The Gotham Independent Film Awards took place yesterday and Fox Chairman and CEO of Filmed Entertainment Tom Rothman was in attendance to receive a career tribute award along with Charlize Theron, Gary Oldman, and David Cronenberg. While there Rothman was asked about potential sequels to Rise of the Planet of the Apes and X-Men: First Class, which have seen movement recently, and he said getting directors Rupert Wyatt and Matthew Vaughn back was a priority.

From Coming Soon:

Rothman confirmed to us that they plan on continuing on from both movies and they’re going to try to get both Rupert Wyatt and Matthew Vaughn back to direct once they get the scripts together. “Both of them were really great scripts and so we have to be sure to get great scripts again,” Rothman said. “We’re working hard on the scripts for both of them, but we have every hope of moving forward with them.”

The CEO also confirmed to THR that the studio will be pushing Andy Serkis for some awards recognition over the upcoming months for his role as Caesar.

“I think we may be at the place where we will see a first-ever in Hollywood this year, which is to see Andy Serkis get nominated for a best supporting actor for Planet of the Apes, even though his face never actually appears. But his performance appears, so we are going to push that hard.”

“The emotionality – what you see and what you feel – he did it. I saw him. I watched him. Then they digitally overlaid – you can think of it as a costume – the skin and the hair of an ape. But I tell you the thing that people felt – and a lot of people where moved when they saw the movie – is because of his performance.”

20th Century Fox haven’t exactly been consistent with their handling of the X-Men and Planet of the Apes franchises, but despite slightly rushed productions Fox have successfully breathed new life into both properties. The involvement of Rupert Wyatt and Matthew Vaughn was a large part of why both movies were great, so getting them back will be key.

Reports suggest Wyatt is already locked following the deal he made for the first Apes film, and screenwriters Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver have signed to return, so it’ll just be a case of getting the script together. As far as we know Vaughn has no deal to return for an X-Men sequel, but James McAvoy recently said Vaughn was pitching ideas to Fox, so it looks promising.

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20th Century Fox today set release dates for a number of it’s upcoming films, most notably Taken 2, Die Hard 5, and the Percy Jackson sequel.

Taken 2, starring Liam Neeson, Famke Janssen and Maggie Grace will be hitting on October 5, 2012. Olivier Megaton (Colombiana) is directing, and filming is scheduled to begin in October. No story details have been revealed, but earlier this year it was mentioned part of the movie would be shot in Istanbul, so some of the action will likely be set there.

Bruce Willis will return as John McClane once again in A Good Day To Die Hard (Die Hard 5), which will hit screens February 14, 2013. John Moore (Max Payne) will direct and the film will be set mostly in Russia with John McClane accompanied there by his son, where the two become drawn into a conflict with local forces.

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters will open March 27, 2013 and Logan Lerman, Brandon T. Jackson and Alexandra Daddario are expected to return. Thor Freudenthal (Diary of a Wimpy Kid) will direct while Chris Columbus, who directed the first film, will produce. The second novel by Rick Riordan follows Percy and his group of friends as they head to the titular sea to find the mythical Golden Fleece and to free a friend who has been captured there.

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Oh Prometheus; we know next to nothing about you yet we can’t help but hop on the anticipation train, searching for any, so far very minimal, information about you to keep us held over. It’s no surprise really, considering it’s a return to the sci-fi realm for coveted Alien and Blade Runner director Ridley Scott. That Scott is a sneaky one, with previous plot overviews only stating that it’s “a sci-fi epic,” but now we’ve finally got a new synopsis courtesy of the film’s official Facebook Page, which will surely give some closure for those us craving it. Right?

Well here it is:

Ridley Scott, director of “Alien” and “Blade Runner,” returns to the genre he helped define. With PROMETHEUS, he creates a groundbreaking mythology, in which a team of explorers discover a clue to the origins of mankind on Earth, leading them on a thrilling journey to the darkest corners of the universe. There, they must fight a terrifying battle to save the future of the human race.

Satisfied? Yea, OK, it really didn’t give us much to go with, but at least it somewhat gives us a little structure on how it could potentially play out, and of course getting us even more excited. Another interesting fact is that the alien creatures are connected in someway with the creation of mankind, providing an eerie backdrop for the film’s mythology. However, that rumor regarding the involvement of the skeletal creature known only of the Space Jockey briefly seen in 1979′s Alien, is still, well, just a rumor but, hey, beggars can’t be choosers. I guess.

Prometheus, produced by 20th Century Fox, stars Michael Fassbender, Noomi Rapace, Charlize Theron, Idris Elba, Guy Pearce, Ben Foster, and Logan Marshall-Green and is set for release on June 8, 2012.

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Last week Disney moved John Carter of Mars up from June 8th 2012 to March 9th 2012, which just so happened to be the date 20th Century Fox recently set for Ridley Scott’s Prometheus.

Both are sci-fi movies set in space and neither would benefit from being set against the other, so in response Fox today moved Prometheus into Carter‘s old spot of June 8th 2012.

John Carter of Mars is directed by Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo, Wall-E) and follows Civil War veteran John Carter (Taylor Kitsch) who is transplanted to Mars. Lynn Collins (X-Men Origins: Wolverine), Thomas Haden Church (Spider-Man 3), Mark Strong, Dominic West, James Purefoy and Samantha Morton also star, along with Willem Dafoe who plays a 10-foot alien with four arms called Tars Tarkas.

Prometheus started out as an Alien prequel but evolved into a “new, grand mythology and universe” with an original story. Ridley Scott says the movie will contain “Alien’s DNA, so to speak, but the ideas tackled in this film are unique, large and provocative.” Noomi Rapace is set to play scientist Elizabeth Shaw.

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20th Century Fox announced today that it has signed a two-year deal with The Wrestler director Darren Aronofsky and his production company Protozoa Pictures. The deal will see Aronofsky develop movies for 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight Pictures, the first of which will be The Wolverine with Hugh Jackman.

Aronofsky has a good relationship with Fox as both The Wrestler and Black Swan were distributed by Fox Searchlight, and he is (hopefully) going to help them out by making a kick-ass Wolverine movie.

Here’s part of the announcement released by the studio, which includes the first official confirmation by them that Aronofsky will helm The Wolverine:

“Darren’s vision has brought audiences some of the most original and memorable stories and characters in recent motion picture history,” said Fox Searchlight heads, Steve Gilula and Nancy Utley. “We at Fox witnessed this first hand with his work on ‘The Wrestler,’ and ‘Black Swan,’ and now, on ‘The Wolverine,’ which will be an exciting take on that iconic figure and on the genre itself. We can’t wait to see what else Darren has in store for us.”

Added Emma Watts, president of production, Twentieth Century Fox: “We’re excited Darren is going to bring his unique vision to ‘The Wolverine’ and we take great satisfaction that Fox, irrespective of the size of his films, continues to provide a home for his extraordinary talent.”

Filming on The Wolverine will begin next April from a script by The Usual Suspects writer Christopher McQuarrie. The story takes Wolverine to Japan where he falls for a woman named Mariko, the daughter of a Japanese crime lord.

No release date has been set yet, but it will probably be sometime in 2012.

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In June we heard that 20th Century Fox had reached out to Robert Rodriguez to see if he would be interested in directing their Deadpool spin-off starring Ryan Reynolds. Last week at Comic-Con Rodriguez confirmed he had been sent the script written by Zombieland writers Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese, but said he may be too busy to direct.

Now word is that both Rodriguez and Fox have done with the small talk and are now in negotiations to strike a deal.

The L.A Times reports:

We’re hearing that after a few weeks of dancing, Rodriguez and studio Fox are negotiating. There’s no deal yet, and the sides need to agree on a number of key points, but it’s moved beyond the casual discussion stage and into the more substantive realm of deal points.

Rodriguez recently directed Machete which will be released in September, and he will be sitting in the director’s chair for Spy Kids 4: Armageddon later this summer so it will be at least another year before Deadpool begins filming if he takes on the job, but it would be very cool if he did.

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20th Century Fox has released the first official trailer for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. It looks a lot like the previous films despite the franchise being under new ownership, and we even see familiar faces such as Tilda Swinton as the White Witch along with a quick shot of Susan and Peter.

Watch below:

Here’s the synopsis for the film, which will be released on December 10th:

Edmund and Lucy Pevensie, along with their pesky cousin Eustace Scrubb – find themselves swallowed into a painting and on to a fantastic Narnian ship headed for the very edges of the world.

Joining forces once again with their royal friend Prince Caspian and the warrior mouse Reepicheep, they are whisked away on a mysterious mission to the Lone Islands, and beyond. On this bewitching voyage that will test their hearts and spirits, the trio will face magical Dufflepuds, sinister slave traders, roaring dragons and enchanted merfolk. Only an entirely uncharted journey to Aslan’s Country – a voyage of destiny and transformation for each of those aboard the Dawn Treader – can save Narnia, and all the astonishing creatures in it, from an unfathomable fate.

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Last month 20th Century Fox hired Hitman and X-Men Origins: Wolverine writer Skip Woods to pen the screenplay for Die Hard 5, and back in September Green Lantern writer Michael Green was brought in to write the script for the Fantastic Four reboot.

Well now according to AICN Fox may have given both films official titles.

Die Hard 24/7 and Fantastic Four Reborn

They aren’t the best of titles, but they get the message across, especially with the Fantastic Four reboot. With words like ‘reborn’ and ‘begins’ you know you’ve got a reboot on your hands.

Following the light and campy films Fox are aiming for a more dark and serious version of Fantastic Four, although it will be more Iron Man than The Dark Knight.

What do you think of the (possible) titles?

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Just yesterday we were hearing that Fight Club director David Fincher is to direct a remake of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea for Disney, and now we have word that another 20,000 Leagues movie is in the works. This seems to be another case of studios setting up rival projects which we have seen a lot of over the years. The problem for Disney is that the 20th Century Fox version is further along in production.

From HeatVision:

Now Heat Vision has learned that Fox is prepping its own version of the classic Jules Verne tale with an equally pedigreed filmmaking team. Producers Ridley and Tony Scott and their Scott Free Prods. are developing a “Leagues” project for the studio with a script by “Clash of the Titans” co-writer Travis Beacham. And they’ve been talking with director Timur Bekmambetov (“Wanted”) about helming the big-budget adaptation, though there’s no deal for Timur yet.

“20,000 Leagues” is in the public domain, so anybody can adapt it. Fox’s project began life quietly after the writers strike. Beacham is said to have approached the Scotts with his take on the literary classic, which Fox then bought. Bekmambetov, notoriously picky about his projects, is interested in directing “Leagues” and has had talks about the project, which insiders say is set in the future (although it follows the novel’s structure). The thinking is that a sci-fi take on the material might be more accessible than a period one.

So which one will surface first? It’s unlikely that whichever project ends up going into production last will continue as it will be seen as the ‘copycat’ and will probably fail at the box office.

Which version do you want to see? David Fincher’s or Timur Bekmambetov’s?

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The Secret Life of Walter Mitty has been itching to be remade for some time. Now, it’s looking like the film, which originally hit theaters in 1947 and bookshelves five years before that, might actually make its return. Pajiba reports that 20th Century Fox has offered Sacha Baron Cohen the lead role. No director is yet attached to the project, nor is it officially in production, but things are looking up.

Walter Mitty has run through a series of actors and filmmakers for the past two decades. Jim Carrey, Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard, Owen Wilson, Mike Myers, and Mark Waters (among others), have all been tied to the project at one point or another.

The film is about a “mild-mannered” man who has five heroic daydreams that are inspired by his mundane surroundings. In the original story, he flies a hydroplane during a storm, performs an impossible surgery, plays an assassin in a courtroom, pilots a plane on a crazy bombing run, and faces a firing squad. With the right filmmaker on board, this could make for a great movie. Let’s hope it doesn’t turn into a CGI-fest like Bedtime Stories. More on the film as we hear it.

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