· If you were worried that the loss of Darren Aronfosky would cripple The Wolverine, relax! "Fox is very anxious to make the movie," Hugh Jackman told Coming Soon, "and we're moving ahead full steam to find another director." If Jackman needs some suggestions, Movieline is more than happy to help. [Coming Soon]
· Melissa Rosenberg is nothing if not a screenwriter with her pulse on teen angst. The Twilight scribe has just signed up to write and produce an adaptation of the 1983 teen sci-fi novel Earthseed, which also has two sequels. "There's a Lord of the Flies element to it," Rosenberg told THR. "It involves a young woman who starts off as someone who is content with playing by the rules and being a 'good girl,' and then has to realize that the rules are malleable and that she has to step forward as a leader. It's really about coming into one's own power and embracing one's own strength and individuality." That sound you just heard was an executive at Paramount shouting, "Ka-ching!" [THR/Risky Business]
· Lucasfilm has announced that they'll work with Prime Focus on the 3-D conversion for Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace, which you wouldn't necessarily care about except for the fact that Focus also handled the 3-D conversion on Clash of the Titans. Yikes. [THR]
· Poor, Joseph Kosinski. Horizons -- the TRON: Legacy director's long-gestating adaptation of his graphic novel Oblivion -- has been dropped by Disney. The studio will let Kosinski shop the project around to other studios. [Variety]
· Richard LaGravenese and Francis Lawrence apparently had such a good time together on Water for Elephants that they're teaming up again. LaGravenese will adapt Laura Hillenbrand's bestselling novel Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption for Lawrence to direct. Unbroken is about a former Olympic prodigy who was captured by the Japanese during World War II. [Deadline]
· Let's give it up for Roger Ebert, soothsayer. "We will have high-definition, wide-screen television sets and a push-button dialing system to order the movie you want at the time you want it," Ebert told Omni magazine in 1987. "You'll not go to a video store but instead order a movie on demand and then pay for it. Videocassette tapes as we know them now will be obsolete both for showing prerecorded movies and for recording movies. People will record films on 8mm and will play them back using laser-disk/CD technology." Not bad. Now when are we getting those hoverboards? [Paleofuture via LAT/The Big Picture]