Been in the work mines all week, and today isn’t looking any better. Catching up is becoming a full time job in itself.So it’s been confirmed that Helen Mirren — a good old Southend girl, don’t you know — has joined the cast of the film adaptation of me’n'Cully’s graphic novel RED. So the top of the cast is now Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman and Helen Mirren. Which is a little surreal. They’ve also set a release date, which I think is 2 November 2010. So we’re a year away from seeing it. Shooting starts in January, in Toronto and New Orleans, I believe.And BLACK SUMMER is now in development, with Ryne Pearson writing the adaptation. He wrote the recent KNOWING, which I haven’t seen, but which I know made its money back. Pearson’s a novelist by trade, according to the internet. Also, according to the internet, a man of devout religious conviction. Just as well SUMMER doesn’t contain any of my usual atheist ravings. And no, I have no idea if the death of an American President will be retained in the script. It’s theirs to play with, no. I imagine I’ll be talking to them in the near future.And next week I’m on the phone with Legendary to get GRAVEL moving.PLANETARY Volume 4 now has a subtitle: SPACETIME ARCHAEOLOGY. I understand that ABSOLUTE PLANETARY Vol 2 is also being prepared right now.(I should actually write a new work FAQ. There’s one on Whitechapel that hasn’t been updated in a month or so. So I’ll add here: FELL moves along slowly, DESOLATION JONES remains on hold for various reasons, NEWUNIVERSAL will get finished up next year once Steve and I are past ARMOR WARS, I have no idea what the state of the CASTLEVANIA animated property is, and, in general, assume that a prolific career of many projects contains several that have just run into trouble or stalled out because, guess what, shit happens. And no, I never got my dead computer back. That’s a tale in itself, which includes the guy who was trying to repair it dying on an operating table.)Buy my book please?