Hayden Christensen and Djimon Hounsou have been cast in “Mandrake”, an adaptation of the comic strip created by Lee Faulk, best known as the creator of The Phantom. The film’s official plot synopsis reads; “Jackson Mandrake lives life on the edge. Working as an underground magician and escapologist, his act has grown increasingly dangerous. Following a daring escape from an SUV that has been dropped out of an plane at the Burning Man Festival, he is coerced by the CIA into breaking a deep-cover agent named Xi Shing Lung out of a maximum security jail. Hypnosis, contortion, distraction and technical wizardry all come into play as Mandrake breaks the agent…

Sci Fi Wire has some exclusive concept art for the Sci Fi/Syfy Channel’s “The Phantom” mini-series scheduled for 2010, which you can check out below. Ryan Carnes has been cast as the Phantom in the TV original, written by father-son team Daniel and Charles Knauf and intended to be a backdoor pilot for launching a new live-action Phantom TV series. “The Phantom” is a comic strip created by Lee Falk, it stars a costumed crimefighter operating out of the African jungle, the latest in a line of avengers stemming back hundreds of years. The series began with a daily newspaper strip on February 17, 1936 and the character, credited with…

The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that Ryan Carnes (“Desperate Housewives”) has been cast in “The Phantom”, the cable channel’s adaptation of the classic comic news strip about the purple-clad ghostlike avenger. Isabella Rossellini will guest star in the mini-series as the villainous Lithia, bent on succeeding with her mind-control power experiments. Cameron Goodman and Sandrine Holt are also starring. “The Phantom” begins production on Monday, and will air next year on Syfyas a four-hour movie/mini-series. The character was created by Lee Faulk in 1936, and is the latest in a line of vigilante avengers dating back to the first Phantom ages ago, who battled pirates. The character is generally acknowledged…