Father Geek here with the 1st (for 2003) of Elston Gunn's regular weekly rehashs of the news from Tinseltown you may have missed during your busy work-week. Lots of cool info here this time, soooo sit back, relax, grap a big ol' mug of your favorite warm drink, and prepare to dig in to...
THE WEEKLY RECAP...
TAKEN FROM VARIETY AND HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
CASTING
TAKEN FROM VARIETY AND HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
CASTING
* Arnold Schwarzenegger and Cedric the Entertainer are in early talks to star in Intermedia Films' JOE'S LAST CHANCE for director Andrew Bergman and Outlaw Prods. It's about a dedicated hit man who travels to a tropical paradise to terminate his "mark." However, when the mark inadvertently saves the hit man's life, the hit man gives him a stay of execution and uses the opportunity to take a vacation, sparking a friendship with the man he is supposed to kill.
* Tom Wilkinson joins Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst and Mark Ruffalo in Focus Features' ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND, written by Charlie Kaufman, for director Michel Gondry. It's about Joel, who falls in love with Clementine, but once the relationship ends, they decide to eliminate the memories of the doomed affair. Halfway through the process, they change their minds, but it is too late to hide from Dr. Mierzwiak, who is supervising the elimination of their memory waves. At the same time, the married Mierzwiak is secretly having an affair with his secretary, while one of his technicians falls for Clementine.
* Ryan Reynolds (VAN WILDER) joins Anna Faris, Luis Guzman, Jay Mohr, Busta Rhymes and Molly Simms in the indie pic WAITING for writer/director Robert McKittrick. The story centers on a group of twentysomethings who work out their various crises in the midst of working at a busy chain restaurant.
* Gabriel Macht (BAD COMPANY) joins the cast of GRAND THEFT PARSONS alongside Johnny Knoxville, Christina Applegate and Marley Shelton. David Caffrey is directing from a script by Jeremy Drysdale.
* Method Man has joined the cast of New Line's THE OTHER SIDE OF SIMPLE for director Joseph Ruben. The project also stars Shannyn Sossamon, Hayden Christensen, Don Cheadle and Vince Vaughn.
* Calista Flockhart, Tim Blake Nelson and Toni Collette are in talks to join the cast of the mob feature PROVIDENCE for Disney and director Jeff Nathanson. Alec Baldwin and Matthew Broderick star.
* Amy Smart, Gil Bellows, Faye Dunaway and Giancarlo Esposito have rounded out the cast of Millennium Films' BLIND HORIZON, which Michael Haussman will direct. Val Kilmer, Neve Campbell and Sam Shepard star in the pic about a man who has lost his memory after being shot in a small desert town in New Mexico. He must piece together clues in an attempt to rediscover his identity as he is watched by a suspicious sheriff and taken in tow by a woman claiming to be his wife. The man slowly begins to believe that he is linked to a plan to assassinate the president. Paul Benz and Steve Tomlin wrote the script.
* Albert Finney is in talks to play the lead in the murder mystery/thriller DINNER MUSIC FOR A PACK OF HUNGRY CANNIBALS for writer/director Willard Carroll (PLAYING BY HEART). Production will start shooting next summer in Los Angeles. Finney would play an eccentric newspaper columnist drawn into the investigation of a murder in which none of the suspects apparently wanted the victim dead.
* James Gandolfini is in talks to star opposite Ben Affleck in SURVIVING CHRISTMAS for director Mike Mitchell about a wealthy young man who, stricken with a variety of neuroses that preclude him from having a normal family life, elects to hire a family with which to share the holidays. However, he discovers they are even more psychotic than his own troubled clan. Gandolfini would play the patriarch.
* Disney has given a greenlight to DEUCE BIGALOW: ELECTRIC GIGOLO, starring Rob Schneider, who is now working on the script to the sequel, with an eye to shooting next year.
* Nick Cannon (DRUMLINE) will star in and executive produce THE UNDERCLASSMAN for Miramax based on the 22-year-old Cannon's idea. The project would see him star as a 24-year-old detective who doesn't get any respect among his peers, who constantly send him on petty assignments at the mall and such. When he is sent to go undercover at an elite private school, he stumbles upon an international stolen-car ring involving some of the students.
* Disney and director Gavin O'Connor have cast Eddie Cahill opposite Kurt Russell in THE MIRACLE, where Cahill will star as goalie Jim Craig in the story of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team's gold medal quest.
* Kristen Stewart (PANIC ROOM) will star in Fox 2000's CATCH THAT GIRL for director Bart Freundlich and producer Andrew Lazar. Production begins next month in Los Angeles. It a remake of a the Danish feature KLATRETOSEN about a 12-year-old girl whose father needs a costly operation to fix a spine injury. The girl and two friends decide to rob the bank where her mother works in an attempt to get the cash to help her father.
* Amanda Peet is in final talks to play the much younger girlfriend of Jack Nicholson's character in an untitled comedy for director Nancy Meyers. Shooting starts Feb. 5 on the project, which Meyers wrote and will direct.
* Aishwarya Rai, India's biggest female film star, has been cast as the lead of Gurinder Chadha's romantic comedy PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: THE BOLLYWOOD MUSICAL. Rai (DEVDAS) will play the Elizabeth Bennet character in the contemporary version of the Jane Austen novel, set primarily in India. Chadha intends to cast an American actor as romantic hero Mr. Darcy.
* Hugh Grant joins the period drama HEAD IN THE CLOUDS for director John Duigan, starring Penelope Cruz, Natalie Portman and Jay Rodan. The Canadian-British co-production begins production in Paris Jan. 17. The pre-WWII epic romance concerns a young Cambridge student and a budding fashion photographer. Their relationship is severed when he heads to Spain to fight fascism, and they are reunited later as she puts her life on the line for him.
* Lauren Bacall and Nicole Kidman will join Danny Huston in Fine Line's BIRTH for director Jonathan Glazer (SEXY BEAST). It's about a 10-year-old boy who falls in love with an older woman. He then becomes convinced that he's the reincarnation of the woman's late husband, causing her to question her past.
* Vinnie Jones will star opposite Eddie Griffin in the action pic BLAST! for director Anthony Hickox. The movie, written by Steven DeSouza, is described as DIE HARD set on an oil rig with Jones playing a righteous environmentalist who hijacks the oil tanker. Production begins next month.
* Patrick Wilson will play rebel Army commander Col. William Barrett Travis in Disney's THE
ALAMO, joining Dennis Quaid and Billy Bob Thornton, who'll play future Texas President Sam Houston,
and the backwoods legend Davy Crockett, respectively. Jason Patrick (NARC) is slated to play the knife fighting brawler Jim Bowie. John Lee Hancock (THE ROOKIE) directs the
pic (set during the 1835-36 Texas revolution), initally scripted by John Sayles for Ron Howard, which will begin filming in late January just outside of Austin, Texas, where Disney
has built a 40-acre replica of the Alamo mission and the outlying town of Bexar (San Antonio).
DIRECTOR/WRITER ATTACHMENTS
* Antoine Fuqua will direct the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced KING ARTHUR for Disney. A spring start date is being eyed. The project is said to be based on a more realistic portrayal of King Arthur than has ever been presented onscreen. The film will focus on the history and politics of the period during which Arthur ruled as opposed to the mystical elements of the tale.
* Kirk Jones (WAKING NED DEVINE) will direct Emma Thompson in the family comedy NANNY MCPHEE from Thompson's script for MGM and producer Lindsay Doran. It's adapted from the NURSE MATILDA book series by Christianna Brand. T he stories follow a magical nanny and the rather large group of horrible children who surround her.
* Writer/director Justin Lin (BETTER LUCK TOMORROW) will direct THE TENTH JUSTICE for Fox 2000. It's adapted from the New York Times best-selling novel by Brad Meltzer, centering on a Yale Law School graduate, who gets embroiled in a conspiracy involving the Supreme Court following the revelation of a verdict. The project will follow the same story line, but the protagonist has been changed to a female lead.
* Nigel Sinclair and Guy East are developing a World War I script through their startup production company Spitfire Pictures. The script, tentatively titled THE GREAT WAR, is being developed for Intermedia with Larry Ramin (THE GATHERING STORM) and will tell of the intersecting lives of four soldiers in the last years of World War I.
* Nicholas Kendall will direct the romantic comedy ISLAND GAMES, set on a volcanic island that rises from the deep once every few centuries.
* New Line Cinema and Mutual Film Co. will produce an adaptation of the Lee Child novel KILLING FLOOR with John Rogers adapting the screenplay about an ex-military investigator who solves crimes as he drifts from city to city. He wanders into a small Georgia town to reconnect with an older brother but finds himself the key suspect in his brother's murder. He avenges his brother's death and uncovers a global counterfeiting ring that brings a corrupt town to justice.
* Phillip Noyce will develop with an eye to direct Columbia Pictures and producer Mace Neufeld's untitled project revolving around a real-life U.S. takeover of an Afghanistan city that was accomplished with a cavalry. Tentatively titled MAZAR E SHARIF, the project takes its roots in the true story that began shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, when the United States sent several 12-man Special Forces alpha teams to liaise with the Northern Alliance forces in preparation for their attack on the Taliban.
* Miramax Films has snapped up a rewrite of the classic 1958 film BELL, BOOK AND CANDLE, adapted by Andrew Stengel. The original starred Kim Novak as a witch who enchants her neighbor, played by Jimmy Stewart, because she despises his fiancee. The film also starred Jack Lemmon and Ernie Kovacks and was based on a play by John Van Druten.
* Paramount Pictures has tapped Joel Wyman to script the remake of THE WARRIORS to be directed by Tony Scott.
* Andrew Klavan has come aboard to adapt Jeffrey Deaver's novel THE BLUE NOWHERE for Warner Bros. and producer Joel Silver. Additionally, Warners and Silver purchased Klavan's spec script WXYZ. NOWHERE is a thriller about a homicide detective who recruits an expert hacker to stop a serial killer who uses technology to stalk his victims. WXYZ is the story of a late-night talk show host at a small-town radio station who encounters supernatural warnings involving a series of murders that he may or may not be responsible for.
* Emmett/Furla Films purchased the action script SNAKESKIN by actor-turned-scribe Caesar Luisi. It's about a man who specializes in "acquiring" specialty items for the highest bidder. He seeks revenge when he's double-crossed and must recover a priceless relic.
* Writer/director Chris Fisher (NIGHTSTALKER) will next direct the psychological thriller THE HILLSIDE STRANGLER from his own script. Shooting is slated to begin in late February in Los Angeles.
* Intermedia Films picked up THE TRANSLATOR, a comic script by Tom Lassally and Chris Henchy ("Spin City"). It's a take on the classic Cyrano de Bergerac tale. A translator is hired to make a Spanish diplomat appealing to a woman for political reasons. However, as he sells the merits of this suave loser, the translator finds himself falling in love with the woman.
* French director Catherine Breillat (ROMANCE) has begun shooting ANATOMIE DE L'ENFER, based on her sexually explicit novel PORNOCRATIE. Rocco Siffredi and Amira Casar will star.
* Pedro Almodovar (TALK TO HER) will next direct LA MALA EDUCACION (BAD
EDUCATION) in April. It follows the lives of two boys from a 1960s church
school in three time periods to adulthood. Shooting will take place in
Madrid and a rural part of Valencia in eastern Spain.
MISCELLANEOUS PRODUCTION TIDBITS
* New Line Cinema has committed to make THE REAL SPRING BREAK, a film that will be shot in Cancun in March and released in early summer.
* Producers William J. Macdonald and Preston Holmes are teaming with 4 Reel Entertainment to tell what they feel is the real story behind the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in a feature film project titled CODENAME: ZORRO. The pic, whose title comes from the FBI's code name for King as they were surveilling him, was written by Justin Stamm and mixes factual information with poetic license as a conspiracy film about the murder surrounding King.
* Warner Bros. is closing a deal to become the domestic distributor of Oliver Stone's epic ALEXANDER THE GREAT, a move that allows producer Intermedia to greenlight the picture for a June start. Colin Farrell will star as the Macedonian conqueror. The director spent the last year working exclusively on scouting and rewriting a script. The result, said insiders, is as strong as anything the Oscar winner has written.
* Distributor Gaga has taken an exclusive option on the film rights to Capcom's samurai computer game ONIMUSHA with RESIDENT EVIL producer Samuel Hadida attached to develop the project for the bigscreen.
GUNN SHOTS
(NOT from the trades)
* The movie ELEVATOR featuring actors from the main stage cast of SECOND CITY has already started playing online. This is the second movie in a series of online movies from Sonnyboo Productions that will feature the entire main stage cast of the Second City. The movies can all be seen on www.sonnyboo.com, www.triggerstreet.com as well as several other short film sites.
* BACKSEAT CONCEPTIONS are proud to announce the arrival of Park City's most anticipated event of January 2003. The first ever BACKSEAT FILM FESTIVAL will consist of two days of stimulating screenings and debaucherous parties on Jan. 20th and 24th, and an inaugural cocktail reception on the 19th. For more info, visit Their Site.
* A couple of readers chime in about the Snake Plissen anime project, "...the script is truly incredible. ...In this movie you will learn how Snake lost his eye as well." "The writers of the film are Corey Mitchel and William Wilson and the script is totally awesome!! ... In this one, Snake is going to kill the President... By the way, if you like Bruce Lee then you will love this flick when it comes out. ... Also, the White Tiger from Big Trouble in Little China will be making an appearance in this film as well."
* Here are a couple of reviews of the new "Battlestar Galactica": Just Click Here, and then if you want more Click Right Here.
* Created for fans by fans, Anime Reactor reaches beyond current Anime trends to introduce emerging artists and premiere Japanese anime products. Creative fan panels, seminars, and social activities make Anime Reactor attractive to both new and experienced fans. For more information, check out www.animereactor.org.
* From moviefans.de and placeboproductions: While several studios are involved with the licensing rights to THE VILLIKON CHRONICLES and THE CRUCIBLES OF MYSTERE, a trailer is being lensed to debut this year and adult screen siren CHEYENNE SILVER may have snagged the coveted role. Visit http://www.cheyennesilver.com/mystere.htm for a first look. Also, visit http://www.moviefans.de/a-z/v/villikon-chronicles/ and http://www.placeboproductions.net
