Father Geek here with our regular weekly recap column from Hollywood insider Elston Gunn... This one's a little late, but Elston's in the middle of moving to his plush new penthouse offices in the hills overlooking Tinseltown, sooo you'll have to forgive any inconvenances this week and next... but enough of that... here's all those sweet tidbits of movie news from last week for those who, like Elston, found their past work-week a hectic one...
THE WEEKLY RECAP...
TAKEN FROM VARIETY AND HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
CASTING
TAKEN FROM VARIETY AND HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
CASTING
* Wanda Sykes grabbed a role opposite Jennifer Lopez and Jane Fonda in MONSTER-IN-LAW for New Line Cinema and director Robert Luketic.
* Heather Locklear is set to star opposite Hilary Duff in THE PERFECT MAN for director Mark Rosman about a teenager who is trying to find the best mate for her mom.
* Goran Visnjic ("ER") is in talks to star as the male lead opposite Jennifer Garner in ELEKTRA for director Rob Bowman.
* Jessica Alba and Nick Stahl are in final talks to join the cast of SIN CITY for Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller and Dimensio Films. Alba will star in a section opposite Bruce Willis and Mickey Rourke playing Nancy, a beautiful exotic dancer known as "the sweetheart of Sin City," while Stahl would play the dual roles of Junior and Yellow Bastard
* Kenneth Branagh and Scarlett Johansson are joining Tom Cruise and Carrie-Anne Moss in MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 3 for director Joe Carnahan, C/W Prods. and Paramount Pictures.
* Ben Kingsley will play Fagin and 10-year-old English actor Barney Clark in Roman Polanski's OLIVER TWIST.
* Reese Witherspoon has signed on to star in and produce MANHATTAN BABY, written by Anya Kockoff (MONSTER-IN-LAW) for Dimension Films. It's about a career-driven, single woman who puts her personal life on hold to become a Gotham-based mogul who operates groups for tots and their moms..
* Jason Biggs has taken the lead role in Saul Metztein's black comedy GUY X alongside Natasha McElhone, Jeremy Northam and Michael Ironside also star. Set in 1979 as Ronald Reagan is gearing up his presidential campaign and the Cold War is entering its endgame, the project is the story of an American soldier transferred by clerical error to the Arctic and unable to escape because he no longer officially exists. Steve Attridge and John Paul Chapple adapted the script from John Greismer's novel NO-ONE THINKS OF GREENLAND.
* Charlize Theron is in negotiations to star in JINX, an adaptation of a Brian Michael Bendis comic book that Circle of Confusion is producing for Universal Pictures.
* Kenny Doughty and Caroline Carver (MY FIRST WEDDING) will reteam as the title characters in THE ARYAN COUPLE, a World War II drama from Atlantic Film/Mairis Film that John Daly is directing. The cast also includes Martin Landau and Judy Parfitt.
* Taryn Manning (8 MILE) joins Ashton Kutcher and Amanda Peet in the the Beacon pictures romantic comedy A LOT LIKE LOVE for director Nigel Cole.
* Burt Reynolds will star opposite Adam Sandler and Chris Rock in Paramount/Sony's remake of THE LONGEST YARD. He'll portray the coach of the team of inmates forced to play football against a team of guards.
* Isabella Rossellini and John Hurt will topline THE FEAST OF THE GOAT, Luis Llosa's bigscreen adaptation of the novel by his cousin, Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa.
* Sara Rue has joined Luke Wilson, Dax Shepard and Maya Rudolph in the untitled Mike Judge comedy (previously titled 3001) for 20th Century Fox.
* Joan Cusack has joined Michelle Trachtenberg in ICE PRINCESS for Walt Disney Pictures.
* Jason Lewis ("Sex and the City") is set to star in the romantic comedy MY BOLLYWOOD BRIDE, the story of a former wind surfing pro turned adventure novelist who meets and romances a Bollywood star while she's on vacation in California.
* Eileen Atkins and Justin Kirk have been added to the cast of Robert Towne's Depression-era drama ASK THE DUST.
* Volleyball champ Gabrielle Reece joins the cast of the beach volleyball movie CLOUD NINE for director Harry Basil. Burt Reynolds, D.L. Hughley, Paul Rodriguez and Angie Everhart also star.
* Treat Williams and Elisabeth Rohm join Sandra Bullock in MISS CONGENIALITY 2.
* Sean Connery will star in JOSIAH'S CANON for 20th Century Fox with director Brett Ratner in talks to direct. It's a dramatic heist story concerning a Holocaust survivor who leads the world's foremost team of bank robbers.
* Robert Redford will play Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey in a feature that chronicles the breaking of baseball's color barrier. The pic is an untitled drama about Jackie Robinson, Rickey and manager Leo Durocher. William Broyles will script.
* Steve Buscemi and Anjelica Huston are in talks to join John Malkovich in ART SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL for director Terry Zwigoff.
* Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson and Rory Cochran will join Keanu Reeves in A SCANNER DARKLY for director Richard Linklater.
DIRECTOR/WRITER ATTACHMENTS
* Ariel Vroman will direct the indie drug drama RX SIN RECETA, starring Eric Balfour, Colin Hanks and Lauren German. Shooting is scheduled to start Monday in New Mexico. It's about a financially desperate young man who decides to cross the border into Mexico with his girlfriend and best friend in order to smuggle pharmaceuticals back across the border. Alan Tudyk, Ori Pfeffer and Danny Pino round out the cast.
* New Line Cinema snapped up Heidi Ferrer's spec CONNECTING WITH JACK GABRIEL for Sandbox Entertainment to produce. It's a romantic comedy about a charlatan TV psychic who falls for the reporter who's trying to expose him.
* Sam Mendes will next direct JARHEAD, a Universal drama based on Anthony Swofford's Persian Gulf-set Marine Corps. memoir. William Broyles (CAST AWAY) wrote the script. Shooting begins in the fall.
* MGM picked up an untitled poker pitch from Don Rhymer (BIG MOMMA'S HOUSE) for Dylan Sellers to produce. Comedy revolves around the exploits of three men who scheme a way to play in the world series of poker tournament in Las Vegas without their wives finding out. Rhymer will write the script.
* Bruce Beresford will direct THE CONTRACT for Emmett/Furla Films and Millennium Films. Written by Stephen Katz and John Darrouzet, the story follows a father who tries to redeem himself in the eyes of his son while trying to bring an assassin to justice.
* Mark Protosevich has been hired to write a remake of THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE for Radiant Pictures, producer Mike Fleiss and Warner Bros. Pictures.
* Greg Poirier has been hired to write a remake of SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON for Disney.
* David Collard wrote a remake of BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT, a 1956 RKO film, for Regency Enterprises. The story centers on a newsman who intentionally frames himself for a murder he didn't commit to point out the dangers of circumstantial evidence and to expose an overzealous district attorney who has manipulated evidence in the past to gain convictions. Everything is going as planned until his friend, the one person who can exonerate him, is killed.
* Controversial French novelist Michel Houellebecq has inked a deal with the Lagardere Group to publish his next novel, which he will adapt into a screenplay for a pic he will helm.
* B.D. Wong ("Oz," "Law & Order: SVU") will make his feature directing debut on SOCIAL GRACE. The independent film is a romantic comedy about the cultural complications that occur when an Asian-American woman realizes her Cinderella fantasy by dating one of Gotham's most eligible blue-blood bachelors. Fay Ann Lee wrote the script.
* Gregory Allen Howard (REMEMBER THE TITANS) has written GOLDEN BOY, a drama based on the story of welterweight contender Dmitriy Salita and his relationship with his trainer, Jimmy O'Pharrow. Project will be produced by Jerry Bruckheimer for Disney.
* Icon producers Mel Gibson and Bruce Davey will team with producers Gavin and Greg O'Connor on WARRIOR, an epic about Boudica, a female warrior who led Britain against Roman conquerors and was posthumously named Britain's first queen. Gavin O'Connor will direct from a script by Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal.
* Wayne Wang is negotiating to direct Queen Latifah in Paramount's remake of LAST HOLIDAY. Production is slated to begin this fall.
* David Hayter will direct THE BLACK WIDOW, a Marvel comic book adaptation he is writing for Lions Gate Entertainment.
* Director Roland Emmerich is developing the political thriller ANTHEM for Columbia Pictures about an impeached president who refuses to leave the White House. Meanwhile, an FBI agent is rushing to discover the truth behind a top-level conspiracy that threatens to undermine the Constitution.
* Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (BAD SANTA) have been tapped to write a BAD NEWS BEARS remake for Paramount Pictures with Billy Bob Thornton starring.
* Castle Rock and Warner Bros. will turn the Richard Russo novel THE RISK POOL into a star vehicle for Tom Hanks, with Lawrence Kasdan writing the script and directing. It tells the story of a man who is suddenly charged with raising his son, after his estranged wife has a nervous breakdown. Hanks will play a charming petty thief and gambler, whose unreliability puts him on the lowest rung of the insurance risk pool.
* John Sayles will write CARLISLE SCHOOL, a feature about Olympic gold medalist Jim Thorpe, for Walden Media. The film will chronicle the early years of Thorpe's collegiate sports career during his years at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, a boarding school in Pennsylvania that housed Native Americans from childhood through college. Project will also detail the college's winning football seasons in 1911 and 1912 and Thorpe's pentathlon and decathlon victories at the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, after which Sweden's King Gustav V dubbed him the world's greatest athlete.
* Gerard Jugnot is set to direct remake of Jean Renoir's 1932 pic BOUDU SAVED FROM DROWNING, and will co-star in it with Gerard Depardieu and Catherine Frot.
* Isabel Coixet (MY LIFE WITHOUT ME) is teaming up with Pedro and Agustin Almodovar's El Deseo for an English-lingo movie, THE SECRET LIFE OF WORDS. Sarah Polley will likely star as a woman in a world of men on an oil-rig.
* Randal Kleiser will direct LOVEWRECKED, written by Stephen Langford, for Media 8 and Bacon and Eggs. Story concerns an 18-year-old who's ecstatic when she finds that her favorite rock star, Jason, is a guest at the tropical resort where she is working for the summer. They are both thrown overboard during a cruise and stranded on a remote beach -- but she fails to tell him the beach is just down the road from the resort.
* Lions Gate Films has purchased the feature rights to Andrew Klavan's novel MAN AND WIFE with James Foley set to direct. It follows a psychiatrist in an ostensibly perfect marriage in New England. His treatment of a mysterious young man begins to reveal his wife's hidden past.
* Kate Kondell will adapt Richard Parker's DON'T TELL MY MOTHER for MGM/Apartment 3B Prods. The story revolves around a first-rate magazine editor who is forced to work for a lowly porn mag while keeping the fact from his mother and the love of his life.
* Josh Stolberg will direct KIDS IN AMERICA with Gregory Smith set to star alongside Rosanna Arquette, Samantha Mathis, Elizabeth Perkins, Adam Arkin, Nicole Richie, George Wendt, W. Earl Brown, Charles Shaughnessy, Stephanie Sherrin and Crystal Grant.
* Writer/director Randall Miller is making MARILYN HOTCHKISS' BALLROOM DANCING AND CHARM SCHOOL, a feature version of his 1990 short film of the same name. Robert Carlyle headlines a cast that includes Marisa Tomei, John Goodman, Mary Steenburgen, Sean Astin, David Paymer, Donnie Wahlberg, Camryn Manheim, Ernie Hudson and Danny DeVito.
* Raja Gosnell (SCOOBY DOO) is in final talks to direct comedy BIG BABY for Warner Bros., Original Films and R&R Entertainment. Penned by Adam Mazer and Gregg Lichtenstein, pic revolves around a career-obsessed man who dismisses his wife's desire to have a baby. When he refuses to change his mind, he unknowingly becomes cursed and begins to uncontrollably act just like an infant.
* Elizabeth Allen will direct the Fox 2000 comedy AQUAMARINE. John Quaintance is adapting the screenplay from the Alice Hoffman novel about two teenage girls who discover a 17-year-old mermaid in their beach club's swimming pool.
* Aaron Sorkin and producer Thomas Schlamme will join forces at New Line on THE FARNSWORTH INVENTION, a drama about how Philo Farnsworth invented TV technology and was robbed of the glory by broadcast pioneer David Sarnoff. Sorkin wrote the script set in the late 1920s, when the 22-year-old genius from Utah became the first to capture a moving image in a box. That led to a skirmish with rival scientist Vladimir Zworykin, who years earlier had filed a patent for the technology even though he hadn't made it work until Farnsworth's invention.
* Gurinder Chadha (BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM) will direct a remake of the French film THE CLOSET for Miramax Films.
MISCELLANEOUS PRODUCTION TIDBITS
* Director Fraser Heston has acquired rights to the late Milt Machlin's 1972 book THE SEARCH FOR MICHAEL ROCKEFELLER. The book recounts the true story of the disappearance of 23-year-old Rockefeller, son of then-New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, in the jungles of New Guinea in 1961 and the search for him seven years later.
* Producer Robert Evans purchased the screen rights to the Darcy Cosper novel WEDDING SEASON about a cynical woman with a longtime boyfriend, whose commitment to being single is sorely tested by the 17 weddings they must attend over six months.
* Columbia has optioned the movie rights to Nick Hornby's bestseller HOW TO BE GOOD for producer Laura Ziskin. It's a moral comedy about a couple on the brink of divorce. The wife is a well-meaning doctor whose sense of superiority to her angry, cynical husband is undermined when she has an affair, and he suddenly decides to become "good" in the fashion of the Gospels. When that turns out to mean redistributing the family's possessions to the needy and inviting poor people to live in their house, she discovers that she misses the man he used to be.
GUNN SHOTS
(NOT from the trades)
* A re-release of his film THE EXORCIST III - LEGION to DVD may be in the works. The details are here: http://www.qtf.info/captainhowdy/fanforum/showthread.php?t=745 and http://www.qtf.info/captainhowdy
* Fake THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST commercial at http://www.jasonwoliner.com/passion
* Jay Mohr and Robert Patrick in LONELY STREET. Go here to see the trailer:http://www.usfilmproduction.com/Lonely_Street/lonely_street.htm
* Hi Def short SWEET JUDY BLUE EYES (http://www.sjbe.com) a film honoring 9/11 victims directed by Noah Harald and written, produced and starring Shane McCarthy, makes its world premiere and is an official selection of the 2004 Beverly Hills Film Festival (http://www.beverlyhillsfilmfestival.com. The festival runs May 6th to May 9th in Beverly Hills, CA.
* A reader felt with the 20th anniversary of Andrew's death approaching (May 16th, 04) Enrique's writings seem more relevant than ever. Visit http://www.andykaufmanlives.com for more. "Andy Kaufman Dead Or Alive Concert" at http://www.comicrelief.org/page3.htm
* British Producer Mark Thomas has been removed from female led spy project DAISY SCARLETT: SEMPER OCCULTUS. Producer Ben Trebilcook is not disclosing the reasons behind his decision and also not revealing any further details on the rumor that a bidding war is taking place for the script, also penned by Trebilcook. In a recent interview on his forthcoming promoting of the Daisy Scarlett movie in Cannes, he mentioned his bizarre plans for a 'Mr. Pink' movie, starring Steve Buscemi and his hopes of discussing this with the busy QT when at the festival together in under two weeks.
