Just yesterday, Disney announced that Maleficent, the live-action retelling of the Sleeping Beauty story starring Angelina Jolie as the eponymous villain, would arrive in theaters on March 14, 2014.  Before she moves into the realm of a fantasy origin tale, though, Jolie might just join a very different type of project for a brief spell.  That would be The Counselor, the next film from Ridley Scott that is attracting attention from very famous people and a potential distributor.

About two months ago, The Counselor was a project of which we were wholly unaware.  It wasn't even really a project, really.  Now, though, the Cormac McCarthy-scripted The Counselor is one of the most exciting things going.  The Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist's first screenplay immediately got no less a director than Ridley Scott on board, and with Michael Fassbender attached to star, the supporting cast is coming into focus.  Right now, a trio of Oscar-caliber actors are in early talks, as Natalie Portman, Jeremy Renner, and Javier Bardem all look to join the film.

Hey look, it's five spiffily-designed posters for the 3D rerelease of The Phantom Menace, all apparently intended to remind us all of the days when we thought The Phantom Menace was a good idea.  Anyone who was taking in oxygen back in 1999 will have memories of the delirious hype leading up to Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace.  The goodwill towards the Original Trilogy and George Lucas's rare status as a modern mythmaker combined with a perfectly calibrated marketing machine to create total pop-cultural permeation and a collective expectation that The Phantom Menace would inevitably be the greatest human achievement since the pillowcase.  Then the movie actually happened and became a symbol of theatrical disappointment and narrative tone deafness. 

After the ambitious undertaking that is The Avengers, Marvel Studios and Disney have an ambitious plan to release two Marvel movies a year.  The second scheduled post-Avengers release, Thor 2, has experienced some very public growing pains, what with not being able to find or maintain a director for very long.  It looks as though Marvel's directorial troubles are over, though, as previously-reported candidate Alan Taylor has been hired to cross the Rainbow Bridge to Asgard with the sequel to this year's surprisingly proficient Thor.

Marvel Studios has an ambitious plan to release two Marvel movies a year after The Avengers hits next summer, but one of the two follow-ups for 2013 is having a bit of trouble finding and keeping a director, which could potentially cause a problem or two with that ambitious plan.  Thor 2 is set to be the second post-The Avengers effort, following Iron Man 3 with an already announced Thanksgiving 2013 release date.  Yet the the project is no figuratively without a head, as director Patty Jenkins has exited roughly two months after being confirmed to helm the Asgardian sequel.

Right now, zombies are doing a pretty good of shambling through popular culture, with AMC's The Walking Dead cementing its place as the network's biggest show.  More than that, zombies have become part of the cultural shorthand to an extent that would've been pretty unthinkable a decade ago, before Shaun of the Dead or Zombieland.  Despite the current popularity of the undead, Lionsgate just can't seem to catch a break on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an adaptation of the novelty mashup novel by Seth Grahame-Smith.  After having already had two directors attached, the third, Craig Gillespie has now departed the beleaguered project.

This morning Disney made it known that Thor 2, the sequel to this last summer's big Asgardian adventure and the second post-The Avengers feature from Marvel Studios, would be vacating its original July 26, 2013 release date and would instead drop on November 16, 2013.  While the project has long had Chris Hemsworth set to reprise his role as the wielder of Mjolnir, it has not yet had an official director since Kenneth Branagh isn't returning, which is, you know, relatively important.  Today, Marvel Studios has officially announced that Patty Jenkins will occupy the director's chair on Thor 2.

Over this last summer, Marvel Studios had its second two-movie summer following the one-two punch of Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk back in 2008.  The first of 2011's Marvel movies, Thor, managed to introduce the Asgardian setting and cosmic elements to the cinematic universe without fuss, which should allow the titular Thunder God played by Chris Hemsworth to integrate nicely into Joss Whedon's The Avengers. 

For 2013, Marvel was planning another double-decker summer, with Iron Man 3 and Thor 2 both sating our need for seasonal superheroics, but now, it seems Disney and Marvel have pushed Thor 2 back about three and a half months to Thanksgiving.

After combining body horror, turgid hallucinagenic thrills, and ballet to Oscar-nominated effect with last year's Black Swan, the question of Darren Aronofsky's next feature directorial project has been an interesting one.  For a spell there it seemed he would actually direct his The Fountain star Hugh Jackman in the stand-alone X-Men story The Wolverine, but he exited that project in March and was subsequently replaced by James Mangold.  Rather than helming the exploits of an adamantium-sporting mutant, it looks like the auteur will be directing his passion project of Biblical proportions, as Paramount Pictures have partnered with new Regency to co-finance his long-in-the-works Noah.

So last week, the internet scratched its collective scalp at the unexpected news that Patty Jenkins is apparently a frontrunner to direct Thor 2, the sequel to this summer's cosmic Marvel adventure starring Chris Hemsworth as the titular God of Thunder.  If she does, in fact, end up with the job, she'll be the second woman to direct a Marvel Studios film, after Lexi Alexander smashed faces with Punisher: War Zone.  But that's neither here nor there; while there's been no official word from Marvel or Disney, Jenkins herself has confirmed that talks are indeed taking place, though her confirmation was necessarily evasive, vague, brief, and loaded with caveats.