Elijah Wood is a 'Maniac'

Elijah Wood once again will delve into a role much darker than what we are accustomed to seeing from him as the good Hobbit Frodo in every LOTR film.  In revisiting the serial killer genre, Deadline is reporting that Wood has agreed to star in a remake of the cheesy 1980 slasher flick Maniac. 

Although I absolutely despise remakes, I am intrigued by the possibility of Wood turning in another fantastically creepy performance as a serial killer.

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Four Great Big Last Minute Images from '9'

The folks over at 9 have been very good to us over the past few months, and I think it's because we were one of the first websites to run a little story about Elijah Wood voicing a character in some weird-sounding animated flick based on the director's short film treatment a few years earlier. We even showed you the original 9 at that point.

So that's been almost a year ago now, and Shane Acker's 9 arrives in theaters tomorrow. I'm seeing it tonight - at 9:09pm, of course - so we'll have a review for you shortly thereafter. But in the months since we first wrote about 9, Focus Features has shared a bunch of stuff with us that we've passed along to you, and here are four beautiful images from the film. Obviously, we've had to cut them down to even fit on the page here, but if you click on any of them, I think the masters run in the 3000px range, so if you're into the animation style director Shane Acker is using, you can take a very, very close look. Enjoy:

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Terrific Clip from the Ani-pocalypse Flick, '9'

A few years from now, we'll probably look back at 2009 as a turning point in animation. In fact, we may not even wait a few years. Between the big studio stuff like Up and Monsters vs. Aliens, the integration of 3-D, and the rise of smaller studios in the animated arena, it's going to significantly change the game.

While Lionsgate is enterting the 3-D fray with The Battle for Terra, the real up-and-comer is definitely Focus Features, which has already received great reviews and very solid box office for Coraline and is bringing us the post-apocalyptic 9 later this year. Director Shane Acker is expanding his terrific 2005 short film of the same name into a feature, with the voices of Elijah Wood, Jennifer Connelly, John C. Reilly, Crispin Glover, Christopher Plummer, and Martin Landau. Here's a two-minute clip from the film, which is sure to be unlike any other animated feature this year:

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'Legend of Spyro' Hitting the Big Screen in 3-D

I don't know enough about the game The Legend of Spyro to know whether or not this is exciting news, but a Big Picture read named Cal was sure pretty hot on the subject. According to the DarkSpyro.com, there will be a Legend of Spyro movie, and judging by the post on that site and the film's IMDB page, it appears to be fairly well along in production.

The word is Spyro will be a 3-D animated film featuring the voices of Elijah Wood and Gary Oldman. See, just based on that you would've figured we would have heard something by this point. It's slated to be released next February in Turkey, according the Database, but there's no U.S. release date there or any other source that's readily available. DarkSpyro says Christmas 2009, but again, that's not supported anywhere else.

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About a month ago, we shared with you a story about Elijah Wood and a post-apocalyptic animated flick he was working on called 9. The film is based on a short film, which we included in the initial story, and though that short is wordless and the new film has plenty of voice actors - Wood, Crispin Glover, Jennifer Connelly, John C. Reilly, Christopher Plummer, and Martin Landau head the cast - it was still a very exciting prospect, in large part because it teams Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov as producers. Said Wood of the project, "It’s basically about a post-apocalyptic world where machines created by man have destroyed mankind, and these nine rag dolls go about trying to find out what has happened and what these machines are about.” Now the trailer for 9 has premiered, and it's almost embarrassinlgy incredible, if such a thing is possible. The Transsiberian Orchestra-like tune certainly captures an image, too. Check it out: That's just all sorts of good, isn't it? Now I'm stoked; next year is shaping up to be a big one for animated film. Look for 9 in theaters on...9.9.09. Clever.