IFC Preps "Anita Blake" Movie

,According to The Hollywood Reporter, cable network IFC in conjunction with Lionsgate is producing a feature length movie based on Laurell K. Hamilton’s series of Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter novels and plans to broadcast the film in 2010. Glenn Morgan (The X-Files) is writing the screenplay for the first Anita Blake movie.

Given the success of True Blood on HBO, the development of similar programming based on Hamilton’s 16 Anita Blake novels (#17 is due out in June) seems like a no-brainer, and cable, rather than network TV, would appear to be the right small screen destination for this sexy sleuth of the supernatural. According to THR IFC and Lionsgate are hoping that this will be the first in a series of Anita Blake movies.

Marvel Comics has adapted the first two Anita Blake novels, Guilty Pleasures and The Laughing Corpse, into the comic book/graphic novel format (the first graphic novel collection of The Laughing Corpse is due out in late May), so any further exposure of character should only help increase sales of Anita Blake novels and comics in both the direct and bookstore markets.

Brett Ratner Helming Conan?

According to The Hollywood Reporter director Brett Ratner (Rush Hour, X-Men 3: The Last Stand) “is in final negotiations to take on literature’s most famous barbarian.” Be prepared for a massive collective wail from certain quarters of fandom that don’t see Ratner as anything more than a mediocre director of campy cop capers. Speaking of which, it is likely that Ratner will helm Beverly Hills Cop IV (penned by Wanted scribes Michael Brandt and Derek Haas) for Paramount before commencing his work on the new Conan movie—both films are tentatively slated to be released in 2010.

Co-produced by Nu Image/Millennium and Lionsgate, and written by Joshua Oppenheimer and Thomas Dean Donnelly, the new Conan film is an origin saga for the mesomorphic mutilator that hews closely to the spirit of the original Robert E. Howard stories (see “Conan Movie on the Fast Track”). According to The Reporter, the new Conan film will be R-rated (like the original John Milius 1982 Conan the Barbarian, and not PG-13 like the franchise-snuffing Conan the Destroyer from 1984) and have a budget of $85 million (down from earlier estimates of $100 million).