Robert Downey Jr, star of the upcoming Ironman 2, looks set to take on the 3D science fiction space thriller Gravity, directed by Children of Men's Alfonso Cuaron. Cuaron wrote Gravity’s script with his son, Jonas. According to Deadline Hollywood, Downey is a big fan of Alfonso Cuaron's work and has wanted to team up with him for some time. Shooting is set to take place in London in July, just in time for Downey to begin work on the Sherlock Holmes sequel with director Guy Ritchie and Jude Law (also filming in London).

Cuarón is the director behind the post apocalyptic Children of Men, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (one of the best Harry Potter films), as well as Y tu mamá también. Gravity was originally set to feature Angelina Jolie in the lead, but she pulled out recently when Warner Bros. took the project over from Universal.

There have been a lot of ape productions over the last 40 years, none as powerful as the first Planet of the Apes film in 1968 that starred Charlton Heston and featured the unforgettable final scene of The Statue of Liberty rising from the sand and waves (watch a clip of the final scene on YouTube at the end of this article). Based on the Planet of the Apes novel by Pierre Boulle, first published in 1963, apart from the Heston classic, we’ve had Beneath the Planet of the Apes in 1970, Escape from the Planet of the Apes in 1971, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes in 1972, Battle for the Planet of the Apes in 1973 and the television series’ Planet of the Apes in 1974 and an animated Return to the Planet of the Apes in 1975 (there is even a series of Planet of the Ape comics). You may also remember the less than average Planet of the Apes remake directed by Tim Burton and starring Mark Wahlberg in 2001 (personally I’m trying to forget the whole thing).

Producer Robert Rodriguez has previewed the first footage from a new Predators movie starring Adrien Brody and Laurence Fishburne at the South by Southwest Film Festival and Conference in Austin, Texas. There’s no Arnold Schwarzenegger, star of the first Predator film, but the excellent new acting additions of Brody and Fishbourne may help Predators rise above the B-Grade level of its sequel and tie–in predecessors, which include Predator 2 (1990) and the two Alien crossover films Alien vs. Predator (2004) and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007).

Some movies seem compelled to arrive in pairs, a bit like the animals on Noah’s Ark. I’m sure there are many good reasons why two studios might release films with a similar plot or theme at the same time, and I’m almost certain they don’t all involve conspiracies and dark dealings. It could be just coincidence. Perhaps it’s simply the right time for a movie, say, about an obscure Roman Legion that passed out of history into legend some nineteen hundred years ago…?

If you wanted further evidence that science fiction authors and film makers are outcasts of the cinematic and literary establishment (as we argued in Why Science Fiction authors just can't win) recent quotes I stumbled across in USA Today from one of Avatar's stars, Sigourney Weaver, highlight this point yet again:

"Jim was telling someone about how sci-fi had always gotten a bad rap, and that maybe now that would change," Weaver said. "And I thought, 'Science fiction? Really? Is that what this movie is?' Because to me it's just a great story that happens to take place in another time."

Science fiction films obviously can't have great stories, can they? I wasn't overjoyed with Avatar's story, but reacting as if it was something else simply because "it's good" seems crazy, and illustrates the uphill battle creators of genre fiction and film face. Perhaps though, Sigourney was simply highlighting this point, trying to downplay the science fiction tag to try and give it a better chance at this year's Academy Awards.  Later in the article, when asked whether Avatar has a chance, she appeared to be pessimistic about Avatar's chances of landing some of the big awards:

Duncan Jones is the director responsible for one of the standout films of 2009, a well crafted science fiction thriller called Moon. If you're a fan (which I definitely am), you'll be glad to hear that he plans to return to the same universe with a new film called Mute Witness. Jones told SFX magazine that Mute Witness bears some notable similarities:

"It takes place in the same timeline as Moon," Jones said. "In fact, Sam Rockwell's character makes a cameo appearance in the plot. I have asked Sam to reprise the part, and he seems happy about that."

"Like Moon it is a very human story - and one of the big reasons I like SF is because it allows you to do that while offering audiences the chance of escapism," he said.

Word is that Universal has pulled the plug on a sequel to Timur Bekmambetov’s Wanted. Apparently the studio had wanted Angelina Jolie to star in the sequel but she pulled out, and without her (very bankable) involvement Universal is not prepared to proceed.

Anyone familiar with Wanted will appreciate that having Jolie’s character Fox return for a sequel would require some pretty fancy pen work on the part of the script writer: at the end of Wanted, Fox killed herself with an unequivocal bullet to the head. Universal’s desire to bring her back strikes as a commercial decision not a creative one, and at a guess I’d say Jolie was not convinced by the fancy pen work. If so, good on her!

Valhalla Rising, the latest project by Danish filmmaker Nicholas Winding Refn (Bronson), first showed up on our radar back in 2008. Since then it's raised its bloody and battered head from time to time with a new trailer, snippet of news or film festival appearance, and quickly faded back into the mist without ever seeming to get any closer to a general release. Blood and mist as you'll appreciate if you've experienced any of the trailers, would appear to be two of the film's most distinctive features.

With a UK release finally approaching (26 March), Valhalla Rising has raised its head once again with a two minute long medley of scenes “showcasing” the film’s gore, set to the most bizarre choice of music: Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers, from The Nutcracker. It’s not a trailer so much as a mishmash of brutal scenes, and believe me when I say it’s not for the faint of heart. Frankly, I don’t see the point of it (beyond the obvious, though cheaply scored, marketing goal). The depiction of violence, brutality and gore is justified in the appropriate context, but this medley of scenes has no context and is basically gratuitous.

M. Night Shyamalan has had some spectacular movie successes, from the excellent The Sixth Sense (possibly the biggest plot twist in movie history) to the powerful and compelling Unbreakable (again starring Bruce Willis with a massive plot twist). There are few directors who have had such an outstanding start. The films that followed however have steadily trended downwards, both artistically and commercially: Signs, The Village, the Lady in the Water, and especially the dismal, The Happening, have illustrated that somehow, along the way, Shyamalan has lost his directorial mojo. Can his latest film The Last Airbender stop the slide?

MTV reports that Roland Emmerich, director of the upcoming adaptation of Isaac Asimov's epic Foundation trilogy, will film the three movies in 3-D, using technology similar to the CG motion-capture techniques James Cameron used in Avatar.

When asked if Asimov's Foundation trilogy would be in 3-D and in motion capture, Emmerich replied, "Yes."

He added that:

"Probably now all big movies have to be 3-D. It's not only the effect of 3-D, [Avatar has] just shown that if you do a movie in 3-D, you can ask for more money and that's the trick. I think now everybody who does bigger movies has to shoot them in 3-D. I think there's no way around it. I was on the set of Avatar and I saw how it worked and I really thought, 'That's the ultimate way of making movies.'"