Father Geek here with this week's edition of our weekly feature column that helps keep you up-to-date on all the film news you could have missed during the preceeding work-week, soooo grab some hot java and catch-up on Tinseltown coolness with...
THE WEEKLY RECAP...
TAKEN FROM VARIETY AND HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
CASTING
TAKEN FROM VARIETY AND HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
CASTING
* Tony Shalhoub is in talks to join Disney's PROVIDENCE for director Jeff Nathanson. He would play a union-controlling mobster in the film. Matthew Broderick, Alec Baldwin, Calista Flockhart, Tim Blake Nelson and Toni Collette also star.
* Johnny Depp will star in SECRET WINDOW, SECRET GARDEN, based on a Stephen King novella that David Koepp will script andl direct for producer Gavin Polone. Shooting is expected to begin in July. It's about a writer going through a painful divorce who is stalked by a psychotic stranger claiming that the writer stole his story but changed the ending.
* Christina Ricci and Giovanni Ribisi will star in I LOVEYOUR WORK for director Adam Goldberg (SCOTCH AND MILK). Franka Potente, Vince Vaughn, Joshua Jackson and Jason Lee will co-star in the film, written by Goldberg and Adrian Butchart. Elvis Costello will make a cameo. It's about the gradual meltdown of a fictional movie star.
* Mark Ruffalo will star opposite Jennifer Garner in 13 GOING ON 30 for director Gary Winick (TADPOLE) and Revolution Studios.
* John Corbett, Joan Cusack, Helen Mirren, Felicity Huffman, Amber Valletta and Hector Elizondo join Kate Hudson in Disney's RAISING HELEN for director Gary Marshall. It's about a young woman who is an assistant to the head of a modeling agency and is about to be promoted. Her world is turned upside down when her sister and brother-in-law die in a car crash and she is left to care for their three children. The script was rewritten by Jack Amile and Michael Begler and polished by Audrey Wells.
* Tilda Swinton will star opposite Michael Caine in THE STATEMENT, based on the novel by Brian Moore, for director Norman Jewison and Serendipity Point Films. Production begins in Europe in the spring. Ronald Hardwood (THE PIANIST) penned the adaptation about a man who once served as a Nazi executioner but now lives an anonymous life in southern France. When the government launches a new investigation, he finds himself a target of hit men and police, with his past closing in on him.
* Matt Damon will star in the feature adaptation of THE INFORMANT, based on New York Times investigative reporter Kurt Eichenwald's book, for director Steven Soderbergh and Warner Bros. It centers around the story of Mark Whitacre, a high-level mole at the self-declared "supermarket to the world," Archer Daniels Midland. Whitacre wore an FBI wire for more than two years to uncover a major price-fixing scam with ADM's Japanese competitors that brought the company millions of dollars in profit. ADM pled guilty in 1996 and paid a $100 million fine. Scott Z Burns is penning the adaptation of the book.
* Evan Rachel Wood (SIMONE) joins Tommy Lee Jones and Cate Blanchett in Ron Howard's Western THE MISSING. Shooting starts in March in New Mexico. Set in 1886, the story centers on a woman who reunites with her estranged, dying father in order to rescue her daughter who has been kidnapped by a band of outcasts. Ken Kaufman (SPACE COWBOYS) wrote the script, based on Thomas Eidson's novel THE LAST RIDE.
* Bill Paxton is in talks to star in THUNDERBIRDS, a live-action film version of the 1960s cult U.K. television show, for director Jonathan Frakes, Working Title Films and Universal Pictures. Shooting begins in March on location in the Seychelles, with studio work at Pinewood Studios in the United Kingdom. William Osbourne scripted. It's about a 12-year-old boy who must save his father and four brothers from imminent death and save the world from the hands of the evil Aristotle Spode. He has a little help from Lady Penelope, to be played by Sophia Myles.
* Brendan Fraser is in talks to star in the sci-fi pic 10th VICTIM, a remake of the 1965 Italian film LA DECIMA VITTIMA, for Myriad Pictres and director Dominic Sena. The story is set in the future, where contract killing is a sport. A woman is searching for her 10th victim in order to achieve the highest possible score and sets her sights on a particular man who turns out not to be such an innocent victim since he's out to get her first. Things get even more complicated when they fall in love.
* Jacinda Barrett and Morris Chestnut will star opposite John Travolta and Joaquin Phoenix in Disney's LADDER 49 for director Jay Russell.
* Chow Yun-Fat will star in the action-drama remake WALK LIKE A DRAGON for Paramount. It centers on an Asian official menaced by Golden Triangle crime lords who threaten to turn his San Francisco-based daughter into an drug addict. The daughter and her American love interest, who have not yet been cast, flee to Arizona.
* Frances McDormand joins the Untitled Nancy Meyers Project at Columbia Pictures. The comedy, written and directed by Nancy Meyers, stars Jack Nicholson, Diane Keaton, Keanu Reeves and Amanda Peet.
DIRECTOR/WRITER ATTACHMENTS
* Michael Lembeck (THE SANTA CLAUSE 2) will direct Nia Vardolos in CONNIE AND CARLA for Spyglass Entertainment. Production begins the first week of May. It's a female buddy comedy about two working-class dinner-theater singers who are forced to go undercover in Los Angeles as drag queens.
* Saturn Films and Aurora Prods. have optioned Michelle Lichter's script ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE with Florian Gallenberger attached to direct. Set in 1952, it tells the story of Rose Jennings, a two-bit wrestling promoter who travels the circuit and tries to manage his stable of performers and his young niece and nephew.
* Director Chris Nolan (MEMENTO, INSOMNIA) is in negotiations to make a deal to revive the BATMAN franchise for Warner Bros. It's unclear whether or not Nolan will write the script.
* Eriq La Salle will direct M'LADY, a modern-day retelling of MY FAIR LADY, for Fine Line Features. The story revolves around a black professor from Stanford University who remakes a "home girl" from the streets of East Palo Alto. The makeover is part of his project to become a dean at the school. Camille Tucker wrote the script.
* Jonathan Liebesman (DARKNESS FALLS) is in talks to direct the suspense thriller THE WATCH, which is set during World War II, for New Line Cinema.
* Peter Hedges (PIECES OF APRIL) will adapt THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA, based on Lauren Weisberger's upcoming novel, for Fox 2000. It's about a small-town girl who takes a job in New York working for the imperious editor of a fashion magazine.
* Pat Kelly (DON'T SAY A WORD) Thomas Carter (SAVE THE LAST DANCE) will direct the Pat Kelly (DON'T SAY A WORD) script BITE, a thriller involving a crime lord and his young protege, for Regency Enterprises.
* Martin Campbell (MASK OF ZORRO) will make EDGE OF DARKNESS, based on his acclaimed 1985 BBC miniseries. The six-hour story began as a murder mystery and then veered into the subject of the illegal harvesting of plutonium. The new project will be based in the U.S. and will make political points. Campbell and Andrew Bovell (STRICTLY BALLROOM, LANTANA) are writing the screenplay.
* Director Darren Aronofsky has signed a three-year, first-look deal with Regency Enterprises. The first project under development will be the novel FLICKER, with Jim Uhls (FIGHT CLUB) in talks to adapt. Written by Dr. Theodore Roszak, a Cal State history professor, it's a conspiracy thriller that takes a disturbing and revisionist look at film history. The story is told through the eyes of a Los Angeles film student who, after he becomes obsessed with the oeuvre of a hack filmmaker, determines that B movies are part of a plot to destroy life on Earth.
* David Marconi (ENEMY OF THE STATE scribe) will direct his script THE INFORMER, a political thriller set in the high-fashion world of Milan, Italy, where an ex-model, after she witnesses the death of her best friend, is recruited by an FBI agent to seduce and bring down an international arms dealer. The three find themselves in a high-stakes love triangle.
* Argentine helmer Luis Puenzo (THE PLAGUE) will direct LA PUTA Y LA BALLENA (THE WHORE AND THE WHALE) about a writer who finds an old letter hidden among the photos of a man who died in the Spanish Civil War. Aitana Sanchez-Gijon will star.
* Kevin Wade (MAID IN MANHATTAN) will write I DON'T KNOW HOW SHE DOES IT, based on Allison Pearson's novel, for Miramax. The book follows the day-to-day life of Kate Reddy, a successful investment banker who struggles to balance her high-powered career with an equally demanding role as a mom.
* Peter Segal (NUTTY PROFESSOR II, TOMMY BOY) will direct Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore in 50 FIRST KISSES, for Columbia Pictures. It's about a man who falls in love with a woman after a memorable encounter but finds out she has short-term memory loss. Because she has no idea who he is, he has to get her to fall in love with him all over again every day. George Wing wrote the original script, which was rewritten by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel.
* Charles Stone (DRUMLINE) is in talks to direct Bernie Mac in MR. 3000 for Disney about a retired Detroit Tigers baseball player who comes out of retirement when three of his base hits are disallowed, dropping him below the prized 3,000-hit plateau.
* McG (CHARLIE'S ANGELS) will direct a live-action feature film based on Mattel Inc.'s Hot Wheels for Columbia Pictures.
* Keith Merryman and David A. Newman have sold their romantic comedy pitch FAMILY PICTURES to Odd Lot Prods. It's about two lifelong friends who unwittingly bring their single parents together. As they attempt to break up the parents, the friends find themselves falling in love.
* Ken Kwapis will direct THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS for Warner Bros., based on the novel by Ann Brashares, about four teen best friends who share a magical pair of jeans that unites them when for the first time they are forced to separate. Delia Ephron scripted.
* Dimension Films grabbed the script THE MAN FROM NANTUCKET from writers Jeremy Garelick and Jay Lavender with Todd Phillips (ROAD TRIP) set to produce. Meanwhile, Phillips is writing, with Scott Armstrong, SCHOOL FOR SCOUNDRELS, a remake of a 1960 British comedy.
MISCELLANEOUS PRODUCTION TIDBITS
* Columbia Pictures and Red Wagon are developing a new big-screen version of BYE BYE BIRDIE.
* Fox Searchlight Pictures has picked up the rights to the Mexican comedy THE CANNIBAL'S DAUGHTER (LA HIJA DEL CANIBAL), based on Rosa Montero's bestselling novel. When a woman finds her husband has mysteriously disappeared, she goes in search for him, finding two friends who help her. Together they discover the value of friendship and passion.
* Twentieth Century Fox will release I, ROBOT on July 2, 2004 and MAD MAX: FURY ROAD on July 23, 2004.
* Warner Bros. and John Wells Productions have optioned RETRIBUTION, a first novel by former Florida Assistant State Attorney Jilliane P. Hoffman, about a female state attorney working on a case involving a sexual predator connected to a ferocious attack she suffered as a law student a decade earlier.
GUNN SHOTS
(NOT from the trades)
* BIKINI BANDITS, starring Corey Feldman, Maynard from Tool, the late Dee Dee Ramone and 60 scantilly clad women with guns is currently touring with the Backseat Film Festival. For more info, check out http://www.bikinibandits.com
* Check out http://www.RiverCityEnt.com to find out how to be an extra on HEART OF THE BEHOLDER, as well as viewing the short film SPECIAL.
* KING MIDAS will be available on home video and DVD Tuesday, Feb. 4th. KING MIDAS was produced by and features real-life drug dealers and convicts. It premiered at the 2001 Woodstock Film Festival. The film was part of investigation by the Connecticut State Police who tried to confiscate the rights under drug forfeiture laws. Read more at http://www.KingMidasTheMovie.com Their next movie, BRISTOL BOYS, which is based on the true story of the drug dealers who made KING MIDAS: http://www.bristolboys.com
