Father Geek here with Elston Gunn and another of our week-in-review reports for all of you who may have missed some of the last work-week's breaking tinseltown stories the first time around, sooooo get comfortable, fill your trusty supersize AICN mug with your fave warm drink and prepare to dig into...
The WEEKLY RECAP...
TAKEN FROM VARIETY AND HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
CASTING
TAKEN FROM VARIETY AND HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
CASTING
* Reese Witherspoon is attached to star in the romantic comedy SPORTS WIDOW, written by Liz Kruger and Craig Shapiro, for Universal Pictures. The studio is the new home for Witherspoons production company Type A.
* Bill Murray, Laura Linney and John Turturro are in advanced negotiations to co-star in THE SQUID AND THE WHALE for writer/director Noah Baumbach (KICKING AND SCREAMING, MR. JEALOUSY) and producers Wes Anderson and Peter Newman. It's about an eccentric Brooklyn family whose patriarch claims once to have been a famous novelist but now teaches. When his wife becomes a literary talent it breaks up the family, leaving the two teenage sons divided between their parents. The wife starts an affair with her younger son's tennis coach, while the husband starts sleeping with a student whom his elder son is courting.
* Sean Penn and Woody Allen will star in WHY MEN SHOULDN'T MARRY for writer/director/producer Steve Bing and Shangri-La Entertainment. It's about a man who rebounds from a painful divorce by becoming an anti-marriage guru. He finds himself in conflict with a veteran divorcee man who still believes that a marriage can be successful. Production begins in Los Angeles next August.
* Eddie Griffin will star in the action pic BLAST!, which is described as DIE HARD on an oil rig, for director Anthony Hickox (HELLRAISER III). Steven E. De Souza (DIE HARD) wrote the script. Shooting begins in December in South Africa.
* Ashton Kutcher and director Phil Joanou are in negotiations to star in and helm, respectively, the action/comedy REGULATORS for Disney. Tristan Patterson wrote the script about a surfer cop working in Long Beach who finds himself teamed up with a black officer from the "hood" who is ready to clean up his newly assigned city.
* Morris Chestnut is in final talks to star opposite Jamie Foxx in THE BREAK UP HANDBOOK for Screen Gems and writer/director Daniel Taplitz. Shooting begins next month in L.A. The comedy centers on a man who writes a how-to book on breaking up and becomes a best-selling author on the subject. Not wanting his male friends to suffer the same fate, he gives them advice on dumping their mates, and a comedy of errors ensues.
* Actress Romola Garai will star opposite Diego Luna in HAVANA NIGHTS: DIRTY DANCING 2 for director Guy Ferland, Miramax Films and Artisan Entertainment.
* Josh Lucas will join the cast of New Line's SECONDHAND LIONS starring Michael Caine, Robert Duvall, Haley Joel Osment, Kyra Sedgwick and Nicky Katt for director Tim McCanlies (THE IRON GIANT).
* Nicole Kidman is attached to star in MANDALAY, Lars von Trier's second part of a trilogy that begins with DOGVILLE. Kidman will play the same character in the project which is scheduled to begin production in August 2003.
* Andy Garcia will direct and star in the drama THE LOST CITY, written by Cuban exile author G. Cabrera Infante. Robert Duvall, Dustin Hoffman, Benicio Del Toro, Javier Bardem, Benjamin Bratt and Tomas Milian will also star. It's about three brothers caught in Cuba's turbulent transition from the increasingly oppressive regime of Fulgencio Batista to the Marxist government of Fidel Castro in the late 1950s. Castro's regime ultimately leads the club owner to flee to New York. Bratt will play one of Garcia's brothers, and either Del Toro or Bardem will likely play the other brother. Duvall will play the head of Batista's secret police force. Hoffman will portray Meyer Lansky, who with fellow gangster Lucky Luciano crafted the mob's infiltration into Havana nightlife. Shooting begins at Miami Beach in April.
* Julianne Moore is attached to star in RUNNING WITH SCISSORS, based on the novel by Augusten Burroughs, for writer/director Ryan Murphy. It's about the author's mother Deirdre, a bipolar poet with delusions of grandeur who falls into the care of an unorthodox male psychiatrist in the mid-1970s.
* Pierce Brosnan has agreed to play James Bond for the fifth time for producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson. Filming probably would not begin until early 2005.
* Mandy Moore is in discussions to star in a remake of A SUMMER PLACE for Edmonds Entertainment, Gold Circle Films and Storyopolis Prods. The romantic drama centered on two teens who fall in love at a summer resort at the same time that her married father and his married mother also rekindle an affair from years ago. Nicholas Di Bella is writing the new script.
* Indian superstar Salman Khan will star in MARIGOLD for director Williard Carroll.
* Mike White will star opposite Jack Black in Paramount's comedy SCHOOL OF ROCK, which he penned for director Richard Linklater and producer Scott Rudin. Production begins Nov. 25.
* Juliette Binoche will star with Daniel Auteuil in CACHE for director Michael Haneke. It's about a couple thrown into turmoil when they receive anonymous videocassettes depicting their own lives. Production will begin in the summer.
* Jessica Lange is in talks to star in BIG FISH for director Tim Burton and Columbia Pictures. Ewan McGregor, Albert Finney and Billy Crudup also star. John August adapted the novel by Daniel Wallace.
DIRECTOR/WRITER ATTACHMENTS
* Columbia Pictures has snapped up Geoff Rodkey's family comedy pitch RV for Red Wagon to produce. An average, dysfunctional American family sets off on the most dangerous, high-stakes, life-threatening and traumatizing adventure of their lives: two weeks together in an RV.
* Daniel Seligmann will write THE FORGOTTEN for Winchester Films and The Donners Co. The plot line is being kept under wraps, but it is described as a supernatural thriller in the vein of MEMENTO and THE SIXTH SENSE.
* Anand Tucker is attached to direct NOVEMBER 5TH about the Gunpowder Plot to blow up the English Houses of Parliament in 1605. Frank Cottrell Boyce will write the script for Artists Independent Network.
* Steven Soderbergh will direct one segment of a three-part ensemble film titled EROS, comprising works by Michelangelo Antonioni and Wong Kar-wai. Soderbergh is replacing Pedro Almodovar on a segment, though Almodovar will still contribute by creating a visual "framework" for the three tales of human love and sexuality.
* Theory Films picked up the film rights to GATEKEEPER, Philip Shelby's 1998 novel about an American in Paris who discovers that the assassin who murdered her parents 15 years ago is on the move to the U.S. She teams up with a covert assassin, known as a gatekeeper, to track him down and stop him from killing again. Jeff Sherwood (THE BRINK) is close to a deal to adapt. Shelby is also signed to write a script titled PAYLOAD.
* New Line Cinema has optioned the rights to MEMORY OF DEMONS, the latest book from David Ambrose, with Peter Care in talks to direct from a Fernley Philips adaptation. The upcoming novel follows a father whose demons come back to haunt him when his young daughter appears possessed by a murdered girl.
* Gerard Jugnot will direct the third ASTERIX film for Claude Berri's Reen Prods. Production may begin next year.
* David Mackenzie (YOUNG ADAM) will replace Paul McGuigan as director of Paramount's ASYLUM, but producers are still looking for a new lead for the project after Liam Neeson dropped out. Natasha Richardson stars in the pic, which Patrick Marber adapted from the Patrick McGrath novel. It's about a woman who moves outside London after her forensic psychiatrist husband takes a job in a remote maximum-security hospital for the criminally insane. There, she falls under the spell of a charismatic artist who has been confined for murdering his wife.
* Rick Rosenthal will direct NEARING GRACE for his newly-formed Whitewater Films. It's a coming-of-age drama, based on the novel by Scott Sommer, about an eccentric teenager who nearly drops out of life after the death of his mother, but who rediscovers life in the arms of a woman named Grace. Jacob Estes wrote the adaptation. Other projects in development at Whitewater include the L.A. cop flick BULLDOGS; the script MEAN CREEK about kids who accidentally kill the school bully; the urban comedy SHOOTING BLANKS; and BURNT BRIDGE ROAD, about a guy who changes the fate of a small New England town.
* Working Title Films is developing a feature based on the true story of Betty Ann Waters, a high school dropout who represented her brother in a murder case. Tony Goldwyn will direct from a script by Pamela Gray (MUSIC OF THE HEART, A WALK ON THE MOON) is writing.
* William Monahan will write a fourth installment of JURASSIC PARK for Universal Pictures and producers Steven Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy.
* Michael Brandt and Derek Haas (THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS 2) have sold their script PHOTOGRAPH to Lions Gate, with Rat Entertainment attached to produce. Set in Las Vegas, the thriller centers on a female boxer and her down-on-his-luck ex-husband, who has to track down an elusive photograph before the subject of the photo catches up with him.
* Will McRobb and Chris Viscardi's (SNOW DAY) pitch WE'RE HAVING A BABY was picked up by Paramount for Kerner Entertainment Company to produce. It's a domestic comedy that chronicles the chaotic two weeks before the birth of a young couple's first child as the families of both the mother and the father come to "help." The pitch is based on an original idea by Kerner.
* Kevin Allen will direct New Line's SMART AND SMARTER about two genius brothers raised in a think tank. When they're suddenly thrust into the real world, they find that they're so smart, yet lacking common sense, that they actually think themselves into problems. Dan Wilson and David Gilbreth wrote the script, which is not related to DUMB AND DUMBER.
* Doug Liman is in talks to direct the action/adventure MR. AND MRS. SMITH, written by Simon Kinberg, for Regency Enterprises. It's about a bored married couple who discover they are enemy assassins hired to kill each other.
* Scott Silver (8 MILE) will write Universal/Imagine's biopic about Playboy creator Hugh Hefner.
* Lasse Hallstrom will direct the Disney period pic CASANOVA about the famed Lothario who learns the meaning of love when he finds a woman immune to his charms.
* David Gordon Green (GEORGE WASHINGTON) will direct A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES from a script by Scott Kramer and Steven Soderbergh, based on John Kennedy Toole's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, for Miramax Films. Production will begin in New Orleans in the spring. The novel centers on Ignatius J. Reilly, a colorful would-be academic who suffers through a series of lousy jobs, stilted romances and misadventures while living at home with his mother in 1960s-era New Orleans. Kramer will also produce with Flower Films' Nancy Juvonen and Drew Barrymore, who will play a role in the film. Soderbergh and Scott Rudin will serve as executive producers.
* Argentinean filmmaker Tristan Bauer is directing the drama ILUMINADOS POR EL FUEGO about the 1982 Falkland Islands war. The project is based on a book by Argentinean journalist Edgardo Esteban, who was a soldier during the conflict. Bauer co-wrote the adaptation with Esteban, journalist Miguel Bonasso and poet-writer Gustavo Romero Borri.
* New Line and Warner Bros. are partnering with Vice, a Brooklyn-based underground music magazine, on the DIRTY BOMBS by magazine co-founder Shane Smith and managing editor Eddy Moretti. It's about a man who heads to Eastern Europe hoping to find and photograph a black market nuke.
MISCELLANEOUS PRODUCTION TIDBITS
* Warner Bros. picked up the remake rights to the Korean pic MARRYING THE MAFIA, about a lawyer who finds himself in hot water after awakening from a one-night stand to discover that his bedmate is the daughter of a mob kingpin. The lawyer's given the choice of marriage or extinction.
* Mindfire Entertainment has picked up the feature rights to Sega's ninja video game franchise SHINOBI. The project is targeted for a summer 2004 release.
* Crystal Sky has made a deal with Namco and Gaga for feature rights to "Pac-Man" for a live-action pic.
* Universal Pictures has picked up the graphic novel series WHITEOUT in turnaround from Columbia Pictures for Radiant Prods. and Type A to produce as a Reese Witherspoon vehicle. The Greg Rucka-created graphic novel follows U.S. Marshal Carrie Stetko as she uncovers the first murder ever in the Antarctic just as the sun is about to set for six months. She must catch the killer before he leaves the ice or be stuck there with him in the dark for six months.
* Phoenix Pictures has optioned SOCIAL CRIMES, Jane Stanton Hitchcock's novel about a Gotham socialite who, after she loses her position to her husband's mistress, enters a cat-and-mouse game with the younger woman to exact revenge. Joel Schumacher is in talks to develop the project.
* Warner Bros. Pictures is in close to acquiring the feature rights to the comic book series BALL & CHAIN by Scott Lobdell, who will write the adaptation. The romantic comedy centers on a divorced couple who become endowed with superpowers that function only when the bickering twosome are together.
* BJ Film is developing a biopic of golfing legend Bobby "the Georgia gentleman" Jones, who dominated the sport from 1923-29 and retired at 28. Shooting begins in March in Atlanta.
* Universal is in talks to snap up Larry McMurtry's 19th century American West novel BOONE'S LICK for the Playtone Co. to produce. The book focuses on the Cecil family, led by Mary Margaret Cecil, who packs up her brood of kids and travels from Boone's Lick, Mo., to Fort Phil Kearny, Wyo., to search for her wayward husband.
GUNN SHOTS
(NOT from the trades)
* Key West Indie Fest is now accepting script submissions via email. Find out more at This Location.
* The Tinseltown Web Show is a 24-hr Celebrity Fest of the latest news, Hollywood features, the spiritual side of Hollywood, music news & features and London news/features. For an exclusive sneak preview of the show log on to: By Just Clicking Here.
* See THE TUNNEL in L.A. at Raleigh Studios in the historic Chaplin Theater on Sunday, Nov. 10th @ 2:30pm as part of the FirstGlance Film Festival. More info at these two spots www.raleighstudios.com and www.firstglancefilms.com/losangeles
* Sylvester Stallone may star in a UK-set action thriller as the lead villainous role. A former Dutch/English Para Trooper who robs a priceless Picasso from Europe's largest shopping mall comes up against an ex colleague who now works as a security guard.
* Vin Diesel is apparently up for Michael Knight in the feature version of KNIGHT RIDER.
* David Fincher's MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 3 was almost about the destruction of Wonders of the World, but since the tragic events of 9/11, a script is now being re-worked - set predominantly in Africa - about human organ trafficking.
* 7th Art Releasing presents the directorial debut of acclaimed photographer Danny Clinch and filmmaker Sam Lee, PLEASURE & PAIN, an intimate documentary of roots rock icon Ben Harper. Begins US Theatrical Run in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Sunset 5 on Thursday, November 14th at 9:30pm. For more info visit one of these locations http://benharper.net, www.7thart.com, www.greengalactic.com
