Father Geek here along with a snow and ice bound Elston Gunn to bring you this week's edition of our long running weekly column thats a look at all that movie news you may have missed during the past work-week... sooooo, sit back, relax, and prepare to breeze thru another issue of...
THE WEEKLY RECAP...
TAKEN FROM VARIETY AND HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
CASTING
TAKEN FROM VARIETY AND HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
CASTING
* Franka Potente will star in EYES OF THE STREET for director Josh Rofe about a teenager who accidentally kills a fellow student in a brawl and finds himself ostracized after spending three years in juvenile detention. He leaves home to share an apartment with a prostitute and a transsexual; all three are trying to find their way in the world.
* Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta-Jones and producer Laura Bickford (all of TRAFFIC) are re-teaming for MONKEYFACE, a racetrack heist thriller that will shoot in Miami in late September. Stephen Frears will direct the project.
* Tim Allen is in talks with Paramount to develop and star in the studio's remake of FATHER KNOWS BEST and is also in early negotiations with Disney about a two-pic deal that would include another SANTA CLAUSE installment.
* Val Kilmer is set to star in the political thriller SPARTAN for writer/director David Mamet about a special service officer who is asked to investigate the kidnapping of the daughter of a famous political figure.
* Sylvester Stallone will play the villain, the Toymaker, in SPY KIDS 3-D: GAME OVER for director Robert Rodriguez. His character is a longtime nemesis of the sleuthing Cortez family who traps the young heroine Carmen in a warped virtual-reality game. Shooting is underway for an expected July release.
* Robert Redford will star alongside Jennifer Lopez in AN UNFINISHED LIFE for director Lasse Hallstrom, Miramax Films and Revolution Studios. The story centers on a down-on-her-luck single mom who is forced to move in with her estranged father-in-law. Through time, they learn to forgive each other and heal old wounds. Virginia and Mark Spragg wrote the script.
* Jack Black and Kyle Gass will star in a film to be directed by music video helmer Liam Lynch. Black, Gass and Lynch will also write the script, with Black and Gass producing as well. The plot is being kept under wraps, but it is said to be a fictitious story revolving around how the duo became the greatest band on Earth.
* DMX will star in and produce the thriller NEVER DIE ALONE for director Ernest Dickerson. Based on a 1974 book by cult novelist Donald Goines, it also stars David Arquette and Michael Ealy and follows the story of a gangster whose murder is witnessed by an aspiring journalist.
* Charlie Sheen will star in SCARY MOVIE 3 for director David Zucker and Dimension Films. Production begins next month.
* Robert Downey Jr. is in talks to star opposite Halle Berry and Penelope Cruz in Dark Castle Entertainment's supernatural thriller GOTHIKA for director Mathieu Kassovitz. Production begins in April.
* Judi Dench is in final talks to star opposite Vin Diesel in Universal Pictures' CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK for writer/director David Twohy, Radar Pictures and One Race Prods. Production begins in Vancouver in April. Colm Feore will play the lead villain in the project.
* Mike Myers is furthering his relationship with DreamWorks, signing a unique feature film production deal that will include several projects that will be examples of "film sampling," in which DreamWorks would acquire the rights to existing motion picture hits and classics, write new story lines and insert Myers and other actors into the film to create an entirely new piece of entertainment.
* Josh Hartnett has emerged as the top contender to star in SUPERMAN for Warner Bros. and director Brett Ratner. The negotiation of the deal and the commitment to doing three consecutive features are reportedly said to be bigger issues than looks or acting capability.
* Jeremy Sisto, Lauren Graham and Billy Burke are among those who will topline Ambush Entertainment's indie horror-comedy DEAD AND BREAKFAST for writer/director Matthew Leutwyler. Ever and David Carradine, Bianca Lawson, Erik Palladino, Gina Phillips, Oz Perkins and Vincent Ventresca also star.
* Michael York and Faye Dunaway will play King Edward VIII and American divorcee Wallis Simpson, the woman he left his throne to marry, in THE BAHAMA TRIANGLE for director Kevin O'Connor. Shooting begins June 30. The script revolves around Simpson's secret affair with American Jimmy Donahue, a rich and notorious homosexual, when the rechristened Duke and Duchess of Windsor relocated to the Bahamas following her husband's 1936 abdication. The picture weaves in the story of Harry Oakes, a friend confidant of the duke and the one-time richest man in Canada, who was brutally murdered in his Nassau home in 1943.
DIRECTOR/WRITER ATTACHMENTS
* Rod Lurie will direct Paul Walker in Universal's HEART OF A SOLDIER, a love story between a West Point cadet and a Manhattan socialite.
* Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Films have picked up an untitled family comedy pitch to be written by Alex Reid ("Malcolm in the Middle") for Stone Village Prods. It's a group of misfit kids who go away to a junior police academy and become heroes when they solve a real-life crime.
* Grammnet Prods. picked up Julie Sherman's romantic comedy pitch IF YOU ONLY KNEW about a woman who desperately wants to get married, but when a psychic tells her she won't be introduced to her husband for three years, her life changes as she stops thinking every guy is "the one."
* Paramount is in talks with Massy Tadjedin to write a remake of the Asian thriller THE EYE about a blind woman who undergoes a corneal transplant that restores her sight but also allows her to see unearthly things.
* State Street Pictures is teaming with 20th Century Fox and Fox 2000 on two projects: the romantic comedy TWO YEAR MARK, with Halle Berry attached to star, and the coming-of-age story ROLL BOUNCE. The former was written by Maisha Yearwood and follows a thirtysomething couple who have just broken up but are forced to live with his parents after a fire accidentally burns down their loft.
* Brad Anderson will direct his psychological thriller script LUCID for Warner Bros. about a woman who cannot distinguish between real life and dream life.
* Disney grabbed Brian Winfrey's action comedy script MAID OF HONOR about a female James Bond type who returns home to small-town America to attend her estranged sister's wedding.
* Documentarian Mark Jonathan Harris will write, direct and produce an inside look at the Moscow Arts Theater, which launched in the late 1800s as the creative home to such legendary drama figures as Russian writer Anton Chekhov and actor-director Konstantin Stanislavsky. The film will include numerous interviews with major stars who are advocates of Stanislavsky's method.
* Steve Gaghan will adapt and direct AND DEAD I WELL MAY BE, based on an upcoming novel by Adrian McKinty about an Irish mobster who sets himself up for retribution when he romances the boss's mistress.
* Warner Bros. is near a deal with director Penny Marshall on COVER ME, a comedy producer Art Linson wrote with wife Fiona Lewis about a tough, single New York actress/waitress who switches place with a housewife to do researdh for a role that could be her big break.
* Alcon Entertainment has purchased Gary Scott Thompson's (FAST AND THE FURIOUS) drama pitch BABY MONITOR where the details of a possible crime aren't seen, they're overheard. In this story, a woman who spends a lot of time alone in a new town begins to think her baby might be the target of a kidnap plot.
* Impact Pictures has optioned the feature rights to the popular Infogrames video game DRIVER for Jeremy Bolt and Paul Anderson to produce along with Robert Kulzer. Anderson may also direct the pic. James Demonaco is working on a script with Todd Jason Harthan and James Roday.
* Peter Berg is in talks to direct the New Line pic DEN OF THIEVES by Paul Scheuring and Christian Gudegast (A MAN APART). It focuses on a mild-mannered barkeep who works near the Federal Reserve in Los Angeles and unwittingly gets caught up with a group of thieves who scheme to rob the place.
* Columbia Pictures has snapped up Barry Stringfellow's screenplay dramedy VIVA LEFTY for Ricochet Entertainment to produce. It's about a Major League Baseball pitching phenom who blows out his arm and is forced to play in the Mexican league, where he finds love and clarity and regains his form.
* Rob Minkoff will direct and produce Disney's planned remake of THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE, using live-action and computer animation techniques to create a new film inspired by the short. The script will be written by David Berenbaum (ELF).
* Lawrence Kasdan will direct a remake of the German gourmet cooking comedy MOSTLY MARTHA for Castle Rock from a script by Terri Minski (LIZZIE MAGUIRE). It's about a top-notch female chef who's a whiz in the kitchen but a mess elsewhere. Her life is turned upside-down when her sister is killed and she must take care of her orphaned niece. Romance blossoms when she hires a charming male chef. Kasdan also is developing the Castle Rock comedy PET THERAPY with scribe Rebecca Belfield, about a couple drawn together through group counseling for those with dead or lost pets.
* Mehdi Norowzian will direct the horror feature BOOGEYMAN for Ghost House Pictures. Principal photography begins in May in New Zealand. The feature tells the haunting tale of a young man traumatized by memories of terrible events he experienced in his childhood bedroom and who, years later, reluctantly returns home to face his fears of a monstrous entity that could be real or merely a figment of his imagination. Eric Kripke, Juliet Snowden and Stiles White wrote the screenplay, which is being produced by Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert.
* Joel Schumacher is officially on board to direct the film version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's stage musical THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA this fall. Lloyd Webber will produce the film under his production banner Really Useful Films.
* Tim Story (BARBERSHOP) is set to direct Universal's SOCIETY CAB, a drama based on the real-life exploits of the last black-owned, black-run taxi company in Miami-Dade County, for Playtone Prods. David Mills ("Kingpin" creator) wrote the script with larger-than-life characters who drive the unsafe area, minding residents' children and even policing it themselves, knowing the cops will show up long after they do. One character in the script is based on real-life cabdriver Franklin "Dark N Lovely" Scott, who was shot at nine times on the job in one year alone.
* John Baldecchi has set up the comic drama pitch SAN QUENTIN GIANTS at Columbia Pictures. Paul Cuschieri will write the script, which centers on a prison transfer who becomes the baseball coach, much to the warden's chagrin.
* Japanese director Hideo Nakata (original THE RING) will direct the MGM supernatural thriller TRUE BELIEVERS, an adaptation of the Doug Richardson novel about the intersecting paths of a senator with White House aspirations, a woman who wants to have a child and a death row inmate who thinks he is a messiah who must carry on his bloodline. Richardson wrote the script.
* Lakeshore Entertainment and MGM are producing the Henry Bean and Leora Barish script RISK ADDICTION (formerly BASIC INSTINCT 2) about a male psychiatrist who gravitates from the couch to the bedroom with a beautiful murder suspect he's been asked by police to analyze.
* Scott Mebus will adapt his upcoming novel THE BOOTY NOMAD for Miramax about a 20ish Gotham-based TV producer who throws himself into the dating pool to recover from a painful breakup.
MISCELLANEOUS PRODUCTION TIDBITS
* New Line Cinema hopes to turn Marvel's IRON MAN into a feature for its 2005 slate from a script by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar ("Smallville," SHANGHAI KNIGHTS). It's the story of Tony Stark, inventor and owner of Stark Enterprises. His work in corporate espionage and international terrorism leads to an accident that forces him to go on life support in the form of a high-tech bodysuit.
* Warner Bros. has optioned THE OLD MAN AND THE GUN, a New Yorker article by David Grann for Wolfgang Petersen's Radiant Productions. The article, which appeared in the Jan. 27 New Yorker, is a profile of Forrest Tucker, whose arrest after a high-speed car chase at the age of 78 ended a six-decade long career of robbing banks and escaping from prison. Tucker once escaped from San Quentin in a kayak built from parts smuggled into the prison; he later surfaced in Texas and Oklahoma as part of crew of robbers dubbed the Over-the-Hill Gang by local newspapers.
* Paramount has optioned the rights to Jeff Parker's graphic novel THE INTERMAN for Valhalla Motion Pictures to produce. The book is the story of Interman, the lone creation of a Cold War laboratory, who is able to rewrite his DNA and adapt instantly to his surroundings. On the run from NATO assassins who want to erase all evidence of his existence, the Interman then discovers there may be others like him.
GUNN SHOTS
(NOT from the trades)
* The Florida Film Festival announces the relaunch of FloridaFilmFestival.com and the opening of Festival Headquarters Monday, February 17. This year's festival takes place March 7-16, 2003 in Orlando, Florida. The 10-day festival highlights the best in American Independent and international film.
* CLAY FIELDS will get its World Premiere at the 16th Annual Dallas Video Festival (www.videofest.org), showing at the Angelika Theater (http://www.angelikafilmcenter.com/Dallas/homepage.asp) on Saturday, March 22nd 2003 at 9:15pm as an official selection of the festival
* Dear Independent Filmmakers, Screenwriters, and Indie Cinema Aficionados, Discount festival passes for Key West IndieFest 2003 (April 17 - 20) are going FAST! Get yours today - while they last - for it is going to be a GREAT time down on THE island! http://keywestindiefest.com. Click on "Year 2003 Festival Passes"
