Stan Lee Media, Inc. files suit against ‘Conan’

by Annie Barrett, Source: EW.com

Stan Lee Media, Inc., a company founded by comic book legend Stan Lee, wants a judge to rule that it is still the rightful owner of the character Conan the Barbarian. In a lawsuit filed Aug. 19 in federal court in L.A. and obtained by EW, SLMI is demanding 100 percent of the film’s proceeds. The company claims its bankruptcy in 2001 would have prevented anyone from taking the rights to the Conan character away. In the suit, Stan Lee Media, Inc. claims the company was betrayed by a former lawyer who made an illegal deal to transfer the rights to another company that would later green-light this summer’s Conan movie. The poorly reviewed remake earned $10 million on its opening weekend, barely beating the debut of the original Conan the Barbarian in 1982.

Pixar to do dinosaurs, the brain in two newly announced movies

By Adam Swiderski, Source: Blastr.com

Everyone’s favorite animation studio may have a full slate ahead with the fantasy film Brave and Monsters University (sequel to Monsters, Inc.) on the way, but that doesn’t mean they’re resting on their laurels. Instead, they used the D23 Expo to reveal the existence of two new projects that sound like nothing the studio has attempted before.

Both are as-yet untitled, but the descriptions are enough to get our animation-loving hearts racing. The first is from Bob Peterson, who wrote and co-directed Up, and features a world in which the asteroid strike that killed the dinosaurs never happened, meaning the creatures coexist with humans. The second, to be directed by Pete Docter, is being called “an inventive new film that explores a world that everyone knows but no one has seen: inside the human mind.”