Simon Monjack, a British screenwriter who married the lately deceased actress Britney Murphy, has died of a heart attack aged 39.

As the mega-success of The Lovely Bones revealed, there’s big money to be made in an adaptation of a classic weepy. Lynne Ramsey and actress Tilda Swinton have revealed that they plan to turn Lionel Shriver’s bestselling novel We Need To Talk About Kevin into a motion picture.

There’s nothing like new blood to pump some life into a dying franchise, and no-one knows that better than the people over at Dimension Films. To brighten up the tired old Scream series director Wes Craven is hiring a lot of nubile young things to murder in colourful ways. So who’s on board?

Looks like Paul Greengrass has fallen in love with a brand new project – and when we say ‘brand new’ we mean the Hollywood version of brand new, ie, a re-make of something old. He’ll be helming a new interpretation of Treasure Island, produced by Sherlock Holmes’ Lionel Wigram, and apparently it’ll be a stylized version of the classic tale. What that actually means, we don’t know. But hey, stylized! Sounds fancy, right?

After mega-arguments with Michael Bay, super-babe Megan Fox has confirmed that she has quit the Transformers series. Apparently Paramount are seeing this as a good thing, as “giving Shia Labeouf a new love interest makes more sense for the story”. Yes. A logical and emotional mature storyline is, after all, the reason we all go and watch Transformers.

…In his diet, that is. In what is possibly the weirdest celeb confession we’d ever heard, Nicholas Cage has admitted that he chooses his diet based on how “dignified” the animal’s mating habits are. Er… what?

Drew Barrymore has cast an interested eye over a project entitled Surrender Dorothy, in which a young girl discovers she is the great, great granddaughter of Dorothy. She finds her ruby red slippers and must use them to stop the Wicked Witch of the West from seizing control of Earth and Oz. Apparently Drew first thought to play the lead herself, but its now looking like she’s more interested in directing – a smart move considering the strength of her directorial debut Whip It.

And we honestly didn’t see this one coming. Jemaine Clement – of Flight of The Conchords fame – has been signed to play of the bad guys in the upcoming Men In Black sequel.

Good news everyone! Armando Iannucci, director of the gloriously razor-sharp In The Loop, has announced that his next project will be in association with the BBC. Excellent stuff, we say. So what’s the plan?

Crimety, even the all-powerful Disney are now fully on the re-make bandwagon, it seems. After the ridiculous (and in our opinion, completely undeserved) success of Alice In Wonderland, the Mouse House have upped their re-make capacity, promising to deliver Malificent (the untold story of Sleeping Beauty) and now a live-action version of Cinderella. Is a remake we need? Of course not. But when has that ever stopped Hollywood before?