Well Father Geek is home from the Hospital long enough to post up Elston's July 4th WEEKLY RECAP. No, I haven't been ill, Harry's sister gave birth yesterday morning on Darth (David Prowse) Vader's birthday, and we've been running around Geek Headquarters like clay based chickens with our heads cut off! That's why this is a little later than usual. It's NOT Elston's fault. So the newest addition to our clan arrived on the same date as The Vader-guy, Deborah Harry, Dan Aykroyd, Liv Tyler, Sydney Pollack, Pamela Lee, Farley Granger, and Olivia de Havilland... TOOOOOO COOOOOOOOOL!!!
To recap the week's biggest event for you just in case you didn't catch Harry's rather splashy announcement in the upper left corner of the page; Dannie (Sister Satan) gave birth in the early morning hours (shortly after Walter Matthau passed away) to a 7 pound, 19 inch, handsome blue-gray eyed boy. It was a 5 hour delivery with no problems. Both she and AICN's newest spy are doing fine and will be going home Monday, so LOBO (proud papa's staying with his family at the hospital) can crank out his part of Latin-AICN for you Tuesday morning readers. Send the parents an E-mail if you like (addresses on the front page) or if you require an overland address send it to Harry's and my PO Box on the Contact page and we'll see to it that they get whatever...
Now on to Elston's report...
TAKEN FROM VARIETY AND HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
CASTING
Now on to Elston's report...
TAKEN FROM VARIETY AND HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
CASTING
CASTING
* Sean Patrick Thomas (CRUEL INTENTIONS) joins WES CRAVEN'S DRACULA 2000.
* Dan Bucatinsky, Adam Goldberg and Richard Ruccolo will star in the pic ALL OVER THE GUY.
* A.J. Benza and Steve Guttenberg will star in the indie flick P.S. YOUR CAT IS DEAD for director Roger Cardinal (DEAD SILENT).
* Michael Rosenbaum ("Zoe") will play Marcus MacBeth in RAVE MACBETH, a retelling of the Shakespeare play in the world of rave music.
* Sam Neill has signed to star in JURASSIC PARK 3 for director Joe Johnston (OCTOBER SKY). Alessandro Nivola may join as well.
* Robert Duvall joins Denzel Washington in JOHN Q about a father who takes an ER room hostage so his son can have a heart transplant. Nick Cassavettes will direct for New Line.
* Mark Wahlberg will star in the PLANET OF THE APES remake for Tim Burton. The deal also includes a sequel. Gary Oldman is in talks to join as well.
* Noah Wyle joins Jake Gyllenhaal in DONNIE DARKO for writer/director Richard Kelly.
* Adam Garcia will star opposite Drew Barrymore in RIDING IN CARS WITH BOYS for director Penny Marshall. Morgan Upton Ward (A PYROMANIAC'S LOVE STORY) adapted Beverly Donofrio's 1990 memoir.
* Denise Richards, Marley Shelton, Jessica Capshaw, Jessica Cauffiel and David Boreanaz will star in VALENTINE for director Jamie Blanks (URBAN LEGEND) about four women who victimize a college nerd. Years later, he is handsome and successful and starts killing the women one by one every Valentine's Day.
* Jon Seda joins William Baldwin in DOUBLE BANG.
* Lochlyn Munro joins DRACULA 2000, KEVIN OF THE NORTH, TAKE MY LIFE...PLEASE and PC AND THE WEB.
* A.J. Buckley, Kerr Smith and Simon Rex will star in the vampire pic THE FORSAKEN.
* Dagmara Dominczyk (KEEPING THE FAITH) joins THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO.
* Amy Smart joins Breckin Meyer and Whoopi Goldberg in RAT RACE.
* John Leguizamo joins WHAT'S THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN starring Martin Lawrence and Danny DeVito based on the Donald Westlake novel.
* John Michael Higgins (BICENTENNIAL MAN) joins CALL O' THE GLEN with Michael McKean and Larry Miller.
* Sam Ball (URBANIA) joins THE GLASS HOUSE.
* Bridget Moynahan (COYOTE UGLY) will play John Cusack's fiancee in SERENDIPITY.
* Mark Ruffalo joins John Woo's WINDTALKERS starring Nicolas Cage.
* Joey Lauren Adams (CHASING AMY), Rebecca Gayheart (JAWBREAKER), Adrian Grenier (CECIL B. DEMENTED), Eric Stoltz and NBA player Ray Allen join Sarah Michelle Gellar in James Toback's college flick HARVARD MAN.
* Carly Pope ("Popular") and Dash Mihok (A PERFECT STORM) joins FINDERS FEE starring James Earl Jones and Robert Forster.
DIRECTOR/WRITER ATTACHMENTS
* Mike Newell (DONNIE BRASCO) is attached to direct HOW TO LOSE A GUY IN 10 DAYS based on a bestseller by Michele Alexander and Jeannie Long. Gwyneth Paltrow is set to star. Shooting begins in the fall.
* Gregory and Gavin O'Connor and Robert A. Hopes have written PRIDE AND GLORY which was optioned by Fine Line about the professional and personal lives of some NYPD officers.
* Donald Petrie (upcoming MISS CONGENIALTY) is attached to direct BIG BABY for Parkway Prods. about a man who can't hold down a job, so he becomes a professional wrestler to save his marriage and family.
* Darryl Quarles will write an untitled hockey comedy for Revolution Studios as a starring vehicle for Cuba Gooding Jr.
* French director Benoit Jacquot will direct a French-German version of the Puccino opera TOSCA.
* Brian Lynch has written NIGHTCRAWLERS about a team of kids who fight monsters (who are led by the Boogeyman) found underneath beds everywhere. Warner Bros. picked up the action/horror/comedy script.
* Adam Herz will write a sequel to AMERICAN PIE for Universal Pictures.
* Mark Illsley (HAPPY, TEXAS) will direct BOOKIES about four college buddies who become bookies and garner attention from the mob. Actor Michael Bacall (FREE WILLY) scripted.
* Brett Ratner (RUSH HOUR) will direct a remake of the 1970 French film LE CERCLE ROUGE for producer Arthur Sarkissian and New Line. The story involves a thief, a murderer, a mob boss, a sharpshooter, a pimp, a nightclub owner and a cop all entangled in a web of theft and revenge.
* Rod Hardy will direct the indie pic ROUTE 52 about four friends who take a shortcut home and their car breaks down. They must spend the night in a poor mountain town where they become suspects in the murder of the sheriff's son. Sidney Lee and Myrica Taylor wrote the script.
* Ivan Reitman will produce and direct the DreamWorks sci-fi comedy EVOLUTION about the quickly mutating one-celled organisms mutating on Earth after a meteor hits it.
* Kevin Smith will adapt and direct Gregory McDonald's book FLETCH WON for the big screen for Miramax after the studio optioned McDonald's 11-book series. David List will produce along with Smith's View Askew Prods. partner Scott Mosier.
* Mark Rocco will direct his script THE JACKET about a man who is imprisoned for a murder he didn't commit. He is able to forsee his death and tries to solve his own case before he dies. Steven Soderbergh's and George Clooney's Warner Bros. based production banner Section Eight will produce.
* William Shatner may produce and direct THE SHIVA CLUB about two showbiz hopefuls who arrive at a comic's house during the Jewish ritual shiva--a weeklong period of mourning.
* Billy Devlin sold a pitch to Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer about a Yankees baseball player who is hated so much he gets death threats on his trip to the city. He is given a cynical Yankee-fan cop who is assigned to protect him.
* Rolfe Kanefsky (THE CURVE, MIDNIGHT 5) will direct his third teen comedy PRETTY COOL for producer Alain Siritzky. Alexis Thorpe, Summer Altice, Cecilia Berqvist and Amy Brassette will star in the pic of a high schooler who can read and control people's thoughts.
* Betty Thomas (28 DAYS) is in final talks to direct SURVIVING CHRISTMAS for Columbia about a lonely guy who rents a family for the holidays.
* Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel will write an adaptation of the Japanese film AFTER LIFE for Fox 2000 about souls stopping on the way to the afterlife and choosing only one memory to keep for eternity.
* John Hughes will write, direct and produce an untitled romantic comedy for Revolution Studios. The pic may begin shooting in the spring for a Christmas 2001 release.
* Gary Lennon sold his pitch to Fox Searchlight for CubeVision and the Firm to develop about a female DJ and a male DJ who fall in love despite their different styles.
MISCELLANEOUS PRODUCTION TIDBITS
* There are several Isaac Asimov-related film projects in the works: Warner Bros. is adapting Asimov's short story THE UGLY LITTLE BOY for Demi Moore; Fox optioned his novel series, FOUNDATION, for Shekhar Kapur (ELIZABETH) to direct; Paramount is developing END OF ETERNITY into a film that Ridley Scott may direct from a script by Gary Goldman (TOTAL RECALL).
* Scott Rudin has picked up the film rights to THE SMOKER by David Schickler about teacher at a private girl's school who is adored by one of his students, has dinner with her folks and is asked to tie the knot with her.
* Revolution Studios has the rights to the Elle magazine article "Single-Gal Haven" by Deanna Kizis about a reporter who dates five dot com millionaires in five days. Team Todd will produce. Jessica Bendinger (upcoming BRING IT ON aka CHEER FEVER) will script.
* Michael Douglas and MGM are developing a feature based on Peter Landesman's investigative article "Art Con of the Century." David Henry Hwang (M. BUTTERFLY) will script the true story of a con who hired a forger to produce a large number of fake "originals" which they put into the market for large sums of money. Around 200 fakes were in circulation in nine years.
* Disney picked up the book CHAIN OF EVIDENCE by Michael Detroit about the true story of Victoria Steele, who (straight out of police academy) is teamed with a hardened criminal/informant and the two go undercover in Hell's Angels biker gangs for a drug-trafficking investigation.
* MGM's THINGS YOU CAN TELL JUST BY LOOKING AT HER, starring Calista Flockhar, Cameron Diaz, Glenn Close, Holly Hunter, Kathy Baker and Gregory Hines, will get its release via Showtime as opposed to theaters in early 2001.
* Working Title Films and producer David Kelly will develop TOWER based on the true story of Welsh coal miners who won a fight against the British government.
GUNN SHOTS
(not from the trades)
* I've received a few emails from an anonymous source in Australia stating that the title (subtitle?) of STAR WARS EPISODE 2 will be JOURNEY OF A SITH. Chalk it up as a rumor right now, but the emailer swears its true.
* Apparently there is some casting for a new Al Pacino movie happening in Texas. Anyone know what the project is? Is it the Hollywood Project written by Andrew Niccol (TRUMAN SHOW)?
HARVARD MAN and WHAT'S THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN are sporting some pretty wild casts. I'm curious about the scripts. And I enjoyed reading that Robert Duvall and Denzel Washington, two of the best actors around, will be working together in JOHN Q. I'm kind of indifferent to the Mark Wahlberg/PLANET OF THE APES news. Ditto Shatner returning to the director's chair. Actor Lochlyn Munro is certainly busy with a number of projects. Whatever happened to CAMOUFLAGE--the movie he's in with Leslie Nielsen from a script by Billy Bob Thornton?
Ivan Reitman and John Hughes, two movie comedy icons from the 80s, hit the trades this week with news of their next projects. I'm anxious to hear more. And Kevin Smith, a Hughes follower, is taking on FLETCH, but plans to base it more on the book rather than the Chevy Chase flicks. Speaking of the 80s, Brian Lynch's NIGHTCRAWLERS sounds like a fun/adventurous movie a la GOONIES and GHOSTBUSTERS. Should be extremely cool.
