• Yes. Sci-Fi Footloose meets You Got Served! Exclamation point. Actually, Chris Stokes’ Boogie Town probably won’t be as good as it sounds, but it is set in a ludicrous near-future New York City where dancing is illegal. So, kids start an underground “battle dancing” scene. Obviously, it’s also being labeled a “modern West Side Story for the hip-hop generation,” and it’s set in 2015, so hopefully there will be hoverboards. Then it would actually be better than it sounds. Anyway, Vivendi will release the film next summer.
• Another music-genre sci-fi/fantasy: Stephen Edmond’s Emo Boy comic book is being turned into a movie, which he’ll script. The property is described as “being in the tone of Napoleon Dynamite, Harold and Maude and Zoolander,” which is funny, because none of those movies are similar in tone at all.
• Hot off The House Bunny (and let’s pretend also Smiley Face), Anna Faris is set to star in two new comedy projects, one of which she co-pitched with Bunny writers Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith. The untitled movie involves the Golden Age Hollywood plot of husband-seeking sisters. The other project, called 20 Times a Lady, is also about finding Mr. Right, though also concerns the non-Golden Age idea of “a person’s sexual quota.”
• Another hot romantic comedienne, Amy Adams, will produce and star in an adaptation of The Ten Best Days of My Life, which treads in the same kind of afterlife territory as It’s a Wonderful Life and Defending Your Life.
• The Dark Knight re-release has been slated for January 23rd, one day after the anniversary of Heath Ledger’s death, which is unfortunate for the celebrity death cult. It’s also one day after the Oscar nominations are announced, so it could be advertised as a “Best Picture Nominee.”

• Julie Taymor is directing a film adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, which will star plenty of Oscar-caliber performers, including Helen Mirren, Jeremy Irons, Djimon Hounsou and possibly Geoffrey Rush (Also: Russell Brand as the jester, Trinculo!). Taymor’s version should be interesting considering her postmodern take on the Bard’s Titus Andronicus for her film debut, and she’s already revealed one twist by casting Mirren in the lead, as a gender-reversed “Prospera”. But I bet it still won’t out-arthouse Peter Greenaway’s film version of the play.
• Forest Whitaker, who has already portrayed jazz saxaphonist Charlie Parker on the big screen, will play Louis Armstrong in a biopic obviously titled What a Wonderful World. Whitaker is also directing the film, though, so don’t expect this to be quite as Oscar-baited as it seems.
• Hollywood is going ahead with more than 40 major projects that will each lack strike protection despite the continued possibility of an actor walkout. According to Variety, the studios are indeed worried about the financial ramifications of a SAG strike, but they’re more concerned about not having enough tentpoles to release in 2010 and 2011. Because moviegoers will put up a fuss if they don’t get their Alvin and the Chipmunks 2 and remakes of RoboCop, Fame, Footloose, Clash of the Titans and A Nightmare on Elm Street.
• Oh, and we can now add Overture’s newly announced remake of George Romero’s The Crazies to the pile, too.
• What should we do about the financial crisis? Kill the poor — or eat them? — says a new sci-fi film titled Fortuna that’s heading into production next month. Likened to Soylent Green, the pic will be set in 2100 when the middle class is gone and the rich have created a deadly contest with which to eliminate poverty.

The new trailer for this summer’s animated feature Star Wars: The Clone Wars isn’t all that exciting. So instead, I bring you this year’s Star Wars dance-off (aka Dancing with the Star Wars Stars) from a recent Star Wars Weekends event held at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. I’d definitely prefer a theatrical release of something like this than a movie that looks like a video game. And who can argue with me? Chewbacca dancing to the theme from Footloose? Princess Leia singing “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” to her mom, Queen Amidala? Darth Vader and troops reliving the video for Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”? There’s no way you can say no to that.

This year’s dance numbers were so much better than last year’s disco-themed event, which reminded me too much of the Star Wars Holiday Special. I’ve never before wanted to become a convention-attending, costume-wearing Star Wars geek, but if they have this kind of fun, I might just change my mind.
[via The Movie Blog]

I still don’t get the deal with these “virtual worlds” the kids are all into today, but apparently someone at Paramount Pictures is hip enough to exploit get involved. The studio is opening its film vault and supplying both There.com and vMTV (which like Paramount is owned by Viacom) with thousands of very short “PG-13-or-tamer” video clips of parts of its movies (examples given are Footloose and Clueless). Unlike the full-length versions of The Matrix and Gattaca that are available in the “world” of Gaia Online, these clips are not as much for entertainment purposes as they are a sort of virtual way to “speak” in movie quotes.

There.com and vMTV members will be able to express themselves with seconds-long video clips of movie one liners — say, Danny Zucko’s “Be cool, huh?” from “Grease” — with the service called VooZoo. The application from Los Angeles-based developer FanRocket was introduced on social-networking site Facebook last month and on mobile devices Tuesday.

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