It's no secret that Glen Larson, one of the minds behind the original, cheesy, 80s version of Battlestar Galactica hates Ron Moore's current, much more successful version of the show. In fact for years now he's stood in the way of turning that version into a movie. He owns the film rights, and he's blocked all attempts to take Adama theatrical. Tonight, Universal Pictures finally threw up their hands and decided to let him screw us all over.

HR is reporting that Larson has been given the greenlight by Universal to make a Battlestar Galactica movie with no connection at all, to the current, mega-successful, much beloved television series currently finishing up its run on the Sci Fi channel. That's right, before the new BSG's final season has even finished, they're already doing a remake.

Now it's one thing to remake or reboot an unsuccessful franchise. For instance Marvel attempted it with Hulk, after the Ang Lee version received tepid reaction. That's bad enough. But to actively seek to snuff out a popular, hugely successful version of something, a burgeoning, still fairly new franchise fresh with newly converted fans and all the excitement that goes along with that, by selfishly rebooting it so you can put everyone in 80s legwarmers is an insult. It's a big fuck you to everyone who loves the current, massively more successful (critically and in popularity) version of BSG. more...

I've always preferred to have my giant combat mech needs filled by Mech Warrior, but I know a lot of you go for its giant robot suit competitor Robotech. Well congratulations, you win. Robotech is being turned into a movie, which means that my dreams of a Mech Warrior film are now almost certainly doomed. The properties are just too similar.

Even better news, the Robotech script is being written by none other than Lawrence Kasdan. Yeah, that Lawrence Kasdan. The guy who wrote Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Basically, just about any George Lucas movie which was good. If only he'd had the sense to hire him for the prequels... what a better world we'd now be living in.

More details on Kasdan's hiring over at HR.

With the start of filming on T4 last week, Warner Brothers has launched a Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins production blog for the film. There's already one post on the blog, from director McG in which he talks about getting started on mankind's latest fight against the future.

What McG has to say sounds good, until you remember it's McG, a guy whose made a career out of bad movies. Still, when he says things like "John Connor will be pushed to the brink. And for me, Christian Bale embodies Connor’s strength and tenacity perfectly." it's hard not to get a little tingle.

Along with his announcement of the start of production, is very cool looking piece of concept art. It's a preliminary look at what post-Judgement Day Los Angeles might look like. Check it out below:

Even though they insist on sticking with the extremely stupid title of Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins, I'm going to go right on calling the next Terminator movie T4, as it should be.

Today we finally found out just exactly what T4 will be about, as Warner Brothers announced the start of principle production, proving this thing is really happening, and also sent out the film's first official plot synopsis. Here it is, the plot of T4:

Christian Bale stars as John Connor, the man fated to lead the human resistance against Skynet and its army of Terminators. But the future Connor was raised to believe in is altered in part by the appearance of Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), a stranger whose last memory is of being on death row. Connor must decide whether Marcus has been sent from the future, or rescued from the past. As Skynet prepares its final onslaught, Connor and Marcus both embark on an odyssey that takes them into the heart of Skynet’s operations, where they uncover the terrible secret behind the possible annihilation of mankind.

I loved Transformers. You loved Transformers. But it was missing something. His name was Soundwave and let's face it, he was by far the coolest Decepticon. He may not have made it into the first movie, but now screenwriter Robert Orci tells IGN that he will be in the second one. Huzzah!

The question is, how will they do it? Soundwave as he was in the cartoon would never work in the real world. We're talking about a 20 foot tall robot which somehow, inexplicably, transformed into a 1 foot tall microcassette recorder. I'm pretty sure that breaks a few laws of physics. Orci doesn't reveal anything other than that Soundwave will be present, along with at least one of the transforming tape robots who used to leap out of his chest, probably Ravage. But obviously, Soundwave is going to have to be turned into something besides a tape player. It's the only answer, especially since the previous film already had a radio robot and we all stopped using tapes more than 15 years ago.

I'm all for it. It doesn't really matter what Soundwave transforms into, as long as they keep the voice, and find a way for him to say "Ravage eject". So we're talking about some sort of robot which has smaller robots leaping out of it. Soundwave is one of Megatron's chief lieutenants, so he'll also need to be big. What else could they turn Soundwave into? Here's a few alternatives:
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We don't normally cover a lot of superheroes here on GFR, even awesome, red, demonic ones. But here's something that's just too good to pass up. The plot of the next Hellboy movie, Hellboy II:The Golden Army has been kept pretty well under wraps, but a new poster released for the film at the New York Comic Con speaks volumes about what he'll be up against in his new movie. Gone are the tentacles of the first film, and in their place... he's fighting giant freakin robot bugs! Now that's cool.

Behold the evidence:
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KYW Radio's website thinks Giant Freakin' Robots will be terrorizing Will Smith's old stomping grounds this year! Greater Philadelphia Film Office's Sharon Pinkenson confirmed that Transformers 2 will be filmed in Philadelphia. Unfortunately, we won't get to see Starscream tearing down a few national landmarks. CGI will be heavily used. Stupid CGI, I really was looking forward to Philly getting a beatdown.

I'll be the first to admit I was wrong about Transformers. I just knew that Bay had ruined one of my favorite childhood memories by mixing it up with a stupid love story. Damn you Pearl Harbor! Anyways, Transformers was over for about 8 seconds when I told my wife I couldn't wait for the sequel. Reports are swirling already that production has already begun on Transformers 2 and about damn time I say!

Nothing feeds geekness like rumors, and IESB has one about some new baddies joining the Decepticons. IESB claims that the Constructicons will be coming to Earth to battle Optimus Prime and the Autobots. Who the hell are the Constructicons you say? What kind of sci-fi geek are you? The Constructicons consisted of Scrapper (front load shovel ), Scavenger (excavator), Mixmaster (Concrete Mixer), Hook (crane), Long Haul (dump truck), and Bonecrusher (bulldozer). One could say that this was a blatant attempt at selling toys to boys. Boys are notorious for their love of construction vehicles. However, the Constructicons were more than your average lazy DOT worker's plaything. These guys joined together and transformed into the bad ass known as Devastator. While searching for a great image of Devastator, I happened across a completely amazing piece of art created by Alex Javier Carabajal over at Rise Studios. Look below to see the great mock up of Devastator and then click here to see the full sized photo.

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Terrible news from Remakeland, aka Hollywood. They're putting their sticky fingers all over the classic Steve Guttenberg/Ally Sheedy movie Short Circuit. The depressing news of Number 5's impending ruination via remake comes at the hands of Dimension Films, a studio mostly known for making low-budget horror movies, which has now snapped up the former franchise's remake rights.

They plan to use the movie to beef up their family film slate. Except of course the original Short Circuit wasn't really a family movie. Ok sure, it was rated PG, but then everything was rated PG back in the 80s. It actually tackled some fairly heavy stuff though, and it definitely had nearly as much appeal for adult audiences as it did for kids. The sequel was a little more watered down, but the original, family movie? Only in the broadest sense of the term. Expect Dimension to utterly ruin it. No disassemble!

Michael Jai White, who if you know him for anything it’s playing Spawn in the superhero movie of the same name, is hopping into another science fiction movie with Bruce Willis. The movie is The Surrogates, and it’s directed by T3 helmer Jonathan Mostow.

It’s not clear exactly how White fits into the movie, but here’s what Moviehole has to say about the film’s premise:

Directed by Jonathan Mostow, the film is set in the near future, where humans live in isolation and interact through surrogate robots, a cop is forced to leave his home for the first time in years in order to investigate the murders of others’ surrogates.

It's a safe bet that Bruce Willis is the cop. Does he ever play anything else? If he's the cop, then could Michael Jai White be a robot? Makes sense to me.