Yu-Gi-Oh Tournament in Atlanta

Konami has announced that the first tournament in the 2012 North American Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series will be held in Atlanta, Georgia on February 18th and 19th. This will be the first official tournament since December.

The tournament will be held at the Georgia International Convention Center and is expected to include hundreds of competitors from the region. The tournament will run over two days, with preliminary rounds starting at 8 a.m. on Saturday, with a final round on Sunday afternoon. The winner of the tournament will be awarded an Ultra Rare Blood Mefist prize card, with Super Rare versions being awarded to second and third place.

Fans of the game will also be able to participate in “Public Events” related to the game. These events include a 3-on-3 team game, “Attack of the Giant Card,” draft tournaments, Dawn of the Xyz Starter Tournament, and others. A new sealed deck format tournament will also be run, featuring the recently released Dragons Collide Structure Decks.

Younger players can join in the “Dragon Duel,” limited to individuals born in 1999 or later. The top four finishers will receive a special Dragon Duel Champion’s Medal, game mat, card binder, and an invitation to the 2012 Dragon Duel World Championship Qualifier

New Michael Bay "Transformers" in 2014

Grab your earplugs and bet the farm on bikini wax futures, Producer Lorenzo Di Bonaventura has announced that Michael Bay will direct the next Transformers movie that is currently scheduled to hit theaters on June 29th, 2014. The first three Transformers movies have earned over $2.6 billion at the worldwide box office, making it far and away Paramount’s top franchise and insuring that it will survive in some form to assault theaters in coming years.

Di Bonaventura told MTV News, “I think we are really going to do a reboot,” before indicating that he and Bay had not decided exactly how much surgery they were prepared to perform on the highly successful franchise, “It’s a hybrid because there is still continuity going on, but there will be a lot of new cast members. Whether there’s anybody from the first cast, we don’t even know yet. But it’s going to be a whole new story.”

The producer was referring to the “human” actors, whose escalating salaries add considerably to a movie’s cost as a franchise continues, and fortunately not to film’s real stars, the robots---Di Bonaventura made sure to let fans know, “But the characters that would come along would be Optimus (Prime) and Bumblebee.”

First Image from "Superman vs. The Elite"

DC Comics and Warner Bros. Animation have released the first image from the next DC direct-to-video feature film Superman vs. The Elite, which is based on the Joe Kelly story, “What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice, and the American Way?” that appeared in Action Comics #775. With the next DC animated release, Justice League: Doom releasing on February 29th, it is likely that Superman vs. The Elite will be released this summer, probably right before the San Diego Comic-Con.

TV Guide managed to get the first image of the somewhat stylized art from the cartoon for its article about TV star Pauley Perrette of NCIS fame, who will provide the voice for Lois Lane in the film with George Newbern (Justice League) vocalizing the Man of Steel’s lines. Perrette sees lots of similarities between Superman’s gal-pal and the inked-up forensic scientist Abby that Perrette plays on NCIS, telling TV Guide: “They’re both very smart and confident and really good at their jobs. They’re both really focused. Abby just doesn’t have a Superman.

Liebesman to Helm Live "TNMT" Feature

The Hollywood trades are all reporting that Jonathan Liebesman is in negotiations to direct Paramount’s live-action reboot of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for Paramount and producer Michael Bay. At this point in his career, Liebesman, who directed the remake of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre as well as Battle: Los Angeles and the forthcoming Wrath of the Titans, which debuts on March 30th, is a legit, if somewhat of a second-tier, director.

Created in 1984 by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles began as a comic book parody and became a worldwide kids’ entertainment phenomenon spinning off TV cartoons, feature films, and more toys than there are bedbugs in Manhattan.

The studio has released few details about the script for the franchise reboot, which was written by Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec, the pair that penned the recent hit Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol for Tom Cruise.

Del Toro to Helm "Beauty & the Beast" Movie

Guillermo del Toro is now attached to direct a feature film adaptation of Beauty and the Beast written by Andrew Davies (Bridget Jones Diary) starring Emma Watson (Harry Potter). The movie is set up at Warner Bros., and it should be noted that there are already two competing Beauty and the Beast TV series based on the public domain fairy tale property currently in development.

Of course the fact that Del Toro is currently attached to the project doesn’t mean that it will be made or if it is that he will end up directing it. The list of projects that the protean director has been involved with is lengthy and includes high profile films like The Hobbit.

As The Hollywood Reporter points out, Del Toro is currently spread pretty thin. He is currently filming Pacific Rim, and is attached to direct a Trollhunters animated movie for Dreamworks, a Haunted Mansion movie for Disney plus Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for Universal.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

The contemporary fascination with the bizarre confluence of history, literature, and fantasy, which has seen Jane Austen's heroines take on zombies, continues in Fox's summer tentpole adaptation of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, which will debut on June 22nd. This film's geek cred comes more from its producer (Tim Burton) and director (Timur Bekmambetov, who helmed the movie version of Wanted) than from its author Seth Grahame-Smith, who also wrote Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

Space 2099: New Series From the Company that rebooted "V"

HDFilms, the company that produced the rebooted V science fiction series for ABC, is going back even further in time to create a new version of Space: 1999, the Gerry and Sylvia Anderson-created series that originally aired from 1975-1977. Producer Jace Hall, whose company is producing the new Space: 2099 series, indicates that what drew him to the project was the “near-future plausibility” of the original series, which drew heavily on the “hard” science fiction of films like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Of course the original series had its implausible elements. A nuclear waste explosion that sent the inhabitants of the moonbase hurtling through space at speeds that would make life for those on the base impossible would have had far more effect on both the Earth and the Moon—and the idea that the wandering moon would come into contact with an different alien group or interstellar crisis with anything like the weekly frequency of the series is clearly absurd, but in comparison with most TV space operas Space:1999 was a model of scientific plausibility.

Hall explained his approached in an interview with io9: “Space: 1999 presented a very near future societal depiction where a moonbase had been established, and the show worked to successfully convince us that it was a reasonable vision to have given where the world was in the 70s.

In a similar but much more emphasized vein, one of the key elements in our depiction will be as much plausibility as possible. Since we are dealing with a future timeframe of only around 80 years, there will still be plenty of familiar things around – however evolved they happen to be. It is this kind of projected iteration and future evolution that can be fun to depict as well as very thought-provoking.

We consciously understand that a future projection must be comprehensive and not just focus on technology. Corporations, governments, social issues and day to day concerns all must be considered.”