News, Rumors & 100% Grade-A Internet Bullshit - July 15, 2011

- Going to Comic-Con next weekend, but bummed you'll miss out on seeing Captain America opening that very same weekend? Superhero Hype says, "Have no fear!" A special screening is going down on the morning of July 21^st with the Sentinel of Liberty himself Chris Evans will be there to introduce the film. Special note, fanboys, please refrain from touching Evans until his body-guard (ironically named Bucky) will "have words" with you.

- Ruairi Robinson and Albert Hughes came and went, but Warner Brothers (for some unexplained reason) is still insistent on Akira. Are things that frantic now that Harry Potter is ending, Christopher Nolan is wrapping up his Batman trilogy on his own terms and DC Entertainment started out the gate with a certified box-office bed-shitter in Green Lantern? Spanish filmmaker Jaume Collet-Serra (who recently delivered a decent-sized hit with the Liam Neeson-actioner Unknown) is the latest to pull up their sleeves and give Akira the good old college-try reports Variety. This time with a $90 million budget and, the looks of it, not this two-film adaptation bullshit like we kept hearing under the Hughes and Robinson incarnations. Been there, done that, and we've heard this before with this property. Shall we start our watches and time when this third attempt falls apart?

- Speaking of WB and their "bleak" future without the boy wizard, Vulture is hearing David Yates (the British helmer behind the last four Harry Potter flicks) is being flown out to Burbank and shooting the shit with the likes of big-cheese Jeff Robinov about working his magic on The Stand. In a move echoing what he did with Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows, their intentions are to split Stephen King's epic into a film-trilogy, which as a fan of that particular book, I can say is justified. Yates isn't committed, mind you, and mulling through other projects with the Brothers Warner including Cicero, an Al Capone "origin story" with Tom Hardy attached and Fables, based on the Vertigo comic-book about various characters from fairy-tale folklore living in Manhattan.