Acquired by Screen Gems in October, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones has hung in limbo ever since. With Scott Stewart (Legion, Priest) set to direct, and Lily Collins (also Priest) cast as his resident starlet, it appears there is still an obstacle in the production’s way: Alex Pettyfer.

According to Vulture, it appears that Screen Gems chief Clint Culpepper is so certain that the one-time Stormbreaker is the key to the film’s success that he does not want to green-light the project unless he can ensure Pettyfer’s involvement.

The Mortal Instruments, a four book series created by novelist Cassandra Clare, charts the romance of ordinary girl Bella Swan Clary Fray and vampire Edward Cullen “Shadowhunter” Jace Wayland.

Should Screen Gems lock the actor down during negotiations scheduled for later this week, the character of Wayland will require a sarcastic, tattooed teen able to defend New York from demons and the like. Due to save the planet from aliens in next months time, The Mortal Instruments should be small fries to Alex Rider.

Hollywood’s search for a new Harry Potter-alike has enjoyed few triumphs to date. With I am Number Four at least threatening to redirect the young-adult-fantasy genre from magic to outer-space, it looks as though Screen Gems has developed a case of cold feet – signing on to develop an adaptation of the Mortal Instruments series.

Comingsoon are reporting that Jessica Postigo’s script, which is based on the first installment of Cassandra Clare’s best-selling book series – City of Bones, incorporates the usual assortment of demons, eccentric warlocks and werewolf packed into a contemporary New York setting.

When ordinary teenager with extraordinary name Clary Fray’s mother disappears, she must embrace her calling as a Shadow Hunter in order to save the day. Snap.

With four books in the series – including City of Bones, City of Ashes, City of Glass and the imminent City of Fallen Angels – Screen Gems will have to develop something pretty exceptional to break the first instalment curse that has so far plagued The Golden Compass, The Dark is Rising, Stormbreaker, The Spiderwich Chronicles, Cirque-du-Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant and Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief – to name but a few.

Scott Stewart will direct, this being his third collaboration with Screen Gems after Priest and his directorial début Legion. With those two projects notable for them both starring Paul Bettany, it will be interesting to see whether the actor/director team goes for the hat-trick.

Cue another ridiculously long title.

We’ve got IMPawards to ‘thank’ for these new posters from Scott Stewart’s forthcoming Priest, starring Paul Bettany as the angry cleric, hellbent on hunting down some vampires for some reason. I’m sure it’s a good reason though.

It’s got a pretty good cast though, with Karl Urban and Christopher Plummer appearing alongside Cam Gigandet, Lily Collins and Stephen Moyer, and the previous images and trailers we’ve seen point to something better than the last collaboration between Bettany and Stewart, the gun toting angel thriller, Legion.

Anyway, here are the posters, which proudly proclaim their 3Dness.

Although that last one feels a little incomplete…

That’s better.

Legion is releasedon DVD and Blu Ray today and stars Paul Bettany, Dennis Quaid, Lucas Black, Adrianne Palicki, Charles S. Dutton,  Tyrese Gibson, Kevin Durand, Jon Tenney, Willa Holland, Kate Walsh and is directed by Scott Stewart.

The basic premise of the movie is that God (although never mentioned by name) isn’t happy with his people and decides to start all over again, much like the Bible story, Noah and the Ark. The difference here is that rather than sending a giant flood to wipe out the earth, God uses….. Us! Sound a bit odd. Well, it sort of is!

While God prepares his army of angels to come and possess us all, one angel, Michael (Bettany) stands up against the Lord and Creator. Michael is on a mission to save a baby which is currently in the womb of Charlie played by Adrianne Palicki. If the baby lives, humanity has a chance, if he/she doesn’t, it’s the end of the world as we know it. Along with Bettany, it’s down to a human with the stupidest name of all time, Jeep Hanson (Lucas Black) to try to defend the love of his life who couldn’t care less if he was attracted to her or not.

Legion is a very confused movie with a rather large cast and no real idea of where it’s going. The fact that a rogue angel stands up to God to defy his will is crazy will no doubt annoy any Christian who watched it.

Some redeeming qualities include the sound design which was just fantastic and the special effects but I’m afraid neither save this movie from the tripe that it turned out to be. I’m rather sad it was so bad because from the trailers, it has potential to be something great and I think if the screenplay had been better, we’d have seen a great movie. However it was full of so many absurdities and cliched lines that it’s probably destined to go to the bottom of the bargain bin at your local service/gas station.

If Terminator was merged with Dawn of the Dead with a splash of Childsplay and Men in Black thrown in for good measure, you’d get some way to explaining Legion’s storyline.

Legion is released on DVD and Blu ray – Monday, 9th August and you can purchase it here.

Go Behind the Scenes of Legion

Special Features:

• Designing Paradise Falls: Discover the creative process behind designing the apocalyptic vision of Paradise Falls.
• Blueprint of a Scene: An immersive, in-depth breakdown of a key battle sequence against the possessed.
• movieIQ+sync and BD-Live connect you to real-time information on the cast, music, trivia and more while watching the movie!
• BD Exclusive: Bringing Angels To Earth: Picture-in-Picture
• Creating the Apocalypse – Behind the Physical Effects
• Humanity’s Last Line of Defense – The Cast and Characters
• From Pixels to Picture – A Look at the Visual Effects

SlashFilm recently got hold of some new images from Scott Stewart’s (Legion) upcoming post-apocalyptic drama, Priest.

These images come a week before Comic-Con, therefore Screengems are supposedly hoping they pump up the anticipation levels. These images follow the first official image and a few set pictures, which you can see here.

Priest stars Paul Bettany (Wimbledon), who previously worked with Stewart on the hugely disappointing Legion, as a warrior Priest who disobeys Church law in order to hunt down a group of vampires who’ve kidnapped his niece.

The film also features appearances from Karl Urban (Star Trek), Christopher Plummer (The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus), Alan Dale (Lost) and Maggie Q (Die Hard 4.0). It’s an adaptation of the Tokyopop manga by Hyung Min-woo.

In a similar vein to Legion, the film deals with themes of death, supernatural warrior Gods, vampires, violence and horror. However, if compared to Legion, Priest looks the superior of the two films, with the images showing a more polished, cooler film.

Check out the images below.

Those following the career of Paul Bettany might be wondering whatever happened to the man who stared into the dark abyss of our souls in Gangster Number One all those years ago.

He established himself instantly with his portrayal of a young Malcolm McDowell in Paul McGuigan’s film, and while he has dipped his toes in the rom com pool occasionally, he has often looked to distance himself from the mainstream and in taking roles such as Priest he is doing just that.

Since his last film Legion took an Icarusian plunge from favour at the box office, he remains undaunted and has reunited with director Scott Stewart for this new film which is currently shooting.

Take a look here for a brief history of the film Preist, along with the very first shots of Paul Bettany in character, and then scroll down for more on set shots of the man of bloodied cloth.

These came crashing into our consciousness by the divine duo of Just Jared and MovieWeb. Bow down in thanks.

Following their collaboration on the poorly received Legion, Paul Bettany and director Scott Stewart have reunited with another religious themed horrorshow for their take on Hyung Min-woo’s comic series Priest, which at its heart is a blend of cowboys, vampires and a host of hellbent craziness.

A behind the scenes clip surfaced a few months ago but the trail went cold until today when a single image from the film appeared online.

Bettany stars with Karl Urban, Christopher Plummer, Brad Dourif, Maggie Q and Cam Gigandet and in Entertainment Weekly director Stewart is quoted thusly,

In our world, priests are like Jedi Knights with special powers and training.

Our vampires are more feral and disturbing than, say, the teen-angst vampires of Twilight or the sexy vampires of True Blood. Those vampires are metaphors. Ours aren’t.

That’ll be news to True Blood star Stephen Moyer who also appears in the film.

Here’s the image, let’s hope there’s more in our future.

MovieWeb pointed us to EW who had this first. We’re like an internet version of the Human Centipede aren’t we?

Today, courtesy of Entertainment Tonight Canada, we have the first look at Scott Stewart’s new film Priest. This follows his pretty terrible Legion which David reviewed here and, like Legion, Priest also stars Paul Bettany in the lead role.

Although I don’t think I disliked Legion quite as much as David, I only thought there were about 10 minutes of enjoyable film in there and the rest was mostly awful. If Stewart can maybe build on those 10 minutes rather than the other 90 maybe Priest could be okay. Also, one of the weak points of Legion was the writing but Priest has a different writer and the film is based on a graphic novel so maybe with some solid visual effects (these were actually pretty good in Legion) and a decent script this could shape up to be a enjoyable vampire action film.

The synopsis of the film is as follows

Priest tells the story of a warrior priest (Bettany) who disobeys Church law by teaming with a young sheriff (Cam Gigandet) and a beautiful priestess (Maggie Q) to track down a band of renegade vampires who have kidnapped the priest’s niece before they turn her into one of them.  The film co-stars Karl Urban, Lily Collins, Steven Moyer, Brad Dourif and Christopher Plummer.

The clip is embedded below and includes some behind the scenes footage and interviews with Paul Bettany and True Blood vampire Bill, Stephen Moyer.

The film is due to be released in the UK on 14th January 2011.

Some movies look great on paper but are either let down by the transition to the big screen. Let me sow that seed of information as you read on.

Legion is the new action thriller from Sony Pictures. It stars Paul Bettany, Dennis Quaid, Lucas Black, Adrianne Palicki, Charles S. Dutton,  Tyrese Gibson, Kevin Durand, Jon Tenney, Willa Holland, Kate Walsh and is directed by Scott Stewart.

The basic premise of the movie is that God (although never mentioned by name) isn’t happy with his people and decides to start all over again, much like the Bible story, Noah and the Ark. The difference here is that rather than sending a giant flood to wipe out the earth, God uses….. Us! Sound a bit odd. Well, it sort of is!

While God prepares his army of angels to come and possess us all, one angel, Michael (Bettany) stands up against the Lord and Creator. Michael is on a mission to save a baby which is currently in the womb of Charlie played by Adrianne Palicki. If the baby lives, humanity has a chance, if he/she doesn’t, it’s the end of the world as we know it. Along with Bettany, it’s down to a human with the stupidest name of all time, Jeep Hanson (Lucas Black) to try to defend the love of his life who couldn’t care less if he was attracted to her or not.

Legion is a very confused movie with a rather large cast and no real idea of where it’s going. The fact that a rogue angel stands up to God to defy his will is crazy and goes against everything The Bible has taught Christians since it was written. Some of the dialogue between characters us just laughable and in fact, if you had a camera on the lady sitting next to me, you’d think Legion was indeed full of laugh out loud jokes. She really was in hysterics at how terrible this film was. She was not alone with groans, yawns and people leaving the screening well before it finished as they couldn’t take anymore! I held strong to the end for you the HeyUGuys readers!

Some redeeming qualities include the sound design which was just fantastic and the special effects but I’m afraid neither save this movie from the tripe that it turned out to be. I’m rather sad it was so bad because from the trailers, it has potential to be something great and I think if the screenplay had been better, we’d have seen a great movie. However it was full of so many absurdities and cliched lines that it was destined to go to the bottom of the bargain bin at your local service/gas station.

If Terminator was merged with Dawn of the Dead with a splash of Childsplay and Men in Black thrown in for good measure, you’d get some way to explaining Legion’s storyline. It’s redeeming feature is that it only cost an estimated $26m to make an according to wikipedia, has already made double that in takings in the US so I guess it’s not to be sniffed at. The effects and cast that was used in the movie was actually quite respectable with a budget so low (and yes, i know $26m is still an awful lot of money).

Legion is released in cinemas this Friday. I really look forward to some of you seeing it so you can tell me if I’m wrong but please make sure you go on Orange Wednesday so you’re not paying full price to watch it!

Sony have released a brand new international trailer for Legion which stars Dennis Quaid, Charles S. Dutton, Kate Walsh, Tyrese Gibson, Lucas Black, Adrianne Palicki, and is directed by Scott Stewart.

The movie has been released in the US for a while now and you can see our early review here. This new international trailer shows us a bit more of the story and the characters. It’s scheduled for release in the UK 5th March.

Even though Britain has come to a standstill because of snow, we’re still here to bring you all the latest movie news. This morning’s treat is a new clip from Paul Bettany’s new movie, Legion. The clip shows him having an epic battle with the Angel Gabriel in the form of Kevin Durand. Legion is directed by Scott Stewart and also stars Dennis Quaid, Lucas Black, Tyrese Gibson, Kate Walsh and Adrianne Palicki.

Legion is scheduled for release 5th March and after seeing the previous trailers and now this clip, I’m looking forward to it even more. Check out the clip below or head over to Yahoo to view in HD.

Paul Bettany is a busy guy at the moment with Legion coming out in the new year and this movie, ‘Priest’ in which he stars alonside Cam Gigndet, Maggie Q, Karl Urban, Lily Collins, Steven Moyer, Brad Dourif, and Christopher Plummer.

Priest is directed by Scott Stewart, the same chap who did Legion so I’m guessing that Bettany and he got on pretty well. Thanks to Collider.com for sharing the poster, they also give us the synopsis:

Priest tells the story of a warrior priest (Bettany) who disobeys Church law by teaming with a young sheriff (Cam Gigandet) and a beautiful priestess (Maggie Q) to track down a band of renegade vampires who have kidnapped the priest’s niece before they turn her into one of them.  The film co-stars Karl Urban, Lily Collins, Steven Moyer, Brad Dourif and Christopher Plummer.

Priest is scheduled for release summer 2010. Click the poster to enlarge.

The Scott Stewart directed supernatural thriller  of Legion starring Paul Bettany looks like being a wonderfully violent and nasty film, and the trailer which debuted this summer had a nice vibe, sort of The Mist meets From Dusk till Dawn.

Recently we’ve seen a slew of motion comics, which is a process of animating the still frames of a comic book and now Legion has had the same treatment – and the trailer is now available below.

Paul Bettany does the voiceover for this and it looks to be a great accompaniment to the film which is released in January 2010.

Enjoy.

Here’s some awesome new images from Legion which we can expect to see on our screens 5th March. I can’t wait to see this movie. It looks like the perfect blend of action and Paul Bettany looking like he’s rather angry!

Legion also stars Dennis Quaid, Lucas Black, Tyrese Gibson, Kate Walsh, Adrianne Palicki, Charles S. Dutton, Willa Holland and is directed by Scott Stewart.

These new images come from Hollywood.com and look awesome. Check them out below (click to enlarge). You can see the red band trailer than we’ve posted previously here to get a bit more info on what the film is about.