UPDATE: Entertainment Weekly has a follow-up to this story. Jolie’s people have revealed that she has also passed on Gravity as well and that WB still hasn’t even confirmed whether that movie is set up with them. Could be all smoke and mirrors, but that’s the update!

Many people have expected a sequel to Timur Bekmambetov‘s assassin-fest, Wanted, for a while now, but sadly, it looks as though this will not be happening.

Vulture is reporting that star Angelina Jolie has decided to walk away from Wanted 2 in order to do another film called Gravity, which is directed by the great Alfonso Cuarón. Jolie was attached to star in both films for Universal, but they decided to drop Gravity, which was then picked up by Warner Brothers. This is where Jolie, clearly looking for the more challenging, awards-possible role, followed it and left Wanted 2 in the dust and Universal deciding to scrap the project completely.

This may anger fans of Wanted who really hoped to see a sequel, but in all honestly, if you have to choose between the two just knowing the basic premise and the director, it’s a crystal clear decision to make.

The trades are reporting that 20th Century Fox has made a deal to acquire a pitch that would see the story of Moses from the Bible being retold using the highly-visual green screen styles that were used in the filming of Zack Snyder’s 300. The movie is expected to cover all of the chapters of the life of Moses, including almost dying as an infant, standing up to the Pharaoh, freeing the Hebrews from slavery, the plagues, and of course, the parting of the Red Sea.

The script is being written by Adam Cooper and Bill Collage, who recently wrote a new take on the classic tale of Moby Dick with a graphic novel vibe to it that is being developed for Wanted director Timur Bekmambetov.

9
Directed by Shane Acker
Starring Elijah Wood, John C. Reilly, Jennifer Connelly, Christopher Plummer, Martin Landau
Studio: Focus Features
Release date: 9/9/09 (clever right?)

I’m a big fan of animation in all its forms, but I’m also an adult, and I want a good story to go along with what I’m watching. That’s what I was hoping for when I first started seeing previews for the film 9. It looked like more of an adult action film, which just happened to be done with CG animation. Add in the names Tim Burton, whose done great animation work before with the Nightmare Before Christmas and the Corpse Bride, and Timur Bekmambetov, who directed Wanted as well as two very visually experimental movies in Night Watch and Day Watch, and you’ve made a movie that I’ll want to see. See is the operative word when it comes to 9, because while it is spectacular looking, the rest of my mind could never get into the film.

The story is fairly simple. A creature made out of cloth (voiced by Elijah Wood) wakes up in a strange room, with a mysterious round object. (I’d accuse the filmmakers of ripping off LittleBigPlanet’s Sack-boy if I didn’t know that the short film this is based on hadn’t come out well before the game.) He can’t speak and doesn’t know anything about what’s going on, so he ventures out until he runs across another cloth man, who says his name is 2 (Martin Landau), and sees that the new one has a 9 on his back, so that’s what he calls him. 2 is also nice enough to hook 9 up with a voice box so he can speak. Shortly after, 2 is captured by some kind of monster and taken away. 9 is determined to rescue him and sets off to the factory where he saw 2 was taken. Along the way he meets a number of creatures just like him (voiced by John C. Reilly, Christopher Plummer, Jennifer Connelly, and Crispin Glover), and then he ends up almost dooming what remains of life. Then the creatures run around, learning where they come from, why they were created, and how they can save whatever life remains on the Earth.

Elijah Wood, the star of the Tim Burton-produced feature film 9, presented to G4’s AOTS an exclusive short he put together with producer Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted) from the upcoming CG-animated film. Watch it here below.

There are a few user-generated 9 mash-up videos up on YouTube, two of which I think are clever and worth mentioning (and are embedded here below). One is called “9’s Obsession” and features clips from the movie set to the song “Jack’s Obsession” from another Burton-produced animated favorite The Nightmare Before Christmas.

In another video, called “Wall-E9 Trailer,” someone did a mash-up of 9 dialogue with scenes from fellow animated post-apocalyptic Earth film, Wall-E.

9 follows the story of 9, as he awakens to find a post-apocalyptic world where humans are gone and machines have taken over. He finds another group of beings like himself who are in hiding from the machines and tries to convince them to fight, not hide, and to try to uncover what’s motivating the machines to bring about the extinction of humanity.

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:

Click over to check out these eight fantastic posters.