A lot of today’s news is people getting attached to different projects that will begin production soon. They aren’t really rumor and they aren’t uber important (’cept maybe the Green Lantern director, which I have been unceremoniously mum about). Under the cut: What Tom Cruise is up to, who is going to write 20K Leagues Under the Sea for McG, Jonah Hex gets some old school actor power, Nightmare on Elm Street haunts a director, and Brad Bird’s 1906…

Word in the trades is that Mark Campbell, the director of Casino Royale, GoldenEye and the Zorro films might be donning a green ring to fight the powers of evil yellow with Warner Bros Green Lantern script. This would be a big boost to DC comics and Warner Brothers who realized with The Dark Knight that they are sitting on a boat-load of DC comic properties ready to get the “serious” treatment.Tom Cruise is in talks to join  the David Cronenberg adaptation of The Matarese Circle, a Robert Ludlum thriller that he will be adapting for MGM. Cruise will join Denzel Washington to play two bitter enemy spies who, after spending two decades trying to kill one another, find themselves in the crosshairs of the Matarese, a powerful group at the root of a conspiracy.Brad Bird’s planned live-action debut titled 1906, about the Great San Francisco Earthquake, has been sent back to the scripting stage by Warner Bros who, in this economy, have asked Bird to trim the budget through re-writes.

Music video and commercial director Samuel Bayer  will be seeing Freddy in his nightmares, as we hear that he will be helming Platinum Dunes’ remake of The Nightmare On Elm Street. They’ll probably re-build it a lot like Friday the 13th’s remake (also Platinum Dunes). Also, it’s interesting to note thet Bayer was the guy who directed “SmellsLike Teen Spirit.” So, that’s interesting.

John Malkovich will square off against Josh Brolin in Jonah Hex, the Warner Bros. adaptation of the DC Comics property that begins production in April. Malkovich will play Turnbull, a wealthy Southern plantation owner whose son is killed by Union soldiers during the Civil War. He blames Hex, a former confederate soldier-turned-hardened bounty hunter and gunslinger.

Darren Bousman, most recently off of schlock-fest Repo! The Genetic Opera (and previously the director of Saws 2, 3 and 4) has decided his next picture will be about a diamond heist on a submarine. However plausible that plot is.

Fanboy screenwriter Justin Marks (who we’ve talked about as the Chun Li writer, the Masters Of The Universe writer, the Voltron writer and the SuperMax writer) has been hired to come take on Bill Marsilli’s original draft for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Captain Nemo, which will be directed by McG.