According to The Hollywood Reporter, newcomer Matthew Lieberman has been signed to write the Short Circuit reboot going on over at Dimension Films. He’d previously written the not-at-all-liked Dr. Doolittle: Tail to the Chief which went straight to video on the coattails of the Eddie Murphy movies, but this project is an interesting way to get a foot in the door of the feature world. What’s more important is that Tim Hill is set to be the director. Hill’s recent work includes Alvin and the Chipmunks, Hop and Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties (apparently everyone involved loves “tail” puns). All of that sounds awful, but once upon a time, Hill also directed Muppets From Space. How someone got from weird and wonderful to boringly broad and homogenous is anyone’s guess. Forget it, fans. It’s Chinatown. That’s sad, but the most fascinating thing about bring back Johnny Five to life is that instead of appealing to a movie geek crowd, the production is attempting to take a character from a strange little 80s movie that’s been reduced to a catch phrase and make him a children’s entertainment icon. To do that, Hill and company will be able to sidestep the treacherous balance between old fans and new by completely disregarding old fans. Of course, the bigger question will be whether a robot movie like this will fly in a time where actual robots are running our lives for us. Will Johnny look like an Erector Set that talks or will

What is Movie News After Dark? It is our nightly promise to keep you on the up-and-up in the world of movie news, interesting links, strange occurrences and developments in the world of Breaking Bad. It is also breaking new ground this evening by defying popular opinion on the new Batman movie and featuring stories about not one, but two pop stars! Tonight’s top story, a first look at pop star Rihanna in Battleship, making her big screen debut as a member of the Naval squad who happen upon some Transformers-esque alien tech in the middle of the ocean and are forced to battle it out via a decades-old board game. B2! Oh, you sunk my interest in her character.

Johnny Five is still alive. And unfortunately, he’s in the hands of a Mall Cop director.

For the inaugural edition of Movies We Love, we dug way back to 1986 and picked up Short Circuit, a film about a lovable military robot who is struck by lightning and begins to believe he is alive.

As part of our Year in Review, we’ve asked our resident DVDologist Brian Gibson to lay down his 15 favorite releases from 2008.

Brian Gibson loves to buy DVDs. Come with him on his weekly journey into the depths of credit card debt as he tells you what to buy, rent and avoid.

We ignored covering this for a little bit hoping it was a mistake, but apparently the honchos over at Dimension Films have had a short circuit of their own and are going ahead with a remake of the endlessly entertaining and oft quotable Steve Guttenberg masterpiece that is Short Circuit.

Johnny 5 is alive… in High Definition!