Yipes. It's here. Wedding AND recap. Now here's a loyal, hardworking AICN reporter... He gets married, and still manages to file his column with Father Geek... amazing! Elston, here's a little Father Geekly advice... leave the laptop at home for the honeymoon, or at least the first few days of it. Anyway folks here's Elston's report of last week's news, I hope you all appreciate his efforts on your behalf...
TAKEN FROM VARIETY AND HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
CASTING
CASTING
* Reese Witherspoon will produce and star in an untitled pic set in the world of women's tennis for Intermedia and her own Type A Films. Bruce Miller will write the script.
* Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu are in talks to star in ECKS VS. SEVER, the Franchise Pictures action film about two undercover agents who believe they are rivals, but discover they have a mutual enemy. Production begins this fall under the direction of Thai filmmaker Kaos. Alan McElroy (SPAWN) wrote the script.
* LL Cool J is being eyed to play the title role in Dimension Films' remake of the 1975 blaxploitation cult pic DOLEMITE. Buddy Johnson (NOT A TEEN MOVIE) is writing the script, which will center on an entrepreneur, Dolemite, who has been framed by a competitor, who planted drugs in his nightclub. When Dolemite is paroled and tries to get into his club, he discovers that the rival took it over and deals drugs there. Dolemite then enlists three feisty female friends to help him get revenge. Rudy Ray Moore, who starred in the original and its two sequels, will serve as an advisor on the film as well as play a role.
* Nora Zehetner (AMERICAN PIE 2) will star in THE SONG OF THE ROSE for Russian director Sergei Livnev. The film, written by Vadim Sokolovsky and Chris Siverton, is about a Jewish-American girl who is caught in the middle of the 1941 Nazi invasion of Russia during a visit with her relatives. She is becomes friends with a young Russian army captain whose unit was destroyed by the Nazi forces. The two find their way to safety and become romantically involved. Shooting starts next month on location in Minsk, Russia.
* Mel Gibson is in talks to star in THE CAPTAIN AND THE SHARK, while being offered the lead in Universal's competing project THE GOOD SAILOR. The former project is being rewritten and will be directed by Barry Levinson, and centers on the USS Indianapolis, whose heavy cruiser was sunk in the Pacific in 1945 after it transported parts of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Navy made the captain of the ship a scapegoat after they couldn't account to families of the deceased soldiers why the Navy ignored distress signals. He did not defend himself and committed suicide in 1968 after years of taunting notes from the grieving families. It's based on the Doug Stanton book IN HARM'S WAY.
* Paul Walker is in talks to star in SWAT, based on the 1970s cop series, for Columbia Pictures. Zack Snyder is attached to direct a script by David Ayer (THE FAST AND FURIOUS). The studo is hoping for a summer 2002 release.
* Chow Yun-Fat is in negotiations to in WAITING, an English-language romance pic adapted from Ha Jin's novel. It's about a doctor stuck in a dismal arranged marriage. He falls for a nurse while serving in the Revolutionary Army but is required by law to wait 18 years before his marriage can be annulled. Peter Chan (THE LOVE LETTER) will write and direct the feature.
* Richard Gere will to star in and Stephen Frears is in talks to direct Warner Bros.' EMPEROR ZEHNDER, based on the life of the late adventure photographer Bruno P. Zehnder. Daniel Bernstein and Ned Zeman have written a script based on Zeman's January 2000 Vanity Fair article "Death Among the Emperors."
* Nicole Kidman has signed the contract to star in Lars von Trier's next pic DOGVILLE for Zentropa. Shooting begins in January.
* Patsy Kensit will co-star in THE ONE AND ONLY for director Simon Cellan Jones. The film is an adaptation of the Danish pic DEN ENESTE ENE.
* Heather Matarazzo (WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE) will star with Zack Ward in the college pic THE PINK HOUSE for writer/director Ian Williams, and co-director/producer Tessa Blake. Matarazzo will also join the urban dramedy 10029.
* Jennifer Lopez is in talks to star in THE CHAMBERMAID for writer/producer John Hughes and Revolution Studios. Shooting begins in the winter of 2002.
* James Van Der Beek and Shannyn Sossamon will star in a feature adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' 1988 novel THE RULES OF ATTRACTION for writer/director Roger Avary and Lions Gate. It's set at a small liberal arts college in New England and takes a satiric look at three students as they try to sort through a romantic triangle and other travails of the self-consciously postmodern undergrad.
DIRECTOR/WRITER ATTACHMENTS
* Jon Favreau will rewrite, and possibly direct, the romantic comedy PORN STAR for Universal Pictures and producer Brian Grazer. It's about an ordinary guy who innocently falls for an adult film star. The script was originally written by Gigi Levangie and Gavin Grazer.
* Steven Soderbergh will directing an untitled feature for Miramax Films and producer Scott Kramer (THE LIMEY). The project is billed as a sequel to sex, lies and videotape and will begin shooting in November.
* Revolution Studios picked up an untitled family comedy from scribes Claudia Grazioso and Steven Gary Banks with intentions of co-producing the project with Happy Madison Prods. The story revolves around a successful bachelor whose life gets crazy when he commits to taking his girlfriend's kids from Washington to New York on the day before Thanksgiving. Adam Sandler may star in the project, but no deal has been made.
* Mike Rich (FINDING FORRESTER) will rewrite THE MIRACLE for Disney, about the U.S. hockey team's victory of the Soviet Union for gold medal in the 1980 Olympics.
* Stephen Norrington (BLADE) will direct the epic kung fu action/adventure pic HAMMER OF GOD for DreamWorks. Stephen Chin (ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE) will write and produce the feature about a Jesuit priest who journeys to 1580s China with the Portugese armada and finds himself entangled in a war between the emperor of China and the Shaolin temple. The priest mystically transforms into a Shaolin monk and subsequently confronts the Chinese Imperial army as well as the Portuguese conquistadors.
* Second unit director and stunt coordinator David Ellis (MATRIX RELOADED, HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE) will make his feature directorial debut on New Line's FINAL DESTINATION 2 from a script by Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber.
* Stuart Baird STAR TREK 10 (NEMESIS?), starring Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner, from a script by John Logan (GLADIATOR).
* New Legend Media picked up the period comedy script NOSTRADUMBASS by Richard Russakoff and Todd Sachs. It centers on attempts by the less successful son of Nostradamus to be worthy of inheriting the name of the 16th century French prophet. His weakness is that he is only able to see five minutes into the future.
* Anne Edgar is developing with Fred Roos her script RED AND THE WOLF KING, based on WILDERNESS CHAMPION, the classic novel by Joseph Wharton Lippincott. It's about a ranger who becomes obsessed with a lost hound that's being raised in the wilderness by a timber wolf.
* Paul Rugg has been tapped to write the sequel to the Disney pic THE COUNTRY BEARS, which is currently in post-production for a summer 2002 release. Christopher Walken stars in the pic that also features the voices of Haley Joel Osment and Charles Dutton.
* Miramax Films has finalized the deal to distribute Oscar winner Steven Soderbergh will direct HOW TO SURVIVE A HOTEL ROOM FIRE for Miramax Films. The film is being touted as a sequel to SEX, LIES AND VIDEOTAPE and is written by Coleman Hough.
* Carl Franklin is in talks to direct the sexy thriller OUT OF TIME about a small-town police officer who is involved in an affair with a woman for whom he loves so much that he steals money from the evidence room to run away with her. When she double crosses him, he finds out she set up the whole affair for her own benefit and vows to seek revenge. Dave Collard wrote the script.
* Roger Michell will shoot the Working Title Films drama ENDURING LOVE, based on Ian McEwan's novel about a man whose calm, organized life goes out of control when he becomes the target of another man's obsession after they both witness a ballooning accident.
* Henry Bromell will rewrite KILLER SPY for Fox Searchlight about traitorous CIA agent Aldrich Ames, who sold to the KGB the identities of at least 12 double agents who were executed.
* Danny Boyle is in final talks to direct SOLOMON GRUNDY for Miramax Films, based on the Dan Gooch novel of the same name. The epic comedy focuses on the wild experiences of a man who lives a full, complete life in one week's time.
* Randy Brown will rewrite Bubble Factory's AMNESIA, based on the Francis Beeding novel THE HOUSE OF DR. EDWARDS. It will follow an amnesiac novelist who starts to put together her past with the assistance of a therapist with whom she is falling in love.
* Danny Baron and Chris Faber (SEE SPOT RUN) will write the comedy CLUB FED for Pandemonium. The story is set in a minimum-security prison where the inmates take over and turn it into the jail no one wants to leave.
* Art Marcum and Matt Holloway sold their script THE AUTHORITY to Disney. It's a modern-day Western set in the world of multimillion-dollar international bounty hunting and centers on a master hunter forced to trust a cunning apprentice.
* Steven Baigelman (FEELING MINNESOTA) will write the screen adaptation to BROTHER SAM: THE SHORT SPECTACULAR LIFE OF SAM KINISON for director Tom Shadyac and producer David Permut.
* Guy Ritchie will direct Madonna in a remake of Lina Wertmuller's 1975 movie SWEPT AWAY about a spoiled rich woman who goes on a yachting holiday with friends in the Mediterranean and gets involved in an unlikely romance with a communist sailor.
* Takashi Bufford will direct AFTER PARTY from his own script for USA Films. It follows a 21-year-old who tells people in line at a club that he's having a small after-party. Word spreads, and suddenly the house is filled with clubgoers, and also the wealthy Malibu social set who live nearby.
* John Luessenhop (LOCKDOWN) will direct HEART 'N' SOUL about a music impresario who hires a shrewd white image consultant to polish a streetwise black female singer.
* Andrew Davis will direct HOLES for Phoenix Pictures and Walden Media, based on Louis Sachar's book of the same name. Brent Hanley adapted the screenplay about a young man who is sent to a youth detention camp after being convicted of a crime he didn't commit. Once there, he and others are forced by the warden to dig holes so he can find an outlaw's hidden fortune.
* Kirk Wong (THE BIG HIT) will develop and direct IRON FIST for Artisan and Marvel. Ray Park stars.
MISCELLANEOUS PRODUCTION TIDBITS
* Producers Richard Brick (SWEET AND LOWDOWN), Marcia Nasatir (VERTICAL LIMIT) and Karen Danaher-Door (CRAZY IN LOVE) and former Texas Supreme Court Justice Rose Spector have optioned Barbara Ehrenreich's book NICKEL AND DIMES for development as a feature. It covers the author's curiosity about how low-scale workers live. She posed as a divorced woman heading back into the workplace, taking such low-wage jobs as a waitress, hotel maid, cleaning lady, nursing home aide and Wal-Mart clerk. Ehrenreich chronicled the lives and struggles of the people around her.
* Landscape Entertainment and producer Paul Kaufman are developing a remake of the 1963 British comedy BILLY LIAR about a daydreamer who lies to everyone, including himself. As he juggles three fiancees, he meets a woman who makes him think he may be able to live a life without lying at all.
* Paramount Pictures is in final talks to pick up domestic distribution rights to the untitled Britney Spears movie directed by Tamra Davis to be presented under their MTV Films banner. Dan Aykroyd, Kim Cattrall, Taryn Manning and Zoe Saldana also star.
