The making of Indiana Jones IV has seemingly taken on the proportions of a never ending saga, going through delay after delay. This is largely due to the fact that the three key people involved with the project - director Steven Spielberg, producer George Lucas and Indiana Jones actor Harrison Ford - have so far not once been simultaneously content with the way the movie was headed towards. The closes Indy IV ever got to being greenlighted was when Frank Darabont (director of The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption, and writer on the Young Indy TV series) turned in a script that Steven Spielberg was in raves about, but Lucas rejected.

Darabont now spoke to CHUD about this, shedding more insight into how frustrating it was for him to have his script dismissed so light-handedly: “I worked very close with Steven Spielberg. He was ecstatic with the result and was ready to shoot it two years ago. He was very, very happy with the script and said it was the best draft of anything since Raiders of the Lost Ark. That’s really high praise and gave me a real sense of accomplishment, especially when you love the material you’re working on as much as I love the Indiana Jones films. [...] And then you have George Lucas read it and say, ‘Yeah, I don’t think so, I don’t like it.’ And then he resets it to zero when Spielberg is ready to shoot it that coming year, [which] is a real kick to the nuts.”

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Morgan Freeman is in final talks to star opposite James McAvoy (Mr. Tumnus in The Chronicles of Narnia) in Universal Pictures’ Wanted, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Freeman would play Sloan, the the trainer of McAvoy’s character in everything assassin.

Wanted, a sci-fi actioner that will mark the English-language debut of Russian filmmaker Timur Bekmambetov (Night Watch), is based on a comic book miniseries by Mark Millar and J.G. Jones published by Top Cow. The story follows a put-upon man (McAvoy) who discovers that his long-lost father is an assassin. After his dad is murdered, the son is recruited into a covert organization of killers and trained to follow in his father’s footsteps.

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Comingsoon.net has been talking to Robert Downey Jr about his upcoming role in Marvel comics movie adaptation Iron Man.

“The suit for ‘Iron Man’ is so complex and does so much stuff that except for once or twice or from the chest up, I’m not required to do all that much,” said the actor,  ”what I will do is a lot of motion capture so that the movement isn’t just some random stunt guy. A lot of time I look at CGI and I’m like ‘What’s the reference for this? This looks like a cartoon reference not a person. So I said I want to do all the motion capture work, which is like eight months after finishing shooting, but as much as it as I can do, I will.”

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Variety reports that Thai authorities are calling for a softer, less violent John Rambo. Rambo IV: In the Serpent’s Eye, is scheduled to begin filming in January in Bangkok, Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai with the muscle bound hero set to rescue a missing girl in Burma. Although the movie will inject 200 million baht ($5.5 million) into the Thai econonmy, officials have requested that the movie should be gentler than its predecessors and cause minimal damage to the jungle shooting locations.

“We have warned them that any violence has to be reasonable because we care about young people,” said Wanasiri Morakul, a director at the Thailand Film Office.

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The Incredible Hulk will smash its way into theaters on June 27th, 2008, announced Michael Helfant, President and COO, Marvel Studios and Kevin Feige, President of Production for Marvel Studios.

The film will be directed by Louis Leterrie, who directed the Transporter 2 and Unleashed, and written by Zak Penn, who collaborated with Marvel on X2 and X-Men: The Last Stand.

The second Hulk film to hit the big screen will be produced along with Iron Man and a variety of other projects by Marvel’s new independently run Marvel Studios and distributed by Universal Pictures.

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