Hey folks, Harry here with another of Elston Gunn's Weekly Recaps which so wonderfully encapsulates the weeks 'official' news from the world of the trades. So dig in and enjoy... Some good stuff here this week....
TAKEN FROM VARIETY AND HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
CASTING
* Jennifer Grey and Johnny Galecki join Ben Affleck, Gwyneth Paltrow and Natasha Henstridge in BOUNCE for director Don Roos (THE OPPOSITE OF SEX).
* Leslie Nielsen will star in 2001: A SPACE TRAVESTY about a marshal who tries to rescue the president and other world leaders who have been kidnapped by aliens and turned into mutants.
* Julie Andrews and Sophie Thompson join Jeanne Tripplehorn in RELATIVE VALUES based on the 1951 Noel Coward play.
* Christopher Lee will co-star as Saruman in New Line's adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's THE LORD OF THE RINGS.
* Elizabeth Hurley and Vinessa Shaw are joining Sean Penn and Sarah Polley in THE WEIGHT OF THE WATER for director Kathryn Bigelow.
* Mel Gibson will star in WHAT WOMEN WANT for director Nancy Meyers (THE PARENT TRAP) and Paramount about a chauvinistic executive who is able to hear what every woman he meets is really thinking. Shooting should begin early next year.
* Natasha Henstridge and Joe Pantoliano join the indie flick A BETTER WAY TO DIE for writer/director Scott Wiper, who also stars with Lou Diamond Phillips and Andre Braugher.
* Melissa Sage Miller and Eliza Dushku will star in SOUL SURVIVOR for Artisan Entertainment and writer/director Steve Carpenter about a young woman who is lying unconscious in an emergency room and is having trouble telling apart reality from hallucination after she thinks she lost her boyfriend in a car accident in which she was driving. Luke Wilson is in talks to take a role.
* Kiandra Maycock joins BITTERSWEET currently shooting in Florida with Heath McKnight directing.
* Nicolas Cage is back in talks to star in CAPTAIN CORELLI'S MANDOLIN for director Roger Michell (NOTTING HILL). Cage may start this film in the spring in Italy after he wraps FAMILY MAN.
* Keanu Reeves is close to signing a deal to star in two back-to-back sequels of THE MATRIX for writer/directors Larry and Andy Wachowski. They're scheduled to begin a 250-day production schedule in Fall 2000. Reeves will most likely shoot the remake SWEET NOVEMBER before the sequels. That film is about a tycoon who falls for a woman who takes a new lover every month, knowing she's not long for this world.
* Kate Hudson (200 CIGARETTES) joins Robert Altman's DR. T AND THE WOMEN. She'll play Richard Gere's daughter, a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader who is planning her wedding.
* Michael Madsen and Chad McQueen will star with Daniel Baldwin in FALL directed by Baldwin about an FBI agent in a witness protection program after he sent a mobster to prison. The mobster hires a hitman team of two brothers to hunt the agent down. Ken August scripted.
* Kim Delaney ("NYPD Blue") joins Gary Sinise, Tim Robbins and Connie Nielson in Disney's MISSION TO MARS for Disney and director Brian De Palma.
* John Goodman joins COYOTE UGLY with Piper Perabo, Maria Bello, Adam Garcia, Melanie Lynskey and Izabella Miko. David McNally directs.
* Ed Harris is in talks to join THE PRIME GIG with Vince Vaughn about a telemarketer who goes to work for a con man. He has second thoughts when he discovers a plan to steal an elderly woman's life savings.
* Lisa Kudrow is in talks to play the female lead in NUMBERS starring John Travolta and to be directed by Nora Ephron.
* Marie Matiko will star opposite Wesley Snipes in THE ART OF WAR for director Christian Duguay about a UN translator teaming up with a spy to uncover a conspiracy concerning the assassination of a Chinese ambassador. Donald Sutherland also stars.
* Ruben Santiago-Hudson joins SHAFT as a detective who poses as a cop.
* Mike Epps (upcoming NEXT FRIDAY) joins BAIT with Jamie Foxx for director Antoine Fuqua (REPLACEMENT KILLERS).
* Bill Smitrovich (AIR FORCE ONE) is now among the cast of THIRTEEN DAYS as the head of the joint chiefs of staff.
* Liv Tyler will play the Queen of Fairies in New Line's trilogy THE LORD OF THE RINGS.
DIRECTOR/WRITER ATTACHMENTS
* Sony Pictures Entertainment picked up David Lesser's DANNY'S TOY about three aliens who plan to destroy Earth but their spaceship is only 3 inches long. They wind up under a Christmas tree where they are mistaken as toys by a young boy.
* Music video director Nicholas Brandt will direct the thriller BLEEDING THE LINE by Chris Boal about the relationship between a serial killer and a comic book artist. Brandt may also direct the pics SUGAR MOUNTAIN and KINDRED.
* New Line picked up Melissa Carter's CATCH OF THE DAY about an heir to a perfume fortune and a girl from the wrong side of the tracks who guts fish in Seattle for a living. Carter has also written a spec about a woman who finds several old letters from her fiancee's past girlfriends. She goes searching for these women because he has never told her about his past. She finds one woman who is a model.
* Jeffrey Eastin (INCONVENIENCED) is in talks with James Cameron and Fox to write the first draft of the TRUE LIES sequel.
HARRY NOTE: He's not in talks... He's writing it.
* Brian Robbins (VARSITY BLUES) is in final talks to direct the romantic comedy FIRST DAUGHTER for New Regency Prods. written by and to star Jerry O'Connell (rewritten by Rob Thomas) about the president's daughter attending college without secret service agents. A young looking agent is secretly hired to keep an eye on her. The two fall in love and things take a turn when his true identity is revealed.
* Commercials director Steve Chase will direct SPECIAL for MGM about a construction foreman who pretends to be handicapped so he can get an autographed football for his girlfriend's son. She won's marry him unless the 8-year old approves. He must continue his charade, however, when he becomes the subject of a PBS documentary.
* John Madden (SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE) may direct an adaptation of Tom Eidson's novel ST. AGNES' STAND for Miramax about an outlaw who stumbles upon survivors of an ambush--three of which are nuns who believe he has been sent by God to rescue them.
* Kyle Cooper (opening title sequence to SEVEN) will direct NEW PORT SOUTH for producer John Hughes. Cooper also worked on the title sequences of BRAVEHEART, TRUE LIES, MEN IN BLACK and MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE.
* Catherine Butterfield will adapt the Jenny Colgan novel AMANDA'S WEDDING for Warner Bros. about a group of friends who plot to sabotage the wedding of another friend who is marrying for an aristocratic title.
* Video director Kevin Kerslake will direct the actioner COSMIC FUNK AND THE TEMPLE OF GROOVE for Artisan Ent. starring Wu Tang Clan's RZA and Shi Yan Ming involving the reincarnation of two 13th century Shaolin monks in the 20th century.
* Rob Reiner will produce and direct an untitled thriller based on his own idea centering on two high school students who commit a series of perfectly planned murders and try to outsmart an FBI agent working her first case. Tony Gayton will script.
* Sam Hamm will be scripting the romantic comedy RECONSTRUCTION for producer Lawrence Bender about a man who feigns amnesia in order to save his failing marriage.
* Chris Wedge (BUNNY short) will direct 20th Century Fox's first fully computer-generated film ICE AGE.
HARRY NOTE: The above news is very exciting stuff. If you have not had a chance to see BUNNY from Wedge and crew... Try to find it. It looks COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from any CGI animation I've seen. Not photographically real... but stylized in a very cool... very groovy way. Expect good things from ICE AGE.
MISCELLANEOUS PRODUCTION TIDBITS
* Miramax bought the pitch ROMANOFF from documentarians Sheri Springer Berm and Bob Pulcini who will write and direct the story of the 1930s Hollywood restarauteur Michael Romanoff, a Jewish immigrant who posed as the nephew of the late Russian Czar.
* Buena Vista picked up the pitch OLD by Oliver Butcher and Eric Freiser about teens who, after taunting the elderly, suddenly become old.
* Warner Bros. bought Andrew Osborne's pitch DRAMARAMA for Mad Chance Prods. about a high school drama club teacher who puts on a play in a small Massachusetts town, wins a competition and brings life to the dead town.
Well, it was a pretty straightforward week (quick too), but films like SHAFT, THE PATRIOT, THIRTEEN DAYS, DR. T AND THE WOMEN, THE LORD OF THE RINGS and BOUNCE are projects we've heard about for a while, but continue to cast and soon head into production (if not already). BOUNCE has Natasha Henstridge among its cast, you can see she is also involved with A BETTER WAY TO DIE. It's cool to see Rob Reiner gearing up to direct a thriller again (his first since MISERY)... the plot sounds intriguing, and timely. His fellow director Nora Ephron is ready to direct NUMBERS with John Travolta and Lisa Kudrow (interesting pairing). I'm curious to hear more on that project as well as ICE AGE, WHAT WOMEN WANT and CAPTAIN CORELLI'S MANDOLIN among others. MATRIX sequel deals are basically a done thing; and how about Jeffrey Eastin writing a TRUE LIES sequel? Read Harry's adventure regarding glancing at Eastin's possible plans for the story from earlier this week.
Title of the week? How about COSMIC FUNK AND THE TEMPLE OF GROOVE...love it.
Have a good September.
Until next week...
Elston Gunn
