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While we're waiting for Peter Berg's big budget adaptation of the board game Battleship to set sail in 2012, another board game adaptation is just gearing up for battle. Over a year and a half ago we learned Columbia Pictures had bought into the board game adaptation craze by making moves to turn Hasbro's strategy game Risk into a feature film. Now Risky Biz reports that writer John Hlavin, who penned the upcoming sequel Underworld: New Dawn and Donkey Punch, and was story editor on "The Shield", will be behind the script that will attempt to capture the classic game of world domination into a narrative story for the big screen. Though it's not clear how the story will unfold, apparently it will be set in modern day and take place all around the world, of course. In the game itself, players form armies and strategically place them all over...

As cool as it would be to see James Mangold (3:10 to Yuma, Knight & Day) in charge of the first film in Stephen King’s fabulous series The Dark Tower, that’s Ron Howard’s baby, for better or for worse.

No this ‘The Gunslinger‘ is a modern day, revenge-Western about an “an ex-Texas Ranger who sets out to punish the men who killed his brother” and it’ll have a lot less magic and fantasy than King’s book. According to THR – this one films in the spring, and The Playlist have heard Josh Brolin could be in consideration to lead!*

As cool as that would be, would Brolin really be interested in yet another Western themed thriller after No Country For Old Men, Jonah Hex and True Grit in quick succession?

The film is setup at New Regency after Warner Bros. put it in turnaround and I’ve had the John Hlavin written,...

When it was confirmed that Kate Beckinsale will return to star in the fourth "Underworld" movie, it was assumed that her husband Len Wiseman, who directed the first two installments, would also return. THR is now reporting that Wiseman will stay on to produce, but helming duties will go to a Swedish directing team of Mans Marlind and Bjorn Stein. The duo recently made their English-language debut with "Shelter," a supernatural thriller starring Julianne Moore and Jonathan Rhys Meyers. "Underworld 4" will begin filming in March of next year in Vancouver from a script by John Hlavin (Donkey Punch). The story was fixed up by comics writer J. Michael Straczynski. The new movie is scheduled to hit theaters on January 20th, 2012.

With a January 2012 release date already attached to the as yet untitled Underworld 4, fans have been in a flurry of speculation over whether actress Kate Beckinsale would be reprising her role as Seline. The actress did not appear in the franchise’s most recent installment, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans but thanks to a studio fact sheet which has been circulated online, we can now confirm that Beckinsale will be biting necks and taking names once more!

The script for the film is also good to go, written by John Hlavin (Donkey Punch) and polished by Babylon 5 and Changeling scribe J. Michael Straczynski, the project is now on the lookout for a director – oh and an actress to play Selene’s daughter! Take a look below at the circular in full:

- Reprising her role as the character Selene, Kate Beckinsale will take the lead in Screen Gems...

Not long ago, Dreamworks bought a script by John Hlavin (Donkey Punch), who’s set to write Underworld 4 (if it ever happens). Now scribe Steven Zaillian is on to produce the “action thriller.” It’s only description is that it’s an “international heist movie.” [THR]

Zaillian is producing for Dreamworks but under his Film Rites company, which has the Kristen Stewart-starrer Welcome To the Rileys.

Despite his A-list screenwriter stature, Zaillian hasn’t produced much (A Civil Action, All The King’s Men, American Gangster) and two of them are films he wrote and directed. The other, American Gangster, he wrote. Rileys and this heist script are void of Zaillian touches in either writing or directing.

What do you think of Zaillian? As a writer? Director?

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Variety reported back in August that Mandeville Films were developing a feature film version of the Top Cow comic Alibi. Now, they are hitting us with the news that Summit Entertainment, fresh off making bank (and still pulling it in) with New Moon, has come on board the film’s production, as well.

Released last year, the comic centers on a top government assassin who uses the presence of his twin brother as an alibi for his kills. Donkey Punch writer John Hlavin has come on board to adapt the comic for the screen.

Summit and Mandeville are hoping to replicate the success of Wanted, a successful film based on another Top Cow property. No director and no actors are attached to Alibi yet. New Moon is fast approaching the $500 million mile marker in worldwide grosses, so, I’m sure, backing a comic book-based film isn’t exactly a gamble in Summit’s eyes.