· While yesterday might have been an OK day for actresses to adapt Ayn Rand opuses, today is all about big projects and the directors who love them. None are bigger than Sam Raimi and World of Warcraft, a collision of geek iconography hot enough to tan even the pastiest fanboy flesh. The filmmaker will adapt the multi-player video-game institution for Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. after shooting Spider-Man 4 this fall, which I guess gets us to the bad news: In all likelihood, Raimi is done with the Spider-Man franchise. [NYT]
Tim Burton throws Shadows, James Mangold revisits problem kids, and more auteur-centric Hollywood Ink after the jump.
· While one report today attributes protracted downtime for Johnny Depp following Alice in Wonderland, Tim Burton insisted he will keep the star busy as usual in 2010 with their long-planned adaptation of the soapy, supernatural TV cult classic Dark Shadows. [MTV]
· I have no idea what happened to James Mangold directing Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz in the comedy formerly known as Wichita, but maybe it was just Jami Gertz's enthusiastic charm as a rookie producer that drew him to Three Little Words as well. He'll adapt Ashley Rhodes-Courter's memoir about her rough upbringing in foster care; a few tweaks to the Girl Interrupted formula here and there, and Oscar, here we come. [Variety]
· The best part about the news that Darren Lynn Bousman will direct the horror flick Abattoir for Radical Pictures isn't his actual hiring, but rather Variety's parenthetical intercession after the film's title: "(the French word for slaughterhouse)." Someone call Radical marketing, see how that might fly on a poster. [Variety]
· Morgan Spurlock will return to the Super Size Me well with the graphic novel Supersized: Strange Tales From a Fast Food Culture, featuring stories such as the one about a "fat man whose cremation made a mortuary smell like French fries." What? He didn't say they had to be true. [THR]