A few weeks back, some rumblings made the Internet rounds concerning the possibility of George Clooney stepping in as the next Jack Ryan. The Tom Clancy character has been previously played by Ben Affleck, Harrison Ford and Alec Baldwin, and Clooney seemed like a perfectly viable fourth. With no "Ocean's" movie on the horizon and the actor's remaining 2009 projects serving up quirkier fare, Ryan's smooth government official would put Clooney back in the leading man saddle.

So when I sat down to chat with "G.I. Joe" producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura two weekends ago, I couldn't help but ask him for an update on his Jack Ryan project. Specifically, how Clooney factors into it. Di Bonaventura had just two words for the actor: "Sorry George." Read more...

One thing that longtime fans might be disappointed to learn about "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra" is that it is essentially a modern-day reboot. The Joes are now a willfully multi-national organization, fighting wherever there's trouble to defend freedom and liberty throughout the world. As for Cobra... they're kinda not even born yet when the movie opens. That's all I'll say, for fear of unleashing too many spoilers. Just know that you should take the "Rise of Cobra" subtitle very literally.

My point here is that a sequel is pretty much a requirement. "Rise of Cobra" lays some good groundwork, but it is not a proper G.I. Joe vs. Cobra outing. Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura agrees. "In this movie, you don't get to see the full glory of Cobra," he told MTV in an interview last week. "I think that's going to be a lot of fun to explore [in future outings]." Read more...

Dust off your rocker switches and joysticks, because Hollywood seems to be all about video games this week -- well, video games and comic books. Today's Dailies feature gaming's most famous vampire hunter, as well as plenty of news from Comic-Con, with "Roger Rabbit 2," "Alice in Wonderland," and much more.

-- James Wan, who helped launch the wonderful world of the "Saw" movies now gets to bring famous vampire hunter Simon Belmont to theaters, as he writers and directs a film version of the classic Konami video game "Castlevania." (Blood Disgusting)

-- Producer Lornezo di Bonaventura says his team has "crafted a really strong, deep mythology" for their film adaptation for the really classic video game "Asteroids." (IGN) Read more...

They grow up so fast. Just yesterday, it seemed like Shia LaBeouf was talking to transforming robots and chasing after his dad, Indiana Jones. Now, he's all grown up and about to graduate from Yale Law School -- well, on the big screen, anyway. Variety reports that LaBeouf has signed on to play the lead in "The Associate" for Paramount Pictures. This is Grisham's first legal thriller in three years, and Paramount just snagged the rights to it after it was quietly shopped to only four producers.

Based on the upcoming John Grisham novel, LaBeouf will play a student who's set to graduate from Yale Law School, when he's manipulated into accepting a job at a prestigious law firm. But all is not as lucky as it seems when he's given inside information about a multibillion-dollar lawsuit. Read more...

You’ve seen the photos, heard the rumors, and even had your eardrums blown out by one star’s unparalleled sense of excitement. But the question remains: Is next summer’s “G.I. Joe” movie going to be as awesome as Michael Bay’s “Transformers,” or as laughable as Dolph Lundgren’s “Masters of the Universe”?

“We are in post-production, and it’s looking really good,” promised super-producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura recently, marveling over some of the early “G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra” scenes he’s been working on recently with director Stephen Sommers. “It’s going to be really fun, and it’s going to be big.”

The cast alone would seem to back up di Bonaventura’s boasts, with such names as Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Dennis Quaid, Marlon Wayans, Sienna Miller and others. When MTV visited the set awhile back, it was as if the soldier-stuffed toyboxes we all had as children had grown 20 times their size and been handed over to Sommers. All that remains now is to see if his plotlines are as exciting as the ones we dreamed up in our backyards all those years ago. Read more...

Do you love “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” but find yourself wanting them to set aside the bullets, boobs and bombs and just let the characters breathe a bit? Were you mighty moved by “A Mighty Heart,” but wish the flick wasn’t so damn talky? Now, Angelina Jolie is in the process of reaching for a happy medium between the dramatic and the dim-witted, and if she has her way, “Salt” will soon be adding some flavor to your moviegoing experience.

“It’s very different from that,” producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura recently said of “Smith” when we asked him what the two spy films had in common. “[Jolie] is the first person cast, and she is the most important person to be cast too. It’s going to be a very exciting film, Phillip Noyce is directing it, and we are going to start in February. It’s a big spy movie on a big canvas with a lot of attitude.”

Originally called “Edwin A. Salt,” the film was supposed to star Tom Cruise as the title character, an American spy who might or might not also be working for the Russians. Now, “The Quiet American” director Noyce will be overseeing Jolie and reportedly changing her name to Edwina, but keeping the script’s basic structure. Read more...

We know Joseph Gordon-Levitt is excited for his role as Cobra Commander in "G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra," but just what exactly can we expect from his take on the iconic character? While viewers of the cartoon know the figure as a more whimsical evildoer, fans of the comic -- used to a bombastic terrorist who entombed his own son -- are feverishly hoping their version of the Cobra leader is the one that makes it on-screen. Thankfully, it sounds like they'll get their wish.

"As we see it, he's a very twisted character," producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura exclaimed to MTV News, telling us the key to Cobra Commander lies in his gritty past...and that we'll see every grimy piece of it. "As the backstory evolves, you discover why his personality [is like that]."

While stopping short of drawing parallels between Gordon-Levitt's PG-13 villain and that of Heath Ledger's terrifying Joker, di Bonaventura does find one noteworthy comparison. "I thought what was great in 'The Dark Knight' was that Heath kept telling you different stories [about his past] so you never knew what it was, and they were all spooky and crazy. [In our film] you get to see it, and you get to understand what's happened to this guy." Read more...

He’s one of fandom’s most celebrated characters, an honor-bound warrior upholding the virtues of an earlier time. And for a moment, he nearly sold his principals down the river simply to get a movie deal.

But thankfully Snake-Eyes, the black-clad, silent warrior of “G.I. Joe” averted a scandal that may have rocked the Internet community to its knees. And all thanks to one very protective father.

“We actually had Snake-Eyes utter one sentence at the very end of the movie,” revealed Lorenzo di Bonaventura, the producer behind the upcoming mega-budget “G.I. Joe” adaptation. “We thought [it] was very clever…Larry didn’t think it was clever at all.” Read more...