The Raven is looking closer to achieving lift off. Gerard Butler is in deep negotiations to play the lead in the sci-fi conspiracy thriller that Ricardo de Montreuil is set to direct for Gold Circle Films and Universal Pictures. The feature, based on a 2010 short film by de Montreuil and Antonio Perez, was penned by…

EXCLUSIVE: Studio is not confirming, but I’m hearing that The Hunger Games‘ star Liam Hemsworth is close to being set for the lead in The Raven, which Ricardo de Montreuil is set to direct at Universal Pictures from a script by Michael Gilio and Justin Marks. The film is based on the helmer’s short film, the one that…

Marvel's 'The Avengers' Amasses $178.4M Overseas SUNDAY AM, 7TH UPDATE: I’m still on vacation but can’t ignore four new low-cost movies opening in North American wide release and performing worse than expected at the box office. This was one of 2012’s worst weekends with overall box office $111M, or a big -30%…

Relativity Media today announced a couple of additional release schedule changes. The Edgar Allan Poe serial killer thriller The Raven is shifting to April 27 where the other wide releases will be Universal’s comedy The Five-Year Engagement and Lionsgate’s Safe. Its former date March 9 had The Raven up against…

This is the first trailer for Relativity’s period thriller The Raven. The James McTeigue-directed thriller stars John Cusack as Edgar Allan Poe, who joins with a Baltimore detective (Luke Evans) to hunt down a serial killer using Poe’s works as the basis for a string of brutal murders — a pretty cool concept for a…

Deadline Comic-Con Movie Contributor Luke Y Thompson reports: It’s the story every media outlet is dying to tell every year: "Comic-Con just ain’t what it used to be." This year, however, the event — set for July 21-24 at the San Diego Convention Center — comes with some alarmist (and circumstantial) evidence: Warner…

EXCLUSIVE: Relativity Media has acquired the U.S. distribution rights to The Raven, the Intrepid Pictures’ thriller that stars John Cusack as Edgar Allan Poe. James McTiegue directed, and Luke Evans, Alice Eve, Brendan Gleeson and Oliver Jackson-Cohen also star. Scripted by Ben Livingston and Hannah Shakespeare, the…

Luke Evans has been set to star alongside John Cusack in The Raven, the drama that will be directed by V for Vendetta's James McTeigue. Production starts later this year in Eastern Europe. Cusack plays Edgar Allan Poe in stylized revisionist take of the last week of the poet’s life, written by Hannah Shakespeare and…

John Cusack blurted out on Twitter that he’ll play Edgar Allan Poe in The Raven. Since I can’t clear my throat in less than 140 characters, I’ll spend the extra verbiage describing the film. Based on an original script by Hannah Shakespeare (I kid you not) and Ben Livingston, the drama is set in the last five days of…

Now that Jeremy Renner snagged the big male lead opposite Tom Cruise in the next Mission: Impossible, the focus of Paramount Pictures, director Brad Bird and producers Cruise and JJ Abrams are intent on filling the role of a young female operative. I’m told that Lauren German and Paula Patton are testing for the job…

Justin Marks had been at WME. He’s writing the Universal pic The Raven, a feature based on the 6-minute short film by Ricardo de Montreuil. Mark Wahlberg is attached. Marks also adapted the DC Comics series Super Max aka The Green Arrow for David Goyer, and Shadow of the Colossus for Sony Pictures Entertainment. His…