Four action-movie franchises have been in the news recently with good news -- all of them will be getting new installments in the near future. Daredevil, Riddick, Superman and Mission: Impossible's Ethan Hunt will all be returning to work, and they all have some big decisions to make. Besides M:I, which already reinvents itself stylistically with every film, they're all coming off of what could have been franchise-killing movies, so they're all going to have to follow M:I's lead. Here's some advice to the producers on what we want to see in each potential re-boot.

Tags: Daredevil, Mission: Impossible, Mission: Impossible 4, Mission: Impossible IV, Pitch Black, re-boot, Riddick, sequel, Superman, Superman Returns, The Chronicles of Riddick

Zack Snyder's fever dream Sucker Punch failed to knock out Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2 at the box office this past weekend and received mostly terrible reviews. But it's not Snyder's latest film we're concerned about, it's his next one: the Superman reboot. Even with Christopher Nolan overseeing the project, Snyder is still directing, and after seeing Sucker Punch, we're worried about what Snyder's clearly imaginative psyche will come up with for the Man of Steel. These are some of our red flags:

Tags: Man of Steel, Sucker Punch, Superman, Zack Snyder

After Rob Zombie's Halloween 2 was defeated in its opening weekend by The Final Destination in 3-D, the producers of the Halloween franchise revealed that the just-announced Halloween 3 will actually be Halloween 3-D. While unsurprising, given the resurgence in 3-D's popularity, this particular 3-D-ification is a sly homage to the early 1980s, when it seemed like the third installment of a horror franchise -- Jaws 3-D, Amityville 3-D, Friday the 13th Part III -- was legally required to be watched through cardboard glasses. (The original Halloween 3, ironically, passed on the gimmick.) And that got us thinking -- what if all third installments of movies had to be released in 3-D? Some would be awesome, and some just plain ridiculous. Here's some quick takes.

Tags: 3-D, 3D, Alien, Back to the Future, Halloween 3-D, Karate Kid, Rocky, Star Wars, Superman, Transporter

The end of the week brings you updates on your favorite (and maybe not-so-favorite) superheroes and what they're up to these days. First up to bat, so to speak, is The Dark Knight. Word just came down from Warner Brothers that the megahit will be re-released in theaters and IMAX on January 23. So if you're one of the handful of Amish people who didn't see it, or you just wanted to watch it for the second or twenty-second time on the big screen, this will be your chance. This will allow The Dark Knight to gain entry into the very exclusive billion-dollar club where the only other members are Titanic, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. That ought to make Batman happy. Relatively speaking, of course. Not coincidentally, the re-release happens the day after the Academy Awards nominations are announced.

Tags: Bryan Singer, Hancock, Superman, The Dark Knight, Will Smith

Don't get too excited (or fearful) yet. There's no definite plan for a fresh reboot of the Superman film franchise. There aren't even definite plans for another Superman film, period. Or at least no announced plans. Last month, Incredible Hulk director Louis Leterrier created a minor hubbub when, according to one website, he told a "French media outlet" that he had "heard whispers at [Warner Bros.]" that they were considering "reinventing" the Super franchise. Whispers of a reboot have been circulating since practically the day Superman Returns bowed in 2006. Now comic book writers Grant Morrison and Mark Waid are talking to MTV's Splash Page about how they'd like to do things.

Tags: All-Star Superman, Bryan Singer, DC Comics, Grant Morrison, Hulk, Incredible Hulk, Mark Waid, superhero movie, Superman, Superman Returns

With a big box office weekend looming (Paramount hopes) with the opening of Iron Man tomorrow, the stars of other superhero franchises are coming out of the woodwork to promote their own upcoming projects. Dark Horizons has both Hugh Jackman of the X-Men offshoot X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and Brandon Routh of Bryan Singer's new Superman series out seeing who can out-superhero whom on the publicity circuit.

Tags: brandon routh, bryan singer, hugh jackman, superman, wolverine, x-men

You hear about them all the time -- awesome Hollywood props going for big bucks and then getting locked away somewhere where no one will ever see them again. Isn't it time we took back these historical treasures? And by "take back," I mean shouldn't we buy them ourselves, and lock them away somewhere where only we and a handful of our friends will ever see them again? Well, now's our chance -- online site liveauctioneers.com is hosting a big Hollywood auction, with tons of film-used superhero costumes (Superman, X-Men, Daredevil, Batman, Captain America and both the movie and TV Spider-Men), as well as a ton of items from Terminator, Jurassic Park, Blade Runner, Highlander and Conan, and it ends August 1st, which means we have to move quick.

Tags: auction, Batman, Blade Runner, Captain America, comic book movie, Conan, costumes, Sci-fi, Spaceballs, Spider-Man, superhero, Superman, Terminator, Wolverine, X-Men

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."

Tags: Mark Millar, remake, Superman, Wanted