Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Father Geek and Harry and everyone in Austin are all at the QT Cinco festivities tonight, and I don't care that I'm just hanging out in LA. I don't care at all. Nope. Not one little bit. I didn't even wanna be there. I coulda gone. You betcha. I just chose not to. And... and... AND DAMN THEM ALL FOR HAVING FUN WITHOUT ME!! At least I can take heart in the fact that Elston Gunn is also at home, on the job, turning in another kick-ass Weekly Recap. He knows what I'm talking about! Fun? Tarantino? Spaghetti westerns? WHO NEEDS 'EM!?!?
TAKEN FROM VARIETY AND HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
CASTING
* Colin Farrell will join Al Pacino in the suspense thriller THE FARM for director Jamie Foley and Spyglass Entertainment. It's about a young CIA agent and his complex relationshipp with a mentor who double-crosses him. Shooting begins this November.
* Wyclef Jean will star in the Cess Silvera's gangster drama SHOTTAS about two Jamaican thugs who get together and take on Miami. Ky-Mani Marley, Spragga Benz, Paul Campbell and Louie Rankin also star, with a cameo by boxer Lennox Lewis. Jean will also provide the picture's soundtrack.
* Italian actress Monica Bellucci (MALENA) will star as the female lead opposite Bruce Willis in the drama MAN OF WAR for Revolution Studios. Alex Lasker and Pat Cirillo wrote the script about a special forces unit that is sent to a Africa to retrieve a doctor doing humanitarian work in a small village before a civil war reaches her. The woman refuses to go with them unless the 40 villagers get to leave as well.
* Halle Berry is in talks to join Ben Affleck in GIGLI for writer/director Martin Brest. It's about a hit man who is assigned to kidnap a district attorney's simpleton younger brother out of a home for the mentally challenged. In the process he gets together with a gun-toting female sent to supervise him. Justin Bartha will also star. Shooting begins in early November.
* Kip Pardue (DRIVEN), Jessica Biel and Thomas Ian Nicholas are in final talks to join James Van Der Beek and Shannyn Sossamon in THE RULES OF ATTRACTION for writer/director Roger Avary. The pic is based on the 1988 novel by Bret Easton Ellis and is set in the height of the 1980s Reagan era at a small liberal arts college in New England. The story centers on three students as they try to sort through a romantic triangle and other travails of the postmodern undergrad.
* Edward Norton and Emily Watson are in talks to star in Universal's RED DRAGON for director Brett Ratner and producers Dino and Martha De Laurentiis. Anthony Hopkins is back as the psychiatrist-turned-cannibal Hannibal Lecter for the pic, based on Thomas Harris' 1981 best-selling crime-thriller novel. Ted Tally adapted the screenplay.
* Michael Douglas is developing and planning to co-star in a film adaptation of Arthur Miller's play THE RIDE DOWN MOUNT MORGAN. Milos Forman may develop and direct the project.
* Laura Linney is in advanced talks to star opposite Kevin Spacey in the capital punishment drama THE LIFE OF DAVID GALE for Universal and director Alan Parker. Shooting begins this fall.
DIRECTOR/WRITER ATTACHMENTS
* Universal Pictures has grabbed an untitled adventure pitch from Owen A. Gottlieb and Stephen Susco, based on the real-life exploits of a CIA candidate/international investigative firms employee who, since she was 12, has devoted her life to becoming a superhero. Gottlieb and Susco learned of this woman in a profile on National Public Radio that they have optioned.
* Miramax Films has purchased MY BABY'S MAMA, a comedy written by Eddie Griffin and Damon "Coke" Daniels, as a starring vehicle for Griffin, John Leguizamo, LL Cool J and Lil' Kim. The comedy focuses on African-American fathers who must come to terms with taking responsibility for their children.
* Jeff Davis sold his thriller INDELIBLE to Palomar Pictures for music video helmer Howard Greenhalgh to direct. It's about a couple's attempt to apprehend the man who killed their only child.
* Rob Moreland will write the bigscreen adaptation of the German TV series "SimsalaGrimm," a parody of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales, for producer John Williams and Greenlight Media.
* Martin Campbell (THE MASK OF ZORRO) is now set to direct Angelina Jolie in BEYOND BORDERS for Mandalay Pictures. The story centers on a decade-long romance between an international relief worker and a socialite. The movie looks to be finally getting off the ground for a Dec. 15 production start date.
* Damien O'Donnell (EAST IS EAST) will direct HEARTLANDS for Miramax about a lovesick man who tries to steal back his wife from another guy. Michael Sheen (upcoming FOUR FEATHERS) will star. Shooting begins next month.
* Nigel Cole (SAVING GRACE) will direct ROMANTIC COMEDY for MGM and Bob Cooper's Landscape Entertainment. The pic is a spoof on romantic comedies and centers on a guy who schemes to win the love of a woman by borrowing from the plots of various films in the genre. Lance Khazei wrote the script with a rewrite by Jeff Lowell.
* Taylor Hackford is developing and will direct the biopic UNCHAIN MY HEART: THE RAY CHARLES STORY for Crusader Entertainment. Jimmy White has written the script.
* Writer Gina Wendkos is working on a script for a sequel to Disney's THE PRINCESS DIARIES.
* Rob Schmidt (CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN SUBURBIA) is in final talks to direct the horror/thriller WRONG TURN for Newmarket Capital Group, Summit Entertainment and Stan Winston Prods. Alan McElroy (SPAWN) wrote the script about six people trapped in the middle of a West Virginia wilderness who are hunted by cannibalistic mountain men grossly disfigured through generations of in-breeding. Cameraman Matthew Libatique (REQUIEM FOR A DREAM) is shooting the pic.
* Universal Pictures has acquired an untitled adventure comedy pitch from writer Dan Schneider (upcoming PAY OR PLAY aka BIG FAT LIAR) for Tollin/Robbins Prods. to produce. The pitch tells the story of a group of disenfranchised kids who save the world from an alien invasion.
* Writer-director Gavin O'Connor (TUMBLEWEEDS) is attached to direct PRIDE AND GLORY for Intermedia Films about the professional and personal lives of members of the NYPD.
* Panoptic Pictures has grabbed the Nicholl Fellowship-winning script AKEELAH AND THE BEE, written by Doug Atchison, about an 11-year-old girl from South Central Los Angeles who overcomes the pressures of her environment to compete in the National Spelling Bee.
* Chris Kattan and "Saturday Night Live" writer Scott Wainio are working on an untitled comedy for Paramount about a guy whose wife is driving him nuts. When he finds out she's doing this on purpose, he pretends to be mentally insane as a way of beating her at her own game. The pic is being developed as a starring vehicle for Kattan.
* Sean Hood (HALLOWEEN: HOMECOMING) is currently writing CURSED for Dimension and producer Kevin Williamson as well as CUBE 2: HYPERCUBE for director Andrzej Sekula about eight strangers who wake up in a cube-shaped room not knowing how they got there or how to get out. They must unlock the secrets of the hypercube which takes place in the fourth dimension where our laws of physics don't apply.
* Agatha Dominik and Robin Lister have written THE DEATH OF CONRAD-SHEPPERD, picked up by DreamWorks from Paramount, about betrayal and revenge set in part against the Cold War.
MISCELLANEOUS PRODUCTION TIDBITS
* Nickelodeon Movies and Paramount Pictures have optioned the feature and TV rights to ECTO-KID, a short story based on the comic book property owned by writer and director Clive Barker. The Razorline/Marvel comic book series, co-written by Larry Wachowski, centers on Dex Mungo, the love child of a psychic woman and the ghost of a murdered man. Dex can see the living with one eye and ghosts with his other eye. Barker will produce the film with Don Murphy (FROM HELL).
* Disney Co. has acquired the rights to BIG DADDY DANGER, the upcoming DC comic book created and written by Adam Pollina. The story centers on a father who's a wrestler by day and secret agent by night.
* Harold Ramis has exited the director's chair of the action comedy RULE NUMBER THREE due to either creative differences (according to Ramis' camp) or scheduling conflicts (according to Fox). The pic is about a cocky firearms dealer who bullies someone he thinks is a regular guy, but is really an assassin.
* Disney has picked up the rights to MY GUY, Sarah Weeks' children's novel, about two rival classmates who try to sabotage their parents' engagement, for Storyline Entertainment to produce.
* Quentin Tarantino has finished his KILL BILL script and will wait until January to begin preproduction when Uma Thurman has her baby, as opposed to recasting her part. Production on that film begins next May or June. In the meantime, he will finish his script GLORIOUS BASTARDS, a World War II "guys on a mission" movie.
* Playboy Enterprises Inc. and Threshold Entertainment (MORTAL KOMBAT) are joining forces to make mainstream feature films that will take the Playboy brand into a new arena. First up are two broad comedies entitled A NIGHT AT THE PLAYBOY MANSION and PLAYMATE OF THE YEAR. The former follows two guys trying to sneak into a party at the famed mansion.
*See anything interesting? Any projects you want to hear more about? Talk Back.
