It was almost a year ago that we found out that David Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen were hoping to make a sequel to Eastern Promises — their gritty Russian crime movie that was released in 2007.

As it turns out, this was not an early April Fools joke and some more good news is here. Deadline Hollywood is reporting that producer Paul Webster is helping to bring the Focus Features sequel along, and that all parties hope to begin filming next winter based on the script from Steven Knight.

A new Robert F. Kennedy biopic based on the Evan Thomas biography, His Life, is now on the way at New Regency with superstar Matt Damon attached to star.

The film — which is currently untitled — will span a large portion of Kennedy’s life, including earlier days when all of the attention was on his older brother John F. Kennedy, to his rise up into the spotlight as a top political leader, and straight through to his assassination in 1968.

The movie will be directed by Gary Ross and written by Steven Knight. Ross wrote and directed Pleasantville and Seabiscuit, and also wrote Big, Dave, The Tale of Despereaux, and the upcoming remake of Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Columbia Pictures is ready to roll the dice on The Da Vinci Code franchise one more time, announcing that it is officially moving forward with The Lost Symbol, which is based on author Dan Brown‘s book of the same name.

When The Da Vinci Code first came out, it was a mass hit and was everywhere you looked and listened. This popularity obviously carried over when director Ron Howard and star Tom Hanks teamed up for the movie adaptation, and though it wasn’t as well-received, the movie still made $758 million in its box office run. A sequel was always expected considering there were more books in the series, but for some reason it never felt quite right. Angels & Demons was even less-liked than the original, and it went on to make $486 million — not a bad take, but surely not up to the hopes of the studio.

Despite the lackluster performance of Angels & Demons, this news comes as no real shock. Yes the original made a lot more money, but it also made a profit of of over $300 million. You don’t need to have the best business sense in the world to think that another film could deliver similar numbers, even if it ultimately doesn’t fare well.