This is one of those news items that makes me check the calendar to see if it’s April Fool’s Day.
Apparently plans for a movie version of Monopoly, everyone’s favorite real estate game, have been kicking around Hollywood for awhile and Ridley Scott’s name was even attached as a producer. This morning I awake to find [...]
Filed under: Development, News | 28 Comments »
Studio Pinhead #1: I don’t know how he does it, but that Will Smith craps box office gold.
Studio Pinhead #2: I thought his last movie bombed.
Development Weasel: Hancock? No, it made almost $230 million. I’ll take a bomb like that any day.
SP2: Yeah, but it cost $150 million. Factor in marketing…
SP1: Well, it made almost [...]
Filed under: Development, Humor, News | 10 Comments »
More Loose Ends: 10/29/08
We last heard from Vince Vaughn in connection to the upcoming Couples Retreat and now it appears he’s in line for Sunny and 68, a “drama with comic overtones” to be directed and co-written by Gavin O’Connor (Pride and Glory). Vaughn plays a poker pro who bottoms out and returns home to [...]
Filed under: Development, News | 6 Comments »
Turns out the movie business keeps rolling whether you’re paying attention to it or not. Here’s a handful of recent casting announcements featuring interesting actors in not-so-interesting projects.
Amy Adams is set to star as NPR correspondent Jacki Lyden in a film based on Lyden’s memoir Daughter of the Queen of Sheba. A fixture at NPR [...]
Filed under: Development, News | 5 Comments »
Gus Van Sant and his Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black have been attached to an adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test for a while now, but the film is now apparently one step closer to reality. Borys Kit reports in THR that Fox Searchlight has picked up the project which tells the [...]
Filed under: Development, News | 5 Comments »
Back in 2005 when Steven Soderbergh wrote the forward for a book about lo-fi band Guided by Voices, he asked author/band member James Greer to write a rock opera for him that he hoped would star Catherine Zeta-Jones as Cleopatra.
It sounds like a joke, but apparently Soderbergh is ready to roll on the project and [...]
Filed under: Development, News | 7 Comments »
Back in February, LiC passed along a Variety report that David Fincher had signed on to direct Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary’s adaptation of Charles Burns’ 12-issue comic Black Hole. As big fans of Mr. Fincher (Zodiac) and Mr. Gaiman (The Sandman comic) and with a growing appreciation for Mr. Burns (see Fear(s) of the Dark), [...]
Filed under: Development, News, Pre-Production | 11 Comments »
I’ve deliberately been avoiding my newsfeed for the last week or so. Random news items were a logical source of filler when I first decided to start posting daily, but it turns out news can be all consuming. I could spend all of my limited blogging time simply combing the feeds for nuggets of information, [...]
Filed under: Development, News, Pre-Production | 7 Comments »
Martin Scorsese is set to direct Robert De Niro in an adaptation of the book I Heard You Paint Houses about Frank Sheeran, the mob assassin who claimed to have murdered Jimmy Hoffa.
“Painting Houses” is slang for a mob hit referring to the blood and goo splattered on walls.
No word yet on where this fits [...]
Filed under: Development, News | 21 Comments »
Here are a few more odds and ends that didn’t quite warrant their own story. As always, they’re 100% Varietese free…
Ben Affleck is in talks to rewrite, direct and star in The Town described as a “dark heist-romance hybrid” revolving around a love triangle between a thief, a bank manager and an FBI agent. Adrian [...]
Filed under: Development, News | 13 Comments »
I’m liking the idea of compiling the odd development, production and distribution tidbits into one post so Loose Ends might become an irregular feature. Here’s what’s been going on for the last few days:
Summit Entertainment has picked up US rights to The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow’s well-received Iraq action picture about a bomb squad in [...]
Filed under: Development, Distribution, News, Pre-Production | 7 Comments »
Here’s a collection of production items that have come across my desk in the last few days, none of which were interesting enough to inspire their own piece.
Ghostbusters 3. People are strangely excited about a possible new Ghostbusters sequel. I love the first one, barely remember the second and never thought to myself “gee, I wish they’d make [...]
Filed under: Development, News, Rumors | 9 Comments »
The most interesting item in reports of Guillermo del Toro’s new four-picture deal with Universal is news that he’s going to make another version of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. I don’t think George Roy Hill’s 1972 adaptation gets enough respect, but I’m interested to see del Toro’s take on the material. According to the Variety report, [...]
Filed under: Development, News | 20 Comments »
Controversial filmmaker Todd Solondz (Welcome to the Dollhouse, Storytelling) has found someone to cough up the cash to pay for a sequel/companion piece to his blackly comic Happiness.
New indie production house Werc Werk Works will finance the project that once had Demi Moore, Paul Reubens and Emma Thompson attached. If it’s anything like the original, [...]
Filed under: Development, News | 8 Comments »
Apparently, US studios have run out of Asian films to rip off because now they’re reversing the trend. Warner China Film HG, an unholy union between Warner Bros, China Film Group and Hengdian group is remaking the Kim Basinger film Cellular for a Chinese audience.
I look forward to the day when I can report that a US [...]
Filed under: Development, News | 6 Comments »
