The Motion Picture Association of America has sentenced Punisher: War Zone with an R-rating. According to CHUD, the R was granted for "pervasive strong brutal violence, language and some drug use."

Everyone who watched the red band trailer for Punisher: War Zone saw the exact same thing: disgusting, humiliating, bone-chilling violence at its absolute brainiest. For fans of Garth Ennis’ run on Punisher for Marvel’s MAX imprint, this was a very good sign. But panic broke shortly over speculation that the film would be watered down in pursuit of a PG-13 rating.

The rumors stemmed from reports that director Lexi Alexander had been unceremoniously dropped from the project due to conflicts with Lionsgate. Alexander reportedly disagreed with Lionsgate’s desire to pull punches with the violent content and their desire to use heavy metal music instead of the planned original score. All signs pointed to yet another cajones-free Punisher film.

The granting of the R-rating is sure to cool some fears as it’s likely to stick closer to Alexander’s vision, but the film is still marred with bad history. Thomas Jane, who played Frank Castle in 2004’s The Punisher, notoriously dropped out of Punisher: War Zone back in 2007. In a letter to Ain’t It Cool News, Jane wrote:

"I am, sadly — no, make that heartbrokenly — f*** it — just rip out the heart and stomp it into the pavement a couple of times — pulling out. Punisher fans are already fighting an uphill battle as it is. And I’ve always felt a responsibility to fight that fight for them and with them so that Frank Castle gets the treatment he deserves."

Jane closed the letter by calling the vigilante sequel "a movie that I just don’t believe in."

Many will argue that since The Punisher was universally panned, Jane’s opinion doesn’t amount to much. Still, it’s worth pondering why the acclaimed actor felt so strongly against the project.

Punisher: War Zone centers on Frank Castle facing his most deadly foe yet, Jigsaw. The film, directed by Lexi Alexander, stars Ray Stevenson (Rome), Dominic West (The Wire), Julie Benz (Dexter) and Wayne Knight (Seinfeld). Punisher: War Zone will be released by Lionsgate on December 5, 2008.

The Hollywood Reporter details AMC’s plans to develop Red Mars, a new science fiction series based on the novel of the same name. Jonathan Hensleigh, writer of Armageddon and The Punisher, is on board as writer/executive producer. Michael Jaffe, Howard Braunstein, Vince Gerardis, Ralph Vicinanza and Eli Kirschner will also executive produce.

"[Red Mars] fits in with our bigger vision of wanting series that feel like cinematic one-hour movies," says Christina Wayne, AMC’s senior VP of original series and miniseries. "We’re always looking for big genres but to do them in slightly different ways so they feel fresh and new."

Red Mars, which AMC is touting as character-driven, is based on a 1992 novel by Kim Stanley Robinson. It chronicles the inhabitants of the first human colony on the planet. Robinson wrote two sequels to the novel, titled Green Mars and Blue Mars, as well as several short stories published in The Martians. AMC will certainly have a lot of material to mine for their series.

This is not the first time that Red Mars has threatened to invade television. James Cameron once held the rights to the Mars trilogy, hoping to develop it as a five-hour miniseries to be directed by Martha Coolidge. He eventually passed on the option. Gale Anne Hurd later planned a similar Mars miniseries for the Sci-Fi Channel, but that too never took flight. It remains to be seen whether AMC’s version will follow in the series’ already ill-fated track record.

In addition to Red Mars, AMC is currently developing a separate sci-fi miniseries, The Prisoner. The miniseries is a remake of the 1960s sci-fi series of the same name, with Jim Caviezel and Ian McKellen set to star.

This week, I have two fat books about the unlikely adventures of (on one hand) a scarred, secretive, arrogant doctor and (on the other) a self-doubting lawyer who defends the innocent. And since I couldn’t see throwing anyone else in between Black Jack and Phoenix Wright, those two will get the whole column to themselves, in a grand showdown between medicine and law.

Black Jack, Vol. 1
By Osamu Tezuka
Vertical, September 2008, $18.95

Black Jack is reportedly Tezuka’s most popular series among Japanese adults – kids prefer Astro Boy, as you’d expect – but there’s only been one (quickly aborted) attempt to publish it in the US before this. And it’s not like Black Jack is a quick little thing: it ran for ten years in Japan, and totals well over two hundred stories of about twenty pages each. But Vertical now is stepping up to the challenge, and plans to publish Black Jack every other month for three years until they get all seventeen volumes out. It’s an ambitious plan, certainly, but ambition is to be applauded, especially in publishing.

So this book reprints some of the earliest Black Jack stories – it doesn’t explicitly say that all of the stories will be reprinted in order, and several stories have never been reprinting, for various reasons, but these are probably from the beginning. It doesn’t start with an origin: some of these stories fill in bits of Black Jack’s backstory, but he’s in the middle of his career as the book opens, already legendary.

Black Jack is a supernaturally gifted surgeon, capable of amazing and unlikely feats, such as transplanting a brain into a new body or building a body for an intelligent parasitic twin and installing her loose, attached body parts into that body. To be blunt, he does the impossible, generally at least once per story. He’s also an outlaw, unlicensed anywhere in the world though still respected and commanding immense fees. (In these stories, his unlicensed status is mentioned but doesn’t affect the action at all.) (more…)

George A. Romero is hard at work on a new untitled zombie picture, according to Variety. Though long speculated to be working on a sequel to his recent Diary of the Dead, all signs indicate that this upcoming feature is more in line with his previous Dead efforts.

The film "involves inhabitants of an isolated island off the North American coast who find their relatives rising from the dead to eat their kin. The leaders of the island feud over whether or not to kill their reanimated relatives or preserve them in hopes of finding a cure."

Just like a zombie invasion that you don’t see coming until it’s too late, Romero’s actually already deep into filming this new project. The film is fully cast, including Alan Van Sprang, Kenneth Welsh, Kathleen Munroe and others. Paula Devonshire is producing, while Peter Grunwald, D.J. Carson, Ara Katz and Art Spigel are executive producing alongside Romero. Shooting is taking place in Ontario, Canada.

Shortly after Variety‘s announcement, Ain’t It Cool News received a spy report from someone on the set of the new zombie flick, which the Web site is affectionately terming Island of the Dead. The report includes a description of scenes filmed, as well as a few photos.

The spy reports, "What I know about the scenes [I saw] filmed is that they take place while the survivors of a zombie attack are trying to escape an island they are on, and as they run for the ferry it has already departed and they miss the boat so they are forced to confront the zombies that are chasing them."

Sounds like classic Romero, who made his bones with his 1968 film Night of the Living Dead, critically revered as both an exceptional horror film and social commentary. He continued that tradition with Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead, then returned to the franchise decades later with Land of the Dead. He broke tradition from his franchise with Diary of the Dead, filmed in a Blair Witch inspired "found footage" style. Romero’s legendary zombie work has inspired remakes, most famously Zack Snyder’s break-out interpretation of Dawn of the Dead.