Father Geek here to tell you, its Java and donuts, and Elston's WEEKLY RECAP time again, sooooo grap that big old mug and those munchies crankup some good background sounds and settle in with another fine info packed edition of the news of the past week out in Hollywoodland...
WEEKLY RECAP
TAKEN FROM VARIETY AND HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
CASTING
* Steve Buscemi will play a mysterious character named Romero in SPY KIDS 2, currently in production for Dimension with director Robert Rodriguez and the original cast returning. Matt O'Leary (DOMESTIC DISTURBANCE) also joins the cast as a boy who witnesses his stepfather commit a murder.
* Connie Nielsen (GLADIATOR) is in talks to join John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson in BASIC for director John McTiernan and Phoenix/Intermedia. It's about a DEA agent's investigation of the disappearance of an Army range drill instructor and several cadets.
* Morgan Freeman, Thomas Jane and Tom Sizemore will star in DREAMCATCHER, based on the Stephen King novel, for director Lawrence Kasdan and Castle Rock. It's about four childhood friends who get together to fight extraterrestrials and an Army colonel. Kasdan will direct from his own rewrite of William Goldman's original script.
* DJ Qualls is joining Aaron Eckhart and Hilary Swank in THE CORE for Paramount and director Jon Amiel.
* Liam Neeson is set to star in the upcoming prequel to THE EXORCIST for Morgan Creek Prods.and director John Frankenheimer. Neeson will play the young Father Merrin who first encounters the devil while doing missionary work in post World War II Africa. Production will begin next year from a script by William Wisher, rewritten by Caleb Carr.
* Steve Martin will star opposite Queen Latifah in Disney's romantic comedy IN THE HOUZE about a man who tries to find a date on the internet, but instead gets tangled up with a woman in jail. When she gets out, she turns the man's life upside down. Adam Shankman (THE WEDDING PLANNER, A WALK TO REMEMBER) will direct for Hyde Park Entertainment from a script by Jason Filardi.
* Jet Li, Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung will star in the historical epic HERO, directed Zhang Yimou, also starring Zhang Ziyi and Wen Jiang. It's set two centuries before the Chinese Empire in China's warring states period and was written by Li Feng. Shooting is already underway in China.
* Antonio Banderas will star in IMAGINING ARGENTINA, based on the book by Lawrence Thornton, for director Christopher Hampton and Myriad Films. Emma Thompson is in negotiations to co-star. The project focuses on an Argentine playwright who has the mysterious ability to see what will happen to people's loved ones when he looks into their faces. The Myriad Films production will shoot in Spain next April
* Charlton Heston is currently playing Nazi fugitive Josef Mengele in RUA ALGUEM 5555, a low-budget feature based on German journalist Peter Schneider's novel FATHER. Egidio Eronico (METROPOLITAN FAIRYTALE) is directing. Mengele, known for his cruel experiments at Auschwitz, escaped to South America after the war and is believed to have drowned in 1985.
* Julia Roberts is in talks to join Sam Rockwell, Drew Barrymore and George Clooney in CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND, to be directed by Clooney. Roberts would shoot the role after finishing Steven Soderbergh's HOW TO SURVIVE A HOTEL ROOM FIRE (a.k.a. THE ART OF NEGOTIATING A TURN).
* Christopher Walken will join Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez in GIGLI for writer/director Martin Brest and Revolution Studios. He'll play a police officer pursuing a female gunslinger and a hit man who have kidnapped the mentally slow brother of a district attorney. Production begins next month.
* Radha Mitchell will star in VISITORS for director Richard Franklin (BRILLIANT LIES) about Georgia Perry, the first woman to sail around the world solo.
* Jean Smart has nabbed a role in Touchstone's romantic comedy SWEET HOME ALABAMA, starring Reese Witherspoon.
* Taryn Manning (CRAZY/BEAUTIFUL) joins the Curtis Hanson/Eminem project for Imagine Entertainment, currently in production in Detroit. Brittany Murphy, Mekhi Phifer and Kim Basinger also star.
* Natascha McElhone (THE TRUMAN SHOW) will join Frances McDormand, Christian Bale, Kate Beckinsale and Alessandro Nivola in LAUREL CANYON for writer/director Lisa Cholodenko (HIGH ART).
* Jim Carrey will star in an untitled romantic comedy for writer/director Gary Ross (PLEASANTVILLE), Universal Pictures and Jersey Films. Set in New York, the story centers on a widower whose wife returns to haunt him when he falls for a younger woman. Her visit forces him to deal with the problems in their relationship. Shooting is scheduled to begin in March for a Christmas 2002 release. Ross will follow this project with SEABISCUIT, based on Laura Hillenbrand's nonfiction bestseller about the rise of the Depression-era racehorse.
* Michael York joins Mike Myers, Heather Graham, Michael Caine and Beyonce Knowles in AUSTIN POWERS IN GOLDMEMBER.
DIRECTOR/WRITER ATTACHMENTS
* Francois Girard is in early negotiations to direct STOMPANATO, penned by David Webb Peoples and Janet Peoples, about the stormy relationship between Lana Turner and mobster Johnny Stompanato, who died when he was stabbed by Turner's daughter. Sharon Stone and Antonio Banderas are being considered for roles.
* Happy Place Productions (ON THE LINE) has picked up the script LYDIA, written by Eugene Lebowitz based on an idea by Dotty Archibald. It's about a shrink who seeks out a woman who has broken the hearts of so many of his patients. Ultimately, the shrink realizes he's fallen for her.
* Nick Hamm (THE HOLE) will direct Dimension's GODSEND for Dimension Films about a couple who lose their son in an accidental shooting, then try to regenerate him.
* Lukas Moodysson (TOGETHER, SHOW ME LOVE) is shooting his latest film LILJA 4 EVER, starring two Russian teens, in Estonia.
* Bent Hamer will direct HYMNS FROM THE KITCHEN about Sweden's Home Research Institute conducting a study on the kitchen habits of bachelors in a little Norwegian village.
* Roger L. Simon and Sheryl Longin will co-write and co-direct SUGIHARA for Show Entertainment. It is a biopic of diplomat Chiune Sugihara, signed thousands of visas for Jewish refugees, enabling them to escape the Nazis. These refugees then trekked across a hostile Soviet Union to safety in Kobe, Japan. Shooting is scheduled to begin summer 2002 in the Czech Republic and Russia.
* Writers Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg have sold their horror pitch RESOLUTION to Phoenix Pictures. It's about a group of friends who each make New Year's resolutions in the name of a college acquaintance who died years earlier. When the first two gruesomely die after breaking their resolutions the others soon realize that something is terribly strange is going on and must try to save themselves.
* Sobini Films has purchased the action script SWORD OF HERCULES from writer Sam Bernard. The story follows a young prince who journeys with a cynical mercenary and a beautiful young pickpocket to find the whereabouts of Hercules, so that he can help rid the world of a barbarian horde.
* The sci-fi thriller SOLARIS, based on the Russian novel by Stanislaw Lem, is shaping up to be Steven Soderbergh's first project of the new director's company, which joins Soderbergh with Spike Jonze, Alexander Payne, David Fincher and possibly Sam Mendes. The novel centers on an astronaut sent to rescue scientists on a space station who finds the commander dead and the two survivors driven insane by visions that soon appear to him as well.
* Glen Morgan and Jim Wong (FINAL DESTINATION, THE ONE) will write, and Wong will direct, an adaptation of John Kessel's sci-fi short story "Hearts Do Not in Eye's Shine." It's about a couple who are close to breaking up. Desperate for a solution, the man proposes a radical program that erases painful memories. She agrees, but then begins to grow paranoid over what was cleared from her memory and whether it was the same as what was erased from her partner's mind. Morgan and Wong will work on the Kessel project after the finish WILLARD and a remake of DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK.
* Allan Weisbecker will adapt his own autobiography IN SEARCH OF CAPTAIN ZERO: A SURFER'S ROAD TRIP BEYOND THE END OF THE ROAD for Radar Pictures. Sean Penn is attached to star and produce. Stacy Peralta (DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS) will direct the feature. The memoir follows a surfer whose best friend disappeared and inspired him to sell his home and search through the Central American underworld to find him.
* John Davis Entertainment has nabbed the script FIRE AND WATER, written by Jared Butler and Lars Norberg. It's about international commandos who raid a Nazi outpost in Norway where the Third Reich is developing an atomic bomb.
* Writer Lee Hall (BILLY ELLIOT) will write BURYING BEN for producer John Wells ("ER," "The West Wing") about a self-made millionaire who, following his son's suicide, ends up having an affair with the son's girlfriend.
* Jean-Pierre Roux will direct Dennis Hopper and Christopher Lambert in THE PIANO PLAYER about the relationship of a money-laundering businessman and his gangster bodyguard. Production begins Nov. 12 in South Africa.
* David L. Cunningham (TO END ALL WARS) has been tapped to direct REBELS, Walden Media/Casey Silver's project based on the true story of pre-Revolutionary war heroes Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys. John Fusco (YOUNG GUNS) wrote the script.
* Phil Beauman's sports comedy pitch SOUTHSIDE SAINTS has been picked up by DreamWorks Pictures. It's about a high school basketball coach who recruits from a local juvenile center to help create a winning team. When the new players arrive, however, they wreak havoc on the court and in school.
* New Line Cinema has grabbed the comedy pitch WILD MAN from writers Nick Falacci and Cheryl Heuton. It's about a highbrow TV talk show host who is fired and reassigned to host an extreme animal show for kids.
MISCELLANEOUS PRODUCTION TIDBITS
* Filmmaker Debra Hill wants will make her newest feature film, New Line's TALES NOT TOLD, with her "Made in America" label as an effort aimed at reducing runaway production.
* Warner Bros. has snapped up the screen rights to the young adult novel THE SISTERHOOD OF TRAVELING PANTS by Ann Brashares. Four lifelong 16-year-olds are spazzing over spending their first summer apart. As they head to different locations, their one bond is a cherished pair of jeans they've shared. Each girl will keep the pants for two weeks of her trip, passing them on to the next friend. The teens face serious coming-of-age problems, and somehow the pants help them through.
* Jane Startz Productions has optioned and will produce SON OF THE MOB, based on the novel by Gordon Korman. The children's story follows the son of a crime family who falls in love with the daughter of an FBI agent.
* Sony has decided to open BLACK HAWK DOWN for a limited run on Dec. 28. It will expand to 2,500 screens on Jan. 18.
* Warner Bros. has optioned Da Chen's WANDERING WARRIOR, a children's martial-arts tale set in 19th-century China. Da Chen wrote the book about a boy raised by monks and trained to fight a mortal enemy.
* Vanguard Films (SHREK) has optioned THE DREAM FACTORY, a children's picture book written by Bjorn Sortland and illustrated by Lars Elling. The story follows two children who disappear from their uncle's attic on Christmas Eve and follow Charlie Chaplin to various movie sets where they encounter characters like King Kong, Tarzan and Orson Welles.
* Tiara Blu Prods. is in talks with MGM to set up the dramedy pitch DANCING CLASSROOMS. It's based on the true story of an internationally known ballroom dancer, who enters the New York public school system to teach ballroom dancing to inner-city children.
