Shaun Burke

After slowly emerging from bankruptcy under the leadership of Spyglass partners Roger Birnbaum and Gary Barber and converting it’s enormous debt of $4.25 billion into equity, MGM is now looking to be make it’s first major franchise play with a remake of an old cashcow: Robo Cop. Deadline is reporting the studio is in talks with Brazilian director Jose Padilha to revitalize the futuristic 1987 film originally directed by Paul Verhoeven that spawned two sequels, a variety of television adaptations, video games and a great deal of merchandising.

The collective, made up of six Aussies and one American, hit a high point this past Sunday when Jacki Weaver, star of Blue-Tongue member David Michod’s Animal Kingdom, was among the nominees for Best Actress at the Oscars. Formed by seasoned stuntman Nash Edgerton, his actor brother Joel, and Kieran Darcy Smith, Blue-Tongue began as a group of friends who could turn to each other for guidance and inspiration in all their various film projects. It seems to be working.

With Robert De Niro and Paul Dano already on board, The Tracking Board is suggesting that Julianne Moore is in talks to join the cast of Another Night, based on Nick Flynn’s novel “Another Bullshit Night in Suck City.” Paul Weitz (American Pie, About A Boy, In Good Company) will direct the film from his own adapted screenplay and serve as producer through his and brother Chris’ (New Moon) Depth of Field Productions banner.

Donnie Darko helmer Richard Kelly is playing it a little safer with his next directorial effort. Variety is reporting that the writer/director is stepping away from his usual supernatural stomping grounds, where films like Southland Tales and The Box failed to find success, and will instead pen and helm the multi-faceted thriller Corpus Christi.

Nick Cassvetes likes drugs. Or at least making movies about them. The filmmaker, who previously wrote the cocaine epic, Blow, directed both drug-centric films She’s So Lovely and Alpha Dog, and is currently in production with Yellow, (Wild Bunch are selling it at the EFM) the not-unlike his father’s A Woman Under the Influence, which centers around a young female with a drug habit, has been inked to direct a new biopic about the notorious drug dealer “Freeway” Rick Ross.