It's a sad place for a movie to be...languishing in development. Since Rainbow Six's original conception as a movie project for Paramount Pictures, an entire other Tom Clancy novel film adaptation (Sum of All Fears) has come and gone. While Rainbow Six has seen a small army of writers and directors take their turn at bringing the project to life, nothing seems to be working out. Now, yet another director has been named to the project, and this one seems no more likely to succeed than the rest.

The Hollywood Reporter lists Zack Snyder (of Dawn of the Dead fame) as the man replacing John Woo in the director's chair. Woo had been tapped this time last year with no word on any action after that. At this point no producer is assigned to the film despite an anticipated 2006 release date. Frankly, given the project's current condition and the fact that nothing significant has taken place in the last six years to move the film forward, any kind of a release date seems optomistic.

The movie circulates around the story of an extremely covert British anti-terrorism unit led by ex-CIA agent John Clark. The book has been the subject of an entire franchise of popular video games. If it ever truly gets off the ground, Rainbow Six would be the first non-Jack Ryan Clancy novel to make it to the big screen. Can Snyder be a big enough driving force to make it happen? It's one thing to bring all-but-dead people back to life, but an all-but-dead movie project? We'll have to wait and see.