Warner Bros has made many popular modern DC books into animated features over the last 4 years, and after getting their feet wet with fare like Under The Red Hood and New Frontier, they’re finally going to go for one of the biggest, baddest comics in their library: The Dark Knight Returns.

Returns tells the story of a 55 year old Bruce Wayne returning to his Batman identity after a decade’s absence. He confronts Harvey “Two Face” Dent, The Joker, and Superman at various points in the story, and takes on a new Robin as his partner. The series, written and and drawn by Frank Miller, is one of the most highly regarded in the DC canon, and helped lay the blueprint for the dark and gritty Batman that is best known today.

WB had a real misfire in their first animated production, re-writing and altering The Death and Return of Superman into a standalone 75 minute feature. Literally dozens of issues and hundreds of characters were cut from the story, and the movie still felt rushed. By comparison, choosing shorter stories (no more than 6 issues) to adapt has worked well for WB, and the bulk of The Dark Knight Returns should make into a fine animated feature. There are some thematic elements that may push WB beyond their usual PG-13 rating, but I certainly hope the original story makes it through unmolested.

Elements of The Dark Knight Returns were present in a Batman The Animated Series episode, “Legends Of The Dark Knight.” In it, 3 children share stories about what they know about Batman. One of the kids is a dead ringer for TDKR’s Robin, Carrie Kelley, and her tale depicts a 5 minute sequence almost directly lifted from the page of Batman fighting the Mutant gang. Michael Ironside provided the voice of Batman in this sequence, and would honestly make a fine choice to reprise the role in a full feature. See a clip at the bottom of this article.

An animated production of Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One is already nearing completion, and is expected to premeire at Comic Con 2011 in San Diego, with a DVD/Blu Ray Release following.

Tip via Joey O and [Bleeding Cool]

Didn’t read the original book? Its never too late to catch up on the classics.

USAToday had the first trailer for Rise of the Planet of the Apes coming to theaters in the United States on August 5th, 2011. James Franco, John Lithgow, Andy Serkis will be among the cast with Serkis voicing Caesar as well providing motion capture for the character.

Warning, the topic of this open letter centers around crucial plot points of this film also known as “spoilers”. Read on only if you have seen the film, or have no interest in doing so.

From the Desk of aDam Gardner: Sad Asuka Fanboy

Dear Mr. Evangelion movie,

Thank you for the Asuka nude scene, 18 instances of Asuka fan service and last but certainly not least, the pervy unit 03 test suit which will forever be immortalized in pervy toys and merchandise by our friends in the east who have wisely decided that such a thing is culturally and socially acceptable…

I certainly appreciated that this film was a departure from the source material, while the first film was a less than compelling rehash of existing scenes. While certainly some details can be changed, there are certainly some things which are so fundamentally Evangelion that they should not be touched.

Simple themes like Shinji being a bitch with daddy issues, Rei being cold and boring, Evas fighting angels and… oh that’s right…

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Green Lantern stars Ryan Reynolds and comes out June 17, 2011.

It has been announced that Leonard Nimoy will be filling the voice of Sentinel Prime in Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Nimoy, a cousin of Michael Bay through marriage, accepted the role saying he was “glad to be back.” Many Transformers fans remember that he lended his voice for the role of Galvatron in the 1986 animated movie The Transformers: The Movie.
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Here is Chris Hemsworth as Thor Odinson, just a couple seconds after waking up on Earth it appears. Natalie Portman as Jane Foster, Stellan Skarsgård as Professor Andrews, and Kat Dennings as Darcy also appear in the clip.

For being a god of thunder, Thor shows remarkable weakness to electricity.