators Kyle Jefferson and Cameron Hood, co-directors of the 2006 short First Flight, were initially on board to helm the project, but they apparently dropped out in early 2008. IMDB listed Gary Trousdale, co-director of Beauty and the Beast and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, as the director around the time Robert Downey Jr. and Tina Fey signed on. Now Tom McGrath, director of the Madagascar films (both of which feature Stiller in the voice cast), has taken over Oobermind.

So, to recap what we know:

1. The film has always been about a supervillain. He was originally called Master Mind and was to be voiced by Ben Stiller, but now he's Oobermind and Robert Downey Jr. is playing him.

2. The supervillain has an archenemy that is a superhero. In 2007, this was Uberman, who was killed by Master Mind. In 2008, this superhero routinely defeats Master Mind. Now, the superhero is Metro Man and he is merely "defeated" - not necessarily killed - by Oobermind. In all three versions, the superhero does something to the supervillain that causes him to experience an existential crisis.

3. The supervillain creates another superhero to replace the original. In the latest version of the story, this supposed hero proves to be even more evil than Oobermind, forcing him to play the reluctant hero.

4. Ben Stiller was originally supposed to play the lead, then shifted over to producing and playing a supporting role, and he is now only listed as an executive producer.

5. Tina Fey is involved. Somehow.

Then there's this new poster for the film, which is worth a closer look.

Putting all of these facts together, I think it's fairly safe to conclude the blue guy with the giant brain is Oobermind (I mean, a mind that big is clearly of the oober variety). I'd say it's even safer to conclude the woman he's holding is Tina Fey's character. I would guess the superhero on the left is Metro Man and not the replacement superhero, considering it looks like he's doing the heroic thing and trying to thwart the villainous Oobermind. This means the one announced character we haven't seen yet is the superhero Oobermind creates. Although only Downey Jr. and Fey are currently listed as voice actors, I'd still say it's possible Ben Stiller will end up voicing either Metro Man or the new superhero.

The fact that Metro Man is (probably) on the poster suggests to me that the character has a more substantial role in the film than someone who is killed early on, as he would have been in the original Master Mind. As such, Oobermind probably doesn't kill Metro Man but instead manages to put him out of the picture for a lot of the story, which still allows him to make a climactic return.

I'm sure plenty more details about Oobermind will be revealed in the coming months, but we'll get our chance to learn exactly what's going on when the film is released. So mark your calendars for November 5, 2010 - it just might be worth it.

[First Showing]

After seeing a large chunk of the movie's first third, I'm still pretty excited. The voice performances, by talents like Reese Witherspoon and Kiefer Sutherland, are just as fun as you'd expect. The movie is jam-packed with silly in-jokes and ridiculous sight-gags, at least half of which are genuinely super funny. I'd say it's not quite as great or memorable as The Incredibles, but several heads better than 99 percent of other animated films.

Here's my rundown of the scenes we got to see:

First scene:

A 350-foot tall alien robot has landed in Modesto, CA, as a reporter explains. The president (Stephen Colbert) tries to confront the giant robot, which has a single swiveling blue eye. The president leaves his guards behind and ascends a giant staircase that leads up to the alien's eye. At the top he plays a big synthesizer. (First he plays the musical message from Close Encounters, then "Axel F" from Beverly Hills Cop. All the soldiers and government spooks dance, stiffy.)

The Prez seems to be getting through! The alien puts out a little protruding item, like a communcations device. Colbert tries to shake hands with it — but it smashes his synthesizer. The robot sprouts massive legs and starts to walk.

The president barely manages to get away, and tells an army captain, "Do something violent." The army complies, but to no avail, and everyone has to withdraw. On his way out, the president pulls out a big gun and shouts, "Eat lead!" (No good. As the president says, "Turns out it eats lead.") Then the president lets himself be carried off, insisting that he's a brave president.

The missiles launched against the alien robot include one that says "E.T. Go Home" in giant letters.

Then we see a guy running to get into the secret bunker where the president is meeting with all his top advisors, and he has to get his eyes, hands, feet, and butt scanned to get in.

The president has two giant red buttons: one of which launches every nuclear weapon in the country, the other of which makes a latte. (Who designed that ridiculous system? he demands. And then it turns out it was him. In which case, of course it makes sense.) The president keeps almost pressing the wrong giant button, either by accident or because he's panicking. ("Damn good cup of joe," the president says.)

Just when all seems lost, General W.R. Monger (Sutherland) shows up and suggests a solution. (The bit you've seen in the trailer where he says "We need a hail mary pass, we need raw power, we need... monsters.")

He runs through a round-up of all the monsters and their origins. (The killer blob B.O.B. (Seth Rogen) is the result of an experiment in a fast-food factory involving ranch dressing and candy. Insectosaurus was irradiated and became giant, attempting to destroy Japan.) When each monster is shown, one woman in the room screams in a theatrical B-movie fashion.

Finally, she's dragged out of the room, but we still hear a scream when Ginormica's origin is revealed — it's the president.) One nerdy guy asks if we really want to have a monster problem added to our alien problem, and General Monger gives him a horrendous wedgie. The president gives the go ahead for the monster plan.

Second scene:

Susan Murphy (Witherspoon), the gigantic woman known as Ginormica, is asleep in her cell, when an alarm begins to sound. She thinks it's her honeymoon and asks her new husband to press the snooze button — then she wakes up and realizes she's actually giant, and her wedding never finished. (She suddenly turned giant on her wedding day after being hit with a meteor, as you probably saw in the film's trailer.)

Then the cell suddenly turns into an elevator and starts shooting down. She finds herself in a huge hangar in Area 52, where mysterious voices speculate on whether she's just a giant pair of legs or something more. A pile of gloop drops onto a table, and a shape scuttles out and hides behind it. The insect-man genius Dr. Cockroach, PhD (Hugh Laurie) pops out and introduces himself, and Susan tries to squish him in a very Bugs Bunny-esque sequence. "My brain will be in the Smithsonian some day, let's not ruin it, shall we?" he implores. Gradually, she meets the other monsters: the gelatinous B.O.B., the half-fish Missing Link (Will Arnett), the gigantic Insectosaurus, whose roar only makes sense to the Missing Link.

B.O.B. thinks Susan is a boy, and says "Look at his boobies! B.O.B. has no brain and says it's overrated. Then he forgets how to breathe, and Dr. Cockroach has to explain it to him.

They all get their food — nasty fish for the Missing Link, garbage for Dr. Cockroach and a giant ham bone which dissolves inside B.O.B.'s see-through flesh.

Susan tells the monsters her name, but they want to know her monster name. She says, "Susan." And they're all like, no, what do people scream when they see you coming, "Oh my god, it's —" And she's still like, "Susan." "Oooh, Sooosan," says B.O.B. And then he decides it is a scary name after all. "I just scared myself."

General W.R. Monger turns up in a flying jetpack harness, and tells all the other monsters to go back to their cells. Insectosaurus gets led around via a giant lamp that he stares at. Susan is thrilled to meet another real human — until she worries that the general is really one of those half-machine, half-human things. "A cyborg," the general says helpfully. "Aaaaa you're a cyborg!" she screams.

Third scene:

The monsters go to confront the giant robot probe in San Francisco. Ginormica gets chased down the street, and runs across the rooftops. She falls down one slanted rooftop, and hangs by her fingernails — and then she only falls! But she only falls a few feet because, duh, she's giant. And B.O.B. gets stuck to the underside of the robot's foot, and grabs a hot dog cart off the street for a snack.

Meanwhile, Dr. Cockroach, PhD has fitted a cable car with rockets, and is zooming down the street with the Missing Link. He tells the Link he'll pull up alongside the robot, and the Missing Link can get up inside it and access the control center. But just as they reach the robot, B.O.B. comes flying into the cable car, knocking the other two over. They go whizzing down the street until they land in the water.

Susan, meanwhile, has turned a couple of cars into improvised roller skates, and she's running away. She reaches a group of people trying to escape the city in their cars, so she has to dodge and weave around them while going a zillion miles per hour. And then the robot shows up when she reaches the Golden Gate Bridge, and starts smashing everything. She's trying to fight the robot and help the people get to safety. The other monsters (except Insectosaurus) show up and tell her she's doing great. "I'm doing everything!" she shouts.

Dr. Cockroach, PhD, runs up inside the machine's crushing mechanism, because nothing can crush a cockroach. He manages to reach a control mechanism. He puts two wires together — and only succeeds in generating a beam that hypnotizes Insectosaurus, who's shown up to fight it. The Missing Link is knocked out, so Susan tries to get B.O.B. to help. "Oh, sorry, I was just looking at that bird," B.O.B. says. She tells him to get the people out of there, so B.O.B. tries to pick up the cars and throw them off the bridge. "No!" she says. "Move the dividers!" B.O.B. starts eating the dividers on the bridge, so people can drive into the opposite lane and drive away.

Overpowered by the robot, Susan almost gives up, but then she gives herself a pep talk and rallies. She manages to knock the robot over so that part of the bridge comes down and slices it in half.

Most of Katzenberg's presentation had to do with the development of the InTru 3-D system. Proper 3-D film (as opposed to the clunky 1950s version) is the third great advance in film-making, after sound and color. From now on, every Dreamworks animation movie will be conceived, from the earliest storyboards, in 3-D.

I asked Katzenberg about the comic book Rex Havoc And The Ass-Kickers Of The Fantastic, which was rumored to be where some of the ideas in Monsters Versus Aliens came from. Said Katzenberg:

Rex Havoc is something that we did option, some many years ago. And that does have a monster hunter, I think, at its core. But the filmmakers, Rob Letterman and Conrad Vernon... actually ended up creaing [MVA] from scratch. And so I think the similarities between those are fairly distant.

During the Q&A after Katzenberg's presentation, people asked why CG animation in these sorts of movies is not more photorealistic. Katzenberg replied that at $150 million a movie, CG animated films are much more expensive than just pointing a digital camera at actors. So in animation, it's better to go for "heightened realism."

Katzenberg also said he's seen a few minutes of James Cameron's 3-D epic Avatar, and it was amazing. And he admitted that the financial crisis has slowed down the financing of 3-D-enabled movie theaters, meaning there are a lot fewer screens available than everyone had predicted this time last year. So even though Katzenberg insisted every movie would soon be in 3-D, it might take a little longer than he'd hoped.

(Wilson also looks to steal the show as a leather-pants-wearing professor in Transformers 2.) MVA is now the most eagerly anticipated animated film since Wall-E. [ET]

The Hollywood Reporter describes the second movie, Real Steel, like this:

The futuristic boxing movie is being penned by "Dante's Peak" scribe Les Bohem, who created and wrote the Spielberg-executive produced Sci Fi Channel show "Taken."

If the thought of Taken's Bohem bringing some of his Dante's Peak insane volcano mojo to the future of boxing isn't enough to entice you, you might be interested in another description of the movie that we found online:

Story takes place in the near future where 2000-lbs robots duke it out in the boxing ring. It follows a boxing promoter who takes his human fighter into the rings against the robots.

Okay, first of all: That sounds like a Vin Diesel movie if ever there was one. And secondly, "2000-lbs robots duke it out in the boxing ring"?

It's The Rock-Em Sock-Em Robots movie.

Sure, it's not officially being called that or anything, but come on; giant boxing robots? We all know what that means. And to think, it was just the other day that Charlie was asking for this to happen...

DreamWorks sets priority lineup [Hollywood Reporter]

Here's how comic book publisher Platinum Studios described Atlantis Rising back when they issued the first issue:

For thousands of years, the legendary continent of Atlantis has thrived unencumbered by those who live on Earth's surface. Now after decades of surface pollution, from oil spills to off-shore dumping, the Atlantean way of life has been threatened, bringing the two civilizations to the brink of all-out war.

"With the ongoing debate regarding global climate change, Atlantis Rising offers a mix of real-world issues, combined with suspense and action on an epic scale," says Platinum Studios Comics Publisher, Sean O'Reilly.

This is the latest in a recent line of comics that got movie deals either before they published their first issue, or soon afterwards. Readers complain about comics that read like movie pitches, but the result seems to work for Hollywood. [Wired]

And he wants to turn it into a live-action 3D movie. Written by Jamie Moss, whose only other work was on Street Kings, a cop actioner currently in theaters. I've actually been wanting to see Street Kings (Keanu Reeves is not Moss' fault, after all) and I like the idea of bringing in a writer with a flair for cop action. Ghost in the Shell is, after all, a cop movie. The main plot arc involves solving a crime of the future: non-consensual brain hacking. And I'm willing to admit Spielberg did make one hell of a slick, menacing dystopia in A.I. — as long as you ignore the egregiously awful ending.

Still, I'm worried the film will lose its freaky philosophical edge when translated into Spielbergese. This is a complicated story based on a famous manga series, which has spawned several movie sequels, games, and TV shows in Japan. Fans are going to have high expectations, and throwing lots of Dreamworks money at the movie to meet those expectations isn't the right way to go. Sure we want to see some awesome effects, and a fully-realized New Port City. But we really need good writing and plotting to make sure nothing is lost in translation.

Dreamworks Doing 3D Live Action Version of Ghost in the Shell [Quiet Earth]

After Hollywood passed on Interworld in 1996, Gaiman and Reaves decided to rework it as a novel. Alas, no one was interested in publishing it. However, they sent it out again in 2006, and it was purchased by HarperCollins and published last summer. And now the project has a new lease on life in Hollywood as well.

While Gaiman is probably best known for his comic book stint on The Sandman and his fantasy novels like Neverwhere, Reaves has written episodes of everything from Buck Rogers to Star Trek: The Next Generation to Sliders. Which comes in handy in Interworld, since the main character Joel finds out he can travel between alternate Earths. According to Gaiman it was,

An idea about a boy who finds himself in the middle of a war between two equally powerful forces, who joins a super-team consisting of versions of himself from different alternate realities to try and maintain the cosmic balance.

Oddly enough, Stephen King's alternate worlds novel The Talisman is being turned into a miniseries later this year by Dreamworks Television, which also involves a young boy who can "flip" between worlds, although the other places he goes are mired mostly in magic. One of the characters even states, "They have magic like we have science." We just hope that the slight similarities between the two stories don't force Dreamworks to shelve Interworld, because who wouldn't want to join their own superteam, made up of different versions of themselves?