Father Geek here with Elston's weekend review of all the week's Hollywood news. I find this especially rewarding this week because I've been deeply involved in the SXSW Festivals here in Austin for the last 9 days. I've been going to panels on interactive and motion pictures as well as seeing over 25 feature length movies, including MEMENTO, AMORES PERROS, BLOW, GINGER SNAPS, SCRATCH, and DOWN THE MOUNTAIN; all very entertaining films. I've been to parties with Rip Torn, Quentin Tarantino, Lyle Lovett, Paul Dini, Bill Plympton, Robert Rodriguez, Sissy Spacik, Terrence Malik, Liz Smith, and the special video presence of Tim Burton. I've caught music by Asleep at the Wheel and a dozen other bands. Anyway you get the point... I just haven't been keeping up on what has happened in LA the last few days, so Elston's report comes in real handy this week.
TAKEN FROM VARIETY AND HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
CASTING
CASTING
* Benjamin Bratt is in talks to star with Katie Holmes in Paramount's psychological thriller ABANDON for writer/director Stephen Gaghan (TRAFFIC). Shooting begins April 16 in Montreal. It centers on a detective/recovering alcoholic who goes ends up at an Ivy League college where a student has visions of a former lover who is missing.
* Chris Kattan and Dave Chappelle join Denise Richards, Eddie Griffin, Aunjanue Ellis, Neil Patrick Harris and Gary Anthony Williams in the Universal/Imagine comedy UNDERCOVER BROTHER for director Malcolm Lee.
* Kelly Hu ("Martial Law") will play the female lead opposite the Rock in THE SCORPION KING, a spinoff of THE MUMMY RETURNS based on a character in that film. Chuck Russell directs.
* Barry Watson ("7th Heaven") is in talks to star in Disney's DOG CATCHER for director Wally Wolodarsky and MBST Entertainment. Production begins March 26. Harland Williams, Michael Rosenbaum and Heather Matarazzo also star. It's about three college seniors who get kicked out of their frat house and find themselves in drag living with a sorority whose members are considered unattractive on campus.
* Hayden Panettiere (REMEMBER THE TITANS) has been cast in Fox 2000's JOE SOMEBODY alongside Tim Allen and Julie Bowden.
* Dutch actor Yorick van Wageningen joins MINORITY REPORT for Steven Spielberg. Tom Cruise, Samantha Morton, Max Von Sydow and Colin Farrell star.
* Jeff Kober ("NYPD Blue," upcoming DIABLO) will star opposite Jennifer Lopez in ENOUGH for director Michael Apted.
* Erica Leerhsen (BOOK OF SHADOWS) joins Woody Allen's untitled spring project.
* Bai Ling (ANNA AND THE KING) and rapper/actor Treach ("Oz") will star in the indie pic FACE for Beech Hill Films and director Bertha bay-Sa Pan. It's about three generations of Chinese women stuck in the middle of the conflicting cultures of their homeland and life in America.
* Geoffrey Rush is in final talks to play Leon Trotsky in FRIDA, Miramax's Frida Kahlo biopic, for director Julie Taymor (TITUS). Salma Hayek (Kahlo), Alfred Molina (Diego Rivera), Edward Norton (Nelson Rockefeller), Ashley Judd (Tina Modotti) and Antonio Banderas (David Alfaro Siquieros) also star.
* Robin Williams is in talks to play the villain in INSOMNIA, starring Al Pacino and Hilary Swarnk. Christopher Nolan (MEMENTO) directs. Shooting begins April 9 in Vancouver.
* Pop star Mandy Moore and Shane West ("Once and Again") are in talks to star in A WALK TO REMEMBER, for Warner Bros. and director Adam Shankman (THE WEDDING PLANNER), based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks. It's about a high school senior who falls for a young woman whom he once despised before he found out she was dying. Shooting is scheduled to begin April 6 in North Carolina. Karen Janszen penned the adaptation.
* Rapper/actor Pras, Michael Goojian (SLC PUNK!) and LisaRaye star in the indie comedy GO FOR BROKE for writer/director Jean Claude La Marre. Production began this week in L.A. It's about two loser best buds who are burdened with a hugh gambling debt. They buy a winning ticket, though have it stolen by a women while she's holding up a fast food restaurant. Bobby Brown, Glenn Plummer and Ed Lauter also star.
* Rene Russo will star with Eddie Murphy and Robert De Niro in the Warner Bros. comedy SHOWTIME, where she'll play a TV producer who teams a cop with an entertaining partner for a reality-based show. Tom Dey will direct.
* Tara Reid is in final talks to star opposite Ashton Kutcher in Dimension's THE GUEST. She'll play the boss's daughter for whom Kutcher has feelings. His life is turned upside down when he is asked to house-sit for his boss and uninvited guests show up. David Zucker will direct from the Davd Dorfman script.
* Clifton Collins Jr. (TRAFFIC) joins DreamWorks' drama THE CASTLE, starring Robert Redford as a convicted general who turns his fellow convicts into his own army. James Gandolfini and Mark Ruffalo also star for director Rod Lurie. Shooting begins March 22 in Nashville.
* Rosario Dawson (JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS) is in talks to play the female lead in 20th Century Fox's THE FIRST $20 MILLION IS ALWAYS THE HARDEST for director Mick Jackson, as well as Columbia's MEN IN BLACK 2 as Will Smith's love interest.
* Julia Stiles will star in the drama CAROLINA, written by Katherine Fugate, for director Jon Amiel. It's about a young woman who leavers her Southern family for the West Coast, where she searches for happiness between the two guys who love her. Kathy Bates and Alessandro Nivola co-star.
* Tcheky Karyo (THE PATRIOT, upcoming KISS OF THE DRAGON) will co-star with Nick Nolte in DOUBLE DOWN, a remake of the 1955 French pic BOB LE FLAMBEUR. Neil Jordan directs.
* Rose McGowan will star in the indie pic VACCUMS for written/directed by Luke Cresswell and Steve McNicholas (STOMP). Shooting begins in late April in Romania.
* Adam Goldberg (SAVING PRIVATE RYAN) joins Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly in A BEAUTIFUL MIND. Goldberg also plans to direct I LOVE YOUR WORK from his own script.
* Robin Wright Penn is in talks to join Michelle Pfeiffer and Renee Zellweger in WHITE OLEANDER for Warner Bros. and director Peter Kosminsky. It's based on Janet Fitch's 1999 novel, adapted by Mary Agnes Donoghue, and centers on a woman imprisoned for the murder of her former lover and how her daughter's journey through a series of Los Angeles foster homes. The daughter is later asked to falsify her trial testimony so her mother can be free.
* Rapper Nas and Isaiah Washington (EXIT WOUNDS) will star in the dark comedy indie pic SACRED IS THE FLESH about a talent agent in Indiana, who takes his wife to Hollywood where he hopes to flourish in talent management. He meets up with a former classmate, a successful music manager who isn't too happy about his former friend's arrival. The project began shooting this week. Washington is also in talks to join Frankie Muniz in Universal's PAY OR PLAY (aka LOST AND FOUND) for director Shawn Levy as well as WELCOME TO COLLINWOOD for directors Anthony and Joe Russo.
* Benicio Del Toro, Juliette Binoche, Geoffrey Rush and Chloe Sevigny are in final negotiations to star in a romantic epic based on the Katie Campbell novel THE ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN for Brazilian director Walter Salles (CENTRAL STATION). It's about the taboo romance between the painter Fra Lippi and the nun who posed for him during the Italian Renaissance. Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella will executive produce the project that is expected to begin production in Florence in the fall.
DIRECTOR/WRITER ATTACHMENTS
* John Woo and Terence Chang's Lion Rock Prods. will produce KILLER ELITE, a remake of the 1975 Sam Peckinpah thriller. Terry Cunningham (THE CHAOS FACTOR) is attached to direct from a script by John Jarrell (ROMEO MUST DIE). Jarrell is also working on a project for Lion Rock and Phoenix Pictures about a group of modern pirates on the South China Sea.
* Writers Matt Manfredi and Phil Hay will direct the comedy BUG about an interconnected group of people who each surprisingly affect everyone around them. Jamie Kennedy, Brian Cox, Ed Begley Jr., Sarah Paulson, John Carroll Lynch and Michael Hitchcock will star.
* Warner Bros. and Clint Eastwood's Malpaso Prods. have optioned the feature rights to Dennis Lehane's novel MYSTIC RIVER for Eastwood to direct and produce. The book follows three childhood friends in Boston whose relationship ends when one of the boys is kidnapped, but reunite years later when they become involved in a murder investigation.
* Writer/director John Stockwell will develop and possibly direct an untitled surf girl project for Imagine Entertainment and Shutt-Jones Prods. Lizzy Weiss wrote the script about a group of surf-loving girls Hawaii who work at an upscale spa while practicing to enter an all-male dominated tow-in surf competition.
* Danny Boyle (TRAINSPOTTING) will direct the suspense thriller TICK-TOCK for Columbia Pictures this fall. It's about a guy with amnesia who wakes up in FBI custody because he is the suspect of some L.A. bombings. He helps an agent rush through the city to find and disarm remaining bombs while he tries to remember whether or not he set them.
For script news, be sure and check out my weekly script report at ScreenwritersUtopia.com
Thanks!
MISCELLANEOUS PRODUCTION TIDBITS
* DreamWorks picked up the film rights to Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin's upcoming biography on Abraham Lincoln. Steven Spielberg may direct. The book should be out in late 2002 or early 2003 and will focus on the Lincoln's years in the White House.
* Director Ted Demme and writer Chris Kletzien are developing a TV show and an action film, both set in real time. New Line is producing the action pitch which will take viewers on a high-speed chase through L.A. and change view points throughout the pic.
* Miramax Films has put under option J. Michael Vernon's book THE GREATEST PLAYER WHO NEVER LIVED: A GOLF STORY. It's about a summer law clerk in Atlanta who discovers evidence of the greatest golfer ever, who is wrongfully accused of murder while on the verge of becoming a national star.
* Britain's Film Council is partially funding a film project about the 1972 Bloody Sunday shootings in Northern Ireland. James Nesbitt (WAKING NED DEVINE) and Tim Pigott-Smith (REMAINS OF THE DAY) will sar. The Film Council is also backing an animated pic entitled APE as well as the thriller THIS IS NOT A LOVE SONG written by Simon Beaufoy (THE FULL MONTY).
