As a director, France's Luc Besson is the man behind The Professional, La Femme Nikita, and The Fifth Element, amongst others.  As a producer and frequent-screenwriter, he's an action-impresario responsible for Taken, Colombiana, and The Transporter franchise.  In order to bring some unique projects from Besson to American theaters, Relativity Media is joining forces with Besson's EuropaCorp, co-financing anddomestically distributing two new films.

Paranoia, a thriller with a unique, all-star cast, has found an American distributor and a release date.  Relativity Media has acquired U.S. rights to the film based on the novel by Joseph Finder, and today the studio announced that Paranoia will hit theaters Stateside on September 27, 2013.

Liam Hemsworth, an Australian up-and-comer who last appeared as Gale Hawthorne in The Hunger Games, leads the cast as a regular guy who finds himself blackmailed into a costly game of corporate and technological espionage with unimaginably high stakes.  Also starring in Paranoia are Academy Award nominees Gary Oldman and Harrison Ford, along with Lucas Till, who played Havoc in last summer's X-Men: First Class.

Some actors bring something special no matter the movie in which they're appearing, regardless of the size or nature of their role.  To say that Willem Dafoe is such an actor would be a dramatic understatement.  The Oscar-caliber actor has officially signed on to Relativity Media's Out of Furnace, an homage to gritty 1970s crime thrillers that follows a recently released convict as he sets out to avenge his brother.

Relativity Media officially announced the truly impressive principal cast of the film currently titled Out of the Furnace, a dramatic and textured homage to the thrillers of the 1970s, following a newly freed ex-convict out to avenge his brother.  How impressive is the cast?  It's led by Oscar winner Christian Bale, along with Star Trek and Avatar star Zoe Saldana as the female lead.  They're joined by two Oscar nominees: Gone Baby Gone's Casey Affleck and legendary actor/playwright Sam Shepard.

Last week, Relativity Media announced big news on The Crow – which just found a new director and writer in F. Javier Gutierrez and Jesse Wigutow – and Timeless, an action-drama starring Liam Hemsworth and directed by Phillip Noyce.  Now, the distributor has kicked off a new week with big news.  Relativity is teaming up with Hasbro to create a Stretch Armstrong feature film based on the squishy elastic action figure first produced in 1976.

Last summer, Chris Hemsworth entered the American cultural consciousness as the title character in Marvel's Thor, but his younger sibling, Liam Hemsworth, is on track to match or exceed his brother as a bankable movie star here in the States.  Liam Hemsworth is playing romantic co-lead Gale Hawthorne in this spring's The Hunger Games and its inevitable sequels, and he's the youngest rough-and-tumble member of Sylvester Stallone's mercenary team in this summer's The Expendables 2.  Now, he's signed on to show his full dramatic potential in Timeless, an emotional adventure to be directed by Phillip Noyce.

Twenty-three years ago, while comic book luminaries like Frank Miller, Alan Moore, and Neil Gaiman were proving that graphic novels could no longer be dismissed as childish wish fulfillment, James O'Barr's revenge tale The Crow amassed a cult following for its dark, sophisticated storytelling.  In 1994, a film version from director Alex Proyas showed that films based on graphic novels could be just as grown-up, visually arresting, and dramatically striking.

Now, with an audience infinitely more versed in the conventions of comic books, O'Barr's original material is set to once again provide a template for a shift in comic book moviemaking.  The Crow, a new feature from Relativity Media and Dimension Films, will re-imagine the story of Eric Draven from a more contemporary, grittier perspective.  Today, Relativity announced that a director and writer have been chosen to bring this new vision to the screen, as F. Javier Gutierrez and Jesse Wigutow have both signed on the project.

With The Hangover, screenwriting duo Jon Lucas and Scott Moore created the most successful comedy franchise of all time by taking a unique and clever approach the time-honored masculine cinematic tradition of the bachelor party gone awry.  For 21 and Over, their feature directorial debut, Lucas and Moore will take on another such tradition: the 21st birthday celebration.  Miles Teller was previously announced as one of two friends who take their buddy, an upstanding student just trying to study, on a raucous misadventure for his 21st birthday.  Today, Relativity Media officially announced that actors Justin Chon of The Twilight Saga and Skylar Astin from Hamlet 2 will join fill out the central trio in the comedy, and they'll be joined by Sarah Wright, who appeared in The House Bunny.

Voltron, a live action adaptation of the 1980's anime series, has been bouncing around as a potential blockbuster for a while now.  The series, set in an indeterminate future, features five pilots of giant mechanized lions which join together to form Voltron, an unstoppable humanoid-shaped mega-robot defending the universe against the varied evil forces threatening innocent lives throughout the cosmos.  Today, Relativity Media and Atlas Entertainment announced that they have officially acquired the big screen rights to Voltron, which is being written by Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer.

Since the assassination of Osama bin Laden by Navy SEAL Team 6 in May, there has naturally been a resurgence of interest in the badass exploits of America's special operators.  Luckily, the new action film Act of Valor was made with unprecedented access to the fighting force itself, and even stars a group of active duty SEALs as a team on a global mission to recover a kidnapped CIA agent.  Directed by Mike McCoy and Scott Waugh from a script by 300 screenwriter Kurt Johnstad, the already completed production has just been acquired by Relativity Media, and Act of Valor will provide all the realistic, SEAL-based action that the public demands in 2012.