Father Geek here once again with our buddy Elston's latest edition of...
The Weekly Recap...
TAKEN FROM VARIETY AND HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
CASTING
TAKEN FROM VARIETY AND HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
CASTING
* Kathleen Robertson has landed roles in the indie drama UNTIL THE NIGHT, opposite Norman Reedus, and the indie thriller CONTROL, starring Willem Dafoe.
* Jeff Daniels and Kip Pardue have joined Sigourney Weaver and Emile Hirsch in the indie pic IMAGINARY HEROES, the dark comedy about the secrets and lies of American families, for writer/director Dan Harris. Shooting begins Aug. 14 in New Jersey.
* Jason Statham will play the villain opposite Kim Basinger, Chris Evans and William H. Macy in CELLULAR for New Line and director David Ellis. Larry Cohen (PHONE BOOTH) wrote the script.
* Kevin Costner is eyeing to star in the romantic comedy TAMING BEN TAYLOR, with Michelle Pfeiffer in talks as his co-star. Scott Sturgeon and Amy Lasser scripted the remake of a 1980s Italian comedy about a vineyard owner in Long Island who longs for love. He becomes interested in an attractive and steely real estate agent who is trying to persuade the man to sell his property to make way for a golf course.
* Sam Neill, Jon Favreau, Bernard Hill, James McAvoy, Eleanor Bron, Nikolaj Coster Waldau, Austin Nichols and James McAvoy have joined Kirsten Dunst and Paul Bettany in the romantic tennis comedy WIMBLEDON for director Richard Loncraine.
* Jim Broadbent is in talks to join Jude Law and Keira Knightley in DreamWorks Pictures/Miramax Films' TULIP FEVER for director John Madden. Shooting begins in April.
* Patricia Velazquez will play the wife of Emilio Zapata in Alfonso Arau's long-in-development biopic ZAPATA. The project is in production in Morelos, Mexico.
* Kaitlin Doubleday, Heather Matarazzo, Bryce Johnson, Jud Tylor and Rachel Dratch have been cast in HOME OF PHOBIA, Sam Huntington, Marla Sokoloff, Mike Erwin and John Goodman in the project directed by Ryan Shiraki.
* Noah Wyle, Illeana Douglas, and Kate Mara ("Nip/Tuck") will star in the romantic comedy THE CALIFORNIANS, based on Henry James' classic THE BOSTONIANS. Jonathan Parker and Catherine Di Napoli wrote the script. Joanne Whalley, Cloris Leachman, Keith Carradine, Valerie Perrine, Jane Lynch and Michael Panes also star.
* Kim Basinger will star in Joel Zwick's (MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING) romantic comedy ELVIS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING. Production begins Sept. 15. Basinger will play the hapless Harmony, born during an Elvis Presley concert and ever after linked in some way to the King. While on the road selling lipstick, she accidentally kills a couple of Elvis impersonators and ends up on the run from the FBI. So, in an unlikely coincidence, does a depressed advertising exec whose path intersects romantically with hers as the two head toward the pic's climax at an Elvis convention in Las Vegas. Adam-Michael Barber and Mitchell Ganem penned the screenplay.
* Lindsay Lohan is in talks to reteam with FREAKY FRIDAY director Mark S. Waters in Paramount's upcoming comedy MEAN GIRLS for producer Lorne Michaels. Tina Fey wrote the script about an adolescent girl who has been on safari with her zoologist parents but must navigate new terrain when she moves to an Illinois public school and falls in love with the ex-boyfriend of one of the most popular girls. Things turn ugly when she's reduced to using the same mean-spirited methods as the other girls. Shooting begins in September.
* Robert De Niro is in talks to star in the thriller HIDE & SEEK for 20th Century Fox and director Albert Hughes. The film centers on a girl who loses her mother at a young age. Her father, who would be played by De Niro, comes to discover that his daughter is dealing with the death of her mother in an unusual and terrifying way. Barry Josephson is producing from a script by Ari Schlossberg.
* Eugene Levy will star opposite Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen in Warner Bros. Pictures' action-adventure comedy NEW YORK MINUTE. Dennie Gordon directs the pic which is described as CHARLIE'S ANGELS meets AFTER HOURS. Jared Padalecki, Riley Smith will play the girls' love interests, while Andy Richter will star as a limo driver/hit man.
* Craig Ferguson and Kathy Kinney (both of "The Drew Carey Show") join the cast of the indie family flick A DOG AND HIS BOY for writers/directors Oren Goldman and Yariv Ozdoba. It centers on a canine who -- after being implanted with a microchip that gives him special powers -- engages a young boy in conversation and adventure. Ultimately, the duo must save the world from an evil scientist who wants to turn all kids into mindless robots. Sammy Kahn, Michael Winslow, Andrew Shaifer, Evan Adams, Stephanie Sherrin and Joe Morton also star.
* Corey Large, Luke Flynn, Jennifer O'Dell, Tom Lenk, Luke Kirby, Melissa Schuman, Paul Johansson, Don Gibb, Alexandra Holden and Carly Pope are teaming to star in director Andrew Putschoegl's indie pic WINDOW THEORY, written by Large and Kyle Kramer. Shooting is under way in Victoria, British Columbia. The film follows mid-20s floater Ethan Humphries from his meaningless playboy lifestyle in Los Angeles back home for the wedding of his best friend, Jeff , only to find that the bride is Ethan's high school sweetheart.
* Nicole Kidman is in talks to star in THE INTERPRETER, the Working Title/Universal co-production with Sidney Pollack set to direct. In the thriller, which is expected to shoot next year, Kidman would play a U.N. interpreter who overhears an assassination plot. When she becomes a target she's paired with a federal agent and together they work to stop the murder of an African leader addressing the General Assembly. Charles Randolph wrote the script.
* Adrien Brody has been offered the lead role in Warner Bros. Pictures' THE JACKET for director John Maybury and Section Eight about a soldier who has been convicted of a murder and believes he's traveling through time.
* Shia LaBeouf (HOLES, THE BATTLE OF SHAKER HEIGHTS) will star opposite Will Smith in I, ROBOT for New Line. The New Line deal will also place LaBeouf in a starring role in a release to shoot this fall, though exactly what film it will be has yet to be determined.
DIRECTOR/WRITER ATTACHMENTS
* Andrew Dominik (CHOPPER) will develop and direct Paramount's THE DEMOLISHED MAN based on the book by Alfred Bester. It's about a future society where telepaths are a recognized group of society and often used to detect crimes before they happen. When a wealthy businessman decides to murder his rival, bribing a high-ranking telepath to help him cover his tracks, a telepathic cop is brought in to investigate. Figuring out who committed the crime is easy, proving the businessman's guilt is more difficult.
* Christian Ford will direct INVISIBLE from a script he is currently co-writing with writing partner Roger Soffer for Maverick Films and Cosmic Entertainment. It's about a young woman, living in New York City, who, struggling against insignificance, feels invisible to those around her. The more she thinks about it, the more she becomes literally invisible only to discover that there is a whole society of shadowy souls.
* Robert Schwentke is set to direct Phoenix Pictures' THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE DEMETER about the terrifying ill-fated journey of the merchant ship Demeter, which carried Dracula's coffin from Transylvania to England only to arrive at port with no survivors aboard.
* Paramount has optioned Robert Silverberg's sci-fi novel THE BOOK OF SKULLS for William Friedkin to direct with Alphaville producing. Jeff Davis will adapt the project, a psychological horror story about four college students who discover an ancient book that provides the secret to eternal life -- a secret that comes with a terrible price.
* John Sayles will direct his script SILVER CITY for producer Maggie Renzi. The project is a political drama/murder mystery telling the story of a small town in Colorado and the events leading up to a local election. Among those events is the discovery of a man's body in a local lake and the mystery surrounding his murder. Daryl Hannah and Danny Huston will star in the pic with Chris Cooper, Kris Kristofferson and Cheech Marin in negotiations to join them. Production begins next month.
* Kevin Connolly will direct an untitled drama written by Nick Cassavetes based on the life of a San Fernando Valley drug dealer named Jesse James Hollywood. It will be produced by Tobey Maguire and Leonardo DiCaprio. Production is set for fall.
* Adam Herz (AMERICN PIE trilogy) is setting up his own production shingle at Universal Pictures. His first project will be an untitled comedy in the tradition of A FISH CALLED WANDA and RUTHLESS PEOPLE. He also plans to make his directorial debut on the pic. Producing along with Herz are Chris Bender and Marc Platt.
* Vera Fogwill will direct LAS MANTENIDAS SIN SUENOS (KEPT & DREAMLESS), a chronicle of women's different roles in life.
* Ed Bye (KEVIN AND PERRY GO LARGE) will direct FAT SLAGS: THE MOVIE, based on the cartoon in the British magazine Viz, for Entertainment Film Distributors. Fiona Allen and Sophie Thompson will play the notorious Newcastle good-time girls. Geri Halliwell will take a small supporting part.
* Damien O'Donnell (EAST IS EAST) will direct INSIDE I'M DANCING, written by Jeffrey Caine, for WT2/Working Title about a boy with cerebral palsy whose life is transformed when he meets a maverick fellow sufferer. Shooting starts Oct. 20.
* Warner Bros. has purchased feature film rights to Phillip Ardagh's family adventure novel A HOUSE CALLED AWFUL END for Circle of Confusion to produce as a live-action feature. Matthew Huffman will adapt. It's about an 11-year-old British boy is sent away from his family when his parents become ill. He finds himself in the questionable care of Mad Uncle Jack and Mad Aunt Maud, who later turn him over to the St. Horrid's Home for Grateful Orphans. Huffman's script will be based on a story, inspired by the book, he wrote with his writing partner, Dan Milano.
* Michael Bay is developing the drama DO NOT GO GENTLY for Revolution Studios about a scientist from the Smithsonian who fulfills a lifelong dream to travel in space. Neil Tolkin (THE EMPEROR'S CLUB) will do a rewrite of the script.
* Grant Calof and Greg Lee will rewrite Constantin Film's comedy BLIND SIDED for producer David Permut. The broad comedy concerns a man who regains his sight after being blind most of his life only to find out the world is a very different place from what he had imagined.
* Frank Cappello (CONSTANTINE) has pacted with New Regency Prods. to write and direct the thriller VOICES, based on his original pitch. Lorenzo di Bonaventura will produce. It's about a cop who discovers that the voices heard by a serial killer are real.
* Betty Thomas is set to direct the Disney comedy GHOSTS OF GIRLFRIENDS PAST, which has Ben Affleck attached to star for producers Sean Bailey, Chris Moore and Jon Shestack. The story centers on a bachelor who goes to his younger brother's wedding, where he is visited by the ghosts of his past girlfriends. John Lucas and Scott Moore wrote the script.
* Focus Features has acquired Pat Montandon's 1975 book THE INTRUDERS and set Gary Lennon to write the script based on the fact-based story of a San Francisco socialite and TV talkshow star whose life was ruined when she moved into an apartment house built upon a former hanging ground and cemetery.
* Jordan Roberts will direct the drama AROUND THE BEND possibly for the new Warner Bros. specialty devision. Christopher Walken, Michael Caine and Josh Lucas are attached to star as three generations of men who head out on the road in search of an old family secret.
* Columbia Pictures will remake the 1986 TriStar actioner LET'S GET HARRY with Neal Moritz producing through his Original Films. Scott Rosenberg is writing the remake with Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec. The original centered on an American engineer taken hostage and held for ransom in the jungles of South America along with an American ambassador. A group of men set out to rescue him.
* James Cameron will direct a film at 20th Century Fox about the love story between freediver Francisco "Pipin" Ferreras and wife Audrey Mestre. After learning the extreme sport of freediving under the tutelage of her Cuban-born husband and breaking his record, Mestre died last year as she tried to better her world mark of descending 557.7 feet while holding a single breath of air in her lungs. On Oct. 12, Cameron will also record Ferreras' attempt to match his wife's world record in Cabo San Lucas, the site where the Cuban diver first met the French-born aspiring marine biologist and taught her to dive. Ferreras is making his first freedive attempt since January 2000, when he set a then-world record of 531.4 feet -- a mark obliterated by his wife before her fatal attempt to surpass it.
* Lukas Moodysson (SHOW ME LOVE, LILYA 4-EVER) starts shooting his new untitled film in a few weeks. The plot is being kept a secret but it's a contemporary drama about a father and a son and a girl and a friend and is called "a kind of submarine movie." Thorsten Flinck, 17-year-old newcomer Bjorn Almroth, Swedish soap actress Sanna Brading and Goran Marjanovic star.
* Brett Ratner will direct AFTER THE SUNSET, starring Pierce Brosnan, Salma Hayek and Woody Harrelson, about a master thief sailing off to an island paradise after his last big score. However, when his lifelong nemesis shows up to make sure the thief is really retired, a new cat-and-mouse game of friendship, suspicion and thievery begins.
* Screenwriter Stephen Schiff will adapt the Patricia Cornwell novel CRUEL AND UNUSUAL for director Joel Schumacher at Columbia as well as script LEATHERHEADS, the period gridiron pic, which George Clooney will star in and direct.
MISCELLANEOUS PRODUCTION TIDBITS
* Sean Connery has opted out of Milos Forman's indie feature EMBERS, to which stars Winona Ryder and Klaus Maria Brandauer continue to be attached. Based on Sandor Marai's Hungarian novel, the project is about two former best friends who meet 41 years after last seeing each other to discuss the woman who drove them apart.
* Jonathan Taplin and daughter Daniela Soto-Taplin have acquired the feature film rights to Edmund Morris' Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller THE RISE OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT, which will be developed as a biopic. The project chronicles Roosevelt's early years and follows him from his tenure at Harvard to his foray as a cattleman, cowboy and local law enforcer out West and through his term as president of the New York City Police Commission. It then tracks Roosevelt during the Spanish-American War with his legendary Rough Riders, a band of Harvard friends, polo players and cowboys whom Roosevelt personally brought together to form a cavalry unit.
* Aardman Animations is finally ready to shoot WALLACE AND GROMIT, the first feature under the deal it signed with DreamWorks in 1999. Nick Park (CHICKEN RUN co-director) will begin production in September, with Steve Box co-directing with Park. Meanwhile, Peter Lord, (the other co-director of CHICKEN RUN) is developing FLUSHED AWAY, about two rats whose lives take a turn for the better when they are washed down a sewer and up into a penthouse.
* Trans-Pacific Media has teamed with the Sick-O-Scope Motion Picture and Novelty Manufacturing Co. to produce remakes of five Herschell Gordon Lewis horror pics. The first, 1971's THE WIZARD OF GORE, is the story of a stage magician whose bloody tricks performed on audience members prove to be fatal. Jeremy Kasten will direct. Other titles in development include BLOOD FEAST, SHE-DEVILS ON WHEELS, COLOR ME BLOOD RED and GRUESOME TWOSOME.
* Universal Pictures has acquired Sindiwe Magona's novel MOTHER TO MOTHER for Reese Witherspoon's Type A Films. U will develop the pic for Witherspoon to star. Although the book is fiction, it's based on the true story of Amy Biehl, a 26-year-old Stanford student and Fulbright scholar who was murdered in 1993 by rioting South African youths.
* Brad Pitt has dropped out of Regency's MR. AND MRS. SMITH, the Simon Kinberg-penned project that Doug Liman is attached to helm. It centers on a bored married couple who discover that they are enemy assassins hired to kill each other. There's now an offer out to Will Smith.
* Revolution Studios has moved up the release of its comicbook actioner HELLBOY, leaving its Memorial Day weekend premiere for a less-competitive April 2 slot.
* DreamWorks is remaking Francis Veber's French comic hit LE DINER DE CONS (THE IDIOT GAME) as DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS with Sacha Baron Cohen ("Da Ali G Show") starring. The French film focused on a weekly dinner party held by a Paris publisher who challenges his friends to bring the most pathetic guest to the gathering. The most recent draft of the script was written by Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio.
* Producer David Heyman (HARRY POTTER) is teaming with producers Corey May and Michael "Dooma" Wendschuh of Sekret Agent Prods. (upcoming THE WIND AND THE WILLOWS) to option screen rights to the Carolyn Parkhurst bestseller THE DOGS OF BABEL. The novel revolves around a linguistics professor's attempt to deal with the tragic death of his wife, who suffered a fatal fall from a backyard tree. The only witness is the family's Rhodesian ridgeback, and the widower tries to discover what happened by getting the dog to communicate.
* English League champion Manchester United is vying with Newcastle United to feature in GOAL!, the first film of a trilogy about a young Latino player who travels from Los Angeles to Europe in search of soccer stardom. Lawrence Bender and Milkshake Films produce.
* The UK Film Council has given development funds for several projects including the espionage pic A SPY BY NATURE with Howard Brenton ("MI-5") and producer Stephen Garrett developing; horror pic OUTPOST which Neil Marshall (DOG SOLDIERS) will direct about a monster on the loose in a North Sea oilrig; and WESTBANK, a thriller about one man's search for his teenage daughter, with David Aukin developing the project with writer Ronan Bennett (LUCKY BREAK).
* Columbia Pictures will release Tim Burton's BIG FISH on Nov. 26. The adaptation of a novel by Daniel Wallace follows a son retelling the fantastical experiences his father claimed to have lived.
* Dimension Films has picked up the feature rights to the comicbook WAKE THE DEAD, Steve Niles' supernatural series which retells the Frankenstein. The five-part series is published by IDW Publishing.
GUNN SHOTS
(NOT from the trades)
* Madonna is being sought for a big role in Brit spy thriller SEMPER OCCULTUS. If all goes to the producer's plans, she will join Kelly Brook, Jason Statham, Roger Moore, Nick Moran and Robin Shou (MORTAL KOMBAT, BEVERLY HILLS NINJA).
* See the trailer (and more) for Shane Carruth's PRIMER at http://www.primermovie.com.
* Check out Colin Liddle's movie website MOVIE SHACK (news, reviews and more) at http://www.movieshack.tk
* The producers of WEST MEMPHIS THREE are doing a full national search for the third lead role of Jason Baldwin now that so many young actors are vying for this role. Start date is October 2003 for an early Fall 2004 release. Michael Pitt, Jacob Reynolds, Doug Hutchison, Ricki Lake, Drea de Matteo, Giovanni Ribisi, Michael Madsen, Donal Logue, Gina Gershon, Paul Dano, William H. Macy and Phillip Seymour Hoffman star for director Alex Steyermark and producer Curt Johnson.
* Robin Tunney joins Justin Chambers, Rory Culkin, Philip Baker Hall and William Mapother in the indie pic IN CONTROL OF ALL THINGS about the famous Zodiac Killer case for Shadowmachine Films and director Alex Bulkley.
