Father Geek here with last week's weekly review. Due to a jam up in my E-mail this weekend I didn't get this till today, but its still crammed full of cool stuff, enjoy...
TAKEN FROM VARIETY AND HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
CASTING
CASTING
* Adam Sandler and Zhang Ziyi are attached to star in the comedy GOOD COOK, LIKES MUSIC, written by first-time writer Coleen Ventimilia, for New Line Cinema and Sandler's own Happy Madison Prods. It's about a lovable slacker who lives with his mother in a trailer park. During a drunked stupor, he sends away for a mail-order bride, who is a musical prodigy, and the two end up changing each other's lives.
* Martin Henderson (upcoming WINDTALKERS) will star opposite Naomi Watts in RING, a remake of the popular 1998 Japanese horror pic, for director Gore Verbinski and DreamWorks Pictures. Ehren Kruger (SCREAM 3) and Scott Frank (MINORITY REPORT) wrote the script. Production is slated to begin at the end of the year.
* Cedric the Entertainer (BIG MOMMA'S HOUSE, KINGDOM COME) will star in and produce an untitled project for Fox Searchlight. Todd and Richey Jones ("The Hughleys") pitched the project alongside Cedric as a family comedy feature about parenting in today's complex world.
* Jennifer Connelly landed the female lead in Universal's THE HULK for director Ang Lee. Production is expected to begin in the spring for a 2003 release. Eric Bana plays Dr. Bruce Banner and his alter ego, the Hulk. Connelly will play Banner's colleague, Betty, who is the daughter of General Ross, the man in charge of a military base where scientific developments occur. Nick Nolte is said to be up for the General's role.
* Britney Spears is in final talks with screenwriter James V. Hart (CONTACT) to write a feature project for her to star in. Details are currently being kept under wraps. Spears has recently formed a production company as well as signed with ICM for representation in all areas but music.
* Rutger Hauer joins the cast of Miramax's CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND as an East German hit man who mentors Chuck Barris, as well as the title role in the sequel to Dimension's DRACULA 2000.
* Nicole Kidman is in talks to star opposite Jim Carrey in the untitled Universal romantic comedy for writer/director Gary Ross. Shooting is set to begin in March for a Christmas 2002 release. It's about a man whose deceased wife comes back to haunt him, forcing him to confront the demons in their relationship.
* Russell Crowe is attached to star in HOGAN'S HEROES, based on the 1960s sitcom, for Imagine Entertainment and Revolution Studios. Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais wrote the most recent draft of the script.
* Mya has joined Renee Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Richard Gere, Queen Latifah, Christine Baranski and John C. Reilly in the musical pic CHICAGO for Miramax Films and director Rob Marshall. Production begins Dec. 12l
* Ralph Fiennes is expected to begins talks to join the cast of Universal's RED DRAGON as serial killer Francis Dollarhyde. Brett Ratner will direct the pic from a script by Ted Tally based on the Thomas Harris novel.
* Halle Berry may star opposite Pierce Brosnan as the femme fatale in the next James Bond pic, but she must work out the scheduling conflicts with the X-MEN sequel. Production is currently scheduled to begin Jan. 14 at Pinewood Studios in England with Lee Tamahori at the helm. The feature will be the 20th in the series and the 40th anniversary of the Bond franchise.
* Zooey Deschanel (ALMOST FAMOUS, upcoming THE GOOD GIRL) is shooting ALL THE REAL GIRLS in North Carolina for director David Gordon (GEORGE WASHINGTON).
* Sisters Marley and Samantha Shelton will star in the low-budget indie pic BETWEEN US to be directed by their father Christopher Shelton. Shooting begins next month. Jerry Rapp wrote the script about an emotional journey involving two sisters who embark on a road trip to bury a man presumed dead.
* Jim Carrey is planning to play Howard Hughes in a film that will be directed by Chris Nolan (MEMENTO).
* Arnold Schwarzenegger may join DMX in CRADLE TO THE GRAVE for director Andrzej Bartkowiak and Warner Bros.
* Rob Schneider is attached to star in the comedy HARV THE BARBARIAN about a simple barbarian who finds himself on a voyage of self-discovery. Production is expected to begin in June for DreamWorks and Winchester Films.
* Morris Chestnut will star opposite Lil' Bow Wow in LIKE MIKE for 20th Century Fox and director John Schultz. Shooting begins in January in Los Angeles. Mike Elliot wrote the script about a kid who finds a magical pair of Michael Jordan sneakers that takes him all the way to the NBA.
DIRECTOR/WRITER ATTACHMENTS
* Peter Wade will direct TRACKS, based on his own autobiographical script, starring Ice I, John Heard, Craig Wasson and Chris Gunn. In 1982, Wade was the first juvenile in New Jersey to be tried as an adult for causing a train to derail and killing the conductor. He served a two-year prison sentence, then worked on Wall Street for a decade, making a six-figure salary.
* Dimension Films and Collision Entertainment are developing Terminal Reality's adventure-horror PC video game franchise NOCTURNE as a big screen action/adventure movie. Brent Friedman ("Dark Skies") and Steve DeJarnatt (MIRACLE MILE) have written a script and production will begin next year. The game introduces players to a secret U.S. government group, the Spookhouse, that investigates supernatural cases in an effort to defend the country from monsters and other evil entities.
* Mark Fauser and Brent Briscoe will do a rewrite on the comedy project CROSS DRESSING for Universal Pictures and Shady Acres Entertainment. The story, based on the comic novel by Bill Fitzhugh, focuses on the twin brother of a recently deceased priest who takes the identity of his brother in order to escape accusations that he stole an idea from a fellow advertising exec at his company.
* Gillian Anderson has optioned the Elizabeth Rosner novel SPEED OF LIGHT, which the actress will adapt and direct after she finished her ninth and final season on "The X-Files." The book is about a young man who lives with his sister in Berkeley and has become a recluse after being brought up by a father traumatized by his ordeal as an Auschwitz survivor. A Latina housekeeper slowly starts to help the man while his sister has traveled to Budapest to trace the family's roots and discovers a horrible secret about her father's time in the concentration camp.
* Terry Gilliam is set to direct GOOD OMENS for Samuelson Prods. from a script he co-wrote with Tony Grisoni. The fantasy film is based on the cult comic by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.
* Roland Emmerich is attached to direct the World War I drama LIGHT OF PEACE, written by Mirko Betz, about two soldiers on opposite sides of the war who form an unlikely friendship.
* Jonathan Lynn will direct the action comedy CHEER UP, penned by John J. McLaughlin, for Bel-Air Entertainment. The story centers on a group of dysfunctional college cheerleaders who witness a murder after one of their cheerleading competitions. A hardened veteran FBI agent investigates the case and must learn to live with the rambunctious girls while dodging the gunmen bent on knocking them off before the group can testify.
* Ron Shusett (MINORITY REPORT co-writer) has optioned and is adapting the unpublished science fiction novella RH1658: A VERY HUMAN STORY from writers r. ellis frazier and Geoffrey Ross. John Chadwell and Ian Rabin are working on the adaptation with Shusett under the title CLONE REBELS. The story is set in 2081 and focuses on a surviving society, following a catastrophic man-made plague, that builds a post-apocalyptic paradise by creating an underground society of cloned humans to serve as a slave labor force. One laborer becomes an unwitting hero and leads a rebellion.
* Twentieth Century Fox has grabbed William Monahan's spec script TRIPOLI for Mark Gordon to produce. It's an epic historical drama, set during the Thomas Jefferson presidency, about the true story of how U.S. soldier/diplomat William Eaton joined forces with an exiled king to overthrow the corrupt ruler of Tripoli in what is now Libya.
* Paul Foley and Dan Forman are working on a rewrite on THE JETSONS for producer Denise Di Novi and Warner Bros. The live-action version of the cartoon series will be directed by Rob Minkoff (STUART LITTLE).
* Mike Newell may direct Julia Roberts in Revolution Studios' MONA LISA SMILE as well as 20th Century Fox's RUNAWAY JURY.
* Sony won Brad Gann's action spec STATIC for Neal Moritz to produce through his Original Films. It's about the imprisoned leader of Los Angeles' toughest street gang who, under the protection of his gang, must battle corrupt cops and rival gangs on his way across town to testify against the cops who wrongly convicted him.
* Dimension Films has hired Craig Mazin to write a new screen version of HARVEY.
* Fox 2000 and producer John Davis have picked up the romantic comedy script CHIP AND KEISHA'S WEDDING by scribes Brad Kaaya and Jeff Franklin. The screenplay centers on a mixed-race couple facing the shock of meeting their in-laws for the first time.
* Intermedia Films has optioned SKELETONS OF THE ZAHARA, a true story of American sailors shipwrecked in Africa in the 19th century. Baltimore/Spring Creek producers Barry Levinson and Paula Weinstein will produce with Doug Miro and Carlo Bernard adapting. It's about a group of sailors kidnapped and sold into slavery by Berber Tribesmen while attempting to cross the Sahara after their ship ran aground off the African coast.
* Carl Franklin has signed with Paramount to direct a pic based on the Susan Kelly book THE BOSTON STRANGLER: ALBERT DESALVO AND THE STORY OF ELEVEN SHOCKING MURDERS. Alan Rosen wrote the first draft.
* Peter Buchman (JURASSIC PARK III) has been hired to adapt the Paramount-based David Fisher novel THE WAR MAGICIAN as a potential star vehicle for Tom Cruise. The book tells the fact-based story of a British music hall magician who became a camouflage officer in the North African desert. There, he helped turn the tide of the war by baffling the Germans through illusionary tricks.
* Screenwriter Bruce McKenna is penning several projects including ONCE UPON A DISTANT WAR for Jerry Bruckheimer, EXPLAINING HITLER for Jim Sheridan and RENDEVOUS WITH THE RAMA for David Fincher.
* Screenwriter John Fusco has sold to Casey Silver the rights to his upcoming first novel, PARADISE SALVAGE, a coming-of-age story he'll write and direct for the producer. The book will be out in January.
* Scott Frank will direct BYE BYE BROOKLYN for Marc Platt Prods. and Gary Ross' Larger Than Life Prods from a script by Jordan Roberts. It's set in the 1940s and centers on a fatherless Jewish boy from Brooklyn who befriends a member of the New York Giants baseball team just before the start of World War II.
* Danny DeVito has replaced Greg Mottola in the director's chair of Miramax's comedy DUPLEX, starring Drew Barrymore and Ben Stiller. Production will now begin in January from a script by Larry Doyle. It's about a New York couple who dream of moving into a duplex apartment, but must first kill the kind old woman who inhabits it.
* John Wells Prods. has picked up the romantic comedy pitch LOVE AT SECOND SIGHT from scribe Kevin Bisch. Te story follows a cynical young man who abandons his skepticism and takes a leap of faith when he believes a psychic's forecast about his already finding true love. The man then goes on a quest to find out who he knows but has let slip by.
* Miramax Films has grabbed THIS IS NOT A TOY, a script by Cindy Davis Hewitt and Donald Hewitt about a young boy's action figure that comes to life and runs for president. Jane Startz Prods. is producing .
* Disney has snatched the comedy script WELCOME WAGON by K.A. Hoeffner about the romance between the most heavily recruited high school quarterback in Alabama and a young woman who works in the kitchen of a hot sorority.
* Adam Sandler is eyeing a role in the comedy ANGER MANAGEMENT about a timid businessman who is sentenced to an anger management program where he finds himself tutored by an ultra-aggressive psycho. The Revolution Studios project was written by David Dorfman.
* Disney has picked up Bill Kelly's script AIR RAGE, a psychological thriller set on an airplane about a man whose actions have unseen implications for himself and the other passengers.
* Scribe Mark Perez sold his script LIFE SAVER, a comedy in the vein of PLANES, TRAINS & AUTOMOBILES, to DreamWorks Pictures. Perez is also working on the comedy MR. FAMILY for Disney about a man who hires his housekeeper and her kids to pose as his family in an attempt to keep his job at his family-oriented company.
MISCELLANEOUS PRODUCTION TIDBITS
* Ted Turner has optioned THE LAST FULL MEASURE to possibly wrap up the Civil War trilogy that includes GETTYSBURG and its upcoming prequel GODS AND GENERALS starring Robert Duvall, Stephen Lang, Jeff Daniels and Mira Sorvino. FULL MEASURE takes the characters to the surrender at Appomatox. GETTYSBURG is based on the late Michael Shaara's novel THE KILLER ANGELS, while his son Jeff continued the series with the other two novels. Ron Maxwell wrote and directed the first two pics and will do the same for the third.
* Universal has optioned the picture book THE ANT BULLY, by John Nickle, for Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman's Playtone Co. to produce as a computer animated feature. The story is about a boy who is shrunk to ant-size after soaking an ant colony with his squirt gun. Tried and sentenced to hard labor in the colony, the boy learns the value of teamwork, fights off a wasp attack and tries to return to normal size.
* Solaris Entertainment has optioned the Rebecca Reisert novel THE THIRD WITCH, a reimagining of Shakespeare's MACBETH through the eyes of the youngest of the play's three witches, a mysterious young girl on a quest for vengeance.
GUNN SHOTS
(NOT from the trades)
* What's playing at Sundance in January? Look at the Sundance lineup at http://www.sundance.org
* LORD OF THE RINGS fans, visit a "line party page", specifically geared towards the fans who want to organize meetings with like-minded fans to wait for the opening of FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING. It's a database where fans can either join or create a line-up party at any theatre, in any city, in almost any country around the globe. http://www.theonering.net/movie/lineparty/
* Edward Furlong is cast as Jimmy in FIRECRACKER. Visit http://www.dikenga.com/films/firecracker for more.
* Melanie Lynskey (HEAVENLY CREATURES) has apparently joined the cast of SWEET HOME ALABAMA. Thanks to Lynskeyium2001 for the tip.
* TromaDance 2002 (Jan. 11-19) is calling for entries for their film festival. No entry fees. Submit your project on VHS 1/2" cassette. For more information, email TromaDance@troma.com or visit http://www.tromadance.com.
