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Gregory Maguire’s novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, which inspired Broadway’s musical Wicked, will serve as the source material for an eight-hour miniseries in development at ABC reports TV Line.

Salma Hayek will produce and Erk Jendersen (Band of Brothers) is penning the series which insiders stress will be very much based on the novel, not the musical, so there’ll be no song numbers such as “Defying Gravity”. This means it will essentially serve as a prequel/companion piece to L. Frank Baum’s “Oz” books.

The announcement in now way effects Universal’s planned film adaptation of the musical itself, or the various other Oz-themed films in the works.

Lucasfilm has officially announced the Blu-ray release of the entire Star Wars film series in September. Three distinct sets are being made to meet the needs of every fan:

Star Wars: The Complete Saga (9-Discs w/ all six films)
Star Wars: Prequel Trilogy (3-Discs w/ Episodes I-III)
Star Wars: Original Trilogy (3-Discs w/ Episodes IV-VI)

All of them will be issued with the highest quality possible picture and audio presentation. The ‘Complete Saga’ set includes three additional discs with more than 30 hours of extensive special features including never-before-seen deleted and alternate scenes, an exploration of the exclusive Star Wars archives, and much more.

This is the teaser poster for the last 11 episodes of Smallville!

He still looks hot!

Story from EW.

Having the public ponder your sexuality is a celebrity rite of passage. But the thing that makes Franco’s case so interesting is that, unlike the loud denials from some stars and even louder silences from others, the response from the 127 Hours star (who, for the record, has been in a years-long relationship with actress Ahna O’Reilly) is actually pretty nuanced.

Franco addressed the rumor-mill mentality in an exclusive interview with EW for our recent cover story.

“It’s funny because the way that kind of stuff is talked about on blogs is so black-and-white,” Franco says. “It’s all cut-and-dry identity politics. ‘Is he straight or is he gay?’ Or, ‘This is your third gay movie — come out already!’ And all based on, gay or straight, based on the idea that your object of affection decides your sexuality.”

The actor definitely doesn’t let the speculation inhibit his choice of roles; Franco’s filmography is packed with gay characters, from Allen Ginsberg in Howl, to activist Scott Smith in Milk and poet Hart Crane in his just-wrapped feature The Broken Tower.

“There are lots of other reasons to be interested in gay characters than wanting myself to go out and have sex with guys,” he says.

“And there are also lots of other aspects about these characters that I’m interested in, in addition to their sexuality. So, in some ways it’s coincidental, in other ways it’s not. I mean, I’ve played a gay man who’s living in the ’60s and ’70s, a gay man who we depicted in the ‘50s, and one being in the ‘20s. And those were all periods when to be gay, at least being gay in public, was much more difficult. Part of what I’m interested in is how these people who were living anti-normative lifestyles contended with opposition. Or, you know what, maybe I’m just gay.”

Yet another reason why 10 years later I am still SO in love with this man! What a class act!

Captain America: The First Avenger production designer Rick Heinrichs has given an in-depth interview for the next issue of French mag L’Ecran Fantastique (via The Daily Blam) and in the process has revealed several story SPOILERS from the anticipated Marvel Studios flick.

As previously reported, most of the action will be set during the Second World War, but parts of it will take place in the modern day. Now it has been revealed that about 10% of the film will be set in the present day, specifically the beginning and the end.

The film’s introduction involves a present day “exploration team discovering the remains of a giant bomber under the snows of the Arctic”. The action then flashes back to an attack on a village in Norway by the Hydra organisation.

Chris Evans will be digitally altered for the pre-Captain transformation scenes to resemble “a young man [who is a] puny victim of mockery by thugs in Brooklyn”. Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) will already be his friend pre-transformation.

The Captain’s first mission involves him freeing a group that will become the Invaders. There’ll be a montage of other missions as well along the way, while the finale involves a battle between Red Skull and Captain America in the plane which eventually crashes in the Arctic.

If they do proceed with sequels, they will likely blend past and present elements throughout.

British filmmaker Gareth Edwards, the man behind the acclaimed very low-budget indie sci-fi tale “Monsters”, is closing in on a deal to direct a reboot of the “Godzilla” franchise for Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures says Heat Vision.

Legendary picked up the rights to the character from Toho Co. in March 2010. David Callaham was the original scribe, now Edwards will work with a yet-to-hired new writer on the script.

Thomas Tull, Jon Jashni, Dan Lin, Roy Lee and Brian Rogers are producing.

Walt Disney Studios today announced plans to release at least fifteen of its films on Blu- ray 3D in 2011.

The most notable entries on the list are celebrated animated classics “The Lion King” and “Beauty and the Beast”, current box-office hits “Tron: Legacy” and “Tangled”, and catalog including Bolt, Meet the Robinsons, The Nightmare Before Christmas, G-Force and Chicken Little.

All will be packaged with the Blu-ray 2D version, and many will be editions that include DVD and Digital Copy versions as well.