The hit animated film Hotel Transylvania is getting a sequel.

The Hollywood Reporter says Hotel Transylvania 2 is in the early stages of development, but is slated for a September 25, 2015 release.

Director Genndy Tartakovsky will helm a different Sony Pictures Animation film, Popeye, instead of the sequel.

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Troubled doesn’t begin to cover it. The journey that World War Z has made from book to script to screen has been dogged with disaster from the start. The Hollywood Reporter did a good job describing the scene back in June, but the potted version basically involves delays, rewrites, re-shoots, the departure of key crew members, and misery on set.

So with the trailer hitting today we ask if, following such monumental problems, the film has any chance of finding an audience next summer?

First things first, the book was always going to be tough source material to adapt. Written by Max Brooks, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War doesn’t have a simple narrative through-line, nor the kind of linear plot that a Hollywood movie demands.

Instead, it’s a sprawling account of the zombie outbreak, detailing the spread of the zombie infection through the likes of China, South Africa, Israel and the United States. And one that feels more like it should be turned into an ongoing TV series than a standalone movie.

And so screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski and latterly Matthew Michael Carnahan were charged with the task of turning what’s essentially an anecdotal historical tome into a movie for the multiplex masses.

The plot therefore now revolves around Gerald Lane, a United Nations researcher who is sent on a fact-finding mission to discover the origin of the outbreak and to figure out how to stop it.

But while the Hollywood Reporter’s source claimed that the film’s first 45 minutes were terrific, the second half was apparently problematic, with scribes Damon Lindelof and Drew Goddard asked to help re-write the finale, leading to re-shoots and the release date being pushed back from December 2012 to June 2013.

Such a process is common practice in Hollywood however, and it's not always the disaster that commentators would have you believe. The Bourne Identity underwent both re-writes and re-shoots late in proceedings and that turned out okay. Same with The Amazing Spider-Man, which grossed more than $750m at the global box office this summer.

So what of the trailer that hit today? It certainly does a good job of building tension and once the zombie apocalypse does hit, it looks epic in terms of size and scale. But fans of the book have already taken to Twitter to not only complain that the story appears to bear only a passing resemblance to the source material, but also to bemoan the fact that the undead are slow shufflers in the book but have been transformed into speedy sprinters for the movie.

The film’s visual effects artist John Nelson told EW the reason for the change: “They are like predatory animals that can’t control themselves. I worked with tigers [while shooting Gladiator], and if you watch them when a horse goes by they go batty, even if they know they can’t reach it. When Zs see humans they do same thing, they activate. They launch themselves.

"There are a lot of things in nature we’re mining as references. They move like birds or school of fish, too, in reactive formations, and it’s not because they have a higher level of [shared] thinking or communication – it’s about their nature and the fact that their instinct to infect is so basic, efficient, and overpowering. They will go through anything. If they lose both legs, they will walk on their hands. They lock in and they’re like salmon going upstream or sperm swimming to be the first to egg.”

Speedy zombies didn’t do the likes of 28 Days Later and the Dawn of the Dead remake any harm. But Shaun of the Dead himself – Simon Pegg – tweeted this morning, “Zombies everywhere are spinning in their graves,” adding that he’d be prepared to give the movie the benefit of the doubt, but that “Fast zombies are not my bag.”

A bigger worry may be the copious amounts of CGI featured in the trailer. Both fast and slow zombies can be made to look scary, but can you do the same with artificial-looking computer-generated zombies? The effects may not be finished yet at this early stage, but the early evidence isn’t good, particularly in the scenes where the hordes attack.

Indeed, the idea that zombies can scale huge buildings and walls by piling on top of each other is cool, but seeing it in practice as the trailer’s climactic money shot is not, the execution disappointing thanks to yet more ropey CGI.

Another question that has dogged the production from the start is whether or not director Marc Forster can handle the film’s action sequences. Forster is better known for dramas like Finding Neverland and The Kite Runner, and his one foray into the genre – Quantum of Solace – was the most underwhelming of Daniel Craig’s Bond movies, with the action a particular disappointment.

He’s got a fine actor to carry the film in the shape of Brad Pitt; one who can handle both action and drama, but will the actor’s talent and popularity be enough to tempt audiences into theatres next June?

That remains to be seen, but whatever the case, it’s clear that studio Paramount has a lot riding on World War Z, with the film’s budget reportedly approaching the $200m mark. It was also hoped that the film would be the first part in a proposed trilogy. But Hollywood is a fickle place, so if the film doesn’t hit big come the summer, expect Worlds War Z to be both the beginning and the end of this particular brand of big-budget horror.

Chris Tilly is Entertainment Editor for IGN and really hopes World War Z works. His idle chat can be found on both Twitter and MyIGN.

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McG is now attached to direct Fox and Radar Pictures' Hollywood Magic Castle movie, based on the famed magicians' night club. Andrew Barrer and Gabe Ferrari will pen the screenplay.

Built in 1909, the historic mansion on Franklin Avenue serves as the headquarters of the nonprofit Academy of Magical Arts Inc. and offers a private space for renowned magicians to perform. Celebs who have performed at the exclusive nightclub include Cary Grant, Steve Martin, Johnny Carson and Neil Patrick Harris, who is the current president of the Academy of Magical Arts.

McG will soon begin filming the Kevin Costner-starrer Three Days to Kill, which will wrap production in February. From there, says The Hollywood Reporter, the filmmaker will shift his focus to Magic Castle, which has Radar's Ted Field producing.

Now repped by agency CAA, the Magic Castle will begin expanding its marketing opportunities not only to films, but other outlets such as television, live events, video games, digital media and merchandising.

Max Nicholson is a writer for IGN, and he desperately seeks your approval. Show him some love by following @Max_Nicholson on Twitter, or MaxNicholson on IGN.

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When you have my job, you get to meet movie stars and famous directors and Hollywood starlets and blah, blah, blah. But those guys are mostly a bore. And besides, it's not every day that one gets to shoot the s#!t with the man whose comics you grew up reading! For me, that would be Walt Simonson, whose acclaimed run on titles like Thor and X-Factor in particular helped shaped a young Collura's comics-reading habits (well, me, and every other kid reading comics at the time that is).

I was lucky enough to get a chance to talk to Simonson recently because of his new book from Titan… or rather, his new old book. Alien: The Illustrated Story is a restored rerelease of his and writer Archie Goodwin's excellent graphic-novel adaptation of the Ridley Scott film that was originally created for Heavy Metal over 30 years ago (read my review here. An Original Art Edition of the book is also out next week which reproduces all of Simonson's black and white boards, in full size and complete with all of the little details and imperfections of the pre-published comics art, plus an interview with Simonson, original script pages, sketches and more.

The main topic of our conversation was the Alien book and its creation, but we also delve into his recently released labor of love for DC, The Judas Coin, his thoughts on returning to his classic titles like Thor, and much more.

Scott Collura: First of all, I have to ask, were you drawing when I called just now?

Walt Simonson: Well, I’ve got some stuff I’ve got to get done. I was working on some drawing, but that’s all right. I can draw after we talk!

SC: How many hours a day do you draw?

WS: Depends entirely on my deadlines. If my deadlines are a long way off, I don’t draw that much. If my deadlines are tomorrow, I’m drawing like a madman. And right now my deadlines are tomorrow, so I’m drawing like a madman. [Laughs]

SC: Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe your big break came with Manhunter, which you worked on with Archie Goodwin, right?

WS: That’s right.

SC: So you obviously worked on Alien with Archie as well. Can you tell me about how that partnership came about on Alien?

WS: Well, the short version is that John Workman, who was the art director at Heavy Metal at the time, called me about the possibility of inking the Alien graphic novel adaptation of the movie over Carmine Infantino['s pencils] -- but he hadn’t been able to get a hold of Carmine at that point, so we talked about it and it sounded like fun. Eventually, we reached a point where I was going to pencil it, and I suggested that Archie would be a good guy to have write the words themselves in the comic. So that’s how that worked out.

SC: And of course, you and John Workman have had a longstanding relationship with each other since then.

WS: [Laughs] Yes we do, and that was the first time we worked together.

SC: As far as the process of actually creating the visuals of the comic, did you have any kind of access to the art from the film? How did that all work?

WS: We had all kinds of stuff. I was actually shown a rough cut of the film. It was close to two and a half hours long. This was in December of 1978 -- the movie came out in May of '79. So at the end of '78, 20th Century Fox provided a lot of references. At the time, Heavy Metal was also producing a book called The Book of Alien, which was a film book; they weren’t as common then as they are now, but it was a book about the making of the film. So they had a lot of references and slides from the film. I was able to have them essentially make photostats of the slides, blow them up. They were just black and white -- terrible reproduction value, you’d never be able to use them for anything, really -- but they were great for visual reference. 20th Century provided some other photographs and stills. Archie and I also had three different script revisions that were maybe two months apart each, and we were able to really just do our version of a comic using that material to create the graphic novel, as it turned out.

SC: How much attention did you pay to H.R. Giger when you were drawing that book?

WS: Well, I had a book of Giger’s stuff that came out before Alien, so I looked at that when I was drawing. We didn’t have a lot of clear shots of the alien. I think I had one where he was tipped over, sort of standing but bent over. And there were some detail shots. So I looked at Giger’s paintings for a sense of texture, a sense of the external skeletal quality of the character, and kind of went from there.

SC: Even on the first two pages where you draw the Alien title, it’s in that sort of skeletal techno-organic style.

WS: Sure, I just looked at this book of Giger stuff that I had and laid out the lettering, then I went in there with pencil, pen and ink and kind of drew up the series of textures that at least reminded me of Giger’s work. Then we used watercolor to kind of simulate that and give it some sense of the alien before you’ve read the book or seen the movie. You wouldn’t know quite what that was about, but it would resonate later after you had read the graphic novel.

SC: So what was it like when you saw the film? I assume you were done with the book by the time you saw the final film?

WS: The final one, yeah. I saw that when it came out. The book had to be published right at the same time the film was released. I don’t exactly remember how close -- same week or whatever it was. So essentially we had a drop-dead deadline to get the graphic novel finished by early April. There had to be time to get the art separated, essentially made print ready, and then sent to the printer -- printed, bound, trimmed and fired off to retail stores so that on the week the movie came out, the book would be available. By the time the movie came out, I’d finished the book four or five weeks earlier. So it was very neat. It was interesting -- there were bits that were different from the rough cut I had seen; by that time I had seen the rough cut almost six months earlier, so I didn’t remember a lot of stuff clearly. But there were a few things here or there that were different in the release cut. I thought that was kind of interesting.

SC: And even with the comic itself, I think one of the things that’s very effective for a fan of Alien who reads the comic is that it plays as sort of an alternate version of the events. Everything that happens is the same, but because we know Alien so well, angles are different; the length of scenes are obviously different. The characters look like the characters, and yet they’re your versions of the characters. In those ways, it kind of plays like an alternate version of the film, which is so cool.

WS: [Laughs] Well, we had a lot of room to maneuver, but of course I could never do a scene-for-scene drawing of the film. Honestly, I’m not sure I would have wanted to, really. What’s the point? But we had a lot of freedom, so what Archie and I tried to do was create a graphic novel that was the most effective comic book we could do of that story using all the stuff that we had, the raw material, as the foundation for building that comic. And that’s how it worked out.

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