The Walt Disney Company is preparing to reinvent one of their own titles. They’ve hired Tron: Legacy director Joseph Kosinski and producer Sean Bailey to develop a new version on 1979’s The Black Hole. Travis Beacham will handle the script writing duties. Beacham doesn’t have a ton of experience, but he was one of the writers on Louis Leterrier’s Clash of the Titans.

The original Black Hole featured many big names for the time including Maximilian Schell, Robert Forster, Joseph Bottoms, Yvette Mimieux, Anthony Perkins, Ernest Borgnine, and Roddy McDowall and Slim Pickens in voice acting roles. It told the story of a space fleet that discovers a lost ship floating near a black hole (think Event Horizon, but with Disney!). On the ship, they find a scientist who has been missing for twenty years commanding a crew of faceless droids that turn out to be the former crew who tried to form a mutiny. They have received a procedure similar to what we know as a lobotomy in order to ensure their faithful service. The crew attempts to bring the missing team home, but the scientist has no plans to leave or let his servants leave as he plans to enter the black hole and explore where none have explored before.

Crank 2: High Voltage
Directed by Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor
Starring Jason Statham, Amy Smart, Clifton Collins Jr., Bai Ling, Efren Ramirez
Lionsgate

Crank, the Red Bull and crystal meth-fueled 2006 action epic, became a minor classic of its time but failed to connect with moviegoers despite the presence of rising celluloid badass Jason Statham in the lead role of unstoppable contract killer Chev Chelios. It wasn’t until the movie hit DVD the next year that it began to find its audience. The sales must have been strong because they were more than enough for Crank‘s distributor Lionsgate to approach the movie’s writer/director team of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor for a sequel. The problem is that the finale of Crank found Chelios dropped from a helicopter over Los Angeles and fought his nemesis to the bitter end. Then he became a street pancake. The end, or so we initially thought. Hey this is Hollywood baby, and in this land of cocaine wishes and Vicodin dreams anything’s possible, even surviving a plummet to the earth from 30,000 feet. And with that in mind, Neveldine/Taylor gives us Crank 2: High Voltage, as boldly over-the-top as a sequel can possibly be.

On our last episode of Crank Chelios was injected with a special Chinese poison by his enemy Verona and in order to keep from kicking the bucket before he could take his revenge Chev had to keep his heart pumping. After a day-long battle that spanned almost all of the City of Angels Chev finally exacted a bloody and satisfying vengeance upon his archnemesis, and then he died. Crank 2 picks up immediately where the original left off with a group of Chinese gangsters scooping the dead Chelios off the asphalt with a snow shovel and spiriting him away to a brothel/makeshift hospital where his powerful heart is surgically removed and placed in the hands of spastic Triad thug Johnny Vang (Art Hsu). In the place of his “strawberry tart” (Chev’s words) the surgeons place an artificial heart that runs on internal and external batteries. They also plot to harvest certain other body parts precious to our hero. Drawing the line at losing his dick Chev wakes up, kills his way out of Triad hands, and contacts his friend Doc Miles (Dwight Yoakam) who explains to our intrepid anti-hero that he must keep the heart running with electricity or else he’ll die.

For those of you who are unaware (this included myself), a brand new re-imagining of George Romero‘s Night of the Living Dead is being made, and it will be completely computer animated, and in fabulous 3-D.

The movie will be called Night of the Living Dead: Origins, and it aims to do things that haven’t been able to be done in live-action films. Directing duties will be handled by Zebediah de Soto, a true fan of the original film. The 1968 film was the first movie he ever saw after a strict childhood that had him forbidden from TV.

The latest Living Dead has now also begun casting its roles, and you will not be able to deny the loyalty that they show to the zombie genre in their casting. Names that have high association with the horror and zombie genre are getting the jobs, and horror fanboys will surely have to take a peek, even though the thought of a CGI zombie film must be a tad infuriating.

The Gold Box spotlight deal of the day over at Amazon today is the Stargate SG-1 – The Complete Series Collection for only $97.99 (that’s 70% off the list price of $329.98; and much lower that the last sale price of $131.99).

This is a 54-disc set with all ten seasons of the scifi series, with four of those discs being hours’ worth of bonus features like commentaries, video diaries, behind-the-scenes footage, and much more.

Also, there’s currently an A&E Boxed Set Sale, with heavily reduced prices — up to 60% off — for complete series DVDs for shows like Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Farscape, The Kids in the Hall, Benny Hill, and much more.

The A&E boxed set sale is valid through December 28, 2009.

Terminator Salvation, the fourth installment in the Terminator franchise, is out on DVD and Blu-ray this week, and we here at Geeks of Doom have two (2) Blu-ray editions to give away to some lucky readers!

Two (2) winners will each receive:

• One (1) Terminator Salvation on Blu-ray

Become a fan of the Warner Blu-ray Facebook Community at http://www.facebook.com/WarnerBlu for the latest info on WB movies and home video releases, contests, and exclusive video clips.

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