In the not so distant past, Latino Review caught word that Nimród Antal was the top choice to direct the Rober Rodriguez-produced reboot Predators for Fox and Troublemaker Studios. Now, this news has been confirmed directly from Rodriguez himself to Ain’t It Cool News.

Antal is still fairly new to the game, but he has directed movies like Kontroll and Vacancy, with another on the way called Armored. The director was among a handful of talents being considered for the job, including Marcus Nispel (Friday the 13th) and Neil Marshall (The Descent). Rodriguez ultimately chose Antal after noticing many impressive skills and virtues that reminded him of a young Quentin Tarantino — most of which was his ability to work with various well-known actors without issue. This trait stood out due to the fact that Rodriguez wants Predators to have strong story as well as a great cast fueling the action flick. He also is putting the work into creating awesome creatures and avoiding CGI as much as humanly possible, which is worthy of celebration. [...]

The Sci Fi (SyFy? If we all refuse to acknowledge that, will they change it back?) channel has already far and away proven that they can take an old TV series, completely restructure it, and create one of the best shows of all time. Now that Battlestar Galactica has come and gone, Sci Fi is developing a new potential series based on Alien Nation with fanboy favorite Tim Minear writing.

Alien Nation first started as a movie starring James Caan in 1988 that turned into a 1989 TV series on Fox. The show was canceled after one season, but has seen five new TV movies made since then, as well. The show is basically a social observation using a fictional setting and aliens known as “Newcomers” who were at first made to live away from humans, but now have been allowed to reside among us; of course this doesn’t stop racism from continuing. The original movie for which this new project is being based followed an L.A. cop (Caan) whose partner is killed while investigating the Newcomers. When the first alien police officer comes to his department, he volunteers to join up with him in order to sneakily try and investigate the death of his former partner. [...]

It’s been a while since we heard that Guillermo del Toro was attached to remake the 1973 TV movie Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark. Recently the project has begun to heat up with the announcement of Katie Holmes being cast, and now comes word that Guy Pearce is in final negotiations to star in the movie. Nine-year old Bailee Madison — who already has almost 20 IMDB listings — has also been cast.

The movie was about a man whose young daughter moves into his creepy house with him and his girlfriend. Eventually the young girl discovers that the house is also inhabited by demons who want to make the little girl one of their own — though her father refuses to believe this to be true.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, Pearce will of course play the father; Holmes will play his girlfriend, while Madison will naturally play his daughter. Guillermo del Toro wrote the script with Matthew Robbins and he is producing with Mark Johnson. One of del Toro’s understudies, Troy Nixey, will be directing the movie adaptation. [...]

The Harry Potter website, The Leaky Cauldron, has found out that actor Bill Nighy has told The Independent that he will finally be starring in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows after a long, long time claiming to be one of the few British actors not cast in a Potter film.

The Leaky Cauldron apparently caught wind of this a long while back, but only now is it seemingly being confirmed by Nighy himself. Though the actor decided not to say who he would be player, experts are confident that he’s a shoo-in for the role of Minister of Magic Rufus Scrimgeour

Here is what Bill Nighy had to say:

I don’t think I’m allowed to say it but I’m going to be in the next Harry Potter film. I won’t say which character, but he’s a goodie. I just got the gig.

When asked if he’s even read the books, he explained “Not yet, but I will! It’s rather like being in a Shakespeare that way, you know?” — a quote that may have Potter fans nervous. [...]

As we all know, this past week or two has been incredibly unfortunate with the passing of many beloved celebrities, including David Carradine, Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson. As depressing as all of this loss was, at one point in the chaos that occurred on the day that Fawcett and Jackson were lost, there were also various reports that actor Jeff Goldblum had also died after falling off a cliff in New Zealand while filming. This news never really seemed legit and we later found out that it was in fact false — but it had actually gotten as far as foreign news programs reporting that police in New Zealand had confirmed it as true.

Taking advantage of the opportunity to bring a little laughter to us at a time where many are mourning, Stephen Colbert decided to report the sad demise of Jeff Goldblum on The Colbert Report while touching on the journalistic accuracy of Twitter. [...]

At this point, most of us are aware of Sacha Baron Cohen, the British actor who has portrayed a Kazakhstanian reporter in Borat; a gay Austrian fashion buff in this summer’s Brüno, and a French car racing star in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby — among many other things. What many of us are not so much aware of is that Sacha has a cousin named Ash, and he’s been here in America and working in movies for much longer than his superstar relative.

In the July issue of Esquire, they did a small story on Ash Baron Cohen, and while he hasn’t made the most well-known films we’ve ever heard of, his story is wonderful and decorated with the praises of cinematic legends. Some of the films he has made are: Bang, which Roger Ebert called one of the best movies of 1997; Pups, which had Mischa Barton and Burt Reynolds; and probably his biggest project was This Girl’s Life, which starred James Woods, Rosario Dawson, Michael Rapaport, and Ioan Gruffudd. He also currently has three movies on the way that are in various states of production.

Most of his projects were directed under the one-name format: Ash. This was because he was initially here illegally. Apparently Oliver Stone loved his movie Bang so much, that he said “We need to get you legal,” and actually wrote the INS to make it happen.

Click over to the other side for one of the best Hollywood stories I’ve ever heard — WITH video! Pre-click warning: this video has some heavy NSFW language from thespian Richard Harris (that’d be Professor Dumbledore from the first two Harry Potter films, for you younger generation folks). Now you’re too curious not to look, aren’t you? [...]

The in-progress story of film maker Duncan Jones is an impressive one. The director took $5 Million on his debut film, and turned it into one of the more popular movies of this summer, Moon. The movie — which stars Sam Rockwell as an astronaut on a three-year mission who ends up dealing with the pains of extended seclusion — is still slowly-but-surely expanding to more and more theaters, and hopefully by the end of its run, it will have made much more than it cost. Even though its box office success is still unknown, Jones is now moving on to his next project, which will be called Mute.

Not much is known of the movie yet, only that it will have many more actors than his previous one-man-show, it will be reminiscent to the classic Blade Runner, and also this brief description: “Mute is about a woman whose disappearance causes a mystery for her partner, a mute bartender. When she disappears, he has to go up against the city’s gangsters.” [...]

By now you’ve all seen the wonderful trailers for Shane Acker’s 9, the computer animated post-apocalyptic adventure about a band of 9 ragdolls and their fight to survive (Read: Check Out The Original Short Film & Trailer For ‘9’ Right Now). It’s dark and scary-yet strangely beautiful look immediately steals your eyes and won’t give them back until its done with you. Now from io9 comes some great new visual sustenance in the form of eight posters that feature the nine brave ragdolls! Just a note, two of the ragdolls are twins, and are featured in one poster, hence the nine dolls in eight posters deal.

Here is the movie’s official synopsis:

When 9 (Elijah Wood) first comes to life, he finds himself in a post-apocalyptic world. All humans are gone, and it is only by chance that he discovers a small community of others like him taking refuge from fearsome machines that roam the earth intent on their extinction. Despite being the neophyte of the group, 9 convinces the others that hiding will do them no good. They must take the offensive if they are to survive, and they must discover why the machines want to destroy them in the first place. As they’ll soon come to learn, the very future of civilization may depend on them. [...]

For a decade now, Frank Darabont has been trying tirelessly to adapt the classic Ray Bradbury novel Fahrenheit 451 into a movie, with nothing but bad luck and fallen plans keeping the project in a deep hole. The closest it seemed to be to actually happening is when they were able to score Tom Hanks for the lead, but when he eventually exited the project, Fahrenheit disappeared from the radar for some time. Now comes word via Sci Fi Wire from the Saturn Awards that Darabont has a new actor in mind and that he’s determined — even in the face of death — to make this movie now.

Frank Darabont isn’t someone who makes movies in quick-succession, but when he does make them, they usually find high-praise. Most-notably, Darabont has written and directed the comparable Stephen King adaptations of The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. He also wrote and directed the remake of The Mist, which was liked by many people, but not nearly at the level of his other King adaptations. [...]

Days after making the brave and surprising move to double the amount of Best picture nominees from 5 to 10 (Read: 2010 Academy Awards To Include Ten Best Picture Nominees), the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science has also decided that if there’s not a song worthy enough of an Oscar, then no Oscar will be given for Best Original Song.

Basically, this new rule states that if a song does not receive a minimum average score of 8.25 during the nominations voting, then it will not be considered for nomination. If not one song is given this minimum average score, than the category will just not be presented at the 82nd Academy Awards ceremony. If only one song gets the 8.25 average score, then that song and the next highest-rated song to it will be the nominees; if only two songs are deemed worthy, then, again, there will be only two nominees. This is also new as the minimum number of nominees used was three prior to this.

This is the second consecutive change made to the Best Original Song category. [...]

Kyle Ward, who wrote the script for the Kane & Lynch movie, and was just reported to be writing the sequel to Hitman, has now been given a third video game movie writing job: Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune.

The popular Playstation 3 game from Sony Computer Entertainment is being developed into a movie by Columbia Pictures, with Marvel Studios founder Avi Arad and his brother Ari Arad’s Arad Productions producing the movie. Also producing will be Charles Roven and Alex Gartner of Atlas Entertainment.

Drake’s Fortune tells the story of Nathan Drake, an adventurer and descendant of actual explorer Sir Francis Drake, who discovers a diary by his late ancestor that leads the way to the fabled city of gold: El Dorado. As usual, when trying to discover some of the universe’s greatest treasures, things don’t go so well; between rival seekers of the gold city and mutated descendants of Spaniards and Nazis trying to stop him, Nathan Drake is obviously in for a challenge and a kick-ass adventure. [...]

Vampires. These bitey little rascals have always been popular sources of entertainment — a fact that remains strong today with multiple movies and TV shows. Some are immensely popular like HBO’s True Blood and foreign film Let the Right One In; others are maybe not so good — depending on who you are, of course — such as Twilight and 30 Days of Night.

Whether you adore these creatures of the night, or if they’re really not your thing, the fact of it all is that they’re just not going anywhere. And with that assessment, here’s presenting the trailer for a brand new vampire tale that is well on its way: Daybreakers.

Daybreakers looks pretty interesting. It has a creepy Dark City with a touch of Guillermo del Toro’s Blade II look to it and deals with the vampire race trying to discover a way to survive when it becomes apparent that the human race is endangered and blood is running out. The movie stars Ethan Hawke, Sam Neill, and Willem Dafoe. It is directed by Peter Spierig and Michael Spierig, who have also directed Undead. [...]

It has been multiple years now that we’ve been aware of James Cameron and his revolutionary juggernaut of a movie, Avatar. As these years have passed, we’ve seen concept and behind-the-scenes images, but still not too much beyond that. Recently though, a small crowd of special peoples had the Willy Wonka-like opportunity to see 24-minutes of footage from the movie at CinemaExpo in Amsterdam.

Among this disgustingly lucky group of people, a handful of them offered up a description of what they saw, and it’s one of those situations where the words are really difficult to put together, and even harder for someone like myself to even attempt to recycle and be useful to you. In this matter, /Film gathered up a collection of clips of these descriptions and put them in one spot — you can go there to read them all, and you can follow the links provided to go to each site and read the full descriptions. Of the many that offered up a description of what they saw, I’ve picked a couple of bits to include below.

We all knew that Avatar was setting up to be a really special event and something that we’ve never seen, but after reading these recaps, you can’t help but put this movie at the very top of your must-see list. [...]

We haven’t really heard of any news involving Hitman since the 2007 movie starring Timothy Olyphant as Agent 47 (Including news about the horrifically long-awaited 5th game in the franchise; let’s go Eidos and IO Interactive!). The first movie didn’t exactly fare too well at the box office and was worse-off when it came to critical review, but even so, it was expected that a sequel would eventually come along. Even with the lacking first run, the flick did do better than most would expect of a video game-based movie; that and the property is based on the ultra-popular game franchise, which can always lead to some success.

In what confirms that a script is at least going to be written before deciding the fate of said sequel, IESB has learned that writer Kyle Ward has been hired to pen the sequel. Ward is pretty much a newbie to the game, but he does have a couple of unseen projects in-production: the Kane & Lynch movie with Bruce Willis and a movie called Fiasco Heights that’s set to be made by Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes. Kane & Lynch is of course based on another video game property that is developed by the same group that makes the Hitman games, so all fits together nicely here. [...]

In what has turned out to be one of the more depressing days in entertainment, the “King of Pop,” Michael Jackson, has died at the age of 50. The news came mere hours after the report that actress Farrah Fawcett had lost her long battle with cancer.

The Michael Jackson news was surreal, as while it was unfolding, many thought it was simply inaccurate news. When word first broke, it was said that Jackson was found in cardiac arrest and not breathing; this news quickly took a turn for the worst when rumors started flying out that he had passed away; this shock was followed up by suggestions that he was actually in a coma, and the reports began alternating, leaving everyone confused as to what was actually going on. Sadly, as time moved forward, this news — first reported by TMZ — was confirmed by the LA Times to be true.

Many have been worried about the health of Jackson for a while now, but with a hopeful three-year world tour set to kick off with 50 sold out shows in London, it appeared that the star was feeling well and prepped for an attempted comeback of epic proportions. [...]

Farrah Fawcett, the ’70s bombshell with glowing blonde hair, has passed away at a hospital in California after her long battle with cancer. She was 62 years old.

Fawcett’s three-year battle had been very public, keeping fans well up-to-date on her progress in this incredibly difficult fight. She even appeared in a TV documentary called Farrah’s Story, which gave us a close-up look at the actress’s terrible struggles, and her determination to find beat it and find a cure.

Farrah Fawcett first showed up in the late ’60s, appearing briefly on legendary TV shows like I Dream of Jeannie and The Partridge Family. She made many other appearances as well, but it wasn’t until 1976 when she broke out in a big way with her highly-recognized run as one the beloved Angels on Charlie’s Angels, as well as her turn in Logan’s Run. Surprisingly, she only appeared in 29 episodes of Charlie’s Angels which ran from 1976 to 1981, yet she is known all over the world for it. After Angels, she became every man’s dream girl — her poster was on almost every young boy’s wall. She moved on from the show to do a lot more drama work, and she was in well-known movies like The Cannonball Run and Dr. T and the Women. [...]

In quite the unexpected move, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science has announced that next year’s 82nd Academy Awards ceremony will have a massive adjustment to it: the normal 5 Best Picture nominees will instead be 10 Best Picture nominees.

This is another apparent move for the Academy to try and bring in new viewers after their shake-up last year, bringing in Hugh Jackman to host instead of the usual comedian host (which I still personally prefer). As mentioned, the typical number of movies that were nominated each year was five, but way back in the early years of the Oscars, there were many more — sometimes as many as twelve, so this is a really a return to classic form. The last year that this format was used was in 1943, when Casablanca took the top prize.

This is shocking to me, but something that I’m pretty excited about seeing. You can’t help but think of all the movies in past years that people wanted to get a Best Picture nomination and didn’t; namely — using 2008 as an example — the animated features like Wall-E, the not-so-traditional contenders such as The Dark Knight, as well as the flat-out snubbed movies like The Wrestler. [...]

Just a few days ago, word swarmed the internet that Shia LaBeouf had decided to step away from the long-rumored Y: The Last Man adaptation (Read: Shia LaBeouf Takes Himself Out Of The ‘Y: The Last Man’ Equation), where he was set to play the lead Yorick Brown behind director D.J. Caruso. LaBeouf had apparently come to the conclusion that the character of Yorick was far too similar to his Transformers character, Sam Witwicky, and that wasn’t a good thing for him.

Many loved this news because, well, Yorick Brown is a hell of a lot more complicated than Sam Witwicky, for one; but if LaBeouf did play the part in Y, he would definitely seem like Sam Witwicky just by default, and this was bad. Unfortunately for those who had become elated with this recent development, it has now quickly been clarified.

Shia LaBeouf sat down with Frosty at Collider and let it all pour out. He explained that Y: The Last Man is his absolute favorite comic book, and it’s D.J. Caruso’s favorite as well, so they still really want to do it. He also clarified that right now, right this moment, the script is nowhere near ready. But because of the similarity of Witwicky and Yorick Brown, he wants to do something else now, but doesn’t want to completely walk away from Y: The Last Man either. [...]

Now that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is upon us, the focus will slowly begin to shift toward Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — the final book in the series which is being turned into two movies. The pair of films will take the smart path and are filming right now, immediately after Half-Blood Prince so they don’t lose any more time or youthful looking actors. One of the big questions that has plagued fans since learning of the two-part finale is of course where do they stop the first part to cut them into two? Well, it seems they have a good idea where they want to slice it.

First off, producer David Heyman and star Daniel Radcliffe spoke to Empire, where Radcliffe claimed that the split would occur at a major cliffhanger. Heyman added:

We’ve played around with a couple of places, and ultimately settled on a place that we think is very exciting, and I think quite bold, in that it’s not necessarily where one might expect. You want to give a sense of completion, on one hand, but a sense that there’s another piece, more to come. [...]

What happens when the most powerful man on the planet in President of the United States, Barack Obama, meets the most “explosive” director in cinematic history, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen director Michael Bay? Does the universe implode? Does God shoot off some fireworks synchronized to an Aerosmith soundtrack to set the mood? Maybe we just get an innocent and amusing little story and quote.

While at a press conference recently, Bay was asked about why he chose to use President Obama’s name in his Transformers sequel instead of a fictional presidential figure. Bay went on to tell the story of his meeting Obama in an airport in Vegas right after the start of his presidential campaign. The entertaining part of the story comes when Obama found out Bay was a director and which movies he had made, he humorously corrected him by saying “So you’re a big-ass director,” to which Bay surely takes pride in.

Obviously this is more just a fun little tid-bit and not that important. But while the story is entertaining, the original question is a bit odd. [...]