The Morning Roundup: Lionsgate Shits All Over Barker, JJ Abrams’ Mystery House, Dreamworks Change-up

Written by: Lance Carmichael, CC2K Staff Writer

In Today's news, another executive screws over a movie, yuppies with too much money and a cool imagination inspire a possible feature film involving J.J. Abrams, and Mola Ram finally begins his take-over of Hollywood.

Nikki Finke over at Deadlinehollywoodaily reports that Joe Drake, the new head of Lionsgate, is trying to bury an in-the-can adaptation of a Clive Barker story called Midnight Meat Train. Not being a horror fan myself, I haven't gotten my undies in a bundle, but fans of Barker (yes, they exist) are reportedly up in arms. Drake recently took over Lionsgate after his Mandate Films was snapped up for a pretty penny by Lionsgate, and he was made "prexy" of Lionsgate as part of the deal. Drake, in a dick move straight out of the Movie Executive Dick Move Bible, is 86-ing every script and project developed by his predecessors in an attempt to feed his insatiable ego. The really nasty part? Midnight Meat Train was originally scheduled to open the same week as The Strangers before it was pulled by Drake. One of the executive producers of The Strangers? Mr. Joseph Drake.

Hate the Drake!

J.J. Abrams is producing an adaptation of this New York Times article about a Manhattan apartment built by rich eccentrics with lots of clues and hidden doors and stuff like that (neat pictures here ). So there you go.

Yo, dogg , Sienna Miller be playing Maid Marion in Ridley Scott's upcoming Robin Hood movie Nottingham! Oh, shit! (Please click here to see a few shots from the photo shoot of Sienna Miller modeled off of the famous New Yorker photo shoot that launched Meryl Streep's career).

And finally, Dreamworks has announced that it's going to be separating itself from financier Paramount (quick history lesson: Dreamworks used to be an autonomous (if backlot-less) studio until Michael Bay's The Island tanked so badly they had to enter a humiliating kept-woman-esque marriage with Par) and getting half a billion dollars from Indian company Reliance ADA Group to become a single woman, er, studio again. Does this mean that the casting down and forgetting of the Hebrew god and the nightmare eternity of Thuggee rule prophesized by Mola Ram is about to come to fruition?

My sources say yes.