This week's Ketchup sees Hollywood continuing its love affair with remakes, sequels, and movies based upon old toys and comic strip orange cats, as well as yet another Hamlet movie.

#1 THE GOVERNATOR'S MOVIES CONTINUE ON (MOSTLY) WITHOUT HIM: TOTAL RECALL, PREDATORS AND... COMMANDO

Arnold Schwarzenegger might not be making movies anymore, but his filmography is quickly becoming one of the most mined resources for remakes and sequels. First up, there is the news that Columbia has chosen Total Recall remake writer: Kurt Wimmer, writer/director behind Equilibrium and Ultraviolet, and scripter behind in-production projects Salt (starring Angelina Jolie) and Law Abiding Citizen (Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler). Next up is a Moviehole report of Robert Rodriguez supposed interest for Schwarzenegger reprising his Dutch Schaefer role for Predators cameo. (That's the Predator sequel Rodriguez is producing, scheduled for a July 2010 release.) And finally, there's a rumor from JoBlo that 1985's Commando is being eyed for the remake treatment.

#2 HEATHCLIFF'S MOVIE CAREER TO GO TO PURR-THERING HEIGHTS

The two Garfield movies have proven an audience exists for movies about fat orange CGI cats, convincing rights holders of Heathcliff to begin development of multiple projects, which may include a live-action movie. First is a 2011 direct-to-DVD animated movie, which could also be expanded to a theatrical release "if the material warrants" it. Heathcliff got his start as a comic strip in 1973 (5 years before Garfield), then starred in two different Saturday morning cartoon shows during the 1980s. Although Heathcliff and Garfield look very similar, Heathcliff is an alley cat, while Garfield is very definitely a house cat. Means Heathcliff actually moves around and has adventures, whereas Garfield traditionally just... sits there.

#3 99 YEARS AFTER HIS DEBUT, TOM SWIFT STILL WAITING FOR HIS MOVIE

These days, there's no shortage of kids book franchises that extend into dozens of entries, but once upon a time, most school libraries had only three: The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew and... Tom Swift, who made his debut all the way back in 1910. Unlike his detective competitors, Edward Stratemeyer's (under the pen name Victor Appleton) Tom Swift was a globetrotting adventurer and inventor, with many of his ideas eventually becoming realities, with the most famous example being the Taser, which is an acronym that stands for Thomas A. Swift's Electric Rifle. Other examples include the electric railroad, FAX machine and the house trailer. Tom Swift is also in general one of the earliest examples of the "boy adventurer," and so with Jonny Quest set to get his own movie soon, it's perhaps no surprise that Columbia Pictures has acquired the rights for a Tom Swift movie as well. The idea of a Tom Swift movie is not new, as in the 1960s, there were plans for a movie musical starring Gene Kelly, and there was another attempt in the 1970s. Tom Swift is being coproduced and will be directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, the visually creative director who gave us movies like Men in Black, The Addams Family, Wild Wild West (which despite outright sucking did indeed look great and featured a lot of Swift-like steampunk inventions) and the day-glo Pushing Daisies TV series.

#4 BETTER THIS THAN A REMAKE: THE REAL STORY BEHIND THE EXORCIST

As Hollywood's reboot/remake fever continues to get really crazy, people are right to worry whether true classics like The Godfather and Citizen Kane might be next. With horror, one movie that has achieved comparable status is The Exorcist. Vertigo Entertainment, the company behind the J-horror remakes like The Ring and The Grudge, probably could have secured the rights to remake The Exorcist, but instead have opted a slightly higher moral road and optioned the rights to the original book, The Real Story Behind the Exorcist: A Study of the Haunted Boy And Other True-Life Horror Legends from Around the Nation's Capital. This book doesn't attempt to tell the story of the 1949 true story that inspired William Blatty to write The Exorcist, but instead recounts a reporter's attempt to find the possessed boy, sixty years earlier. So, if anything, this is a sequel. Even if it is trading on the fame of another movie, The Real Story Behind the Exorcist sounds like an attempt to take a somewhat original angle.

#5 THE HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT INSPIRES A STATE-THEMED TRILOGY FOR NEW YORK AND GEORGIA

In March, The Haunting in Connecticut opened to a surprising $23 million, so it's no surprise Lionsgate is developing the concept into a trilogy. Like Connecticut, Haunting in New York and Haunting in Georgia will be based on episodes from A Haunting, the paranormal reenactment series that airs on the Discovery Channel. New York will be about a single mother whose mentally handicapped daughter appears able to communicate with spirits, while Georgia will tell the tale of a four year-old girl with imaginary friends, whom the girl's parents suspect might be evil ghosts (and yes, this element was part of The Amityville Horror as well) when their daughter wakes with claw marks across her face. In both stories, families turn to paranormal experts. Given Lionsgate's love for extending horror franchises for as long as possible (Saw), this might just be the tip of the iceberg. Maybe in 2049, your kids will be talking about plans for The Haunting in New Hampshire and The Haunting in Nebraska.

#6 UNIVERSAL AND OSCAR-WINNER BRIAN GRAZER SET A DATE FOR... STRETCH ARMSTRONG?

In a six-year Hasbro toy deal that included the rights to Ouija, Monopoly, Candyland and Battleship, the first movie to receive a greenlight for Universal will be Stretch Armstrong, slated for an April 15th, 2011 release. Based upon the obscure 1970s toy that let kids pull on a barechested man's rubber arms and legs, Stretch Armstrong is being produced by Brian Grazer, who commented that Stretch is "a character I have wanted to see onscreen for a long time." Afterwards, he probably asked for agreement from the crowd and heard back only the sound of crickets. Steve Oedenkerk (Patch Adams, Evan Almighty) is working on the Stretch screenplay, and there's no word yet as to who will direct, although with the release date less than two years away, Universal will have to decide soon. In other Universal kid movie news, and because I didn't know where else to stick it, the studio this week has pulled the Where's Waldo? project out of turnaround from Paramount and Nickelodeon. Maybe why it fits at universal is that, like Stretch Armstrong, it's hard to see (get it?) how they will stretch (zing!) the concept into a 90+ minute movie.

#7 BRYAN SINGER CONTINUES CAREER OF MUTANT AND NAZI MOVIES WITH X-MEN ORIGINS: MAGNETO?

Doing the publicity rounds for the DVD release of Valkyrie, director Bryan Singer revealed this week that he is "possibly" interested in returning to the X-Men movie franchise with X-Men Origins: Magneto. It's looking more and more likely that Singer won't be returning for a second Superman movie after the flawed Superman Returns, but the director is still fondly remembered for the two X-Men movies he directed, which were very, very good. Singer makes note, however, that the thematic quandary in directing Magneto will be that he's already done a couple of Nazi-themed movies (Apt Pupil and Valkyrie), as well as the Magneto flashback in X-Men. Says Singer: "I've lived in that Nazi universe for quite a while. I just might need to take a little break before I do something like that."

#8 HALLE BERRY IN TALKS FOR PAUL VERHOEVEN'S NEXT THRILLER, THE SURROGATE

One movie that almost made last week's Ketchup was The Surrogate, the next thriller from director Paul Verhoeven (Basic Instinct, Total Recall). This week, the little detail that lands the movie on the list is news that Halle Berry is in talks with 20th Century Fox to star. Berry took a couple of years off after 2007's Things We Lost in the Fire to have a baby, and recently filmed the multiple personality drama Frankie and Alice as her comeback. The Surrogate is about a couple who discover that the woman they hire to be their surrogate mother is crazy, but it's unclear whether Berry would be playing the title character, or the woman whose fertilized egg she's carrying. If Halle Berry is indeed to play The Surrogate, this will complete a "crazy lady" trilogy of sorts, following Gothika and the aforementioned Frankie and Alice. The Surrogate was written by the father/son team of Rod and Bruce Taylor (The Brave One) from a novel by Kathryn Mackel, and although there's no filming start date yet, the casting of Halle Berry suggests it might be sooner rather than later.

#9 EMILE HIRSCH TO BE, DEFINITELY NOT BE, HAMLET

Hamlet is one of William Shakespeare's most movie-adapted plays, with previous actors playing the Danish prince including Laurence Olivier, Niccol Williamson, Mel Gibson, Kenneth Branagh, and Ethan Hawke, who, at 29, at the time currently holds the record as the youngest actor, notable since Hamlet is supposed to be young. Emile Hirsch, 24 and star of Into the Wild and Speed Racer, wants to break that record. He's come up with an idea for a modernized American Hamlet as a "suspense thriller" about "a young man [who] must decide whether to kill his uncle to avenge the death of his father." This new Hamlet will be directed by Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight, Lords of Dogtown, also starring Hirsch) from a script by Ron Nyswaner (Philadelphia, The Painted Veil). Overture Films (Traitor, Righteous Kill) hopes to start production soon after the script is finished.

#10 THIS WEEK IN MONSTER KID MOVIES: MONSTER SAFARI, UNTITLED MATTEL MONSTER MUSICAL

This week saw the announcement of two thematically-tied movies: they're both for kids and features an ensemble of monsters. First up is the stop-motion animation project Monster Safari, which will set off Interweb nerd bells because it represents a collaboration between screenwriters Craig Zobel and Matt Chapman, (creators of Homestarrunner), Screen Novelties (the company behind Robot Chicken and Moral Orel), and the Jim Henson Company (The Muppets, obviously). Monster Safari is the story of "what happens when the Earth's monsters come out of hiding and a pair of bumbling crypto-zoologists spring into action to save them from a ruthless big-game hunter." Another Robot Chicken-related news story: show writer, Dan Milano, has been hired to work on Short Circuit; Dimension Films hopes he'll bring a "subversive edge" to the remake. Dimension will be keeping the same look for the new Number 5, with a producer noting that "we think of Wall-E as an extended trailer for our film." Going back to the monster angle, Universal has made a "big bucks deal" for an untitled upcoming Mattel toy property, which they will turn into a musical written by Hairspray team Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman. Although no details were revealed about this monster musical, the words "lore" and "mythology" were used in the article, and it is important to remember that Universal is the home of such classic monster franchises as Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, The Wolfman, Creature from the Black Lagoon, King Kong, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The two possibilities I see are that Universal could see whatever this new Mattel toy franchise is as being the latest addition to their monsters, or it could in fact be a toy version OF those monsters.

ROTTEN IDEA OF THE WEEK: BARBARELLA REMAKE CONTINUES ON WITHOUT ROBERT RODRIGUEZ

Recently, Robert Rodriguez confirmed that he would no longer be developing a remake of Barbarella, the schlocky 1968 sci-fi movie starring Jane Fonda, which would have starred his girlfriend Rose McGowan. This week, however, Entertainment Weekly broke the news that the remake project is being continued by Dino de Laurentiis (outside Universal, where the Rodriguez project was), with a very different type of director now attached: Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde, Monster-in-Law, 21). Where Robert Rodriguez could be seen as bringing a frenetic visual energy to a Barbarella remake (see: Grindhouse, Sin City, Spy Kids, etc), Robert Luketic's first two movies were just very vanilla comedies, and 21 was different from them, but nothing about it suggested anything along the crazy lines of Barbarella. Basically, this news gets the "Rotten Idea of the Week" tag because the idea of a Barbarella remake only seemed "fresh" when a director like Robert Rodriguez was attached. It's not so much that Barbarella is such a revered classic that it can't be touched (in fact, the original was kind of crappy), but just that Luketic seems like such a bland choice for a remake of a movie that, despite being flawed, was a randy and sexy landmark of the 1960s.

For more Weekly Ketchup columns by Greg Dean Schmitz, check out the WK archive, and you can contact GDS through his MySpace page or via a RT forum message. Greg also blogs about the TV show Lost at TwoLosties.Blogspot.com.