Back in August, Justin Lin vacated the director’s chair for the latest in Hollywood’s seemingly endless string of remakes – jumping off Highlander to spend more time making Vin Diesel and Paul Walker jump off moving trains on to moving cars (or similar) with his next entry into his wildly successful spin on The Fast and the Furious franchise. Summit Entertainment has now announced that Juan Carlos Fresnadillo will take on directorial duties for their Highlander reboot/magination/whatever, so let’s all pause to yell “there can only be one!” and move on with the news. Fresnadillo will direct from Melissa Rosenberg’s script, with the film poised to start filming in the spring of 2012. Summit’s official press release gives a quick plotline for the new film – “In HIGHLANDER, after centuries of dueling to survive against others like him, Connor MacLeod, an immortal Scottish swordsman must confront the last of his kind, a murderously brutal barbarian, who lusts for the Prize” – so, yes, rest easy, this is definitely a Highlander film.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s the movie website equivalent of stuffing a turkey with three chickens and an eel. News of all shapes and sizes finds itself among some strange bedfellows here even if you can’t sleep. We get things started with a metric ton of images and information about The Muppets. If you’re willing to brave the spoilers, /film has everything from character descriptions to photos to trivia. Or, you can let the burning questions wash over you. Why is Kermit behind bars? Does it have anything to do with inter-species sex laws? Why wouldn’t it?

Considering this week’s news that Justin Lin was vrooming down the director’s highway and careening right from Fast Five to the next installment of the Fast and the Furious franchise (forgive the terrible puns), it’s no surprise that the director is kicking some other projects out of his metaphorical trunk (glove compartment? backseat? whatever?) to make way for more mayhem with Vin Diesel and Paul Walker. The first causality of that fast track? The Highlander reboot Lin has been attached to direct since 2009.

What is Movie News After Dark? It is (d) all of the above. “La Luna is the timeless fable of a young boy who is coming of age in the most peculiar of circumstances.” That’s the opening of the synopsis to Pixar’s La Luna, the short that will play the Annecy International Animation Festival next month in France. It’s our adorable headlining image. (Courtesy of Walt Disney Pictures)

You probably read other movie sites, so you may have already seen articles decrying the idea of Melissa Rosenberg taking on screenwriting duties for Summit’s Highlander remake. Some of them do so just by headlining “Twilight writer set to write Highlander remake.” Pretty gruesome idea, eh? Let me re-title that: “Dexter writer set to write Highlander remake.” Much better. The internet has a short term memory, and even though Rosenberg was brandished with the golden albatross of adapting a group of books with more sizzle than steak in them (aimed at an audience most website runners don’t find themselves in), she also had the good fortune to showcase her talents on a television program with violence, depth, humor, and action. Her abilities in those arenas make her a perfect choice for taking on the material. The bigger question is whether the world needs a reboot of Highlander. Why not? It’s an interesting concept, the original was fun but not masterpiece material, and something has to, has to, has to cleanse the memory of Highlander: The Source from our lives. If there’s anything worth applying a short term memory to, it’s that. Thanks for indulging the inside baseball, but this project sounds incredibly cool. When you look at it the right way. Now about Justin Lin directing… Source: THR

What is Movie News After Dark? This is a question that I am almost never asked, but I will answer it for you anyway. Movie News After Dark is FSR’s newest late-night secretion, a column dedicated to all of the news stories that slip past our daytime editorial staff and make it into my curiously chubby RSS ‘flagged’ box. It will (but is not guaranteed to) include relevant movie news, links to insightful commentary and other film-related shenanigans. I may also throw in a link to something TV-related here or there. It will also serve as my place of record for being both charming and sharp-witted, but most likely I will be neither of the two. I write this stuff late at night, what do you expect?

We keep an eye on remakes in development so you don’t have to, and there are a lot of them. You might be a major fan of this latest victim of the re-creation machine, but try not to lose your head over it.

Artist Mitch Ansara has created what could be called one the first geekgasm of 2009: 1960s-inspired paperback book covers of novelized movie adaptations. Okay, so it might not sound so cool at first, but you’ve got to check some of these covers out.

Who wants to live forever? Highlander that’s who! A new version of Highlander is in the works according to Summit, the people who will be bringing you Twilight. I guess they have a thing for immortals.

In a futuristic dystopia, Duncan MacLeod (Adrian Paul) and his fellow immortals go in search of The Source, a mythic entity they’re being guided to by Duncan’s wife Anna (Thekla Reuten). Standing in their way is The Guardian (Christian Solimeno), a former immortal who is doomed to ensure others never reach The Source.