Robo-Rocky vs. Edgar Allen Poe vs. JCVD. Fight! Fight! Fight!

Often are the occasions on which a movie news story will turn up, teasing and tantalising with its faint hints of intrigue, yet without quite enough substance to warrant expending precious keystrokes on its re-telling. Occasionally however, we – in the manner of Victor Frankenstein stitching together cadavers – like to bring together a few such stories for a mini round-up. As is the case today.

First up is Real Steel, which has been talked about for a few weeks, but has now been officially announced as greenlit by Dreamworks bigwigs Stacey Snider and that Spielberg bloke. According to Variety the movie is set in a world where human boxers have been superseded by mechanical counterparts, and focuses on an ex-fighter turned promoter (to be played by Hugh Jackman), who finds a cast-aside robo-pugilist that subsequently turns out to be damn near unbeatable in the ring. The success of the ironclad biffer then apparently gives Jackman's character opportunity to bond with his estranged 11 year-old son. Yay! Bloodshed and violence bridging the generation gap! The script is based on a short story by Richard Matheson (whose huge body of work also spawned recent movies I Am Legend and The Box), and was previously adapted into a Twilight Zone episode starring Lee Marvin. Production is due to start in June, with a budget of $80million, and direction is being handled by Shawn Levy (Cheaper by the Dozen, The Pink Panther, Night at the Museum, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian – all the greats). Anyway, that is that. Next!

Edgar Allen Poe is of course no stranger to the big screen, with his works having most famously inspired the AIP series of Roger Corman-directed/Vincent Price-starring Gothic melodramas from the 1960s (often from screenplays by our old chum Richard Matheson). One of those movies was entitled The Raven, after the Poe poem of the same name (though the film was a kind of horror spoof drawing on other EAP short stories too), and that is the proposed title of a new picture from V For Vendetta and Ninja Assassin helmer James McTeigue, which will apparently centre on the eccentric scribbler himself. Speaking to SCI FI Wire, McTeigue explained that, 'It's sort of Se7en meets a series of Poe stories. It's set in 1850s Baltimore, and it's about creating Poe's version of 1850s Baltimore, him moving through it. So it has a lot of Poe stories interwoven into it.' The script will supposedly find Poe on the trail of a killer who is committing murders using the macabre methods found in his own writings. McTeigue confirmed that amongst the stories and poems touched upon in the movie will be The Raven, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Premature Burial, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, and The Cask of Amontillado. Preproduction and casting are underway, with shooting planned for next year.

And finally, a glimpse at the fifth instalment in the Universal Soldier series, and the third to feature the eurozone high-kicking of Jean-Claude Van Damme (er, no need to hold on for the Richard Matheson connection this time). The plot sees Islamist terrorists seizing control of Chernobyl, with JCVD the only 49 -year-old qualified enough to put the brakes on them. But those naughty terrorists have two bad-ass enforcers of their own, namely Ultimate Fighting Champion Andrei 'The Pitbull' Arlovski, and, returning from the first Universal Soldier movie, Dolph Lundgren. Roland Emmerich is too busy blowing up the world again to make an emotional directorial return, so John Hyams gets to call the shots. Hyams' veteran director dad Peter (Capricorn One, 2010, and gobsmackingly implausible Van Damme ice hockey-thriller Sudden Death) has been roped in on cinematography duties. Entitled Universal Soldier: Regeneration, check out the trailer below.