• Threat of a SAG strike is now nearly eliminated following the guild’s National Board of Directors’ firing of national executive director and chief negotiator Doug Allen. Also, the board disbanded the TV/Theatrical Negotiating Committee. While we can now rest assured there will be no work stoppage, though, SAG’s lack of unity will unfortunately continue.
• Brendan Fraser may have bombed at the box office this past weekend, but his career will always be safe as long as he’s willing to do movies like Furry Vengeance, in which he’ll play a real estate developer battling against “a band of angry critters.”
• While film writers are being axed everywhere, at least two are finding other gigs in filmmaking: Latino Review’s Kellvin Chavez and IESB.net’s Robert Sanchez are two of the producers working on the comic adaptation El Zombo Fantasma, which is described as a “Latino Hellboy.”
• Anyone who has ever wished to see Hilary Duff gunned down by machine guns rejoice! The former Disney Channel starlet will play Bonnie Parker in a new telling of the story of Bonnie and Clyde, ingeniously titled The Story of Bonnie and Clyde. Transamerica’s Kevin Zegers will play Clyde Barrow.
• Fans of Defiance rejoice! Jamie Bell and Daniel Craig will be reunited for Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn, in which they’ll play Tintin and Red Rackham, respectively.
• Fans of Carl Franklin’s Devil With a Blue Dress rejoice! Denzel Washington will be reunited with Jennifer Beals in the Hughes brothers’ The Book of Eli. She’ll play a blind woman who is both daughter to Mila Kunis and sexual prize of Gary Oldman.
• Sundance attendees who loved Sin Nombre rejoice! Director Cary Joji Fukunaga has lined up his next two projects at Universal/Focus Features.

• Or is it technically Ghostbusters IV? Columbia Pictures has hired writers Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky, both of TV’s The Office, to script a new installment of the Ghostbusters series, which was previously thought to be hitting a final note with an upcoming video game (which Dan Aykroyd led us to believe was pretty much “Ghostbusters III”). The Hollywood Reporter claims that while the new sequel may involve the original cast, the main focus will be with a rookie cast of Ghostbusters.
• Paul Bettany, who played a kind of precursor to Charles Darwin in Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, will actually portray the famous evolution theorist in the biopic Creation (formerly titled Origin), scripted by Master and Commander’s John Collee and to be directed by Jon Amiel (The Core). Bettany’s real wife, Jennifer Connelly, will play Darwin’s wife/first cousin, Emma.
• Albert and Allen Hughes will finally follow-up their 2001 period-set From Hell with the post-apocalypse-set Book of Eli, which will star Denzel Washington as a man “who must fight across America to bring society the knowledge that could be the key to its redemption.”
• Tarantino’s Inglorious Bastards script is pissing off the Germans.
• According to Variety, as long as male audiences aren’t too busy with the new football season or summer leftovers, Nic Cage and his latest crapfest, Bangkok Dangerous, should top the box office this weekend.

Good thing Veruca Salt (the girl, not the band) doesn’t have a movie up for Best Picture this year. She’d probably shout at her daddy, “Hey, Denzel’s got two! I want another one!” And hopefully Grandpa Joe (Here that would be Joe Wright, whose Atonement received seven nominations) would turn around and mumble that she needs a good kick in the pants.

But really, looking at the Golden Globe nominees this morning, I’m wondering why the Hollywood Foreign Press Association couldn’t just pick one of Denzel Washington’s films, so that one category wouldn’t make the rest of the list seem so lopsided. Surely there were two more comedy/musical contenders that could have been added on, too. Heck, let’s just nominate everybody and call it a year, shall we?

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• In more proof that the cultural history of pre-Giuliani New York City is destined to be rewritten, Tony Scott and Denzel Washington are teaming up to remake The Taking of Pelham 123.
• The third Resident Evil movie made $24 million this weekend. This is probably the best opportunity I’ll get to point out that the film was directed by the same guy who made these Duran Duran videos.
• TV film critics Jeffrey Lyons and Alison Bailes will soon contribute to a “weekly blog” at ReelTalkTv.com.
• Universal is launching a new website to distribute branded mobile marketing content, in an effort to “be master of our own destiny more,” says Universal Mobile senior VP Jeremy Laws.