Amanda Seyfried, star of the upcoming thriller Chloe, has signed on for a new adaptation of Red Riding Hood.

According to the LA Times, Seyfried will play the title role in a retelling of the Brothers Grimm fairytale, to be helmed by Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke.

The film will be called The Girl With The Red Riding Hood and will be penned by generically named David Johnson and produced by Leonardo Di Caprio’s company Appian Way.

Hopefully this film will be a dark version as we’re tired of seeing Seyfried in shiny happy dramas; she’ll be appearing in the upcoming Dear John and Letters To Juliet. I want more stuff like Chloe where she displays more dramatic chops and a dark underbelly (amongst other things).

Well it seems that the Oscar nominated actors are having a good time of it because after they got a nod from the Academy they’re signing on to some interesting projects.

Penelope Cruz just signed on to what will undoubtedly be a huge money spinner, Pirates Of The Caribbean 4. Christoph Waltz joins Water For Elephants and now Jeremy Renner is getting in on the action.

According to the New York Times, the star of The Hurt Locker has reportedly signed on to join The Raven; a fictional account of Edgar Allen Poe’s life mixed with mystery and murder. Ewan McGregor, star of the upcoming Ghost Writer, is also attached to the project but it’s not confirmed.

Renner has also been chatting with Hancock director Peter Berg about signing up for a leading role Battleship that Berg plans to launch in 2012. Look who’s Mr. Popular.

Everyone’s favourite Nazi Christoph Waltz has signed on to star in I Am Legend director Francis Lawrence’s Water For Elephants, according to reports from DeadlineHollywood.

The Inglourious Basterds star will reportedly play a paranoid schizophrenic animal trainer in a circus. Um, OK.

The movie will also star Twilight’s Robert Pattinson as a veterinary student who falls for the circus’ star performer and Waltz’s wife, played by Reese Witherspoon.

Based on the novel by Sara Gruen, the script was penned by Richard LaGravanese, writer of the upcoming Chronicles Of Narnia: Voyage Of The Dawn Treader.

I couldn’t be happier for Waltz; he’s moved straight into the big leagues with his Oscar nominated performance of Colonel Landa in Basterds, to signing on to The Green Hornet, The Talking Cure and now this. Well done.

I guess it’s been a while since I had a sleepover and watched Shakespeare In Love but still, I just don’t think that Gwyneth Paltrow is such a great actress.

I’ll admit that I have enjoyed many of her performances – she was fine in Iron Man and The Royal Tenebaums was great but on the whole she’s not my fave. And though there are many actresses who are much worse than her (Jessica Alba), I never get excited when we hear that Gwynie has been cast in something.

According to DeadlineHollywood, the star is joining Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard and Jude Law on Steven Soderbergh’s thriller Contagion. Now I’m interested.

Most of the details of the project are under wraps but I do know that it’s being written by The Informant’s scribe, Scott Z Burns and is set for a 2011 release.

In the meantime, I’m off to re-watch Sliding Doors. I want to love you Gwynie, I really do.

Finally, Kristen Wiig will be getting her own starring vehicle in the shape of a wedding comedy and Judd Apatow has signed on to produce.

The SNL star has written and will star in an untitled comedy that sees a group of women fighting it out in order to host a friend’s wedding. Now the project has the backing of funnyman Judd Apatow, it should really get moving now.

This will be Wiig’s first lead role but before production starts she’ll be getting plenty of practice in; she’s got several films coming out in the next year, most notably Pegg and Frost’s Paul and How To Train Your Dragon.

The project will also be giving director Paul Frieg a leg up in the game; so far he’s mostly directed TV comedies like the US Office, 30 Rock and Arrested Development. With a mix of Apatow, Wiig and Freig, this project looks better and better.

Just as I reported that there are two Dracula movies in production, we got word of another set of movie twins coming our way.

It was announced today in Variety that Dean Koontz, a poor man’s Stephen King, will get to see his series of Frankenstein adapted into films.

Koontz’s version of the story, originally based on Mary Shelley’s gothic novel, will see the mad Doctor Frankenstein and his creation in modern-day New Orleans, wreaking havoc on the locals. The monster, now named Deucalion, gets caught up in a murder investigation incurring the detecting skills of two nosey gum shoes.

Ralph Winter and Terry Botwick will be producing the project but will see it go up against the previously announced Patrick Tatopoulos’ I, Frankenstein.

I’m actually more excited about Patrick’s version; I’m just working on a first come, first served basis today and I’m sticking to it until we see some concept artwork. And the Koontz project better have some pretty spectacular artwork to go up against Patrick as he’s a creature designer and general special effects wiz.

There’s no set date for these two projects so everybody’s got plenty of time to try to get one over on the other team.

Yeah, vampires are cool and everything but Twilight has ruined them for me a little bit. But there’s light at the end of the tunnel folks: there are two Dracula movies coming our way.

The Hollywood Reporter announced today that the writer of The Crazies, Scott Kosar, is reworking a script about Vlad The Impaler, who many will know went on to be known as Dracula.

Kosar is re-jiggering the original script that was written by Green Street star Charlie Hunnman which will cover Vlad’s early years.

Anthony Mandler will be helming the project in his feature film debut but will be going head-to-head with Alex Proyas’ Dracula: Year Zero, starring Avatar’s Sam Worthington.

At least we know that given Kosar’s past work, we know it won’t be mopey teenage vampires going on about their pathetic love lives. He penned The Amityville Horror remake, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake and The Machinist so hopefully the new film will be nice and dark.

Quentin Tarantino thinks he can turn his hand to anything these days, but unfortunately, I saw Inglourious Basterds and clearly he can’t.

But now he’s gone and told the New York Daily News what he’d like to do for his next project.

The Oscar nominated director claims that, “I’d like to do a Western,” Tarantino told the New York Daily News. “But rather than set it in Texas, have it in slavery times. With that subject that everybody is afraid to deal with. Let’s shine that light on ourselves.”

Interested? Meh. The most I’d expect from a Tarantino western is some good shootouts but that’s about it.

“You could do a ponderous history lesson of slaves escaping on the Underground Railroad. Or you could make a movie that would be exciting. Do it as an adventure. A spaghetti Western that takes place during that time. And I would call it a ‘Southern’.”

So Tarantino wants to take on ye old slavery times, but will he do a Basterds and rewrite history? Though I might have fallen slightly out of love with him, I’d be excited about this news if I knew the film was going to look like this.

If you’re a big sci-fi fan then grab a Kleenex because you could get a lil’ teary eyed at what I’m about to tell you.

Roland Emmerich, the director behind 2012, is helming an adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series. See what I mean about the Kleenex.

It’s always hard for fans of books to see the movies being made and it’s even harder when you find out Mr. I Love Explosions is the one making it.

The Foundation series are prominent pieces of sci-fi literature and it’s got a lot going on, but knowing adaptations like I do, you’ll have to read the books to get the full picture because you’re never gonna get it in the films.

Wikipedia handily simplifies the story of the series as: Foundation tells the story of a group of scientists who seek to preserve knowledge as the civilizations around them begin to regress.

In an exclusive interview with MTV, Emmerich described his plans for the project; he’s basically going to steal from James Cameron.

“The Avatar technology applies to Foundation. It has to be done all CG because I would not know how to shoot this thing in real.”

Steal from Cameron all you want but if I see start seeing comparisons with anything (Pocahontas), I’m going to be sending you a little present, Roland. Put it this way, if you see a bag of poo on fire on your doorstep, it was me.

“Probably now all big movies have to be 3-D. It’s not only the effect of 3-D, [‘Avatar’ has] just shown that if you do a movie in 3-D, you can ask for more money and that’s the trick. I think now everybody who does bigger movies has to shoot them in 3-D. I think there’s no way around it. I was on the set of Avatar and I saw how it worked and I really thought, ‘That’s the ultimate way of making movies.’ “