Father Geek here in Austin to happily post Elston Gunn's sixth B-day edition of our long running fact filled film news column...
The Weekly Recap
Elston reporting in... Sorry for the long absence. My wife and I have welcomed our first child, a
son, on June 8 and I've been insanely busy ever since. Fatherhood's great
and I highly recommend it, if you're up for it. Glad to be back, though,
and this week marks my 6th ANNIVERSARY with the site! That just blows me
away. Thank you all for reading. Now, on to this week's recap...
TAKEN FROM VARIETY AND HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
CASTING
* Pablo Echarri and Mariano Martinez are toplining the crime and vengeance thriller PELIGROSA OBSESION (DANGEROUS OBSESSION) for Patagonik Film Group and Telefe Cine.
L* Luke Perry and Haylie Duff will star in DISHDOGZ, set in the world of skateboarding. Marshall Allman, Art Alexakis and pro skateboarders Tony Alva, Andy MacDonald and Ryan Sheckler also star. It's the story of a ne'er-do-well who finds himself working as a dishwasher with a former skating champ who takes him under his wing.
* Roger Lloyd-Pack (VANITY FAIR), Pedja Bjelac (EUROTRIP), David Tennant (BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS), Jeff Rawle, Robert Pattinson, Stanislav Ianevski, Clemence Poesy and Katie Leung join the ensemble cast of HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE.
* Jamie-Lynn DiScala ("The Sopranos") and Jonathan Bennett (MEAN GIRLS) "Mean Girls") have joined the cast of Randal Kleiser's romantic comedy LOVEWRECKED, starring Amanda Bynes and Chris Carmack.
* Isaac Hayes has joined Terrence Howard and Ludacris in HUSTLE & FLOW, John Singleton's first independently financed and produced feature. Based on a script by Southern filmmaker Craig Brewer, who also will direct, the film is set to start shooting early next month in Memphis. The story centers on DJay a thirtysomething Southern hip-hop artist and hustler who enlists a cross section of the local community to help him realize his dreams of making a record. When he hears that a superstar rapper is coming to town, he gets ready for the hustle of his life. Anthony Anderson, Taryn Manning, DJ Qualls, Taraji Henson, Paula Parker, Elise Neal also star.
* Charlie Hunnam will play Jennifer Aniston's love-interest list in Warner Bros. Pictures' untitled Ted Griffin project for studio-based Section 8 and Paula Weinstein. Griffin will also direct.
* Scott Speedman, Nona Gaye, Sunny Mabrey and Peter Strauss are joining Ice Cube, Samuel L. Jackson, Willem Dafoe and Michael Roof in the sequel XXX: STATE OF THE UNION for director Lee Tamahori.
* Nikki Reed (THIRTEEN) is in talks to star alongside Forest Whitaker in IFC Films' AMERICAN GUN. The project follows a series of interweaving story lines focusing on the proliferation of guns in America. Aric Avelino will direct from a script he co-wrote the script with Steven Bagatourian.
* Johnny Depp will provide the lead voice in CORPSE BRIDE, the stop-motion animated film Burton is co-directing with Michael Johnson and producing with Allison Abbate. Helena Bonham Carter, Emily Watson, Albert Finney, Richard Grant, Joanna Lumley and Christopher Lee will provide character voices for the film. In a 19th-century European village, Victor travels to the underworld for a quickie wedding to a mysterious corpse bride while his living wife pines for his return. Caroline Thompson (EDWARD SCISSORHANDS) and Pamela Pettler wrote the script. WB will release the pic in October 2005, four months after Burton's CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, also starring Depp.
* Scarlett Johansson will star in Woody Allen's new picture, replacing Kate Winslet. Emily Mortimer, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Brian Cox, Matthew Goode and James Nesbitt also star in the untitled movie. Allen plans to shoot during July and August in London. Johansson will portray Holly, an overtly sexy young woman.
* Ian McKellen, Aaron Eckhart, Brittany Murphy, Nick Nolte and Alan Cumming are in talks for the indie drama NEVER WAS. Marking the directorial debut of writer Joshua Michael Stern, the feature follows a Yale graduate who gets a job at the mental institution where his novelist father spent the last years of his life. Once there, he meets a schizophrenic man who proves a mysterious link to his father's material.
* Minnie Driver and Ana Claudia Talancon are teaming to topline the psychological drama THE VIRGIN OF JUAREZ for director Kevin James Dobson. Filming is under way in Los Angeles from a script by Michael Fallon. The duo star alongside Angus MacFadyen, Esai Morales, Jacob Vargas, Jorge Cervera Jr., Guillermo Diaz, David Starzyk, Noel Guglielmi and Joanna Cassidy. It's about a journalist investigating the real-life murders of young women in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, that have made international headlines. SHe meets a survivor of a vicious attack whose mysterious weeping wounds are the catalyst for the drama that unfolds and the hunt for the killer.
* Colin Hanks and Kyle Chandler ("Early Edition") have joined the cast of Peter Jackson's KING KONG. Andy Serkis is providing the reference for the character of Kong, who will be a completely CGI character, as well as playing the role of Lumpy the cook.
* Melissa George (DOWN WITH LOVE, "Alias") is in talks to star in MGM and Dimension Films' remake of THE AMITYVILLE HORROR. Ryan Reynolds will also star.
* Selma Blair, John Leguizamo and Sam Elliott have joined the cast of THE ALIBI for directors Kurt Matilla and Matt Checkowski, Summit Entertainment and Endgame Entertainment. Steve Coogan, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, James Brolin, James Marsden and Jaime King fill out the cast of the film, which concerns a guy who creates alibis for cheating spouses. Circumstances force him to confront his own criminal past to get a client out of a murder charge.
* Joel Moore (DODGEBALL) joins John Malkovich, Steve Buscemi, James Broadbent, Anjelica Huston, Sophia Myles and Max Minghella in the satirical pic ART SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL, based on the Daniel Clowes comic, for director Terry Zwigoff, producer Malkovich and United Artists.
* Jsu Garcia (ALONG CAME POLLY) joins Andy Garcia -- who is also writing and directing -- Bill Murray, Dustin Hoffman, Benjamin Bratt and Enrique Murciano in THE LOST CITY. Pic, set against the backdrop of the Cuban Revolution, is filming in the Dominican Republic.
* James DeMonaco (THE NEGOTIATOR) is writing DRIVER, based on Atari's bestselling franchise, for Impact Pictures and Constantin Film.
* James Cromwell will portray the sadistic warden in the Paramount/Sony remake of THE LONGEST YARD, starring opposite Adam Sandler, Burt Reynolds and Chris Rock. Cloris Leachman has signed to play the warden's secretary and William Fichtner has also joined the cast.
* Christian Bale, David Thewlis and Noah Taylor have also joined the cast of Terrence Malick's THE NEW WORLD, starring Colin Farrell, Christopher Plummer, August Schellenberg and Wes Studi . Fourteen-year-old newcomer Q'Orianka Kilcher will portray Pocahontas in the project. Inspired by the legend of Capt. John Smith and Pocahontas, drama is set amid the cultural collision of European explorers and Native American tribes.
DIRECTOR/WRITER ATTACHMENTS
* D.J. Caruso is set to direct Al Pacino, Matthew McConaughey and Rene Russo in TWO FOR THE MONEY for Morgan Creek. The drama is aiming to start shooting in August in Vancouver. Dan Gilroy wrote the script about a star college football player who is at the top of his sport until he blows out his knee during a game, forcing him to choose a new profession. He winds up getting into the sports gambling business only to be recruited by Pacino's character, who runs one of the best sports-booking operations in the country.
* Ronny Yu will direct SNAKES ON A PLANE for New Line. It centers on a ruthless assassin who unleashes a crate full of lethal snakes aboard a packed passenger jet over the Pacific Ocean in order to eliminate a witness in protective custody. John Heffernan and David Loucka scripted.
* Columbia Pictures, Ecosse Films and Mission Pictures are developing BECOMING JANE, a biographical feature about Jane Austen. Penned by Kevin Hood, the film is described as a biographical portrait of the British writer at around age 20, before she became famous, and involves a love theme with Austen falling for a young Irish lawyer.
* Mark Famiglietti and Lane Garrison will write the horror comedy SUCCUBUS, based on an idea by Mark Steven Johnson, for MGM. Story concerns two twentysomething best friends, one a ladies man, the other a nerd, whose lives are turned upside down when the nerd miraculously starts dating a supermodel. When the handsome friend discovers the supermodel is actually a succubus, he takes action and attempts to bring down the race of beautiful but evil succubae.
* Koichi Chigira will direct Buena Vista Intl. Japan's CGI pic BRAVE STORY, produced by Fuji Television and Gonzo Digimation. Based on the bestselling novel by Miyuki Miyabe, story concerns a 10-year-old who enters a magical world to find a cure for his mother's illness.
* Tony Goldwyn will direct EVENING for Hart Sharp Entertainment and United Artists. Script was adapted from Susan Minot's bestselling 1998 novel by the author and Michael Cunningham. Book concerns a 65-year-old woman with terminal cancer whose children gather around to make sense of their complicated mother while she drifts back through morphine-induced memories to a brief romantic interlude in the late 1950s, perhaps the only moment of complete surrender and happiness in her life.
* Aurora Prods. and the Helpern Co. have optioned Maria Flook's INVISIBLE EDEN: A STORY OF LOVE AND MURDER ON CAPE COD, with Agatha Dominick adapting. It's the true story of Christa Worthington. Two years ago, the 46-year-old fashion writer was found dead on the floor of her Truro, Mass. cottage, stabbed in the chest. Her homicide was the first in Truro in more than 30 years. Police say she was dead for at least 24 hours before they arrived; they found her 2-year-old daughter alone with the body.
* Terry Gilliam will direct TIDELAND, co-written by Gilliam and Tony Grisoni, about the fantastical world of a 10-year-old orphan girl abandoned in rural Saskatchewan.
* Jim Abrahams and Pat Proft have set up BALLS OF COURAGE at Universal Pictures. The two will write the screenplay, which Abrahams will direct. The comedy will spoof various genres of film, particularly those of the high-testosterone action genre.
* Columbia Pictures has set Gina Wendkos to write a remake of the 1954 comedy IT SHOULD HAPPEN TO YOU that will be turned into a starring vehicle for Kate Hudson. Michael Douglas' Furthur Films and Hudson's Cosmic Entertainment will produce.
* Quentin Tarantino was paid exactly $1 to film a scene in SIN CITY. Robert Rodriguez co-directed the rest of the Dimension Films drama with Frank Miller, who created the graphic novel series. Tarantino filmed a scene in the final segment featuring Clive Owen, Benicio Del Toro and Brittany Murphy. Tarantino had paid Rodriguez $1 to compose the score for KILL BILL VOL. 2.
* Renny Harlin will direct THE NORTHMEN for Morgan Creek. The historical epic concerns two Viking brothers, heirs to their clan's throne, who both fall in love with a kidnapped English princess. Sean O'Keefe and Will Staples are writing the screenplay.
* Writer Darin Mark will pen FIFTY PERCENT for Warner Independent Pictures, producer Steven Haft and Odd Lot Entertainment. Story follows three waitresses who agree to marry for money, get divorced and take 50% of each man's net worth so they can start their real lives on a tropical island. Five years later, one woman is ready to cash out whether the other girls are in or not.
* Dana Fox will write BRATZ, based on MGA Entertainment's popular Bratz fashion dolls, for 20th Century Fox.
* Regency Enterprises grabbed Justin Stanley and Shane Bitterling's spec script WITCHFINDERS for Kopelson Entertainment to produce. The script is described as a possible tentpole action-adventure project in the vein of PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN with witches. It centers on a group of 17th century witch hunters who are charged with destroying a coven of witches before they flee Europe for a new home in Salem, Mass.
* Bob Nelson has penned an original script inspired by Bernard Cooper's L.A. magazine article "The Bill From My Father" for Warner Bros. and Heyday Films. Nelson's screenplay is based on Cooper's relationship with his father. Book will be published by Simon & Schuster. Story, first heard on NPR, concerns a young man who quit his promising corporate job to find himself. Soon thereafter, he received a large bill from his father requesting reimbursement for the total cost of his upbringing.
* Hideo Nakata (THE RING 2) will direct an Americanized thriller based on the Japanese novel OUT for New Line. Written by Natsuo Kirino, the book is a thriller about four female factory workers who band together when one kills her abusive husband.
* Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois (LILO & STITCH) have signed an overall deal with Disney. While Sanders is working on a 3D pic with an original script he wrote called AMERICAN DOG, DeBlois will make his live-action feature directing debut next spring with THE BANSHEE, from his own script.
* Screenwriter Michael McGruther and his Buffalonickel Films have optioned the rights to Arthur C. Clarke's first published novel, PRELUDE TO SPACE, and David Bennahum's memoir EXTRA LIFE: COMING OF AGE IN CYBERSPACE.
* Billy Crystal has made a deal to star in, direct, co-write and produce an untitled comedy for New Line Cinema. In the pic, the U.S. president is visited by Death's "repo man,", who informs the commander in chief that his time is up. The president has until midnight to get his priorities in order, including his personal affairs and affairs of state. Crystal will write the script with Quinton Peeples.
* Revolution Studios is near a deal with RKO Pictures to acquire remake rights to MR. BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE. The film will be scripted by Hank Nelken and fasttracked as a directing vehicle for Steve Carr (DADDY DAY CARE).
* New Line Cinema has purchased the tennis-themed BABY GOT BACKHAND from screenwriter Colleen McGuinness. The pitch is based on McGuinness' personal experience of playing girls high school tennis in Long Island and winning the gold medal at the Empire State Games.
* Director Mark Waters (FREAKY FRIDAY, MEAN GIRLS) is attached to direct IF ONLY IT WERE TRUE for DreamWorks and THE DICE MAN for Paramount. Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo are in discussions to topline the DreamWorks project, which is based on the debut novel by Marc Levy. The story centers on a San Francisco architect who discovers in his closet the spirit of a woman who has been comatose for six months in a hospital across town. The two begin an affair, despite the fact that he is the only one who can see her and the only one who can save her body from being taken off life support. DICE MAN is based on the cult novel by Luke Rhinehart and revolves around a bored psychiatrist, also named Luke Rhinehart, who submits his life's decisions to the roll of a pair of dice. This changes his life, and in some ways changes the world as well. Rhinehart is the pen name of George Cockcroft.
* Josh Heald has sold his spec ALL YOU CAN EAT, a comedy set in the world of professional eating contests, to New Line Cinema. Producing the pic are Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg.
* DreamWorks-based producer Bonnie Curtis has optioned spec script THE FAMILY GUIDE TO BOUNTY HUNTING by playwright Tom Patrick. Fish-out-of-water comedy concerns a recently laid-off, mid-level telecom exec who tries his hand at bounty hunting to support his family's extravagant lifestyle.
* Paramount Pictures has scared up ALEISTER ARCANE, purchasing feature rights to Steve Niles' horror comicbook and setting up the project with Penn Station set to produce. Dan Milano and Matthew Huffman will adapt the tale of local TV horror host Aleister Arcane, who's forced off the air due to the wishes of parents in an Oklahoma community. In the wake of Arcane's unplanned retirement, unexplained terror and horror beset the town.
* Warner Bros. has made a pre-emptive pitch deal for an untitled action drama to be scripted by Sheldon Turner as a directing vehicle for Doug Liman. Idea is to make a '70s-style action film revolving around members of the California Highway Patrol, who attempt to tame a lawless stretch of highway within their jurisdiction.
* Paramount Pictures has set Jonathan Hensleigh (THE PUNISHER) to write and direct a remake of THE NAKED JUNGLE for Alphaville to produce.
MISCELLANEOUS PRODUCTION TIDBITS
* Vin Di Bona Prods. has picked up the feature film rights to STORM ON THE HORIZON, former Marine Infantry officer David Morris' soldier's-eye view of one of the most intense battles of the Persian Gulf War.
* Paramount Pictures has moved MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 3 back to June 29.
* Paramount and producer Art Linson are developing a spinoff to Brian De Palma's 1987 pic THE UNTOUCHABLES. Antoine Fuqua may direct. It will focus on the rise of Chicago mob kingpin Capone, in the years before Ness and his lawmen.
* Maverick Films has acquired the film rights to Elise Abrams Miller's debut novel STAR CRAVING MAD about a first-grade teacher at an exclusive Manhattan private school who falls for the father of the adorable new kid in class. Dad also happens to be a famous actor.
GUNN SHOTS
(NOT from the trades)
* Learn more about Jesse Cowell's pic SHADES OF GRAY at http://www.shades.jeskid.com/
* Japanese film production company, buildup, inc., announced the release of its new content " BIZARRE CREATURES of JAPAN, English Version. For more info, visit http://www.buildup.tv/bc/
* A Revolutionary War pic is entering its final phase of production. Visit THE CHEST websites: http://www.glossedfilms.com/thechest/ or http://www.wjmproductions.com/thechest/
* Award-winning feature DEAR PILLOW to screen at the Alamo Drafthouse Theater in Septermber. Log on to http://www.dearpillow.com for more.
