In many ways, Cleopatra was a woman ahead of her time. Through political machinations, she sought to secure her place in history, and if she could have seen into the future, she would have seen that her fame lived on, even if her empire did not. She would have also seen that she'll be getting the high-tech treatment as Steven Soderbergh plots to bring her story to the big screen. According to Variety, the director is planning to tell the story of Egypt's final pharaoah as a rock musical -- and it will be in 3-D. If she'd known this would some day be her fate, Cleo may have opted for a life of obscurity. [I think we're eight years beyond that. Have you seen Cleopatra 2525? - Zach]

I'm not going to lie -- Zac Efron, for all the High School Musical-y stuff he's done (I can't drive two blocks without seeing him jumping ecstatically in a cap and gown), earned my respect for his stint as Link in Hairspray. For all the fun I'd normally make of a guy with hair as floppy and in need of cutting as his, I won't, because what John Waters has joined together, let no blogger put asunder. So, it is with humility and a straight face that I bring you the news that the Footloose remake that will star one Mr. Zac Efron, has gotten the blessing of Kevin Bacon. I'm sure we'll all sleep better.

With Josh Brolin getting a lot of press lately for playing a letter of the alphabet and signing on to play Jonah Hex, I naturally wondered when someone would pounce to make a sequel his first big movie, The Goonies. As it turns out, Richard Donner -- who directed the 1985 hit about a motley crew of adventurous kids -- had already been working on a follow-up. Sadly, sequels just don't seem to be happening for Donner lately, and even with Steven Spielberg enthusiastically on his side, things just didn't quite come together, according to Variety. Goonies never say die, though, so Donner is working hard to make sure they'll live on... in a Broadway musical.

I'm not going to lie. For a very long time, I pronounced the word "biopic" wrong. I think I knew that I didn't quite have it right because I avoided saying it. When I did say it, it rhymed with "myopic." Luckily, I learned to say it correctly about the same time the genre started winning people Oscars. I'm proud to say (correctly!) that Forest Whitaker is about to put in his bid for a hopeful nomination in the now classic Oscar Bait: Musician Biopic Edition. He's signed on to star in and direct What a Wonderful World, a Louis Armstrong biopic, for Legende, the French production house behind La Vie en Rose.

Who would have thought Mamma Mia! would have this kind of steam overseas? Well, it certainly does, as it stayed on top at the foreign box office for the weekend, taking in another $14.1 million, increasing its total haul to $377.2 million. Add that to its domestic take of $142.7 million, and it's brought in more than $500 million worldwide -- no small feat, especially when you consider its genre: musical comedy. Not exactly the type of film that usually fares quite this well. [At least, not in America. Three of the top five all-time movies at the Indian box office are musicals. - Zach]

When Hollywood movies get made into Broadway musicals, it's not necessarily a bad thing -- that is, of course, unless you consider any Broadway musical to be a "bad thing." They certainly make money, and ever since The Producers blew up, movie-based musicals like Legally Blonde, Young Frankenstein and Spam-A-Lot have played to packed houses. Hell, even Evil Dead has enjoyed a long, successful run at its Toronto theatre and on tour. Recently, we reported on the proposed 9 to 5 musical, but that seems almost logical next to the latest news. Not only is the rumored Spider-Man musical still actually happening, but there's going to be an American Psycho musical, as well. Be still, my pulsating, gore-dripping heart.

Although snippets of the song first debuted in Coke advertisements, people yesterday got their first full listen of the new Bond theme song by Alicia Keys and Jack White. There was a lot of anticipation for this ditty -- the first duet in the Bond franchise's history -- so it's unsurprising that for many it doesn't completely live up to the hope/hype. Radio 1 listeners heard "Another Way to Die" for the first time and, according to the BBC, reactions were "mixed." A Los Angeles Times blog dings the song for relying on elements of the "instantly recognizable Bond theme" for its hooks rather than rather than coming up with anything new of its own. Another complaint is that the singers' voices are "not meshing well". My main problem with it is that I keep wanting to type "Die Another Day", Madonna's similarly-titled Bond song from a few years back.

You can learn a lot from Danny Boyle's movies. From 28 Days Later, there's an important lesson to be learned about the dangers of drinking too much sugary soda and the benefits of irradiating fruit. From Sunshine, viewers learned not to name their solar mission spaceships after mythological Greek characters who died because they flew too close to the sun. Hell, I learned more from Trainspotting than I did from a straight decade of being told to "Just say no!" Now, if Boyle gets his way, fans might get to learn how to sing and dance, because, as the maverick director tells MTV, he "would love to do a musical." What a coincidence. I'd love for him to do a musical, too!

It's like someone opened up the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, chanted a little something, and not one but two new possible Evil Dead projects popped out to possess unsuspecting audiences. Zach recently posted about the prospects of a fourth outing with Ash Williams and his demon-obliterating weapon of choice. Thanks to Screen Daily, today I bring you news of Evil Dead: The Musical. According to the article, producer Don Carmody and his partners are in negotiations to make a movie version of the Canadian and off-Broadway stage musical based on the Raimi films.

My Great Aunt Muriel's old excuse for holding onto her VCR -- and eschewing the purchase of such "new" technology as a DVD player -- was that there were more titles on video tape, and that there was no way she'd ever be able to replace all (eight) of the movies in her library to make the DVD player purchase worth it. If she hadn't died five years ago, I'd print out this article from the Hollywood Reporter and mail it to her with a Best Buy gift card. The number of films now available on DVD has passed 90,000. I didn't even know there were more than 90,000 films out there. Turns out by December 31st of this year, there will be 90,440 movies that you can take back to Blockbuster without having to rewind them.