Sorry Renny Harlin, Steven Spielberg Didn't Steal 'Tintin' From You

Plus: Another day, another questionable remake from a Scott brother

From the Hollywood set: Renny Harlin stakes a claim to the Tintin movie, Tony Scott might be rebooting The Wild Bunch, and The Big Lebowski takes over Facebook.

• Steven Spielberg's long-awaited The Adventures of Tintin should have been directed by Renny Harlin, if you believe Renny Harlin. In a new interview with Vulture to promote his film 5 Days of Glory, the filmmaker--who has fallen on lean, straight-to-cable times since being paid a then-record $3 million to direct Die Hard 2 in 1990--says he told Spielberg that Tintin was his dream project in 1988 "after I had just done A Nightmare on Elm Street 4," which prompted Spielberg to buy the rights to the series. One small flaw in Harlin's account: according to Wikipedia, Spielberg acquired the Tintin rights in 1983. But it's still a good story. [Vulture]
• Director Tony Scott is in "early talks" to helm a reboot of Sam Peckinpah's very dusty, very bloody 1969 western The Wild Bunch. The Guardian notes plans to modernize the original go back to 2005, when Training Day screenwriter David Ayer wrote a draft that replaced aging gunmen and bandits with drug cartels and the CIA. We'll let you decide if this or brother Ridley's just announced follow-up to Blade Runner is the least promising Scott brother attempt to improve on a classic this week. [Variety]
• Universal is using The Big Lebowski to launch its new Social Theater Facebook application. The service lets users rent movies directly through the site's fan pages and  participate in what The Hollywood Reporter calls "a communal viewing experience," which in this case will likely involve lots of recipes for White Russians. [The Hollywood Reporter]
• Scarface director Brian De Palma hasn't made a movie since Redacted in 2007, but he's attached to direct The Key Man. According to Deadline, the thriller about a single father on the run from shadowy government agents is designed to be "a throwback to paranoid 70s movies like Three Days of the Condor and Marathon Man." [Deadline]
• Don't tell TNT the western is dead. The network picked up the pilot to Gateway, a drama about brothers, murder, and evil cattle barons set in 1880s-era Colorado. The Pacific's Bruce McKenna is signed on to executive produce. [The Hollywood Reporter]