Hey folks, Harry here with Elston Gunn's latest Update and Weekly Recap... Not too much that is fall down exciting but there are a couple of things to put on the radar.... check em out....
TAKEN FROM VARIETY AND HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
CASTING
* Toni Collette and John Goodman will join Bryan Brown in the Australian comedy DIRTY DEEDS for director David Caesar and Alliance Atlantis. The project follows a gangster in 1960s Sydney whose illegal activities are noticed by the Chicago mob because business is booming due to the parade of Vietnam War soldiers in town for some R&R. The East Coast mob then decides it wants a piece of the action. Shooting begins in August.
* Cate Blanchett is in talks to join Brad Pitt in an untitled sci-fi pic for Warner Bros. and director Darren Aronofsky.
* Rupert Everett, Marisa Tomei, Lynn Redgrave, Brenda Blethyn and Alfre Woodard are lending their vocal talents to THE WILD THORNBERRYS, the Paramount pic based on the popular series on Nickelodeon. It's about Eliza Thornberry, a 12-year-old who can talk to animals. She and her family travel across the globe looking for exotic animals to star in their documentaries.
* Tim Blake Nelson (O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU?) will star opposite Robin Tunney in the indie pic CHERISH for writer/director Finn Taylor (DREAM WITH THE FISHES). Jason Priestley, Brad Hunt, Lindsey Crouse, Nora Dunn and singer Liz Phair will also star. The pic is about a young woman who is accused of a crime she didn't commit and is incarcerated in the electronic bracelet program, never able to move more than 57 feet from an electronic modem. The only human physical contact she has over two years is with a man who works for the county monitoring the bracelet and modem. Their relationship grows as he helps her to find freedom.
* Sanaa Lathan (LOVE & BASKETBALL) is in early talks to star in Fox Searchlight's BROWN SUGAR for director Rick Famuyiwa (THE WOOD). The film is about a romance between a magazine editor and an A&R executive for a hip-hop record label.
* Jennifer Love Hewitt is in talks to star opposite Jackie Chan in the action comedy THE TUXEDO for DreamWorks and director Kevin Donovan. Production begins in September in Toronto. Hewitt will play a government agent who teams up with a spy who possesses a tuxedo that helps him fight the villains. Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi (crazy/beautiful) wrote the script.
* Paddy Considine will star in Jim Sheridan's romantic drama EAST OF HARLEM
for Fox Searchlight. It's about a hardworking Irish immigrant who moves his
family to a run-down apartment in New York so he can pursue his acting
dream. His daughter and pregnant wife help him deal with the loss of a son
who died back home. Samantha Morton is in talks to play the wife.
DIRECTOR/WRITER ATTACHMENTS
* George Hickenlooper will direct the indie pic 2.2 for Gold Circle Films and producers John Cusack and Steve Pink of New Crime Prods. Dan Mitchell wrote the story about a police officer and his helpless victim who team up to fake a police beating in order to file a lawsuit against the city for damages. The two recieve $2.2 million to split. Production begins in the fall.
* Phil Morrison will direct LOST IN DUNCANVILLE for 20th Century and producers Mike Judge and 3 Arts Entertainment. It's about a Wall Street investment banker and his best friend who go to Texas for a bachelor party and ultimately spend a miserable night in a Dallas suburb. Alan Cohen and Alan Freedland ("King of the Hill") wrote the script.
* Ben Queen will adapt Laurie Gwen Shapiro's novel, THE UNEXPECTED SALAMI for Radical Media. The flick has the working title AMERICAN WOMAN and has Alan White (RISK) attached to direct and produce. The project centers on an American and the emotionally troubled addicted Australian rocker with whom she's become involved. After she's sent back to the U.S., the result of becoming a material witness to a murder, complications arise when she discovers it's all a PR ploy meant to revive the band's deteriorating fame.
* Patrick Massett and John Zinman (TOMB RAIDER) will rewrite the sci-fi thriller RED WORLD for Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer Films. The pic follows a man who travels back through time to stop the ruling class of his world from colonizing the past. Massett and Zinman also are writing the Jet Li pic THE FIRST KING.
* Producers Neal Moritz and Gina Matthews have picked up the comedy pitch GREEK GIRLS' GUIDE TO WAR AND OTHER PASTIMES from writers Mark Gibson and Phil Halperin. It's about the comedic misadventures of two rival sororities at a university, one predominantly white, the other mostly black.
* George Clooney may make his directorial debut on CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND for Miramax, producer Andrew Lazar and possibly Section Eight. The long-gestating project is an adaptation of the Chuck Barris ("The Gong Show") memoir that claims the game show host was once a CIA assassin. Charlie Kaufman (BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, upcoming HUMAN NATURE and ADAPTATION) wrote the script.
* Martin Campbell will develop and direct the action pic PATHFINDER for Paramount Pictures and producer Mace Neufeld. George Nolfi wrote the script about a military operative known as a pathfinder who has to track down a rival pathfinder.
* Universal Pictures grabbed Andrew Marshall's comedy script SCARY POPPINS for Imagine Entertainment to develop and has hired Saladin Patterson to handle rewrites. It's about a con artist who poses as a nanny to escape other con men and the law as well, and ends up overseeing two spoiled children.
* Red Cliff Prods. has picked up WHEN IT COUNTS, an action comedy script by Michael Zaidan. The story centers on a young single mother whose children are kidnapped. To save them, she must take matters into her own hands and come up with an imaginative way to get them back.
* Alex de la Iglesia (PERDITA DURANGO) has set up his own production banner, Panico Films, which will first produce the contemporary spaghetti Western BALAS PERDIDAS (LOST BULLETS). The project will shoot in Spain later in the year. ``Balas Perdidas'' (Lost Bullets). He will shoot thepicture in Almeria, Spain, later this year.
* Charles Stone III ("Whassup?" beer commercials) will direct the comedy DRUMLINE for Fox 2000 about a Harlem street drummer who enrolls in a southern university.
* Richard Donner will direct and executive produce the action pic CRAZY TAXI, based on the popular Sega video game, for Goodman/Rosen Prods.
* Dimension Films grabbed an untitled romantic comedy spoof script from
Simon Goltsman and has Bob Morrow attached to direct. The studio is keeping
the plot of the screenplay a secret for now and is hoping that the project
will be a huge summer flick next year.
MISCELLANEOUS PRODUCTION TIDBITS
* Bill Mechanic's Pandemonium has purchased the feature rights to Carole Matthews' upcoming novel FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE and has hired David Hubbard to adapt for producer Bridget Johnson. It's about a newly divorced young woman who flies to her cousin's wedding in Manhattan. While on the plane, she meets and falls for a free-spirited man, though they lose each other in the big city. As she tries to find him, she discovers that her cousin is marrying the wrong man, and she must stop her from making a big mistake. Furthermore, the woman's ex comes to town with a diamond ring, hoping to rekindle their relationship.
* Fox 2000 is in final talks to buy Peter Berg's TRUCK 44 from Universal. Berg will direct his own script about a group of New York firefighters who are trying to rob a building, but end up setting it ablaze.
* Warner Bros. is in final talks to purchase the rights to the true story of Kevin and Clair Wiles, an Oregon couple who got married last month after meeting through the America Online personals with the help of Clair Wiles' matchmaking high school students. The two met after her ninth-grade students secretly posted an ad for their teacher at love@AOL.com. Kevin was one of several men who answered the ad, and the two soon started dating and were married in her high school auditorium in Eugene, Ore. The project, tentatively titled MATCHMAKERS, will be loosely based on their story and developed by producers Roy Lee, J.C. Spink and Rona Edwards.
* Blum Israel Prods. has optioned John Darnton's second novel THE EXPERIMENT, a science thriller about a journalist who meets a man who appears to be his identical twin and learns that as a child he was part of an experiment in cloning. The experiment went awry and a group of politicians, businessmen and scientists are determined to keep it a secret.
* MGM has moved John McTiernan's remake of ROLLERBALL to the first quarter of 2002 so the studio can have more time to market the pic.
* Columbia Pictures is sending the black comedy LIFE WITHOUT DICK to pay cable as opposed to the theaters. The film, starring Sarah Jessica Parker, Harry Connick Jr. and Johnny Knoxville, will debut on The Encore pay TV network sometime this fall. Bix Skahill (CHAIN OF FOOLS) wrote and directed the pic about a woman who falls for the hit man who was hired to kill her boyfriend.
I'm very curious about George Clooney directing CONFESSIONS... It could be something very cool. And the Jennifer Love Hewitt/Jackie Chan pairing was unexpected--as was Donner directing CRAZY TAXI. Anybody read THE TUXEDO script?
Until next week... Happy July 4th to you. Enjoy the summer.
Elston Gunn
