By Steven Zeitchik

“Dark Void” will yield development matter.

Indian giant Reliance BIG Entertainment and Brad Pitt’s Plan B shingle are developing a film version of the upcoming video game, and Pitt could well star as the lead combatant.

The two firms have acquired rights to the Capcom third-person shooter and will develop as a feature. The companies say that the project would be a “potential starring vehicle” for Pitt. No writers have been hired as yet.

“Void” centers on a a cargo pilot named Will (Pitt’s presumed character) who, after crashing in the Bermuda Triangle, ends up in a parallel universe where a band of humans must fight an alien threat they had long been thought extinct. Will and the other humans are outmanned but have a number of weapons and powers to help them beat back the alien incursion.

The game will be released for Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in January. CAA repped Plan B and Reliance in the deal; UTA-repped Capcom.

By Steven Zeitchik

One of the perks, or punishments, of this film blogging racket is the opportunity to see an obscene amount of documentaries. This was more of an issue when there were an obscene amount of documentaries being made, but if you’ve been to a film fest recently, you know that number is still high — if not Larry Flynt obscene, then maybe at least Robert Mapplethorpe obscene.

Given all that, we’d have to say that the flap over the omissions by the doc shortlist committee Wednesday is, like all flaps, with some merit and with some bloviation.

One of the reasons for the shortlist has always struck us as political. The doc category is rife with submissions, in part because it’s so damn cheap to make one. That means a higher level of chaff but also a higher level of  wheat, and part of the idea of revealing three times as many films as will actually be nominated is to show just how inclusive the Academy can be.

But that inclusiveness also creates a sense of entitlement. Everyone wonders why they can’t make the cut. if you actually look at the number of docs made every year relative to the fifteen slots (made, not qualified), it’s probably a higher ratio than the number of features relative to their slots. In other words, it’s harder to actually make the doc shortlist than it is to get nominated in other categories.

So we should probably treat the doc shortlist as slightly more elite than we do, and not be so in umbrage when films don’t make it.

We also shouldn’t be surprised for another reason: several of the supposedly glaring absences contain their share of  flaws. The omission of Toback’s “Tyson” is understandable. The film is essentially a single interview, and while revealing at points — Toback is never lacking for things provocative — you could make a case it’s a little too thin, given all the ambition out there, to make the list.

By Steven Zeitchik

Eddie Murphy could be feeling fluffy.

The A-lister is attached to produce and could potentially star in “The Misadventures of Fluffy,” a new buddy comedy that’s been set up at Paramount.

Sam Pitman and Adam Cole-Kelly sold the pitch for the R-rated comedy and will write the script. The project is described as a road trip pic through New York featuring talking animals, and with an element of social comedy reminiscent of Murphy’s 1980’s hit “Trading Places.”

Insiders emphasize that while Murphy is formally attached to produce, he is not formally attached to star at this point.

Pitman and Cole-Kelly, repped by WME and Management 360, came to prominence with a project called “The Diversification of Noah Miller,” a race-themed story about a man who tries to bring cultural enlightenment to his son by befriending people of another race. Tyler Perry is attached to produce and potentially star in that project.

By Steven Zeitchik

It’s almost impossible to watch “The Blind Side,” a story of race and the power of education to overcome life’s brutalities, and not think of “Precious,” a story of race and the power of education to overcome life’s brutalities.

Both settle on misunderstood, gentle-giant, inner-city teenagers, and give them ways to escape their past with the help of people who care for them after their real families don’t.

Of course that’s like saying “Goodfellas” and “Analyze This” are both mob movies. Where “Precious” director Lee Daniels uses extreme style to blunt the impact of the brutality, “The Blind Side” director John Lee Hancock uses extreme sentiment, and comedy, to give his dramatized true story of a white upper-middle class Memphis family that adopts a black teenager (he has a preternatural ability to protect the quarterback — hence the blind side) a kind of warm glow; no one, with one or two exceptions, really does much to try to bring down the feelgood (as THR’s review notes).

Still, it’s nice to see that a sports-themed movie as eager as this one to win the audience’s affections — there are moments in the Warners/Alcon pic that are genuinely heartfelt (and funny) and those so drippingly  sweet it would make a bumblebee gag — can have more on its mind than just a simple underdog story. Even with all of the storybook elements, it least tries to give a sense of race and the way parts of the South currently engage with it. If “Precious” (character and movie) finds its redemption amid the do-gooder volunteerism of liberal New York, “Blind Side” does it amid the college-football Republicanism of upper-middle-class Tennessee.

By Steven Zeitchik

“An Education” director Lone Scherfig recently lamented, good-naturedly, that she was tired of producers thinking of her for stereotypically female projects. “Everyone sends me scripts with these sweet stories,” she said. “I’ve done that already. I want to make a movie with chases and explosions. I want to blow things up.”

Scherfig might have a point about typecasting, but she also might consider herself lucky — at least she’s in a category in which women are finally getting their due. This awards season couldn’t be a happier time for female helmers — as many as three (Kathryn Bigelow, Jane Campion and Scherfig) could be nominated for best director. That would equal the total number of women nominated — can this be? — in the 73-year history of the award (Sofia Coppola, Lina Wertmuller and Campion, if you’re playing Trivial Pursuit).

And yet a look at a category specifically designed for women shows a different picture.

In the best actress field, there’s a single Oscar perennial (Meryl Streep, for “Julie & Julia”), some buzzed-about newcomers (Carey Mulligan and Gabourey Sidibe for “An Education” and “Precious,” respectively) and … that’s pretty much it .

By Steven Zeitchik

How — apart from the possibility that Roland Emmerich has secretly hypnotized us with an ancient Teutonic curse — can one explain the runaway success of the by-the-numbers snooze that is “2012″?

The of-quoted explanation for any disaster hit is Zeitgeist-ian, which in this case would mean that in the era of foreclosures, global warming and general end-of-the-world jitters, moviegoers see in the filmic apocalypse a mirror of their own fears. It’s a tempting theory — you know, catharsis, vicariousness, other things college-students write term papers about.

But does it hold up? Looking at the biggest apocalyptic blockbusters of the past couple decades, there’s some correlation between the state of the world and the stock of Roland Emmerich. But it’s hardly neat or simple.

Sure, one of Emmerich’s other big hits, the environmental disaster tale “The Day After Tomorrow,” earned a whopping $186m basically 2 1/2 years after 9/11, and as fears of global warming were beginning to take hold.

By Steven Zeitchik

If you’ve been sitting back and wondering where the stars of yesteryear have gone — you know, the real stars, like Robin Givens and Dolph Lundgren — you need but take a stroll through the halls of AFM. We did, this past weekend, at the Loews in Santa Monica, and found that not only are these thespians working, they are making some of the funniest, sharpest, entertaining material around. Just ask the people who designed the posters.

We’ve long heard the conventional wisdom that Steven Seagal and his ilk enjoy a ten or twenty year afterlife in many foreign countries — the Tina Turner effect, if you will. But in perusing the posters (which tout English-language movies whose rights are being sold in foreign-language countries) we were struck by how many of these actors are not only working, but are actively marketed. If these people were in our movie we’d hide them, not boast about them.

Most of these movies at AFM have little in common (with each other or with any movie you might actually see at a theater). But the producers behind them do seem to share a similar philosophy — namely, to bring on actors with currency without actually spending any.

They also all have absurdly nonsensical taglines. We use to think the murky descriptions were a function of subpar copywriters. But it must be intentional. if you’re trying to sell a movie to twenty different countries, you need to boil it down to utter meaninglessness to ensure a broad market.

By Steven Zeitchik

Zachary Quinto could be taking a new ride.

The “Star Trek” topliner is loosely attached to his first post-”Trek” feature, the romantic dramedy “Whirligig.”

Quinto would play the lead role in the Canadian indie, which is aiming to shoot early next year.

The actor has been very selective about his next role, and with no deal in place and a number of contingencies that need to be met, it remains possible he’ll opt for another project as his first post-”Trek” feature.

The “Whirligig” project centers on a man who, in a misguided attempt to woo an older woman, befriends the woman’s adopted son.

By Steven Zeitchik

Several months after Aaron Sorkin came aboard “Moneyball” — and slightly longer since the plug was pulled on Steven Soderbergh just before the start of production — the underdog baseball pic is well into its next stage, or inning, if you’re in a punning mood.

Several directors have met with star Brad Pitt, studio execs and/or producers over the past weeks. And while the studio has not formally made any offers, a number of names have surfaced, including that of the Oscar nominee Bennett Miller and the suddenly ubiquitous Marc Webb.

Webb has been entertaining a slew of interest since his “(500) Days of Summer” jolted critics and the development community this summer. He’s attached to a remake of the Danish thriller “Just Another Love Story” and met on Universal’s remake of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” to name a couple.

By Steven Zeitchik

When the buzz on a best picture nom for “WALL-E” hit a fever pitch last year, one Pixar exec confided to us that, “This is it. This is our last chance. After this year, we’re out of the awards game.”

Well, maybe not.

The Oscar buzz this year couldn’t be higher for Pixar’s “Up,” not only for the best animated category but for best picture, thanks to a warm Festival de Cannes playdate and a lucky-to-be-born late blessing of 10 best-picture noms.

A dual accolade would make history (the only instance of an animated movie being nominated for best film was “Beauty of the Beast” in 1991, long before the best animated feature category existed). It would also  create complications — and not only for Pixar execs who might have to shell out some extra coin on a broader campaign.

Pixar and director Pete Docter might hope that the best picture momentum will carry it to a victory in the animation category. But for some voters, it could slice the other way, prompting them to choose something else in animation because they’ve already put “Up” high on their best picture ballot. (In that sense, “Up” would be unlucky to be nominated twice.)