Well another week has past and Father Geek is here with yet another WEEKLY RECAP from Elston Gunn. Alot of cool news this week, a couple of bits that caught ol Father Geek's attention were Christopher McQuarrie being attached to ALEXANDER THE GREAT and John Boorman's THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN. As a kid I loved the old Richard Burton "Alexander", so I can't wait to see an updated version, especially in light of the way GLADIATOR turned out. As for Boorman's flick I feel the subjects made to order for directing style, so I'm on pins and needles till it comes out.
TAKEN FROM VARIETY AND HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
CASTING
CASTING
* Pierce Brosnan is in final talks to star in LARCENY FOR LOVERS for Mandalay Entertainment about a con artist who travels through Europe with his sister and falls in love with another con artist. Phil Lasker wrote the script.
* Actress Zhang Ziyi (CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON) is in talks to join Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker in RUSH HOUR 2 for director Brett Ratner and New Line Cinema. Shooting begins this week in L.A. and will later move to Hong Kong. Ziyi will play a villain.
* Jennifer Esposito will play a flirtatious maid in WELCOME TO COLLINWOOD, an indie film also starring Vincent D'Onofrio, Luis Guzman and Isaiah Washington. Anthony and Joe Russo will direct from their script. Shooting begins in March. Esposito will also co-star with Michael Douglas in DON'T SAY A WORD.
* Anthony Anderson (ME, MYSELF & IRENE) joins Morris Chestnut, Gabrielle Union and Tamala Jones in the romantic comedy HOW TO MAKE YOUR MAN BEHAVE IN TEN DAYS OR LESS for writer/director Mark Brown and Screen Gems.
* Mark Wahlberg is in final talks to star in THE TRUTH ABOUT CHARLIE, a remake of the 1963 film CHARADE, for Jonathan Demme. Shooting begins in the spring.
* Eddie Griffin is in final talks to star in the comedy UNDERCOVER BROTHER for director Malcolm Lee from a John Ridley script. It's about a man who secretly works for an all-black brotherhood.
* Kristin Scott Thomas will star in a film based on the Stefan Zweig novel TWENTY FOUR HOURS OF A WOMAN'S LIFE, where she would play an English widow who falls for a young gambler on the French Riviera. Ingrid Bergman and Merle Oberon have previously played the role. Laurent Bouhnik (ZONZON, 1999 MADELEINE) will direct. Production begins in May.
* Balthazar Getty, Jamie Kennedy, Kate Towne, Natasha Gregson Wagner, Robert Wagner, Johnathon Schaech, Eric Roberts, Jared Leto, Carmen Electra, Tori Spelling, Cheri Oteri and many others star in SOLL GOODE, an indie comedy that writer/director Danny Comden recently completed shooting for Immortal Films.
* Jacqueline Obradors (DEUCE BIGALOW: MALE GIGOLO) has been cast in the Vin Diesel-starrer DIABLO. F. Gary Gray directs the pic which begins shooting this month.
* Saul Williams (SLAM) will play a mental patient in K-PAX starring Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges.
* Ansen Mount (URBAN LEGEND 2: FINAL CUT) joins Robert De Niro in CITY BY THE SEA for director Michael Caton-Jones.
* Jesse James (upcoming BLOW and PEARL HARBOR) will play Piper Perabo's little brother in the comedy SLAP HER, SHE'S FRENCH.
* Mark Ruffalo, Stacey Dash and Lindsay Price join the cast of A VIEW FROM THE TOP, the upcoming Miramax comedy starring Gwyneth Paltrow for director Bruno Bareeto about a young woman who has aspirations of becoming a flight attendant. Kelly Preston, Christina Applegate, Candice Bergen and Rob Lowe also star.
* David Arquette is in final talks to star in the comedy/thriller ARACH ATTACK for Warner Bros./Village Roadshow and director Ellory Elkayem, who shared script-writing duties with Jesse Alexander. It's about a toxic waste spill that turns spiders into giant destructive monsters.
* Toni Collette joins Ben Affleck and Samuel L. Jackson in Paramount's CHANGING LANES. Roger Michell directs the pic about a car accident involving a lawyer and businessman and the terrifying levels to which it escalates.
* Kirsten Dunst will play Mary Jane opposite Tobey Maguire in SPIDERMAN for Columbia Pictures and director Sam Raimi. Shooting begins next month.
* Philip Seymour Hoffman will star in OWNING MOLONY as a bank manager who embezzled millions of bucks to supplement his gambling habit over the course of a year and a half. It's based on the 1987 nonfiction book STUNG: THE INCREDIBLE OBSESSION OF BRIAN MOLONY. Richard Kwietniowski will direct from his own adaptation of a screenplay by Maurice Chauvet.
* Susan Sarandon is in talks to star in the indie drama RIALTO for director Lizzie Borden (WORKING GIRLS) about a mysterious woman who runs an independent movie theater in Rhode Island in the 1950s. She has an affair with a young ex-POW of the Korean War. After people wonder about her past and her support for artsy films, she becomes a suspect of communist activity. Borden co-wrote the script with Stephen Glantz and Lennie Bleecher.
* Lance Henriksen stars in the thriller THE UNTOLD for writer/director Jonas Quastel and producer Matt Huson about a powerful exec who assembles a group of experts to find and investigate the site of a plane crash where his daughter was killed.
* Izabella Scorupco (VERTICAL LIMIT) joins Christian Bale and Matthew McConaughey in Disney's REIGN OF FIRE. Rob Bowman directs the pic which starts shooting in Feb. in Ireland.
* Richard T. Jones ("Judging Amy) will play a police sergeant in PHONE BOOTH for 20th Century Fox.
* Jonathan Brandis joins MGM's HART'S WAR. Production begins next month.
* Terry Crews (THE 6TH DAY) will play Elizabeth Hurley's right-hand man in SERVICING SARAH for Paramount.
* Al Pacino is in talks to star in PEOPLE I KNOW, a picture about a New York press agent who finds himself involved in a mystery surrounding politics and celebrity. Dan Algrant (NAKED IN NEW YORK will direct from a script by playwright Jon Robin Baitz.
* Connie Nielsen will star in the indie pic LOVING THE GODDESS for director Julian Jarrold about poet Robert Graves' struggles with traumatic WII flashbacks and his finding relief in a beautiful American poet who becomes his muse and lover, though he is married with four children.
* Will Ferrell, Judd Nelson, Ever Carradine, Shannon Elizabeth, George Carlin, Seann William Scott, Jason Biggs, Tracy Morgan, E! Entertainment's Steve Kmetko & Jules Asner will round out the cast of the pic JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK for writer/director/co-star Kevin Smith and Dimension Films. They join Jason Mewes, Jason Lee, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Brian O'Halloran and Jeff Anderson in the comedy which begins shooting next month for an Aug. 10 release.
* Australian TV comedian Eric Bana has been cast alongside Josh Hartnett and Tom Sizemore in BLACK HAWK DOWN for director Ridley Scott, based on the book by Mark Bowden about U.S. soldiers in Somalia.
* Patrick Stewart and Martin Short lend their voices to JIMMY NEUTRON: BOY GENIUS for Paramount/Nickelodeon Movies. It's set for a holiday 2001 release.
DIRECTOR/WRITER ATTACHMENTS
* Wes Craven is attached to direct ALICE, based on the new Electronic Arts videogame, which is a Gothic horror version of ALICE IN WONDERLAND for Collision Entertainment (a partnership between Dimension Films and Abandon Entertainment).
* Brad Silberling will direct BABY'S IN BLACK from his own script which Disney is in talks to acquire. Susan Sarandon and Dustin Hoffman are attached to star in the pic about a grieving man who begins to fall for a woman who works in a bar owned by her missing boyfriend.
* Music video director Nick Quested will helm Mandalay Pictures' comedy KUNG FU THEATER about a comic book artist who is transported inside a martial arts film and takes a strange journey. Tom Jankiewicz scripted. Shooting may begin in March.
* James Foley (THE CORRUPTOR) is in talks to direct THE IRISHMAN, based on the biography by Rick Porrello, TO KILL THE IRISHMAN: THE WAR THAT CRIPPLED THE MAFIA, for Emmett/Furla Films. It's about Irish mobster Danny Greene and his battle against the Italian mob in Cleveland. He wore green suits and was notorious for his "Irish luck."
* Tom Dey (SHANGHAI NOON) is in talks to direct Eddie Murphy and Robert De Niro in SHOWTIME for Warner Bros./Village Roadshow about two cops in a reality-based TV show created to help boost the image of their police dept.
* Christopher McQuarrie will direct an epic drama about Alexander the Great for producer Mark Canton and Senator Entertainment. Peter Buchman (JURASSIC PARK 3) wrote the script.
* Alex Proyas is attached to direct a feature based on the Fred Saberhagen sci-fi series BESERKERS for New Line Cinema (who just secured the rights). Jesse Alexander will write the script about Earth's struggle against the beserkers, a group of intelligent machines created by one alien species at war with another.
* Music video helmer Tim Story will direct the comedy BARBERSHOP for MGM about a day in the life of a barber shop on Chicago's South Side. Shooting begins in April.
* Robert Marcarelli (THE OMEGA CODE) will direct the romantic comedy GABRIEL'S GIFT by Nancy Zilotto about a lonely woman who meets her guardian angel in the form of a 5-year old boy.
* John Boorman will direct Icon Entertainment's THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN based on the nonfiction book by Simon Winchester about the compiling of the Oxford English Dictionary where a schizophrenic physician/murderer helped a professor write the dictionary while he was an inmate at an asylum for the criminally insane. Boorman will collaborate with Todd Komarnicki on a rewrite of the script.
* Writer Chris Gerolmo (MISSISSIPPI BURNING) will direct his first feature on OVER THE EDGE, the Universal Pictures action triller for the Kennedy-Marshall Co. Gerolmo wrote the script based on an article in the November issue of Outside magazine about four mountain climbers who were taken hostage by Muslim rebels in the mountains of Central Asia. The group came up with an escape plan to save themselves.
* Artist/director Lynn Hershman Leeson is helming TECKNOLUST about a young scientist, played by Tilda Swinton, who creates cyborgs from her own DNA. Jeremy Davies, Karen Black, James Urbaniak and Thomas Jay Ryan also star.
* Thomas Vinterberg (THE CELEBRATION) will shoot his new film IT'S ALL ABOUT LOVE, about a skating queen and her beau, in New York and other parts of the world beginning in April. Vinterberg scripted with Mogens Rukow.
* John Schultz will direct 20th Century Fox's comedy SEVEN SPELLS starring D.L. Hughley, Steve Harvey, Bernie Mac and Cedric the Entertainer. Shooting may begin in February. Scott Sanders wrote the script about a group of ex-cons who try to save a casino from Russian mobsters.
For script news, check out my weekly script report at ScreenwritersUtopia.com
MISCELLANEOUS PRODUCTION TIDBITS
* Mike Myers has chosen not to star in CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND, opting instead to play Inspector Jacques Cousteau in a remake of THE PINK PANTHER. Ben Stiller and John Cusack are in the running to play Chuck Barris in CONFESSIONS.
* Columbia Pictures has optioned the upcoming novel THE LAST VAMPIRE by Whitley Streiber, about a gorgeous vampire who is being chased by a CIA agent. It is a sequel to Streiber's novel THE HUNGER.
* Fox is developing MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE, based on its hit sitcom. Creator Linwood Boomer, who won an Emmy for writing for the show, will produce and co-write the script with Jill Condon and Amy Toomin. The show also won an Emmy for direction.
* Pacifica has optioned feature film rights to the thriller POTSDAMER PLATZ by writer/director Buddy Giovinazzo for Tony Scott to produce/direct. Giovinazzo is also writing the screen adaptation of the story of two foot soldiers of a New Jersey crime syndicate that wants to get into the international construction business. They men are sent to Germany where they discover other crime syndicates wanting to do the same thing.
* Paramount Pictures/Nickelodeon Movies/Klasky-Csupo are developing a third RUGRATS picture. This time around, the Rugrats will meet up with characters from "The Wild Thornberrys," another popular Nickelodeon show. A separate THORNBERRYS pic is also in the works.
