Since Shia LaBeouf’s car accident (totally not his fault, man, I swear!) has left the actor hospitalized and awaiting surgery on his hand, the Transformers 2 cast has been scrambling to re-schedule the shoot to lose the minimum amount of time during production.

We hear that they lost two days of shooting because of the accident, but the movers-and-shakers are determined not to lose any more work on the already uber-expensive production.

Co-Star Josh Duhamel has had some of his sequences in the film bumped up to cover for Shia’s absence.

Yes, Sony is developing a Venom movie.

Not that this hasn’t been tried before. New Line owned the rights to Venom in the late 90s and did absolutely nothing with it, now it seems that the character’s lackluster adaptation in Spider-Man 3 has lead to a Sony coup on the symbiote.

Word is that Topher Grace is out as Eddie Brock as the studio thinks he can’t handle a movie of this size himself (which is odd, because he can). Also, a previous Venom script by fairly-green scribe Jacob Estes is out and a new writer is being sought to take Venom in “a different direction.”

So where does this leave us, the Marvel fans?

Well, for one, this bodes ill for the 2011 Spider-Man 4 we’ve been hearing about, since it’s perfectly feasible that a good Venom script would eclipse the return-to-form Spidey 4 needs to be for Sony after they renewed their rights to the character from Marvel Studios (who you know is just waiting to integrate their biggest character into their unified universe). Much like X-Men Origins: Wolverine is going to spice-up the X-Franchise that Bret Ratner drove into the ground, Venom would ideally boost Spider-Man in time for 4 to roll around.

Also, there is the fanbase who saw one of their favorite characters relegated to a second/third class villain (venom got less screen time than Sandman, and was less important then Green Goblin 2). Are they going to flock to another possible pillaging of one of their favorite villains.

Also, how can a Venom movie exist without Spider-Man? So much was left unresolved between Brock and Peter Parker in 3 that some reference must be made. It would be acceptable to add in another Marvel rogue, but since Marvel Studios has taken off with Iron Man and The Hulk, they would be smart to hold their properties close to the chest.

If you want to know what a compelling Venom story looks like, free of all the studio bullshit that will likely mar this film into mediocrity, check out the new trailer for the video game Spider-Man: Web of Shadows.

Symbiote Wolverine? That we can get behind.

Empire is going to release two Watchmen covers featuring the heroes from the much anticipated tent-pole flick that wow’d audiences with its Dark Knight trailer.

You can check out both the covers and 4 new images (though they are missing our all-too-truthful dialogue) HERE.

Despite the bombing of the Love Guru, leaving Myers outdated and outperformed by more serious superhero fare, New Line (really Warners) is ready to jump back into bed with the has-been and make Austin Powers 4, which Nikki Finke has heard he has started writing:

I’m told that Mike Myers has started writing Austin Powers 4 which will be an homage to his father. “It’s very personal with a father and son theme loosely based on his own life,” an insider tells me. As Myers has previously said, this fourth installment of the super spy spoof movie series will focus on Austin’s arch-villain Dr. Evil, who was based on Blofeld of the Bond films. But what hasn’t been known is that the AP4 plot is really about Dr. Evil and his son (introduced already as Scott Evil, played by Seth Green). Myers is penning his idea with Baby Mama’s Mike McCullers, who collaborated with Myers on Austin Powers 2: The Spy Who Shagged Me and Austin Powers 3: Goldmember.

Great. The writers two sub-par sequels to Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (which should have never gone beyond sleeper-hit) are back at it, probably watching the earlier three films looking for jokes involving midgets, pop songs and “zip it” that absolutely MUST be brought to the forefront of the cultural zeitgeist.

Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’re going to bang our heads against this nearby wall until we’re brain-damaged enough to think this is a good idea.

Then, maybe we can get that producing job at Warners we’ve always wanted.

We’ve already brought you news that DJ Caruso (Eagle Eye) is gearing up to shoot Brian K. Vaughn’s uber-fantastic comic series Y: The Last Man, about a failed magician named Yorick and his monkey Ampersand being the last two beings on earth with a Y chromosome.

Which makes us think that most of our readership would be dead.

Either way, UGO caught up with producer JC Spink on the floor of Comic Con. The man’s produced Red Eye and A History of Violence and is working with Caruso on the Y property. They got him to spill that, yes, they are working on locking down Shia LaBeouf for the role of Yorick, but then he let slip about some other casting goodies, specifically Agent 355, Yorick’s bodyguard:

Concerning the casting of Dr. Mann he said, “an unknown, I don’t want Lucy Liu.” For Agent 355 he said, “believe it or not, I think Alicia Keys would be fantastic. Or Zoe Saldana. By then Star Trek will be out and she’ll be huge. I don’t think Jada Pinkett Smith would be right but a lot of people like her. The truth is that it is up to DJ Caruso and the studio…..but mostly DJ. I just make suggestions. But please post this to your site to see if you can get people campaigning.”

Um, hell yes?

We don’t know how Alicia Keys (who just got awarded the Bond film duet) would handle the action scenes, but she did some pretty good work in Smoking Aces in 2006 as a lesbian hit-woman.

We don’t know what it is, but as a fan of the whole series of comics, something about Keys rings true.

There have been small rumblings of rumors that a new live-action Ghostbusters movie is in the works. Sadly, these are nothing internet rumors based around the Wondercon 2008 announcement that a “big Ghostbusters announcement” would take place at Comic Con San Diego.

It didn’t happen, leading to speculation that we were finally going to get a Ghostbusters 3: Ghostbusters Go To Hell announcement.

Those “ in the know” (which would be you, if you were reading us last November) were ready for the full announcement for the Ghostbusters video game, which Dan Akroyd, Harold Ramis, Bill Murry and Earnie Hudson have signed on to co-write and do voice acting for. It’s basically as close as we’d ever get to Ghostbusters 3.

This rumor has spun out of control and now /Film reports that they heard rumors of Seth Rogen, Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, and Romany Malco donning the beige uniforms with the old ‘Busters watching over them.

This reminds us of a game Dave used to play with his friends called “The Ghostbusters Game.” The premise was: “Which four comedians would best don the proton packs under the tutelage of the original Ghostbusters?”

This was awhile ago, so Dave’s stock answer was something like: Ben Stiller, Jon Stewart, Mitch Hedberg and Chris Rock.

Needless to say, Hedberg is dead and probably would have wreaked havoc on a studio film, and the Rock/Stiller/Stewart combo would have never freaking happened. They’re all older (and more serious) now, anyway.

To re-cap: No, we are not getting a third Ghostbusters. No matter how awesome the Apatow team would be while ‘Bustin’.

You can still play the dream game, though, you have our permission.

Steve Niles, one of Fangoria Magazine’s “13 rising talents who promise to keep us terrified for the next 25 years” and writer/creator of the comic 30 Days of Night, later adapted into the film, was involved in some sort of “altercation” on the floor of Sunday’s Comic Con.

We get this from Ryan Rotten:

A fight broke about between the 30 Days of Night creator and an unidentified man. Security personnel got involved and the physical scrap was brought to an end. Police were later called to the scene, but at that point, tempers had faded.

I spoke with Niles this afternoon and he told me, in short, that he was attacked and had no choice but to defend himself. (Witnesses tell us did a pretty damn good job of it, too.) He walked away with minimal injuries.

As for the other guy, we’re not sure (no one from the other side has stepped forward to talk about it).

Some commenters online have suggested that Steve might have thrown the first “sucker punch,” but thus far no actual reports to the contrary of the above have been filed.

What could possibly cause a Comic Con goer to attack Steve Niles?

The Wolfman, the upcoming Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins horror flick, looks more like classic horror than some sort of studio tent-pole, and with Hugo Weaving rounding out the male headlines and Rick Baker doing the Wolfman make-up, this film looks like it could be a very different beast from the rest of the “horror” we’ve been getting these days.

Does The Wolfman have what it takes?

Those who saw Comic Con footage were hopeful, and – for now – you can see what they saw…after the cut!

The younger sister of one Ms. Britney Spears will marry her fiance Casey Aldrige before the year is out, says Fox.

Clearly inspired by the brief but rewarding relationship she watched play out between Britney and K-Fed, Jamie Lynn is marrying a pipe-layer from Liberty Mississippi. He also happens to be her baby daddy. Maybe pipe-layers are more down to earth than back up dancers, but it seems like marrying a Spears can go to a guy’s head. We shall see.

Harvey Keitel is like a mature wine that you stash away in the shadows and forget about for a while. When you finally remember you have him you bust him out and take a sip and you suddenly realize he’s what you’ve been missing.

Not that we’ve sipped Harvey Keitel or anything.

We just mean we’re happy that the onetime Mr. White has ended his long period of exile from good entertainment (the Jerry Springer musical did not count) because we’re beginning to realize how much we missed him since his heyday in the 90s.

According to WENN, Keitel has been cast as Detective Gene Hunt in the US revamp of British show Life On Mars. Mars is set to replace Boston Legal on ABC and tells the story of a cop who gets hit by a car and wakes up in 1973.

This marks Keitel’s first time as a TV series regular and it’s obviously a sign that television is no longer considered career suicide for veterans of film.

We’re totally cool with it and excited about the show. Emmys are the new Oscars in case you haven’t heard. Just ask MVPs Kyra Sedgwick, Holly Hunter and Glenn Close. (Plus the telecast is better.) If we could get a good TV pilot for Pacino and De Niro our work would be done. Here’s to Harvey paving the way.