Summit Entertainment is talking about creating two films from Breaking Dawn, the fourth (and perhaps final?) book in the Twilight series.  Unfortunately, the stars were only secured for four films so it’s going to cost to get them to do five. 

Via Cinematical

So if you saw New Moon this weekend, what did you think?

  

All from the great movie blog /Film.

An incredible voice cast has been announced for the 3D animated movie of Guardians of Ga’Hoole.  Voices include Sam Neill, Geoffrey Rush, Hugo Weaving and David Wenham.  The film is based on the first three books of the series.  It will be released in September 2010.

You can check out the new trailer for Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief at the official site.  It will be released on February 12, 2010.

Transformers producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura will produce a big screen version of Michael Scott’s series The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel.  The film rights had been purchased by Mark Burnett before the books were even published, but that deal seems to have lapsed.

The Cycler series of teen novels has been picked up for filming by Angryfilms.  The author of the series, Lauren McLaughlin has adapted the first book, Cycler, into a screenplay which will be the basis of the film.

/Film has the news of a new Moomin Movie that will feature a song from Bjork.  This second Moomin movie, Moomin and the Comet Chase, will be done in 3D using the stop-motion style.

You can also see a trailer of the first Moomin film, Moomin and Midsummer Madness.  This film was created using footage from the Polish-Austrian TV series. 

Cinematical reports that Ann Brashares new book, My Name Is Memory, has created a bidding war between studios.  This new book isn’t due out until June 2010, but the rights have been purchased already by New Regency.

Featuring a college-age couple, I am wondering who the audience is for this new series.  But I’m guessing Twilight fans will enjoy this story of reincarnated souls.

UPDATE:  Thanks to /Film for pointing me to an excerpt from the new book on Brashares’ official site.

I seem to be posting a lot about films these past couple of days, but by far the most puzzling to me is the announcement of an upcoming film based on The Berenstain Bears!

The film will be done by Walden Media with Shawn Levy producing.  They will be a mix of live-action and computer animation.  That’s the part I find puzzling.  Why not do entirely computer animation?

This quote also worries me:

“I’d like the film to be un-ironic about its family connections but have a wry comedic sensibility that isn’t oblivious to the fact that they’re bears,” Levy says. “The comedy comes from this bear family coexisting in a more recognizably real world.”

Levy compared his vision of the film to the tone of Will Ferrell‘s Elf, which had a sweet, earnest hero who clashed with his cynical surroundings. “I think the movie will be witty but never sarcastic,” he says.

So will the Bear family be the only bears?  Is it a human world?  Because that is an inherent change from the series where everyone surrounding the Bear family were also bears.

Golly, this one has me bewildered.  Luckily I am not a die-hard fan of the books because I find them far too honey sweet for my liking.

Variety reports that The Mortal Instruments trilogy by Cassandra Clare will be made into a film.  For me, the most interesting piece of it is that the three novels City of Bones, City of Ashes and City of Glass are going to be merged into a single script. 

Now, I have copies of this series on my shelf but have yet to read them.  For those of you who have, do you think this merging of the first three hefty novels will work?

The team behind Half Nelson and Sugar are bringing It’s Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini to film.

 /Film has a post on the newly announced cast: 

 

Keir Gilchrist as the lead, Zack Galifianakis as his mentor, and Emma Roberts as the love interest

No, not that Wicked.

This Wicked is the series of YA books written by Nancy Holder and Debbie Viguie.  There are five books in the series so the obvious hope is that this will become a successful movie franchise like Twilight has. 

Dreamworks has acquired the rights to the books.

Thanks to FirstShowing for the news.