Its a big one this week folks... Yeah, its Father Geek here in Austin, Texas... Well, due to the fact that in the last 2 1/2 weeks ol' Father Geek here was in Seattle 5 days, and Berlin 5 days and working on BNAT 4 days Elston's report is a little tardy. I know, "I've been a Baaaaaaad Boy" as Lou would say, buuut here it is, all of the info you crave in one monster of a report. Sooo curl up, get soome Hot Cocoa, or whatever warms your inards and dig into the last couple of weeks of confirmed news out of Tinseltown...
THE WEEKLY RECAP...
TAKEN FROM VARIETY AND HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
CASTING
TAKEN FROM VARIETY AND HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
CASTING
* Catherine Keener, Jennifer Aniston, Frances McDormand and Joan Cusack are in talks to star in FRIENDS WITH MONEY for director Nicole Holofcener (LOVELY & AMAZING). The film revolves around four best friends and their relationships with one another and their husbands. Only one is not married.
* Donald Faison ("Scrubs") joins the cast of the comedy VEGAS, BABY for writer/director Eric Bernt. Kal Penn and Jonathan Bennett also star in the road-trip tale about five pals who travel to Las Vegas for a bachelor party.
* Laurence Fishburne and Keke Palmer will star in AKEELAH AND THE BEE about an 11-year-old from South Los Angeles whose journey to compete in the National Spelling Bee unites her community. Doug Atchison will direct from his own script for Lions Gate Films and 2929 Entertainment.
* Matt Damon will replace Leonardo DiCaprio in Robert De Niro's THE GOOD SHEPHERD for Universal, Morgan Creek and Tribeca. Eric Roth wrote the script, a history of the CIA as seen through the eyes of a career agent, the film was already in pre-production. Francis Ford Coppola, Rick Schwartz and Chris Brigham are credited as executive producers.
* British actor Ben Whishaw (LAYER CAKE) will star in the thriller PERFUME for director Tom Tykwer and Constantin. Dustin Hoffman and Alan Rickman are also in talks to star. Whishaw will play Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a man in 18th century France born with no odor but a super-refined sense of smell who becomes a scent-maker and eventually resorts to murder to extract elements to create the ultimate fragrance. Tykwer co-wrote the script with Bernd Eichinger from the bestselling German book by Patrick Suskind.
* Paul Giamatti is attached to star in PAPER MAN for writers/directors Michele and Kieran Mulroney, FilmColony and Management 360. Giamatti will play a man struggling to recapture the spark that made him a successful novelist. His marriage also is disintegrating, and neither problem is helped by the presence of an imaginary superhero friend who has been with the writer since childhood. On Cape Cod, he strikes up a platonic relationship with a local high school girl that re-energizes him.
* Richard Roxburgh (VAN HELSING) and British teenager Tom Sturridge (BEING JULIA, VANITY FAIR) join LIKE MINDS, a psychological thriller starring Toni Collette and Eddie Redmayne, for writer/director Gregory Read. It's about a forensic psychologist who must decide if there's enough evidence to find a that psychopathic 17-year-old killed a fellow pupil.
* Usher will star in Lions Gate Films' DYING FOR DOLLY with Emmanuelle Chriqui and Chazz Palmintieri for director Ron Underwood, while MGM is trying to line up another Usher project with STEP IN THE NAME OF LOVE. In the first project, Usher will star as the loyal right-hand man to a Mafia don. He's been assigned to watch over the don's daughter, but the dad doesn't know the bodyguard and the girl have long nursed a mutual crush. Chanel Capra wrote the pic. Meanwhile, MGM has tapped Craig Brewer to rewrite the second project as an urban SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER that Usher would star in and produce. Pic is set in the world of steppin', a flashy kind of dance reminiscent of swing dancing.
* Tom Hanks will star as symbologist Robert Langdon in Dan Brown's THE DA VINCI CODE for director Ron Howard and Columbia Pictures. The film will premiere worldwide on May 19, 2006. Akiva Goldsman penned the screenplay.
* Dennis Quaid is set to star in, write and direct SHAME ON YOU, a biopic about the controversial 1940s Western swing star Spade Cooley. Katie Holmes is in talks to play Cooley's wife, whom he killed in front of their teenage daughter in 1961. Cooley spent the '60s in prison for his crime and was released in 1969 to perform a benefit concert, where he died from a heart attack backstage.
* Al Pacino has shown interest in MGM's remake of WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION, based on the Agatha Christie play. David E. Kelley is writing the adaptation with Robert Benton in talks to direct.
* Joshua Close has been cast in Screen Gems and Lakeshore Entertainment's untitled exorcism project that Scott Derrickson is directing. The horror/thriller is based on true events in which a college freshman was demonically possessed and died during her exorcism. Close plays the boyfriend to the young woman and is the first person to witness her becoming possessed.
* David Rogers is starring opposite Jamie Lynn DiScala in Lions Gate's DARK RIDE for director Craig A. Singer. The film revolves around a group of college kids who, en route to spring break, decide to break into an amusement park. The park was the site of an atrocity 10 years earlier, and the kids soon find themselves on a ride to horror.
* Bryan Fisher (SURVIVING CHRISTMAS) will star in the indie feature JEKYLL + HYDE for director Nick Stillwell. Fisher is performing the dual role of Henry Jekyll and Hyde.
* Charity Shea and Heather Wahlquist have joined the cast of director Nick Cassavetes' ALPHA DOG. The ensemble drama starring Emile Hirsch, Justin Timberlake and Ben Foster tells the story of a 19-year-old well-to-do Los Angeles drug dealer, who kidnaps his friend's brother and holds him as a marker for welching on a debt.
* Meagan Good has been cast in Dimension's BACKWATER for director Jim Gillespie. The horror movie tells the story of the evil side of voodoo at play when a demon spirit is unleashed in a small backwater community.
* Joe Cortese will star in the indie black comedy SHUT UP & SHOOT from actor/writer/director Silvio Pollio. He'll play Spencer Spector, a B-movie producer who hires his leading actor to assassinate his five producing partners. The film also co-stars Daniel Baldwin and James Russo.
* Ving Rhames stars in and is co-producing ANIMAL, a gritty urban drama that David Burke is directing. Kip Konwiser co-produces with Rhames. David C. Johnson (WOO) wrote the script. Rhames plays a violent felon nicknamed Animal, who is released from prison on a technicality. Led to reconsider the futility of the life he is leading, Animal tries to go straight to keep his son from following in his footsteps. Terrence Dashon Howard (RAY), Chazz Palminteri, Jim Brown, Wes Studi, Beverly Todd, Faizon Love and Paula Jai Parker also star.
* Naomie Harris (AFTER THE SUNSET, 28 DAYS LATER) joins Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Jeremy Northam and Gillian Anderson in TRISTRAM SHANDY for director Michael Winterbottom. It's based on the novel by Laurence Sterne.
* Chiwetel Ejiofor (DIRTY PRETTY THINGS) will star alongside Joel Edgerton in the Harbour Pictures/BVI production THE KINKY BOOT FACTORY for director Julian Jarrold. It's about a man who sets about to rescue his dad's ailing Northampton, England shoe factory.
* Nicole Kidman is attached to star in the romantic comedy WEDDING SEASON for Paramount, producer Robert Evans, Tatijana Shoan and Elizabeth Costa. Valerie Breiman (LOVE AND SEX) is attached to write the adaptation of the Darcy Cosper novel. Story is about a cynical woman and a longtime boyfriend who are dedicated to remaining unmarried, but question that strategy as they attend 17 weddings over a six-month span.
* Timothy Hutton will star opposite Queen Latifah and LL Cool J in its remake of LAST HOLIDAY for director Wayne Wang and Paramount. He'll portray the villain Kragen. Gerard Depardieu and Giancarlo Esposito also star.
* David Arquette and Kristin Davis join the cast of Robert Rodriguez's THE ADVENTURES OF SHARK BOY AND LAVA GIRL IN 3-D. The story tells the tale about a 10-year-old outcast shunned by classmates and forced to spend summer vacation alone. With his two imaginary friends he goes on a mission to prove that dreams can become reality. Newcomers Taylor Dooley, Taylor Lautner and Cayden Boyd, along with George Lopez, also have been cast.
* Peter Sarsgaard is set to star alongside Jake Gyllenhaal and Jamie Foxx in JARHEAD, the Sam Mendes-directed adaptation of Anthony Swofford's Gulf War memoir for Universal Pictures. William Broyles wrote the adaptation. Brianne Davis also joins the cast.
* Julianne Moore is in talks to play the female lead in NEXT opposite Nicolas Cage for Revolution Studios and director Lee Tamahori. Gary Goldman adapted Philip K. Dick's short story "The Golden Man." Moore would play a federal agent who's looking for people who can help predict terrorist acts. Her search puts her in pursuit of a man who has the ability to see his own future and take a different path if he chooses.
* Dakota Fanning will star in the live action/CG-animated adaptation of E.B. White's classic children's tale CHARLOTTE'S WEB for director Gary Winick. Story follows a young farm girl who teams up with a spider named Charlotte to save a pig named Wilbur from the butcher's block. Paramount, Nickelodeon Movies and Walden Media are co-financing and producing. Kerner Entertainment will also produce. Susannah Grant and Karey Kirkpatrick wrote the screenplay.
* Mark Pellegrino will star opposite Philip Seymour Hoffman in CAPOTE for director Bennett Miller. Pellegrino plays Richard Hickock, one of the killers Capote interviewed.
* Tyler Patrick Jones snagged roles in two features: Paramount's BAD NEWS BEARS and Dimension's FEAST, John Gulager's "Project Greenlight" horror movie.
* Nikki Griffin joins THE DUKES OF HAZZARD for Jay Chandrasekhar. Griffin plays an old high school friend who Bo and Luke Duke reconnect with and fight over.
* Katheryn Winnick stars opposite Jeremy London in indie feature JULIAN AND CHALICE for writer/director William Tyler Smith. Winnick plays Chalice in the comic drama about a couple's amorous adventures and a dangerous liaison.
* Brian Austin Green is co-starring in DOMINO, directed by Tony Scott. In the feature starring Keira Knightley as bounty hunter Domino Harvey, Green plays himself.
* Noa Tishby is on her way to DreamWorks' THE ISLAND for director Michael Bay. In the Ewan McGregor/Scarlett Johansson sci-fi thriller, Tishby plays the community announcer who appears throughout the film.
* Mischa Barton is talks to star in THE DECAMERON, Dino De Laurentiis' adaptation of Giovanni Boccaccio's 14th century literary classic. Barton would play Pampinea in the period piece about a group of young Florentines who take refuge in the Italian countryside, amusing one another with stories of love and adventure, as the black plague devastates the city. David Leland is adapting Boccaccio's story and also will direct.
* Rob Schneider and David Spade will topline baseball comedy BENCH WARMERS for Happy Madison and Revolution Studios. Based on an original idea from Sandler and scripted by Allen Covert and Nick Swardson, the story centers on three men who lacked athletic childhoods but try to make up for it by forming a three-manteam that challenges nine-player youth baseball teams.
* Ross Patterson (THE NEW GUY) joins the romantic comedy feature THE DARWIN AWARDS, starring Winona Ryder and Joseph Fiennes, for writer/director Finn Taylor. David Arquette, Jeffrey Tambor and Tim Blake Nelson round out the cast. Patterson has also been cast in Lions Gate's horror sequel THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD 2: DEAD AIM.
* Tony Curran has been cast in the sequel UNDERWORLD 2. Kate Beckinsale and Scott Speedman reprise their lead roles in the Screen Gems project, filming in Vancouver under the direction of Len Wiseman.
* Snoop Dogg will star in and executive produce COACH SNOOP for 20th Century Fox based on his real-life experience of coaching his son's youth football team. Mark Gibson and Philip Halprin are penning the project.
* Alec Baldwin is in talks to star as the coach in the basketball pic STREET, which Michael Shapiro is directing at MGM. Baldwin was also just added to the cast of Sony's FUN WITH DICK AND JANE, which he's filming now. STREET follows a group of street basketball players recruited to play for an NBA team whose owner has slashed player salaries. Matt O'Neil and Chris Parker penned the script.
* Simon Baker and Sanaa Lathan will star in 42.4 PERCENT, an interracial love story, for Focus Features. Sanaa Hamri is making her directorial debut and production is slated to begin in February. Lathan plays an African-American professional who's well aware that 42.4% of her race never gets married. Determined to find love, she falls for a white landscaper. Kriss Turner scripted.
DIRECTOR/WRITER ATTACHMENTS
* Dana Stevens (FOR LOVE OF THE GAME) will adapt THE DIVE for James Cameron and 20th Century Fox. Cameron is expected to direct the feature, which is based on the true-life love story between free divers Francisco "Pipin" Ferreras and his wife, Audrey Mestre.
* William Moreing is adapting SCARED STIFF, with Scholastic Books authors Jahnna Beecham and Malcolm Hillgartner to pen the script. Story concerns a teenage brother and sister who live above their parents' mortuary business. They must stop the corpse of a mass murderer that has come back to life and is out for revenge.
* Jason Todd Ipson will direct THE FIRST VAMPIRE, a horror feature set in 4th century Scandinavia, for Relativity Management and Asgaard Entertainment.
* Todd Kessler ("Blues Clues") and his No Hands Prods. partner Rebecca Goldstein have reacquired from Miramax the fully developed teen romantic drama KEITH. The project, based on a script Kessler wrote with David Zabel, will mark Kessler's directorial debut. It's about a 17-year-old who thinks she's got it all figured out until she falls for a guy who has nothing to lose. No Hands is teaming up with Furst Films.
* Paramount Pictures grabbed JERSEY DUKES, a pitch for a comedy that will be scripted by Fred Wolf (JOE DIRT) and produced by Lorne Michaels. It's a romantic comedy involving a New Jersey mob boss who sends a crew over to England to check on his daughter's impending wedding to a royal. The mobsters discover that England is ripe for mob expansion, especially once they are offered help by some dukes and duchesses in need of money to hang on to their country estate.
* Nick Cassavetes is set to direct IRON MAN for New Line Cinema, Marvel Studios and Angry Films. Based on the long-running Marvel comic book series, it's the story of Tony Stark, a driven inventor and executive who straps on billions of dollars in armor and weaponry each night to fight crime, terrorism and corporate espionage. The project is written by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, and David Hayter.
* Harold Ramis is directing an untitled laffer for Sony, penning the screenplay and producing with Owen Wilson, who'll likely star. Storyline of the historical comedy is being kept under wraps.
* Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Dutch parliamentarian who wrote the script for murdered filmer Theo Van Gogh's short pic SUBMISSION, is working on SUBMISSION II, the second part of what was intended as a trilogy on the treatment of women in Islamic society. Ali, who has been in hiding since Van Gogh was murdered Nov. 2, has denied rumors she might step down from her post in the liberal VVD party but said she would remain in hiding as long as the risk was considered high.
* Zhang Yimou (HERO, HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS) is directing QIAN LI ZOU DAN JI (RIDING ALONE FOR THOUSANDS OF MILES), returning to the quieter themes of his earlier work. In his new pic, set in the 1920s, a Japanese man travels to China with his dying son to learn the local opera of Yunnan Province. Ken Takakura (POPPOYA) and Kiichi Nakai (WARRIORS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH) star.
* Director Mira Nair (VANITY FAIR) and writer Jason Filardi (BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE) are teaming on GANGSTA M.D., a Bollywood remake that's been set up at 20th Century Fox. Story focuses on a low-level gangster who keeps his criminal life a secret from his mother by telling her he is a medical doctor. When his mom discovers his criminal lifestyle and threatens to disown him, he's forced to do the one thing that would make her proud: become a doctor.
* Katherine Laupot will write a paranoid thriller for Contrafilms to produce for New Line Cinema. Details on the film's story is being kept under wraps.
* Glenn German and Adam Rogers will write MAD DOG, AN ENGLISHMAN for Kevin Misher Prods. Based on an original idea by Misher, the story is a fish-out-of-water action comedy about a rogue Chicago cop forced to travel the globe to solve a crime committed in his own back yard.
* Rupert Wainwright will direct the remake of John Carpenter's classic horror thriller THE FOG for Revolution Studios. Debra Hill, David Foster and Carpenter are producing the film, which Cooper Layne is penning from the screenplay written by Hill and Carpenter for the original 1980 film.
* New Line bought the rights to make a romantic comedy out of the pop culture phenomenon book HE'S JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU: THE NO-EXCUSES TRUTH TO UNDERSTANDING GUYS. Co-authors Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo will write the script. The book is a non-fiction advice forum for women who seem in denial when their men make excuses to keep them from committing. The hard fact is, the guy is probably not interested in the woman. The pic will be about a hard-line advice guy who falls for a woman who seeks him out because she can't figure out the men in her life.
* Hoyt Yeatman will direct G-FORCE, a live-action/CGI family feature film, for Jerry Bruckheimer and Disney. Yeatman has been developing the project at his newly formed production venture Whamaphram Prods., which is set to produce both computer-generated and animated film projects integrating animated characters into live-action settings.
* Chris Columbus will direct and produce SUB-MARINER, based on the Marvel Comics icon for Universal Pictures, from a script by David Self (ROAD TO PERDITION). Avi Arad and Kevin Misher are producing the pic along with Columbus and his 1492 Prods. The project is based on Marvel's first superhero, Prince Namor, a half-amphibian man from the kingdom of Atlantis. A troubled rebel with a fierce temper, he has both helped the human race and fought against it when humankind polluted his underwater kingdom.
* Disney picked up the pitch OH HAPPY DAY, an English-language remake of the Danish pic of the same name, for Mandeville Films and Fuse Entertainment to produce. Pitch, penned by Heather Hach (FREAKY FRIDAY), centers on a woman and how her life was changed by her involvement with a gospel choir.
* Tim McCanlies (SECONDHAND LIONS) will adapt the Piers Anthony novel SPELL FOR CHAMELEON for Warner Bros. Pictures and director Wolfgang Petersen. It's about a young man who lives in a country where everyone possesses magical powers and faces exile if he can't figure out what his own powers might be.
* David Ayer (TRAINING DAY) will direct HARSH TIMES, starring Christian Bale, Eva Longoria and Freddy Rodriguez, about a coming-of-age story about two South Central L.A. men in their 20s. Bale and Rodriguez play the friends, with Longoria appearing as Rodriguez's girlfriend.
* Beacon Communications has set up Joshua Safran's script RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS as a potential starring vehicle for Ashton Kutcher. Beacon will produce with Katalyst Films. It centers on a suicidal young man rescued by a reclusive novelist who inspires him to find his way in life.
* Renny Harlin will develop and direct a feature based on the upcoming graphic novel FULL MOON FEVER for producers Adrian Askarieh and Daniel Alter. Story, created by comicbook writer Joe Casey for publisher AIT/Planet Lar, is set in the not-too-distant future. A group of blue-collar workers is sent to repair the deserted first lunar base on the dark side of the moon; they soon discover they're not alone as they fall prey to a pack of ravenous werewolves.
* Spitfire Pictures have set Justin Haythe (THE CLEARING) to write SNITCH, a drama inspired by a PBS "Frontline" documentary. "Frontline's" David Fanning and Haythe will exec produce the crime drama about how a shift in U.S. drug laws toward federal mandatory sentencing minimums compels the guilty to snitch on others. In many cases, that means rewarding the guilty and punishing the not-so-guilty. Haythe will dip into the docu for the fact-based story of a man whose son makes a foolish mistake and stands to pay with a long prison stretch. The parents are coerced by prosecutors to buy their son's freedom by delivering up a dealer.
* Mobius Entertainment has purchased THE CLEANER, a spec script by the writing team of Steven List and Astrid Neal. Comedy centers on a hellish temp hired by companies whenever they want one of their employees to quit. He meets his match when hired to get rid of someone who proves to be even more annoying than he is.
* Bull's Eye Entertainment and FilmColony's Richard Gladstein have teamed to option Mark Svenvold's nonfiction book ELMER MCCURDY: THE MISADVENTURES IN LIFE AND AFTERLIFE OF AN AMERICAN OUTLAW. Aaron Mendelsohn will script the story of McCurdy, an American outlaw shot in 1911, who re-entered the public consciousness in the '70s when a movie crew preparing to shoot in a funhouse in San Bernardino County tried to move a hideous neon-orange mummy. It fell to the ground, revealing a full set of bones that turned out to be McCurdy's. Pic will begin after the skeletal discovery, as the outlaw is brought back to his hometown for a proper burial. It then delves back into the past and a major train robbery McCurdy was reputed to have orchestrated.
* Charles Picerni will direct the comedy RETIREMENT for his own Corner Stone Pictures. Jack Warden, George Segal, Ossie Davis and Rip Torn are in talks to star in the pic, which follows four men who undertake a road trip to stop one's daughter from marrying the wrong guy. Billy Burke (LADDER 49) will play the romantic lead.
* Florian Baxmeyer will direct Studio Hamburg Intl. Pictures' production of the English-language pic THE MYSTERY OF SKELETON ISLAND, the first in a trilogy based on THE THREE INVESTIGATORS books by the late Robert Arthur. Filming will start next year in South Africa.
* Paramount Pictures grabbed PALMS FITNESS, the romantic comedy pitch from Nicholas Stoller for Dylan Sellers to produce. Story centers on star-crossed lovers -- a young man from a humble Nebraska background who takes a job as a trainer at a fitness club and becomes involved with a highly educated young woman. Tale's set in an upper-crust community outside Miami, where Stoller grew up.
* Mike Figgis will direct New Line Cinema's GUILTY PLEASURE about a young couple who engage in a menage a trois as a last sexual fling before their wedding.
* Jeff Nathanson will direct GHOSTS OF GIRLFRIENDS PAST for Walt Disney Studios. He will replace Mark Waters, who boarded the project in June. Story centers on a bachelor who goes to his younger brother's wedding, where he is visited by the ghosts of past girlfriends.
* Matthew Vaughn is in talks to helm THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E., a big-screen adaptation of the classic TV series, for Warner Bros. Pictures. The series, which ran on NBC from 1964-68, featured the espionage adventures of Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin, agents of United Network Command for Law Enforcement (U.N.C.L.E.) who fight the forces of T.H.R.U.S.H. (Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity).
* Victor Salva will direct PEACEFUL WARRIOR, based on the Dan Millman bestseller, for Sobini Films, DEJ Prods. and Inferno Distribution It's the story of a top college gymnast who has a chance encounter with an unusual man at an all-night gas station that sets him on a spiritual quest and changes his life. Pic, adapted by Kevin Bernhardt, Anthony DiPietro and Bob Dolman, starts shooting Feb. 15.
* The Mount Film Co. has picked up HIGH TIMES, a spec by Jason Mundy and Gregg Moscot, with Graham Aldis attached to direct. Story chronicles the lives of two Valley teens who become cocaine dealers in the 1980s.
* Mark Gordon is producing SAFETY LAST, loosely based on the Harold Lloyd silent picture, at Sony. Playwright Keith Bunin will pen the screenplay. The 1923 film starred Lloyd as a store clerk who organizes a contest to climb the outside of a tall building; circumstances force him to make the perilous ascent himself. New version will also feature the elaborate, choreographed physical comedy that was the trademark of the early silent films. Earlier this year Sony Pictures Releasing acquired domestic theatrical rights to Harold Lloyd's films through the Harold Lloyd Trust. Theatrical engagements of the restored, uncut films will begin in early 2005, with retrospectives in major cities, after which the pics will be available to theaters on an individual basis.
MISCELLANEOUS PRODUCTION TIDBITS
* Mandalay Entertainment has optioned film rights to the upcoming book THE HOOKUP HANDBOOK: A SINGLE GIRL'S GUIDE TO LIVING IT UP for Alan Riche and Peter Riche to produce through their Sunrise Entertainment banner. The part satire and part field guide, written by New Yorkers Jessica Rozler and Andrea Lavinthal, postulates how in the modern world of singles looking for love, formal "dating" has been replaced by the more casual "hooking up."
* Christopher Coppola and partner Elyse Meredith are launching Ars Nova XXI, a "ministudio" facility to handle all phases of high-def and digital film and TV production. Through the banner, they are developing an HD feature rock opera based on Shakespeare's MACBETH, as well as children's pic DUCK DUCK GOOSE, inspired by Sherlock Holmes' nemesis Professor Moriarty.
* Craig Zadan and Neil Meron (CHICAGO) will produce HAIRSPRAY, the film version of the hit Tony-winning musical that is set for a mid-2005 start in Baltimore and 2006 release, for New Line Cinema. New Line previously hired original stage architects Jack O'Brien to direct and Jerry Mitchell to co-direct and choreograph. Marc Shaiman is back to supply music and lyrics that will include new tunes; Scott Wittman is co-lyricist. Mark O'Donnell and Thomas Meehan, who wrote the stage libretto, are penning the script.
* Mount Savage Prods. has teamed with Paul Pompian to finance and produce three films: the thriller e-STRANGERS; 1-800 FOR MURDER, about a college student who finds a phone book in his CIA dad's roomfilled with 800 numbers that involves a technology designed to kill terrorists; and WINDOWS, a special effects-driven pic about a scientist working on wormholes, windows in space that permit a traveler to span a great distance by merely stepping through one.
* Hideo Kojima is finally considering selling to Hollywood the film rights to his METAL GEAR videogame franchise.
* Tarak Ben Ammar's company Quinta has boarded three Dino De Laurentiis projects -- the Hannibal Lecter prequel BEHIND THE MASK, Giovanni Boccaccio's THE DECAMERON, and Valerio Massimo's THE LAST LEGION.
* Nintendo is preparing to get into the film biz, likely by creating an inhouse unit to develop animated features based on the numerous properties owned by the company behind the GameCube and Game Boy systems. Plan calls for Nintendo to create a pic based on one of its own franchises for theatrical release in 2006.
* 20th Century Fox has moved up FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX to Dec. 17 to fill the hole left when Miramax moved THE AVIATOR to Christmas weekend.
* Universal has acquired the feature rights to the award-winning BBC miniseries STATE OF PLAY from producer Andrew Hauptman and his Mission Pictures, which secured the film rights from the series' creator, Paul Abbott. The project tackles the intersection of politics and journalism, revolves around an elected government official and his former campaign manager-turned-journalist for a high-profile national paper. When two seemingly unrelated slayings are linked by a single phone call, the two friends find themselves on opposite sides of an investigation.
* Scott Rudin will produce an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's upcoming novel NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN for Paramount Pictures. The book is a noir thriller set in West Texas, tells the blood-soaked tale of a man on the run with a suitcase full of money being pursued by a number of individuals.
* Dimension Films has sealed a deal to develop Platinum Studios' THE DARKNESS as its latest bigscreen comicbook adaptation. Project, published through Platinum's newly acquired Top Cow, revolves around a 21-year-old former assassin who inherits a family secret, an unholy power known as "the darkness," which changes his life. The comic's central character, Jackie Estacado, has crossed into storylines of superhero the Hulk and is skedded to mix in the worlds of Superman and Batman in upcoming issues.
* Universal Pictures has teamed with Mission Pictures to develop an American movie version of Paul Abbott's BBC miniseries STATE OF PLAY. It's a political thriller about two friends, one a member of Parliament and the other a journalist, who find themselves on opposite sides of an investigation into two seemingly unrelated murders. Abbott, who created the show and is writing a second series, will exec produce the movie.
* Pixar Animation Studios' upcoming film CARS will be postponed from its pla
nned November release to a June 2006 bow. Pixar and Disney explained that moving the film to June 9, 2006, would allow them to take full advantage of the large summer moviegoing audience, followed by the lucrative holiday DVD market.
* Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies have acquired screen rights to THE ANYBODIES, the bestselling children's book series written by N.E. Bode (the pen name of Julianna Baggott) and illustrated by Peter Ferguson. Baggott's book is a whimsical adventure about an 11-year-old who learns she was switched at birth and she is actually a member of "The Anybodies," a rare breed of humans with shape-shifting powers. She's soon pitted against a sinister magician to gain possession of a manual that holds the key to being an "anybody."
* Micott & Bazara, the Japanese creators of the upcoming toontoon import APPLESEED has pacted with nascent Axis Entertainment to co-produce two sequels in the franchise together. The projects combine motion-capture and new technology called "toon-shading," which gives 3D characters a 2D comicbook look. * DreamWorks Animation Studios announced Wednesday that it will postpone the release of SHREK 3 from a November 2006 playdate to May 2007. The move allows the newly public company to stick with a formula that has worked incredibly well for the first two SHREK movies.
* DreamWorks has given Ben Stiller and Stuart Cornfeld's Red Hour Films a three-year renewal on their first-look deal. The studio is mobilizing TROPIC THUNDER as the next film Stiller potentially directs and toplines, based on an original script he wrote with Etan Cohen and Justin Thoreau, and has also made a preemptive acquisition of THE RUINS, the upcoming horror novel by A SIMPLE PLAN author Scott Smith. Smith will adapt his book about a group of tourists on a hikehike that turns into a nightmare. The first Red Hour project to go into production under the DreamWorks logo will likely be the comedy DATE SCHOOL, directed by Miguel Arteta. Red Hour is also mounting CIVILWARLAND IN BAD DECLINE, Stiller's true passion project, which is based on a George Saunders novella about the trouble a wimpy administrator gets into when he unwittingly hires a trained killer to stop gangs from terrorizing the patrons of a Civil War theme park. Saunders is adapting the script.
* Nicole Kidman is dropping out of Mel Brooks' bigscreen adaptation of his musical THE PRODUCERS. Kidman wouldn't have enough time to rehearse the intricate song and dance routines before she heads into her next film, EUCALYPTUS.
* Working Title have made a preemptive acquisition of ALIBI, a novel by Joseph Kanon (THE GOOD GERMAN) to be published in May by Henry Holt. Story concerns a young, wealthy GI who arrives in post-war Venice in 1945 to visit his expatriate mother. He falls in love with an Italian Jewish girl, and his moral compass goes awry when he suspects mom's Italian fiance was a Nazi collaborator.
GUNN SHOTS
(NOT from the trades)
* SUBDIVISION, COLORADO, an adventure feature in the tradition of THE GOONIES and Ray Harryhausen recently premiered at the Santa Fe Film Festival and is available on DVD. There's a QuickTime trailer at http://www.SubdivisionColorado.com/
* American Accolades 5th Annual TV, Treatments and Shorts Competition entry deadline is approaching. Visit http://www.americanaccolades.com/ for more info.
* British actress Samantha Bond, who played Miss Moneypenny in the last four Bond movies, has stated she is quitting her role as the flirty secretary as it wouldn't be the same without Pierce Brosnan. Rumor has hinted that a replacement Moneypenny is likely to be around 20 years of age and fresh out of college.
* Speaking of Bond, Welsh actor Ioan Grufford is tipped to succeed Pierce Brosnan as Agent 007. The King Arthur star would be the second Welshman (after two-time Bond Timothy Dalton) to play the suave spy.
* Speaking of Timothy Dalton, the actor has also been approached to upgrade from spy to head of spies, to portray 'C', the MI6 Director General, in DAISY SCARLETT: SEMPER OCCULTUS. Sienna Miller (LAYER CAKE) is said to be reading the script, sparking rumor she is competing with Naomi Watts for the lead role of MI6 Agent Daisy Scarlett. Danny Boyle is being sought to direct, though sources state Narc's Joe Carnahan has the script too.
* Is Mike Myers planning to bring his camp 60's spy back for a fourth time? Word has it, the project will be set in the 80's and will have a WEDDING SINGER vibe to it. Paris Hilton has been associated to it, though it seems doubtful. David Hasslehoff (in KNIGHT RIDER mode) has also been mooted about for a supposed cameo.
* The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures today honored British filmmaker John Deery and his debuting film CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE, which joins the company of FAHRENHEIT 9/11and THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST as the three films that received Special Recognition of Films that Reflect the Freedom of Expression. The film opens Friday, December 3 at an exclusive engagement at the Angelika in New York and at the Laemmle Theaters in Los Angeles from December 17. The film also is the debuting feature from new distribution company Watch Entertainment, headed by John Cusimano (http://www.watchentertainment.com)
* The movie QUADRO PINK is a high concept comedy that implies that 911 is just the beginning of a huge money making plan. In the film, President Bush is depicted as a puppet who won the presidency only to put money into the hands of his friends. To watch a sneak peak from the Quadro Pink Movie got to http://www.quadropinkmovie.com.
* The director, co-writer, producer, and the stellar leading cast of The Lord of the Rings film trilogy will appear in RINGERS: LORD OF THE FANS, executive produced by Tom DeSanto (Apt Pupil, X-Men, Transformers), and directed by first-time writer/director Carlene Cordova. RINGERS is a feature-length documentary that explores how "The Lord of the Rings" has influenced Western popular culture for the past 50 years. The film reveals many layers of history and artistic inspiration behind Tolkien's books, while reveling in the pop frenzy carried forward by the Hippie movement, the rockers, the fantasists, the activists, and legions of screaming fans. Visit http://www.TheOneRing.net for more.
* The all-new Muppets.com went live November 17, offering fans the latest news, behind-the-scenes updates, interactive games and activities in one Muppettsational web site. The site integrates real video of Kermit the Frog and the cast of Muppet characters into a vibrant 3-D environment creating a unique and immersive web experience. Check it out at http://www.Muppets.com
* Chris Fuller has put up a website for his film LOREN CASS at http://www.lorencass.com
