NBC has acquired the rights to adapt the 1984 Robert Zemeckis action–adventure romantic comedy, Romancing the Stone, into a TV series.

The deal with NBC comes from 20th Century Fox TV and Shawn Levy (director, Night of the Museum 1 & 2, Real Steel) and Marty Adelstein‘s (producer, Hanna, Prison Break) 21 Laps Entertainment and Adelstein Productions. Mark Friedman (writer, Home of the Brave, creator/writer/producer, The Forgotten) will write the adaptation, and Levy could step in to direct if no feature film projects (like Night of the Museum 3) become available to him.

The Wrap is reporting that Warner Brothers and Legendary Pictures have reached a deal with screenwriter Brian Helgeland to pen the script for a movie to be called Here There Be Monsters. The studios have also entered into negotiations with Academy Award–winning director Robert Zemeckis to make the movie for them.

The movie will follow along the same lines as the popular alternate history monster movie sub–sub–genre where real times, places, and historical figures have monsters and all kinds of beasties thrown into the mix.

A new trailer for Mars Needs Moms is now online. Check it out here below.

The film is one of Disney’s upcoming non-Pixar animated films. It tells the story of Milo, a 9-year-old whose mother gets abducted by aliens so that they can rob her of her “mom-ness” to use with their own young. The film stars Seth Green, Joan Cusack, Dan Fogler, Elisabeth Harnois, Mindy Sterling, and Kevin Cahoon. It’s directed by Simon Wells who brought us the remake of The Time Machine. The film is produced by Robert Zemeckis who brought us Cast Away and The Polar Express. Yes, he also directed Back to the Future.

Mars Needs Moms is based on a critically acclaimed book from Berkeley Breathed, the Pulitzer Prize winning author and illustrator of the comic strip Bloom County. He based the book on a disagreement he had with his son also named Milo.

There’s been plenty of talks of L. Frank Baum‘s classic 1900 tale, The Wizard of Oz, getting a few new movie adaptations.

The majority of the news we’ve heard comes from Walt Disney’s new spin on the original story, Oz: The Great and Powerful, that’s now being developed and directed by Sam Raimi with hopes of bringing in Robert Downey Jr. for the lead role of the Wizard.

Today, however, brings news from another one of the Oz films in the works. It’s being reported that Warner Brothers is now in negotiations with Robert Zemeckis to direct their version of the tale. And what will their version of the tale be? Well, it looks like it will be something familiar to all of us. Instead of re-adapting Baum’s book to avoid stepping on the toes of the classic 1939 film that everyone knows and loves, Warner Bros. is planning to use the actual screenplay from the ’39 film for this movie.

Disney’s A Christmas Carol
DVD | Blu-ray | 3D Blu-ray
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
Starring Jim Carrey, Gary Oldman, Colin Firth
Walt Disney Pictures Home Entertainment
Release date: November 16, 2010

Ever since 2004’s The Polar Express, filmmaker Robert Zemeckis has been obsessed with motion-capture performance and has been at the forefront of its technology. With his hand so firmly planted in the medium, it’s no surprise that his last few films have employed motion-capture animation, including his latest, Disney’s A Christmas Carol.

I’ll admit, with each film the animation does gets better. Beowulf (2007) trumped The Polar Express, and now A Christmas Carol tops Beowulf. But, I have to ask, how many more classic stories must Zemeckis run through the mo-cap mill before he gives it a rest?

I don’t mean to sound harsh. Like I said, the technology is improving and I think non-human characters are rendered wonderfully with motion capture, for the most part. I just wish Zemeckis would maybe do an original script, like James Cameron did with Avatar, and give adaptations of classic novels a break for a while.