On Friday night, Bleeding Cool reported that Nemesis, a comic-book written by Mark Millar with art by Steve McNiven, is headed to the big screen as 20th Century Fox optioned the property and Tony Scott set to direct.

The idea behind Nemesis is ‘What if Bruce Wayne became a bad guy?’ In the comic, the very Batman-inspired character is the country’s only super-villain who uses his training and high-tech gadgetry to systematically hunt down cops.

Millar is a prolific comic-book writer, having worked on the X-Men, Civil War, The Ultimates, and many others before focusing on his own creator-owned books like Kick-Ass and Wanted. He has been criticized for only thinking about how his comics can be turned into movies, and I can’t judge his intentions, but it seems to be working.

Tony Scott, younger brother of Ridley, has had a long and successful, albeit not always critically-acclaimed career. He has directed Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop 2, True Romance, Enemy of the State and more recently worked with Denzel Washington on Man on Fire, Déjà Vu, and The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3. His next film, Unstoppable hits theaters November 12th.

While Nemesis is a neat idea, a film adaptation doesn’t really sound all that interesting. The comic presents some interesting imagery, so that may be good to see on the big screen, but are a simple character study and some cool images enough to hold up an entire film? And Tony Scott directing doesn’t get me as excited as it does Millar. He can direct action, but I don’t see him bringing anything new to the movie to really make it stand out. Anyway, its still very early in development so we’ll have to wait and see.

In an unsurprising move, Fox revealed that Avatar will be re-released on August 27th to theaters around the country.

James Cameron has added eight minutes of deleted scenes back into the movie, which seems a little weird. He had previously stated that there were over 20 minutes of material that didn’t make it into the final cut. However, as Steve Weintraub of Collider pointed out, originally Avatar was 162 minutes long. The IMAX format can only support films up to 170 minutes long. (due to the large film, I presume) Basically, Cameron was limited by the format.

I am still amazed at the success of this movie. I mean, everyone went to see it. Its audience transcended every barrier: age, gender, it didn’t matter. Avatar made 2,730,829,876 in worldwide box office. Anyway, come August, that number will only get closer to 3 billion.

Here’s Fox’s official press release:

On August 27, return to Pandora and re-experience James Cameron’s History-Making Epic film, with more than Eight Minutes of Never Before Seen Footage- exclusively in Digital 3D and IMAX® 3D. Since – and largely as of result of – AVATAR’s release last December, the number of available digital 3D screens has exploded, and moviegoers who missed experiencing the film in 3D, as well as fans that want to return to Pandora again, will now have that opportunity. The Oscar® and Golden Globe® winning epic is the highest grossing film of all time, taking in over $2.7 billion in worldwide box office. It is also the top-selling Blu-ray disc of all time.

So, if you somehow missed it the first time, or just want to see the film again as it was intended to be viewed, make sure you get out in late August for a sure-fire spectacular end to this summer movie season.

Gleeks unite! September 14th Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment releases the complete first season of GLEE on Blu-ray and DVD! You better believe there’s extras, here’s what series creator Ryan Murphy had to say about all of those wonderful extras you’ll find only on the  four-disc Blu-ray and seven-disc DVD set-

“The show started out as a comedy musical about the underdog in all of us and has blossomed, largely due to the incredible support and passion from the fans that have embraced the show…. When we developed the Blu-ray and DVD, we wanted to give those fans something special because they’ve been so great to us. There’s everything from a sing-along karaoke, to a behind-the-scenes look at our Madonna episode, to a dance lesson from our amazing choreographers. There’s even some all new Sue’s Corners which have never been seen before. It’s our ‘thank you’ to the Gleeks.”

If you haven’t seen an episode of GLEE yet then maybe these awards will help sway you- winner of the Golden Globe® for Best Television Series, Comedy or Musical. Winner! People’s Choice Award for Favorite New TV Comedy (Hello! That’s sayin’ somethin’ in a year that also debuted ABC’s Modern Family and NBC’s Community!) and winner of the Screen Actors Guild Award for Oustanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series (Again, they beat out Modern Family and Community!)

Here’s the official synopsis-

“GLEE follows an optimistic teacher who – against all odds and a malicious cheerleading coach – inspires McKinley High’s Glee Club to conquer the world one singing competition at a time.”

Goodness! I’m still thinkin’ about those special features! Why can’t the DVD’s be released next week?! What’re you looking forward to?

Machete, Robert Rogriquez’s feature spin-off of a trailer from the Rodriguez/Tarantino double-feature, Grindhouse, has been slotted for release on September 3rd.

The film follows an renegade Mexican called Machete (Danny Trejo) as he seeks revenge against the people who double-crossed him. The cast also includes Jessica Alba, Lindsay Lohan, Cheech Marin, Rose McGowan, Steven Seagal, and Robert DeNiro.

I think anyone who has already heard about this knows what they’re in for, but can it get a more widespread viewership based on word-of-mouth come Labor Day weekend?

It’s been almost two months since we brought you news on a long-in-development reboot of Planet of the Apes. At that time, the project had just lost its long-suspected director/screenwriter Scott Frank, and Fox was moving ahead with writer Jamie Moss being brought in to rework the script. Now Deadline is reporting the the remake/prequel project may have found a director in young indie upstart Rupert Wyatt.

Wyatt only has one full-length feature under his belt so far, the 2008 prison drama The Escapist, and later this year he’ll be releasing Birdsong, another low-key British drama. Seems an auspicious start for the expected director of a big-budget, blockbuster franchise, but it could be a blessing. Wyatt’s experience seems to fall into the “deep character study” genre, which would be perfect for the proposed screenplay, which finds a geneticist working with simian test subjects to find a cure for Alzheimers. One of those subjects, an ape named Caesar, gradually develops highly-evolved qualities such as speech and upright movement and eventually leads a worldwide ape uprising. The script has been given the apt, if uninspired title Caesar: Rise of the Apes.

Chud also lists a few cool easter eggs and nods to the earlier series that are present in the script including an opening scene that mirrors the classic human-capturing scene from the original, as well as references made to Charlton Heston’s character Colonel Taylor and the crew of the Icarus.

Apes fans sound off! What do you think of this new prequel/reboot/remake/something?

2009 was a pretty good year for 20th Century Fox, and the release of Avatar in the final weeks of the year gave the studio an extra boost in profits. While Fox did well domestically, it was overseas that they really knocked out the competition.

Thanks partially to the $405 million brought in internationally by Avatar, 20th Century Fox set a new record in foreign box office sales. Fox earned $2.26 billion from theaters around the world, beating the previous international box office record of $2.24 billion (seen by Warner Bros. in 2007).

While Avatar‘s release may have given Fox the final push towards its record-breaking year, the studio’s big winner internationally was the summer’s animated hit Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. The third film in the Ice Age franchise saw a cumulative of $687.2 million at foreign theaters, making it one of the industry’s top 3 highest international grossers of all time (Titanic comes in at number 1, The Return of the King at number 2).

Dawn of the Dinosaurs and Avatar may have been the big hits leading Fox’s way to their international success of the year, but Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel has held its own to give 20th Century Fox an added buffer at foreign box offices. The live-action/animation mix has so far brought in $133.6 million internationally, and is still scheduled to open in 25 more areas.

After working for over six months on his remake of 1950′s Harvey, Steven Spielberg announced this week that he was backing out of the project. And this after 20th Century Fox had already scheduled soundstages to be ready to go for the film to begin production at the beginning of 2010.

Despite the idea phase of Harvey starting out strong last summer, the film has seen some trouble getting started, with Spielberg and the studio courting both Tom Hanks and Robert Downey Jr. to play the role made famous by James Stewart, but both turned the part down–Downey after creative differences regarding the script occurred with Spielberg. Now, Spielberg has officially walked, with no specific reason being given for doing so.

Spielberg does have several potential projects at his disposal, so it’s likely a matter of deciding to seek greener pastures. Thus the question is what he’ll decide to do instead of Harvey, and who DreamWorks will choose to helm the film in Spielberg’s place.

Len Wiseman, the man behind Underworld and Live Free or Die Hard,  has signed on to direct and produce an untitled pitch that Fox has just grabbed the rights to.

Details (and screenwriters!) are scarce, but according to THR, “the project is based on an original idea about a group of people who survive the end of the world and the mystery surrounding how they got to that position. The studio is seeking writers for the project.”

Wiseman is currently in limbo at the moment, with his name attached to Schrapnel and Atlantis Rising, but no project in production. Seeing as how this post-apocalyptic project hasn’t even had the details fleshed out, I’d say we’re more likely to see one of those two projects coming to fruition first, or Wiseman stepping in for another director elsewhere.

I have conflicted thoughts about Wiseman. He seems to straddle a line between interesting action director and total studio hack, so I eye every project he’s attached to with caution.