Reeves's Company Films has been circling round this project for a while now, but it was only a couple days ago that studio Morgan Creek gave Passengers the green light. Written by Jonathan Spaihts, Passengers takes place on an ark ship, making a centuries-long interstellar voyage to a new planet. All the passengers are being held in suspended animation until they arrive, but a computer glitch causes Reeves's character to wake up nearly a century too early. Faced with dying alone on a cold, vast spaceship, he decides to revive a beautiful woman to be his companion.

Spaihts's screenplay has been talked about in Hollywood circles for some time. It placed third on the 2007 edition of the Black List, an annual list of the best screenplays that, for whatever reason, remain unproduced. A script review by screenwriter Joel Haber posted in January 2008 offers some rather cryptic hints as to what one might expect from the story - keeping in mind there will be plenty of revisions and rewrites before filming even begins.

Here are the choice quotes from Haber's review of Passengers, for a production company that ultimately passed on the screenplay:

Passengers is unique and thoughtful science fiction film that has the added benefit of not requiring an exorbitant budget to produce, due to a small cast, single primary location, and few serious effects shots...

The film's potential to be made for a budget lower than most Sci-Fi films suggests some commercial viability. Of course, its more intimate, dramatic and less action-oriented nature suggest it will never become a blockbuster...

[The concept] is both unique and thought provoking. As an audience, we can easily empathize with Jim and Aurora, and wrestle with their dilemmas ourselves. The film is an excellent example of finding a story out of a "what if" scenario...

There are a number of plot holes that might not be terrible, but still exist. None of them alone is that bad, but in conjunction with each other, they do weaken the story somewhat.

A thoughtful, dramatic, low-budget science fiction film with minimal special effects...that stars Keanu Reeves? Color me intrigued. Although I'd love to know how you can apparently cram so many plot holes into the classic story of "Man wakes up from cryogenic hibernation a century early, man gets lonely, man wakes woman up from cryogenic hibernation slightly less than a century early, man meets woman." That's pretty much the oldest, most straightforward plot in the world.

[Sci-Fi Wire]

So it's pretty certain that the Ood, those creepy telepathic slaves from "The Satan Pit," will be back in "Planet of the Ood." And we know for sure the clone warrior Sontarans will be back, because we've seen a promo pic. And it sure looks like the Axons (a sort of space parasite from the 1970s) will be back in the Christmas episode, judging from the latest promo image. And we know Billie Piper is coming back for a few episodes.

But everything else sounds totally bogus. Will Ben Kingsley really play Davros, creator of the Daleks? Will Joanna Lumley really play the Master (actually, that sounds hot.) Will the Ice Warriors and the Brigadier really drag their asses out of mothballs? Not to mention the season concluding with a four-part "Time War," involving every monster ever. Most of the alleged spoiler summary sounds like ridicuous fansturbation. Which, knowing Russell T. Davies and co., means it's probably all true.

Meanwhile, there's a ten-second teaser trailer for the Christmas episode, which reveals nothing. In other news:

The animated Batman DVD that's coming out to promote The Dark Knight could be better than the movie itself. The six animated shorts will include new work by Satoshi Kon (Paprika), Bruce Timm (Batman: The Animated Series), plus animation studios Madhouse (Death Note), Studio 4°C (Tekkonkinkreet) and Production I.G. (Ghost In The Shell)

Movies we might see in 2008 or 2009: The top movie scripts written in 2007 include a few science fiction stories, according to the "Black List" compiled by 150 movie execs and top assistants. The fave scripts include Passengers, about a passenger on an intergalactic spaceship who awakes from cryogenic sleep a hundred years before the rest of the crew. Keanu Reeves' company is producing that script but no studio has optioned it yet. A movie version of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, written by Joe Penhall, has already been optioned by 2929 Productions. Also on the list: Get Back about two die-hard Beatles fans who (it gets worse) find a time machine and travel back to keep John Lennon from ever meeting Yoko Ono. Can we please send that one to development hell now now now?

Gerald "300" Butler still might star in the Escape From New York remake, despite reports he's dropped out. Terminator 3 director Jonathan Mostow is directing, so it should be just cheesy enough for Butler's trademark scowl.