Hey folks, Harry here... There's lots of fun stuff here this week, but the most interesting is that Richard Kelly is writing a project for Tony Scott to direct... Remember when Tarantino did one of those.... yup, Kelly is that type of good. I have faith. I do. Then there's the two Werewolf projects... One has Wes Craven and... Kevin Williamson, remember him? ...working on it. The other is a big studio werewolf film with Angelina Jolie attached as a werewolf character. It's being written by the screenwriter of THE WAR ZONE, which means I'm instantly intrigued and interested, though I believe Jolie has a "bad film curse" on her that I hope she'll break soon. The key thing this project could do to get me all the way excited would be to hire Rick Baker's CINOVATION group to create and beat his work on AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON. CG werewolves have sucked ass thus far, go old school you bastards!
TAKEN FROM VARIETY AND HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
CASTING
* Diego Luna (Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN) will play the male lead in HAVANA NIGHTS, the sequel to DIRTY DANCING, for director Guy Ferland (BANG BANG YOU'RE DEAD). Shooting is scheduled to start early next year for a Nov. 21, 2003 release. The story follows a 17-year-old girl who moves with her family to revolution-era Cuba. While there, she defies her family's wishes when she falls for a young Cuban dancer who helps her discover herself. Luna will also star in the black comedy CIGARROS, DESAMORES Y 20 DIAMANTES (CIGARETTES, QUARRELS AND 20 DIAMONDS). It's about a socially inept computer hacker who spies on his stunning neighbor, played by Marta Belaustegui. The project will be shot in real time and directed by Hugo Rodriguez.
* Natalie Portman, Penelope Cruz and Jay Rodan will star in the epic romance HEAD IN THE CLOUDS for writer/director John Duigan, Dakota Films and Remstar. Production will begin in Paris in December and then continue in Montreal until the end of February. It's a love story set against World War II in Paris during the turbulent years leading up to the war, with the climax taking place in the liberation of the city in 1944.
* Hayden Christensen is in talks to play Vince Vaughn's slow-witted younger brother in the upcoming New Line thriller THE OTHER SIDE OF SIMPLE, also starring Don Cheadle.
* Guy Pearce will star in the family film TWO BROTHERS for director Jean-Jacques Annaud (ENEMY AT THE GATES, THE BEAR). Shooting begins next week. The story centers on twin tigers born amid the temple ruins and exotic jungles of French Indochina. Separated as cubs and taken into captivity, one tiger is forced to become a circus performer, the other a trained killer. Years later, the brothers find themselves reunited, but as forced enemies pitted against each other. Christian Clavier and Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu will also star. Annaud and Alain Godard wrote the script based on an original story by Annaud.
* Angelina Jolie will star in BITTEN for Warner Bros., based on a novel by Kelley Armstrong, about a woman who turns into a werewolf after she gets bitten and lives among a clandestine wolf pack in Canada. She decides to suppress her animal behavior for a normal human life, becomes a journalist and falls in love. She is drawn back to her pack, though, when a band of werewolves begins drafting criminals into its pack. Alexander Stuart (THE WAR ZONE) will write the script.
* William Baldwin will star in RED ROVER, opposite Jodi Lyn O'Keefe, for director Marc Grenier and producer Lee Faulkner. Alisandra Rand and Linda Cordeiro wrote the script about a brother and sister who travel to their family's old estate after the death of their father. While staying at the mansion, the two encounter strange occurrences that lead to the discovery that their family's ancient secrets of witchcraft and the occult have left them a target for danger.
* Tom Wilkinson will join Colin Firth and Scarlett Johansson in the dramatic indie pic GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING for director Peter Webber. Wilkinson is also in discussions to star in two other indie features: Gillian Armstrong's fairy-tale drama SEVENTH HEAVEN and the quirky drama LIVING AND BREATHING for filmmakers Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe.
* Claire Danes is in talks to star in the romantic comedy SHOPGIRL, based on the Steve Martin novella, for Lakeshore Entertainment and director Anand Tucker. Martin also stars. Production is slated to begin January in L.A.
* Dustin Hoffman and Ray Romano are in talks to star in the political comedy MOOSEPORT about a former U.S. president whose plan to retire in a small town goes awry when he's implored by townsfolk to fill an empty mayor seat. His opposition is an unassuming hardware store owner. Rod Lurie (THE LAST CASTLE) will direct the project from a script by Tom Schulman (DEAD POET'S SOCIETY) for Intermedia Films.
* David Paymer has joined Kate Hudson, Luke Wilson and Sophie Marceau in LOOSELY BASED ON A TRUE STORY (aka ALEX AND EMMA) for director Rob Reiner and Franchise Pictures. The story centers on the efforts of a man and woman to compose a novel within 30 days in order to pay off a gambling debt.
* Jo Champa joins Matthew Broderick, Carl Reiner, Brittany Murphy, Molly Shannon, Kevin Nealon and Liam Aiken in GOOD BOY! for director John Hoffman, MGM and Jim Henson Pictures. It's about an alien dog who comes to Earth and becomes the pet and good friend of a young boy.
DIRECTOR/WRITER ATTACHMENTS
* MGM grabbed Nick Guthe's script DON CORNELIUS for Cuba Gooding Jr. and Tierre Turner to produce through their Feel Good Films along with Tollin/Robbins Prods. It's about a repressed suburban accountant who finds out that his biological father is the head of the New York Mafia. When an attempt is made on the father's life, Cornelius ends up taking over the position.
* Stuart Beattie will adapt the story of The Pacific Clipper for Twentieth Century Fox. It will tell the true story of a group of 11 pilots who circumnavigated the globe after Pearl Harbor in 1941 in an effort to get back to America. The project will be based on two accounts, PACIFIC CLIPPER: THE UNTOLD STORY by Albert S.J. Tucker Jr. as well as ESCAPE OF THE PACIFIC CLIPPER by George L. Flynn.
* Lewis Colick (OCTOBER SKY) will adapt Robert Frump's novel UNTIL THE SEA SHALL FREE THEM, based on the true story of a rundown merchant marine ship that sank off the coast of Virginia in 1980, with the loss of 31 out of 34 men. In the following investigation, the ship's first mate was held accountable for the tragedy, but ultimately becomes a reluctant hero, defying the shipping industry and pressure from his community to stay quiet.
* Director Tim Story, as well as producers Robert Teitel and George Tillman Jr., will return for MGM's BARBERSHOP 2. Don D. Scott will write the script.
* Joel Schumacher is in talks to direct New Line's psychological thriller THE NUMBER 23 for Firm Films. It's about a man who is obsessed with an obscure book titled THE NUMBER 23 and becomes convinced that the book is based on his own life as the number 23 is woven throughout his life.
* Writer/director David DeFalco is about to begin shooting the horror pic THE HOUSE IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, inspired by Wes Craven's 1972 pic THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT. David Hess, Kevin Gage, Sage Stallone, Deborah Lacey and Chantal Berry.
* Dan Forman and Paul Foley will write SCOOBY-DOO 3 for Warner Bros. Pictures. The two have also rewritten a JETSONS draft for the studio.
* MGM is grabbing an untitled scuba pitch to be penned by Matt Johnson for Mandalay Pictures to produce. It's about a group of scuba divers who uncover the sunken wreckage of a plane that contains illegal substances. The divers then find themselve involved with a dangerous drug lord.
* Tony Scott will direct the dramatic thriller DOMINO for Fox 2000, with Richard Kelly (DONNIE DARKO) set to write the script. The project is based on the real-life story of Domino Harvey, an ex-Ford model and daughter of actor Lawrence Harvey who gave up her pampered lifestyle to become a real-life bounty hunter.
* Wes Craven will direct CURSED, written by Kevin Williamson, for Dimension Films. The project is set in L.A. and is being described as "a modern, hip twist on the classic werewolf tale." Shooting begins as soon as possible for an August 8, 2003 release.
* David Ellis (FINAL DESTINATION 2) will direct CELLULAR for New Line about a young man who receives a random call on his cell phone from a woman who has been kidnapped. Knowing she will die unless he helps her, the man embarks on a desperate attempt to save her life. Larry Cohen wrote the script.
* Jamie Vanderbilt (upcoming BASIC) will adapt Robert Graysmith's books ZODIAC and ZODIAC UNMASKED: THE IDENTITY OF AMERICA'S MOST ELUSIVE SERIAL KILLER REVEALED as a feature project for Phoenix Pictures. In 1968, Graysmith was an editorial cartoonist at the San Francisco Chronicle, where the Zodiac killer sent taunting letters documenting his deeds. The letters inspired Graysmith to begin his own investigation. He believes he identified the killer, but competing investigations and other circumstances meant the suspect was never caught. The man in question died in 1992.
* Bart Freundlich (THE MYTH OF FINGERPRINTS) is in talks to direct CATCH THAT GIRL, based on the Danish pic KLATRETOSEN, about three twelve-year-olds who plan a bank heist so the female of the group can pay for her father's spine operation.
* Davis Entertainment picked up the script EARTHBOUND from Gren Wells about the doomed but often amusing and poignant relationship between a beautiful 30-year-old cancer patient and the attending oncologist who is also her contemporary.
* Jonathan Tolins and Seth Bass will write the drama THE MARTIAN CHILD for New Line, based on a short story by science fiction author David Gerrold. It's about a single man who adopts a 6-year-old boy because he wants to experience fatherhood. Things go awry when the man begins to believe the kid's claim that he is a Martian.
* Maverick Films has acquired IBIZA, a pitch from Jonathan Mills and George Leonardopoulos that is similar to 1988's FRANTIC in that it concerns a disappearance that occurs in a wild party town.
* Columbia and producer Laurence Mark grabbed John Enbom's Civil War script SIX SHOOTERS, about a couple of Union soldiers hellbent on stealing gold that Confederate president Jefferson Davis loaded aboard trains during the siege of Richmond to keep them from falling into the wrong hands.
MISCELLANEOUS PRODUCTION TIDBITS
* Running Bull Pictures and Glenwood Prods. have merged to launch the feature production unit Spiderwood Entertainment. Their first project is the drama THE INNER CIRCLE, about a couple coping with breast cancer. Michael O'Keefe, Beth Broderick, Barbara Williams, Patrick Bristow, Wendy Benson-Landes and Ned Vaughn star for director Goran Gajic.
* RomanoShane Prods. have purchased feature rights to David Porter's FIXED: HOW GOODFELLAS BOUGHT BOSTON COLLEGE BASKETBALL, which follows the point-shaving scandal of the 1978-79 Boston College basketball team.
* Twentieth Century Fox has postponed indefinitely the release of the sniper thriller PHONE BOOTH, directed by Joel Schumacher and starring Colin Farrell, in light of recent tragic events.
* GANGS OF NEW YORK will now be released on Dec. 20, five days before CATCH ME IF YOU CAN.
* Andy Tennant is in talks to direct the Billy Wilder-esque comedy BEING BOOEY for Universal/Working Title. The plot is being kept under wraps.
* Sara Sugarman is in early talks direct CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE DRAMA QUEEN for New Line, based on the Dyan Sheldon novel.
* Warner Bros. Pictures has purchased the live-action feature film rights to Cartoon Network's "Johnny Bravo" as a possible starring vehicle for The Rock, for Original Film to produce.
* Ovation Entertainment has several projects in development including Steven Christopher Young's romantic comedy script MEANT TO BE; and the action/adventure THE RISING with Gregory Widen penning a rewrite as well as his own period pic THE QUEST.
* Columbia snapped up the screen rights to the Michele Faber bestselling novel THE CRIMSON PETAL AND THE WHITE as a vehicle for Kirsten Dunst, who would play a 19th-century prostitute who becomes intertwined with a powerful London family.
Until next week...
Elston Gunn
