Back in 2008 we heard that 20th Century Fox had hired Minority Report writer Scott Frank to write and direct a new Planet of the Apes film called Ceaser, which followed a hyper-intelligent chimp raised by humans who incites a worldwide ape revolution and causes the downfall of humankind.

Since then Scott Frank has left the project, and now according to Deadline newcommer Rupert Wyatt (The Escapist) has been hired to develop the project and direct.

Chud, who have been following this movie for years, also got some details on the story. Caesar: Rise of the Apes revolves around a doctor (Will) trying to cure Alzheimers, a disease that afflicts his father. He’s working with monkeys to create a benign virus that can get into brain tissue and restore functionality. After his research is shut down he’s left with just one chimp, the child of his most promising subject. Young Caesar is incredibly intelligent for an ape, and over time he continues to mutate and evolve, looking less like a chimp and moving on from sign language to actual speech. Eventually Caesar ends up leading an army of apes in an uprising just as a catastrophe strikes mankind.

Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes in 2001 was a wasted oppotunity to reinvent the franchise, which given the subject matter, had the potentially to be a great sci-fi movie. Apparently Caesar: Rise of the Apes will leave the door open for another movie, so we could have a badass Planet of the Apes trilogy on our hands.

No start date has been set, although with a director onboard there should be developments in the future.

SplashPage found a charity auction by CharityBuzz which gives rich people with lots of disposable income the chance to have a walk-on role in an upcoming X-Men film. The auction doesn’t specifically say which X-Men film, although it’s probably Wolverine 2 since we heard recently that filming is gearing up for January. The opportunity was also given by X-Men Origins: Wolverine producer John Palmero who is co-partner of Seed Productions with Hugh Jackman.

As I type this the highest bid is currently $3,583, although it says the experience is worth $25,000. So what will the winning bidder receive?

Share the excitement of film making with a walk-on role in the next installment in the highly successful film series, X-Men. Although cast information has not been announced, the next X-Men film will likely find the series’ previous stars returning for more action-packed thrills. This once-in-a-lifetime experience will also give the winner a chance to meet some of the actors who may be on set that day. Filming is anticipated to begin in 2011, location to be determined.

The proceeds for this item benefit Worldwide Orphans Foundation

Terms: Valid for one person. This is a non-speaking walk-on role with no guarantee that the winner’s scene will be included in the final cut. Location and shooting schedule is to be determined. Does not include travel or accommodations. Not valid for children under the age of 18. This item cannot be resold or reauctioned. Winner subject to security screening.

The site also has an auction where the highest bidder gets the chance to meet Daniel Craig on the set of Jon Favreau’s Cowboys and Aliens. If I were rich I’d probably buy my way onto every movie set possible.

Following a screening of Buried at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival Lionsgate entered a bidding war for the film and eventually won with a bid of $3.5 million. Now they have set plans for a limited release on September 24th, followed by a wide release 2 weeks later on October 8th.

In the film Ryan Reynolds plays a civilian contractor who is kidnapped in Iraq and wakes up buried in a coffin in the desert with only a phone, a candle and a knife. The teaser trailer we got last month shows Reynolds informing us of his situation, and says that he needs ransom money otherwise he will be left in the coffin to die.

A few weeks ago we heard that Angelina Jolie was floating around Alfonso Cuaron’s sci-fi thriller Gravity after dropping out of Wanted 2, however the actress has since decided space ain’t her thing. Now comes word from Deadline that Robert Downey Jr. is in talks to star in the film which is now being produced by Warner Bros after Universal dropped the project following Jolie’s departure.

Downey’s recent success with Sherlock Holmes means Warner Bros. are happy to put him in anything, and this space movie gives Downey something to do over the summer before shooting begins on Sherlock Holmes 2.

Downey will play the leader of a team posted at a remote space station. While he and a female colleague are traveling outside the space station, the other team members are decimated by debris from an exploded satellite.

The script had been developed originally at Universal with the intention of having Angelina Jolie play the female role. Much of the film is devoted to her struggle to get back to Earth and her daughter.

If Downey joins they may re-write the script slightly to give him the daughter angle, or they may get another well known actress onboard and keep the story the same. We rarely get a sci-fi film carried by a female, and Jolie is probably the only actress who could have carried the film herself. Downey’s joining will make it more gender-neutral, and less of an experiment to see whether a female can lead a sci-fi film, like Sigourney Weaver did in the Alien days.

The attendees of the South By Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas were treated to a first look at footage from Nimrod Antal’s Predators last night, and luckily for us a sneak peak has been made available for everyone to see online.

Descriptions of the first trailer and an extended clip that were also shown can be read over at ShockTillYouDrop, and you can check out the sneak peak after the jump.

The film is produced and overseen by Robert Rodriguez (Desperado, Once Upon a Time in Mexico), and there’s an introduction by him included in the footage. The full trailer will be available on March 18th, and the film will be released on July 7th in the United States. I was pretty blown away by this footage; the movie looks a lot more expansive than I thought it’d be, and Adrien Brody definitely seems like more of a badass than I anticipated. And of course the presence of Laurence Fishburne adds an air of gravitas to any production.

What did you think about the first look at Predators? Are you excited for the film? How do you think Brody will perform in an action movie?

Alice in Wonderland set an all-time record for 3D releases and the January-April period last weekend by opening with a staggering $116.1 million in North America, way more then anyone could have expected. For Tim Burton it was his biggest opening ever while for Johnny Deep it was his 2nd biggest (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest opened with $135.6 million in 2006).

This weekend there are 4 movies opening wide, Green Zone, a thriller from Universal starring Matt Damon in 3003 theaters, She’s Out of My League, a romantic comedy from Paramount in 2956 theaters, Remember Me, starring Robert Pattison from Summit Entertainment in 2212 theaters and Our Family Wedding, a comedy starring Forest Whitaker from Fox Searchlight in 1605 theaters. None of them stand any chances of making more money then Alice in Wonderland, fact. Actually none of them look like they could open with more then 20 million, if that, while Alice might be in for a weekend of $50-$55 million and maybe more. That should bring it to a total of around 200 million in North America in just 10 days, easily making it one of the top 15 fastest 10-days grossing movies ever, either above or below Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire with $201 million (top is here).

Green Zone is the movie most likely to finish second with around $20 million. This is another collaboration between director Paul Greengrass of Bourne Supremacy and Bourne Ultimatum fame and Matt Damon, the star of those movies. The Bourne series has been very successful and Universal are planning a forth one in the coming years, but Green Zone isn’t Bourne, it is an R-rated thriller with average reviews (48% on RottenTomatoes).

She’s Out of My League looks as run-of-the-mill as you can get and having Jay Baruchel from Tropic Thunder and Knocked Up is not going to help it to much. Let’s see, Romantic Comedy-ish, check, R rating, check, average reviews (49% on RT) …yeah, this isn’t Knocked Up or even 40 Year Old Virgin. Probably $15 million for 3rd place.

Now how did Remember Me miss the opportunity to open closer to Valentine’s Day? So now this movie is standing only on Robert Pattison’s Twilight shoulders. I’m seeing 13-14 million but this could surprise and maybe even go for 3rd place, if not 4th place is also good.

My Family Wedding is a PG-13 comedy with awful reviews that could find an audience with the Tyler Perry crowd, maybe, maybe not. I still see this around $10 million for 5th place.

1. Alice in Wonderland (BuenaVista) $53M ($198.6M)
2. Green Zone (Universal) $20M (NEW)
3. She’s Out of My League (Paramount) $16M (NEW)
4. Remember Me (Summit) $14M (NEW)
5. My Family Wedding (FoxSearchlight) $10M (NEW)

It seems $2.6 billion worldwide just isn’t enough for some people. In an interview with USA Today Avatar director James Cameron said that 20th Century Fox may be looking to re-release the film on 3D screens after all the summer blockbusters are out of the way. Alice in Wonderland, which was released last week, has taken up all the 3D screens after Avatar claimed them for 2 straight months. Apparently Avatar could have made another few hundred million if it still had them all to itself.

Q: When is Avatar coming out in 3D on Blu-ray?

A: We’re not officially announcing it right now but I’m hoping for fall. The wildcard is that we might be re-releasing the movie this fall. It’s kind of gotten stomped out (in theaters) because of Alice in Wonderland. The word we’re getting back from exhibitors is we probably left a couple of hundred million dollars on the table as a result. The question is the appetite still going to be there after the summer glut of movies. We’re going to assess that. We’re talking about maybe adding in additional footage and doing something creative.

The only big 3D release toward the end of the year is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 which will be released in November, so a re-release in September/October could be likely. That is, if Cameron wants to battle for 3D screens with Saw VII or Resident Evil: Afterlife.

Cameron also said they have plans to convert Titanic into 3D and re-release it in the spring of 2012, which will be the 100 year anniversary of the sailing of the ship.

Would you be interested in seeing Avatar again on the big screen later this year?

The Hollywood Reporter’s Heat Vision Blog has some exclusive casting news for us today: Hugo Weaving is in talks for the villainous role of Red Skull in Captain America. If this is true, it would reunite Weaving with director Joe Johnston; the two recently collaborated on The Wolfman for Universal.

No contracts have been signed yet, but the trade expects an official announcement regarding Weaving’s involvement sometime in the next few days. At least they’re giving us a loose timetable here; the amount of speculation and casting curveballs thrown by this film are the most chaotic in recent memory.

Honestly, I’ve never read a Captain America comic in my life. The most knowledge I have of the character comes from overhearing conversations about the recent Marvel Comics event Civil War, in which he is prominently featured. So while we wait around for final confirmation on who is going to carry the star-spangled shield, I’ll share an interesting bit of trivia for you regarding the Red Skull. According to Marvel.com’s profile page of the character, at one point he operated under the alias “Mr. Smith.” The eyebrow-raising parallel, of course, being that arguably Hugo Weaving’s most famous role is Agent Smith from The Matrix films. Click on over to Wikipedia for an exhaustive run down of the character.

Marvel fans, rise up! Since I don’t know the character very well, let us know in the comments below if you think Hugo Weaving would make a good Red Skull. If not, who would you rather see?

Warner Bros. have picked up a treatment by producer Adrian Askarieh (Hitman, the upcoming Kane & Lynch), entitled Leonardo da Vinci and the Soldiers of Forever. So says The Hollywood Reporter.

You’ll know who da Vinci is. He was, according to Wikipedia, a “painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, botanist and writer.” A genius, basically. He painted the Mona Lisa, and The Last Supper. Soldiers of Forever will take very different approach to the man, however – THR summarises Askarieh’s treatment as the following:

The project re-imagines Da Vinci as a member of a secret society who falls headlong into a supernatural adventure that pits the man against Biblical demons in a story involving secret codes, lost civilizations, hidden fortresses and fallen angels. Think “National Treasure” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark” by way of “Clash of the Titans.”

It reminds me a bit of the game Assassin’s Creed II…and Askarieh has about 5 videogame adaptations on his list of IMDb credits…hmm…

It sounds interesting enough though – I just hope they take a more serious approach to it than the more “fun” / light-hearted historical adventures like Sherlock Holmes and The Mummy.

Askarieh is apparently looking for a writer as we speak. He will produce the project, teaming up with Roy Lee and Doug Davidson of Vertigo Entertainment (The Departed, How to Train Your Dragon, and many, many US remakes of Japanese horror films). THR notes that this is just another in a long line of period adventure films being developed by Warner Bros. (ever since Sherlock Holmes’s success), in addition to the recently announced Marco Polo, Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur project, and of course, the Sherlock Holmes sequel.

We saw 10 seconds of the teaser yesterday, and now Summit Entertainment has released the full teaser trailer for The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. Watch below:

In The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, Bella once again finds herself surrounded by danger as Seattle is ravaged by a string of mysterious killings and a malicious vampire continues her quest for revenge. In the midst of it all, she is forced to choose between Edward and Jacob — knowing that her decision has the potential to ignite the struggle between vampire and werewolf. With her graduation quickly approaching, Bella is confronted with the most important decision of her life.