Hey folks, Harry here, with a pretty darn busy and filled to the brim WEEKLY RECAP. Lots of projects moving around. Directors delaying and leaving. X-MEN moving up to summer isn't good news for me, personally, I'd rather see Bryan Singer be given the post-production time to really make sure everything is just perfect... as opposed to working under the gun. But hey... that's just me. Well, here's Elston....
TAKEN FROM VARIETY AND HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
CASTING
* Jason Isaacs (upcoming THE END OF THE AFFAIR) joins Mel Gibson and Heath Ledger in Columbia's THE PATRIOT for director Roland Emmerich. Chris Cooper (OCTOBER SKY) also joins the flick as Mel Gibson's character's brother while Joely Richardson will play Gibson's love interest.
* Jennifer Esposito (SUMMER OF SAM) joins SHAFT starring Samuel L. Jackson.
* Eric Schaeffer (IF LUCY FELL) joins ONE NIGHT AT MCCOOL'S.
* Bruce Greenwood will play JFK in New Line's THIRTEEN DAYS for director Roger Donaldson. Kevin Costner stars in the Cuban missile crisis pic.
* Meg Ryan will star in THIS MAN, THIS WOMAN for director Richard Loncraine (RICHARD III). Frederic Raphael (EYES WIDE SHUT) wrote the script inspired by Lynn Darling's Esquire articles. The story follows a couple who rediscover their love after two devastating incidents. Ryan is also expected to shoot THE SHIPPING NEWS for director Billy Bob Thornton.
* Oliver Platt will play the wrestler who falls from grace in Warner Bros.' wrestling comedy starring David Arquette and Scott Caan to be directed by Brian Robbins (VARISTY BLUES).
* Will Smith is in talks to star in THE LEGEND OF BAGGER VANCE for director Robert Redford. He would play Rannulph Junah, a war hero who competes against the nation's top golf pros while guided by a black caddie.
* Anna Friel (A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM) will play the lead opposite Freddie Prinze Jr. in Dimension's BOYS AND GIRLS for director Robert Iscove.
* Jeanne Tripplehorn (MICKEY BLUE EYES) will play the female lead in the comedy RELATIVE VALUES for director Eric Styles (DREAMING OF JOSEPH LEES) about an English aristocratic family and their son who comes home with his fiancee, an American actress.
* Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (LIMBO) joins THE PERFECT STORM.
* Denzel Washington is in negotiations to play the coach of a newly integrated football team in 1971 in REMEMBER THE TITANS for director Boaz Yakin (A PRICE ABOVE RUBIES) and producer Jerry Bruckheimer. Shooting begins in late Sept.
* Busta Rhymes joins SHAFT playing John Shaft's sidekick Rasaan. Richard Price (CLOCKERS) wrote the latest draft of the script.
* Rade Sherbedgia (EYES WIDE SHUT) joins Clint Eastwood's SPACE COWBOYS.
* Ron Livingston will play Allen Ginsberg in BEAT starring Courtney Love, Norman Reedus and Kiefer Sutherland.
* Nathan Lane is in talks to play Jackie Gleason in a biopic for producers David Rubin and Stanley DeSantis. Neil Labute and Jon Robin Baitz are in talks to direct and script.
* John Turturro and Emily Watson are set to star in THE LUZHIN DEFENSE for Dutch director Marleen Garris about the relationship between a chess master and a beautiful young woman in the 1930s. Peter Berry adapted the Vladmir Nabokov novel.
* Maria Bello ("ER") joins COYOTE UGLY for Touchstone Pictures, producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director David McNally.
* Tara Reid (AMERICAN PIE) will play Richard Gere's daughter in Robert Altman's DR. T AND THE WOMEN.
* Helen Hunt is attached to produce and star in the black comedy NICE for Warner Bros. and producer Denise DiNovi based on the Jen Sacks novel about an attractive woman who's too nice to break up with her suitors and begins to think burying them would be easier than leaving them.
DIRECTOR/WRITER ATTACHMENTS
* Ronny Yu (BRIDE OF CHUCKY) will direct Samuel L. Jackson in the action-comedy THE 51st STATE written by Stel Paulou about an American chemist and street entrepreneur who go to England to set up a drug deal, but things get complicated when an anti-American hitman escorts him around Liverpool.
* MGM bought the script AIN'T NOBODY LIKE THE ONE I GOT by Freddie Gutierrez, Wesley Johnson and Scott Taylor about a young man and woman who don't realize how perfect they are for each other and end up switching bodies to figure it out.
* James Cameron is reportedly telling friends he'll be directing TRUE LIES 2 as well as the Imax 3-D Mars project both expected to be released in 2001.
* Brian Lynch will direct his comedy script EVERYBODY'S DEAD for Artisan Entertainment about college students who encounter zombies after a wild frat party.
* Sally Field will direct Minnie Driver in BEAUTIFUL about a young woman obsessed with being a beauty queen. Hallie Kate Eisenberg, Joey Lauren Adams and Leslie Ann Stefanson are in talks to join the Destination Films project.
* Photographer Pat York will direct her adaptation of Alicia Donati's THE MARZIPIAN PIGEON about a love affair in the New York art scene. Roger Corman is helping to fund the project.
* Mike Elliot has written WINNER'S OUT for Eriq La Salle to direct for his Humble Journey Films. The story follows a black man and a white man who befriend each other at a free-agent basketball camp. Their friendship is tested when one becomes successful and the other does not.
* MGM optioned Julian Stone's spec I WANT KANDEE about a 17-year old pop star who wants a normal teenage life. She runs away, changes her look and enrolls in a regular school hoping for normal experiences.
* Avi Nescher will write/direct the WWII drama THE SECRET for Open City Films about the true story of a Jewish man who passed himself off as an SS officer during the war. Shooting begins next year.
* James Gunn will write SCOOBY-DOO for producer Chuck Roven and Warner Bros. His version is reported to be a comedy horror a la ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN and GHOSTBUSTERS. Gunn recently did a rewrite of SPY VS. SPY for director Jay Roach.
* Mimi Leder is set to direct PAY IT FORWARD for Bel Air Entertainment, based on the upcoming Catherine Ryan Hyde novel about the relationships between a dysfunctional single mother, an emotionally scarred teacher and a boy who comes up with an idea for an assignment on changing the world: doing a favor for someone in advance whicl will ideally cause that person to do something for someone else and so on.
* John Woo will direct the thriller DIRTY 30 for New Line about a cop who leaves the NYPD for two years only to return after his brother is accused of killing a rookie cop.
* Joe Mantegna will direct a film adaptation of David Mamet's comic play LAKEBOAT about a grad student who takes a summer job on a Great Lakes freighter and sees life through the eyes of his low-brow crew members. Tony Mamet, Charles Durning, Peter Falk, Robert Forster, J.J. Johnston, Denis Leary, Jack Wallace and George Wendt star.
MISCELLANEOUS PRODUCTION TIDBITS
* Tom Green (MTV's "The Tom Green Show") signed a feature film pact with Touchstone Pictures to write and act in projects for the studio.
* Steven Spielberg is delaying production on MINORITY REPORT to accomodate actor availability. Shooting is now set for January 2000 (three months later) which will also affect the start of MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA (though whether production on GEISHA will be earlier or later remains to be seen due to contradicting reports).
* Due to "creative differences," Jan De Bont has abandoned directing duties on THE ADAPTIVE ULTIMATE scripted by Jon Cohen (MINORITY REPORT).
* Doug Liman (GO, SWINGERS) is entering a deal to produce and possibly direct films based on Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne trilogy THE BOURNE IDENTITY, THE BOURNE SUPREMACY and THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM. Blake Herron will adapt the first installment about Bourne, a man with no memory of his past, trying to figure out if he was good or evil and discovers CIA connections, conspirators and an assassin who wants him dead.
* Miramax optioned the nonfiction article from its Talk magazine. The studio will develop Mark Ross' "The Last Safari" into a feature about Hutu rebels kidnapping a group of tourists in Uganda. >{?* Akiva Goldsman (BATMAN & ROBIN) will produce and/or write an adaptation of the 1970s show "Starsky & Hutch" for Warner Bros. as well as FLESH & INK, a comic book property to be co-produced with Icon Prods.
* Joel Schumacher has dropped out of directing THE APARTMENT. His next project hasn't been determined yet, but he is apparently choosing between a top secret project or TIGERLAND about former grunts who train for Vietnam in 1971 in the backwoods of Vietnam and forget their humanity.
* Bruce Willis has dropped out of his next pic ACE IN THE HOLE. It was set to shoot this fall.
* Scott Rudin and Sydney Pollack have picked up Vikram Seth's novel AN EQUAL MUSIC for Paramount. Pollack may direct the story of a relationship between a violinist and a pianist who never got over their love affair they had as students.
* Though shooting won't begin until Oct., Fox is moving the release date of X-MEN up to July 2000 as opposed to Christmas of that year.
* Warner Bros. picked up the novel A & R by Bill Flanagan about a young record exec who learns the harsh realities of the music biz.
* Dimension Films acquired the rights to the comic series TORSO from Todd McFarlane Entertainment. TORSO creators Brian Bendis and Marc Andreyko will adapt the screenplay about Eliot Ness' hunt for America's first known serial killer the "Torso Killer."
Tom Green getting into flicks, James Cameron buzzing about TRUE LIES 2, lots of PATRIOT casting and more casting for DR. T AND THE WOMEN and ONE NIGHT AT MCCOOL'S (big cast for LAKEBOAT too), MINORITY REPORT delayed but X-MEN may be released sooner, lots of literature being optioned...busy week. Both Jan De Bont and Joel Schumacher dropped out of projects, so it will be interesting to see what they decide to do next...Bruce Willis too--since no ACE IN THE HOLE.
Hope you're excited about some of the projects mentioned this week. I'm interested in EVERYBODY'S DEAD by Brian Lynch. If it's remotely as funny and well written as his THE NEXT MUPPET MOVIE script, I'm there. Can't wait to find out more about it. I'm also curious on James Gunn's take on SCOOBY-DOO and how this BOURNE trilogy is going to work out for Doug Liman...could be cool.
Until next week...
Elston Gunn
