Production Notes: 2/21/09
If it bleeds, we can corset it. Plans are afoot to make the first Jane Austen/Alien hybrid flick. To be called Pride and Predator, the film takes the characters from a Jane Austen-type costume drama and unleashes a crash-landed alien upon them. Carnage ensues in what I assume will be a sci-fi comedy.
Variety 2/16
An Indian, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, a hyena and a Bengal tiger are stranded on a lifeboat… Ang Lee might follow up this summer’s Taking Woodstock with an adaptation of Yann Martel’s allegorical survival story Life of Pi about a young spiritual seeker who finds himself on a lifeboat with the aforementioned animals when his freighter sinks in the middle of the Pacific. The novel won the Man Booker Prize in 2002. I assume the whole thing would make more sense if I’d ever read it.
Variety 2/17
Brosnan focuses on photojournalist. Pierce Brosnan’s production company is developing a film based on the life of Robert Capa, the Hungarian photographer who covered several wars including The Spanish Civil War, World War II and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. He exposed 106 photographs during D-Day, the 1944 invasion of Normandy, only to have a staff member at Life magazine accidentally ruin all but 11 of them during developing. His rocky romance with Ingrid Bergman in the mid-40s supposedly inspired the love story between L.B Jeffries and Lisa Fremont in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window.
THR 2/17
Not-ingham. This is officially the last time I mention the Ridley Scott/Russell Crowe Robin Hood project until cameras roll. Maybe. Crowe was supposed to play the sheriff in the long-delayed film originally titled Nottingham and then Scott mysteriously revealed that he’d be playing both characters. Now according to the lying clowns at MTV, Crowe is just going to play Robin Hood which will also be the title of the film. I’m officially bored with the whole thing.
MTV 2/17
Koepp eager to leave another sour taste in your mouth. Regarded by some to be the real villain behind Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, screenwriter/director David Koepp somewhat redeemed himself with the underrated and underseen Ghost Town a couple of months later. Now he’s attached to write and direct a couple of films for Columbia Pictures. The first is based on The Billionaire’s Vinegar: The Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine, the true story of some auctioned wine that may or may not have belonged to Thomas Jefferson. The other one is based on Charles McCarry’s novel Shelley’s Heart a drama about two friends who end up on opposite sides of a fraudulent presidential election. Hmmm. Yeah. Did I mention Ghost Town is a lot better than you probably thought it would be? That’s all I’ve got here.
Variety 2/18
Heigl and Kutcher team up in one last attempt to explain why they’re famous. Katherine Heigl and Ashton Kutcher are a couple of attractive TV stars who lack the wattage that translates to big screen success…at least by LiC standards (such as they are). So it is with great relief that we report they’re going to be in the same movie we can ignore from this moment forward: It’s a thriller called Five Killers about a couple of newlyweds who think their neighbors might be assassins out to kill them. Perhaps they’re members of the Cinema Police.
Variety 2/18
Cruisin. Unwilling to completely let go of the Tom Cruise Career Deathwatch, LA Times entertainmo-blog-olumnist Patrick Goldstein pulls a David Poland harrumph (the kind he’s so often the victim of himself…in fact I’d be shocked – SHOCKED I TELL YOU – if Poland hadn’t already harrumphed about this very column) on Variety’s recent report of renewed studio interest in the actor. Goldstein snorts that the piece by Michael Fleming, detailing a bunch of projects Cruise may or may not be interested in, is little more than a plant by Cruise’s representation at CAA designed to show the world that rumors of the actor’s demise were greatly exaggerated. He’s probably right, but that doesn’t mean that the piece isn’t true. One couch-jumping incident, a nationally televised argument with Matt Lauer and one really bad movie (Lions for Lambs) might be enough to derail the career of Ashton Kutcher, but not a star the magnitude of Tom Cruise.
The truth is, all the people who danced on Valkyrie’s grave as that film was shuffled around the calendar were wrong. Though Goldstein smirks that “the studio shelled out $60 million in marketing expenses,” he begrudgingly admits that it made more than $150 million worldwide. Not a blockbuster, but not too bad for a film that was tagged a bomb before anyone had ever seen it.
Goldstein then takes a look at the films Cruise is rumored to be interested in and notes that they’re all “safe bets, groupable under two of the most commercial genres in the business: gripping thrillers and romantic comedies” and that they’re directed by “the very offbeat Cronenberg or such lesser-known filmmaking talent as Susanne Bier, Bharat Nalluri or Len Wiseman.” In other words, Cruise is eager to flex his box office muscle, but isn’t a guy who draws the top directing talent like he used to – or something like that.
Say what you want about Cruise’s personal life, he’s an actor who (unlike Will Smith) has parlayed his box office success into working on a series of films for interesting directors including Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg, Paul Thomas Anderson, Michael Mann, Neil Jordan and Brian DePalma.
Having said all that, none of the upcoming potential Cruise projects are all that interesting except for the Cronenberg adaptation of the Ludlum novel we mentioned last week.
- The Tourist. Bharat Nalluri’s (Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day) remake of the French thriller will co-star Charlize Theron as an Interpol agent who uses an American tourist to help flush out a criminal who happens to be her former lover.
- Motorcade. U.S. President vs. Terrorists when they take over the presidential motorcade. Sounds like it should be called Airforce One II: Motorcade One. Len Wiseman (Underworld) will direct.
- Lost for Words. Swedish director Susanne Bier’s (Brothers) romantic comedy about an actor involved in a love triangle with his Chinese director played by Zhang Ziyi (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and her translator. Hate the title and can picture the detached head poster already.
- Wichita. Comedy about an undercover agent who gets entangled with Cameron Diaz. Yick.
- Hardy Men. Shawn Levy and Ben Stiller’s comedy spoof about the kid crime-fighting duo grown up.
- The Champions. Adaptation of the 1960s Brit TV series about a group of government agents who survive a plane crash in the Himalayas and are given superpowers by an advanced civilization. Guillermo del Toro will be producing, but plans for him to direct fell through when The Hobbit came up. This could be kind of cool if they did it period.
Variety 2/18
Salt, now with 100% more Liev Schreiber. Speaking of Tom Cruise, remember Salt, the Phillip Noyce film about a CIA officer accused of being a Russian sleeper spy? Cruise was attached, then erroneously rumored to be replaced by Will Smith only to be factually replaced by Angelina Jolie. With the film set to begin filming next month, Liev Schreiber has signed on to play Jolie’s boss. I hated Schreiber’s latest film Defiance, but he’s a good actor and a welcome addition to Salt.
Variety 2/18
Filed under: Casting, News, Pre-Production, Production
When I first read the Aliens/Austen summary, I looked to see if April Fools Day had sneaked up on me. It’s gotta be a comedy, but it still doesn’t sound like a good one, more like a random plot generator put to the task of reaching both the fanboy and women book club demographics.
Both of the Susanna Bier films I’ve seen were much better than they sounded on paper. I have yet to see Brothers, which is supposedly her best film, but she’s already made a fan out of me. I’ll look forward to hearing more about this one.
“Heigl and Kutcher team up in one last attempt to explain why they’re famous.”–Craig Kennedy, eternal optimist
Have to disagree with you about Heigl – she lights up the screen, is a very good actress and is every inch a movie star. She just needs to choose better projects.
I’d recommend Life of Pi as an entertaining and intelligent read. The ending to this adventure story about survival is quite moving and surprisingly resonant. I worry that the amount of CGI use required might detract from the story’s realism (admittedly magic for the most part).
Hearing that Ang Lee is taking over “Life of Pi” made me feel a twinge of disappointment. He’s directed a lot of great films, but the novel seemed like perfect material for Jean-Pierre Jeunet. At least Shyamalan isn’t at the helm, as I’d heard a few years ago. The novel itself isn’t much more “intelligent” than, say, “The Da Vinci Code,” but I loved it for its imagination. A thoroughly entertaining read.
Tom Cruise isn’t so much a person as an institution. When he’s not jumping on couches, it’s the same granite face over and over again. The same voice, mannerisms and emotions in almost every film. Even in “Tropic Thunder,” he was performing as “Couch Jumper” Tom Cruise in a bald cap and fat suit. He needs to work with directors who have bigger egos than he does (i.e. Michael Mann and P.T. Anderson–based solely on my impression), or he becomes robotic and cold. I have no time for his movies anymore.
The Da Vinci Code is one of the worst written novels I’ve had the misfortune to read. I take it you’re not an English major WJ if you can’t see the difference :-)