It should come as no surprise that Disney’s constant live-action reimaginings of their classic animated films is bringing them a nice chunk of change. Though they speedily put those films into development, one of their films just hit a major speed bump.

According to new reports, Academy Award winner Sam Mendes will no longer be directing the live-action take of Disney’s Pinocchio. More on the story below.

As Disney continues to mine through their animation vault, more and more acclaimed directors are climbing aboard live-action adaptations. Sam Mendes (Spectre, American Beauty) is the latest filmmaker to join the club. According to new reports, Mendes is in talks to direct a live-action remake of Pinocchio – not to be confused with the Pinocchio starring Robert Downey Jr. that is being developed at Warner Bros – the 1940 classic film about an elderly, impoverished woodcarver named Gepetto, who creates Pinocchio and wishes upon a star that he could be a real boy.

More on the story below.

This past summer, Disney’s made a worthy attempt to bring the world of Roald Dahl’s The BFG to life with the help of Steven Spielberg. Though the adaptation didn’t meet box office expectations, that won’t stop the studio from exploring more of the author’s works. But this time, instead of looking for a new one, they will do some revisiting. According to a new report, Disney will be working on a live-action adaptation of James And The Giant Peach, with Sam Mendes, who directed the last two James Bond films, currently in early talks to develop and direct. More on the story below.

Although it was a huge step down from the absolutely perfect quality of its predecessor Skyfall, I had a lot of fun with the latest James Bond adventure Spectre. I do have to admit that the opening credits sequence, a longtime staple of the franchise, had me almost rolling on the theater floor in hysterics due to its surprisingly perverse octopus imagery and Sam Smith‘s ridiculous and over-orchestrated main title song “Writing’s on the Wall.”

Smith wasn’t the first choice of Spectre‘s producers and director Sam Mendes to perform the Spectre theme tune. Several artists were sought out for the job, one of them being the internationally-renowned British pop-rock band Radiohead. Early in the morning on Christmas Day, Radiohead’s lead singer and songwriter Thom Yorke confirmed the long-standing rumor via his Twitter. As a Christmas gift for their fans, Radiohead has released their unused contribution to 007’s latest cinematic mission, simply titled “Spectre,” which you can listen to here below.

Spectre
Director: Sam Mendes
Writers: John Logan, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, Jez Butterworth
Cast: Daniel Craig, Christoph Waltz, Léa Seydoux, Ben Whishaw, Naomie Harris, Dave Bautista, Monica Bellucci, Ralph Fiennes, Jesper Christensen, Rory Kinnear
Columbia Pictures | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures
Rated PG-13 | 148 Minutes
Release Date: November 6, 2015

Directed by Sam Mendes (Skyfall), Spectre is the 24th film in the James Bond franchise, and the fourth to start Daniel Craig as Agent 007.

A cryptic message sends Bond to Mexico City during Día de Muertos in pursuit of Marco Sciarra (Alessandro Cremon), a criminal with ties to the sinister organization known as SPECTRE. After dispatching his target, Bond heads to Rome to attend the funeral, where he meets the dead man’s widow, Lucia (Monica Bellucci). Of course, because this is a Bond film, they have sex and she gives him all the information he needs to pursue SPECTRE.