Film News: Terry Gilliam's Zero Theorem; Guy Ritchie to take on King Arthur?

THE RUMOUR MILL: GUY RITCHIE TO TAKE ON KING ARTHUR? PLUS: SHAUN THE SHEEP RETURNS, NEW RIDDICK SEQUEL PLANNED, BRUCE WILLIS & M NIGHT SHYAMALAN TEAM UP AGAIN
Following the box office success of Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes movies, it seems Hollywood now considers the British filmmaker a safe pair of hands for big-budget franchise projects. According to Deadline, Ritchie is in talks with Warner Bros. about a six-picture deal which would see him revitalise the legend of King Arthur for the silver screen. This follows news that the studio's last Arthur-themed project – Arthur & Lancelot, which was mooted to star Kit Harrington (aka Jon Snow in Game of Thrones) – has been shelved. Richie's current project is a film reboot of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., with Hugh Grant, Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer's names being bandied about as potential stars.

Another great British hero destined to make a return to the silver screen is Shaun the Sheep, the wily wooly wunderkind who made his debut in Aardman Animation's Oscar-winning Wallace and Gromit sequel A Close Shave. Shaun, who has gone on to star in four series of his own TV show on CBBC, will now star in his own movie, due for release in 2015, according to a press release from Aardman. The film will be co-produced by StudioCanal. "Shaun's mischief will now inadvertently lead to the farmer being taken away from the farm," reads the press release. "Shaun and Bitzer, together with the flock must brave the big city to rescue him, setting the stage for an epic big screen adventure." 

Staying with sequels, fans of brain-dead science fiction twaddle will no doubt be pleased to hear that Riddick is due for a possible fourth outing, according to Vin Diesel. Quoting a bizarre video blog posted by Diesel himself, Total Film reports that Diesel is claiming Universal have told him that they plan to make a fourth film, following the commercial success of last year's Riddick. Since the original (and superior) Pitch Black, the Riddick films have had a less than glowing critical reception, with The Skinny's reviewer pointing out the last film's jarring misogyny. 

And finally, this week saw rumours that bald, vest-wearing interview saboteur Bruce Willis plans to team up once again with his Unbreakable and The Sixth Sense director M. Night Shyamalan. Deadline reports that their new project will go by the title Labor of Love, and that it will feature none of Shyamalan's customary supernatural or fantasy tropes. Instead, the tale focuses on a widower, played by Willis, who decides to walk across the country to honour his dead wife's memory. If possible, this film sounds even more boring and trite than Shyamalan's previous lowlights, like The Happening (in which nothing much happened) and the excruciating The Last Airbender.

TRAILERS: ZERO THEOREM, A MILLION WAYS TO DIE IN THE WEST, FROM DUSK TILL DAWN: THE SERIES
This week we got genuinely excited by the first look at Terry Giliam's new film, Zero Theorem. Returning to the dense, oblique science fiction themes of Twelve Monkeys and the outre production design and world-building of Brazil, Gilliam's new film stars Tarantino favourite Christoph Waltz as a secretive and lonely computer programmer attempting to define scientifically whether or not life has meaning. As with the aforementioned Brazil and Twelve Monkeys, it looks like this will be a film that the audience will be able to ponder and plunder for meaning for years after their first viewing – have a look at the visually stunning trailer below.  

Perhaps less impressive, but no doubt destined to cause a few belly laughs, is the new film from Family Guy creator and Ted director Seth McFarlane – like Tarantino, he's opted to set up his tent in the Western genre on this outing, A Million Ways To Die in the West. The star-packed cast features Charlize Theron, Amanda Seyfried, Liam Neeson, Giovanni Ribisi, Sarah Silverman and Neil Patrick Harris, and stars MacFarlane himself as a hapless cowboy. 

Speaking of Quentin Tarantino, here's the trailer for his old pal Robert – Machete – Rodriguez's new TV show, developed from the original script by Tarantino that was shot by Rodriguez in 1996 as From Dusk Till Dawn. In the new, long-form adaptation of the Mexican vampire saga, we focus on the crime spree undertaken by the notorious Gecko brothers. Various Tarantino meta-references can be spotted in the trailer – watch out for the sign of a Big Kahuna Burger, and play spot-the-scene as Rodriguez's cast of unknowns recreate key moments from the original film. Although it looks far from brilliant, at least the show is bound to be better than the original film's dire straight-to-video sequels.