When director McG finishes up with Terminator Salvation, he’ll be running over to take helm of a big-budgeted 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea remake. Earlier this week it was reported that Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was set to star in the film – based on the book by Jules Verne – about the various adventures of Captain Nemo’s secret submarine, The Nautilus.

McG shot down those Rock rumors rather quickly this week, but then admitted that he’d like Will Smith to star. He tells Sci-Fi Wire, "My intention is to show [Smith] Terminator and see if he responds to it. We're friendly. We'll see if it's on the cards." Should Smith respond well, he’ll be the first to sign on to what could potentially be a very big film. Though there have been many versions of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea over the years, the most popular (and recognized) is the 1954 Walt Disney film starring Kirk Douglas and James Mason. No release date is set yet for McG’s take on this classic masterpiece.

Pirates Are Hot Again – Just Ask Samuel L. Jackson

We went through a huge Pirates phase at the height of the Pirates of the Caribbean popularity, and now the thieves of the ocean are back in the news due to what’s currently going on off the coast of Somalia. These new Pirates, however, are a lot different than Captain Jack Sparrow in that they’re young, desperate, dumb, violent and very, very real.

What that means in Hollywood-speak is "Let’s make a movie about them!" – and so, naturally, one is currently in the works … and Samuel L. Jackson is in talks to star. Jackson would be playing a real-life figure by the name of Andrew Mwangura, who’s a negotiator between Somalian pirates and the owners of vessels hijacked by said pirates. So, no, parrots, eye patches and lost treasures of gold won’t be on the menu, and we understand that might take a bit of the “fun” away – but this is a scary topic that, in my opinion, needs to be explored some more.

What do you think? Should Hollywood stick with the make-believe pirate stories?

Video of the Week: Is 'District 9' the Next 'Cloverfield'?

The first trailer for Neill Blomkamp’s low-budget sci-fi flick District 9 hit the interwebs this week, and all everyone keeps talking about is how much it resembles last year’s little-viral-engine-that-could, Cloverfield. Blomkamp, a protégé of Peter Jackson, was originally set to direct an adaptation of the video game Halo (a job he snagged based on his incredible short film, Alive in Joburg), but when that project fell through, folks scrambled to stick him on something else.

That something else is a quiet little South African-set film that tells of an alien race that gets stranded on earth and subsequently cordoned off in one particular area while their giant ship remains isolated from them in the sky. Check out the trailer everyone is talking about right over here, then let us know what you think of District 9.