It's like someone asked a Magic 8-Ball about new movies on the horizon and the answer came back, "All signs point to geeky." That's good news if you're a big ol' science fiction geek like me, or at least it's news that'll keep you busy with chatter, predictions of doom and fantasy casting wishlists. Coming up are Bill & Ted in the Matrix, giant robots, alien invasions, and trigger-happy monkeys.

If you're a zombie fan, hopefully you took some time away from watching Romero films over the last couple of years to read a book -- specifically, World War Z. The "survivors' account" of the First Zombie War talks to veterans and victims from every continent who recount how humanity made it through a global outbreak of the undead. J. Michael Straczynski (the cartoon and comic book writer who wrote Changeling) penned a screenplay based on the novel by Max Brooks (son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft), and the result was a reportedly fantastic script. Well, now the project has a fantastic director: Marc Forster, whose Quantum of Solace just opened with the biggest weekend take of any James Bond film ever, so everyone who thinks that he's some kind of a hack who ruined the Bond franchise, you can rest assured that he won't be coming back for another installment, you big babies.

Clint Eastwood is in talks to direct Hereafter for DreamWorks, reports Variety. The movie, described as a "supernatural thriller", was one of the properties Steven Spielberg took with him as part of the divorce settlement from Paramount Pictures, and it could end up with all the right ingredients for something great. First, of course, there's Eastwood as a possible director. Then there's the spec script by Peter Morgan, who also penned the screenplay for Frost/Nixon, which is racking up the critical praise before it's even released. Finally there's the subject matter -- who doesn't love a good psychological thriller? Here's where it gets a little iffy, though: Although "[p]lot details are being kept under wraps," it's being compared to The Sixth Sense. What are they thinking?

For a production company who has not made a single movie that I have seen, Nu Image/Millennium Films has managed to put together a movie that I would actually break out of prison to see. And, yes, it's Lindsey Lohan's Labor Pains. How did you guess?! Okay, it's not. What did actually hook me is the fact that the production house has managed to put together the Holy Trinity of Ass-Kicking, bringing together Sylvester Stallone, Jet Li and Jason Statham in one shiny package. The three actors will star in The Expendables, as a team of mercenaries who are sent to infiltrate a South American country and overthrow its ruthless dictator in order to liberate the population. Their team is hired to do jobs that no one else can or will. Duh-duh-DUH! The best part? The script was written by Stallone, who will also direct. I don't care how good or bad it is, I'm in.

If you didn't already know the trivia that the human head weighs eight pounds before you watched Jerry Maguire, then the cuteness seared into your brain by the adorable delivery of said fact by a kindergarten-bound Jonathan Lipnicki pretty much ensures that you do now. Hell, anyone who saw the trailer for the movie could easily answer the Jeopardy question. The fact that that clip alone will probably be akin to Lipnicki's epitaph no matter how successful he ever becomes makes me feel bad for the kid. That, and the fact that he looked like Cousin Oliver with spikey hair. The young actor has worked quite a bit since, but I for one can't remember a single part without having to think about it for several minutes, and then only because I happened to attend a screening of The Little Vampire at the Edinburgh Film Festival in 2000 and got a free TLV T-shirt. (The movie name on the shirt was glow-in-the-dark. It was otherwise unremarkable.) But it turns out Lipnicki is still getting acting work, his latest part a starring turn in the upcoming psychological thriller The Other Side of Innocence.

Michael Crichton, creator of ER and The Andromeda Strain, died yesterday. The 66-year-old multi-hyphenate's career spanned four decades and spawned numerous books and movies with which you are no doubt familiar. His books-turned-movies took us to Jurassic Park and The Lost World, made Demi Moore sexually harass Michael Douglas in Disclosure, put Sharon Stone and Samuel L. Jackson in a Sphere and sent James Bond and Passenger 57 to the land of Rising Sun. His loss is a sad occasion for this writer-slash-science major who loved the way he mixed the two disciplines in his work. His books were so cinematic that they seemed ready to film straight from the bookstore. Here are a few examples of Crichton's lesser-known work onscreen.

This one's for the ladies! Essential Pictures is in the process of developing a potential franchise out of author Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series. The books, which Variety describes as "fantasy," tell the story of an 18th century Scottish Highlander and his modern-day time-traveling wife. [Not to be confused with the 2008 movie Outlander, about a space cop who lands on a planet of vikings. - Zach] And while the premise of the books is certainly fantasy-based, you generally find these books in the Romance section. And, okay, I know this because I've read them all. Don't judge me. They're an addicting, well-written series that sees historical events with a modern eye, and blends some pretty intricate stories all with an engaging romance unfolding in the background. If the film or films are anywhere near as captivating, y'all better watch out. I once had a dental hygienist obsessed with me simply because she thought I looked like one of the characters.

You know how, when a filmmaker's first film does reasonably well at the box office, their next project is generally a little bit better, a little bit bigger, and they slowly inch their way up the Hollywood ladder until they've got the pull and the relationships to really make something epic? Well, that's generally how it goes, but sometimes there are guys out there that just say "fuck it" and shoot for the moon. Sometimes they nail it (Peter Jackson), most times they don't (randomly pick just about any name over at IMDb), and sometimes they're Wanted writer Mark Millar, and you just want to sit back with a bag of popcorn and watch the whole thing unfold. Millar had a decent summer movie that made a reasonable amount of money ($134,000,000 at the B.O.), and now he wants to take the Superman franchise and make it his "magnum opus."

Almost everyone is feeling the effects of the economic downturn (to put it mildly), and we all know it's had its effects on the movie industry, what with changes in spending habits and budgets -- not to mention the writers' strike and the possible actors' strike. But there has been another side effect of the economy on Hollywood: how to schedule, release, and market movies about the economy, Wall Street, or frivolous spending.

Leonardo DiCaprio is an anime hoarder. Not only does his production company, Appian Way, have the classic Japanese animated film Akira set up at Warner Bros. as a two-movie live-action epic, Appian has now set another classic anime up at Warners: Ninja Scroll. The gory, over-the-top period film, which pits a vagabond ninja against the super-powered assassins known as the Eight Demons of Kimon, will be written by Watchmen screenwriter Alex Tse. Leonardo DiCaprio will not appear in it, thank God.