Father Geek here with our buddy Elston and another great newsy review of the work-week's news from Tinseltown... lots of stuff you may have missed, sooooooo dig in and enjoy...
The Weekly Recap...
TAKEN FROM VARIETY AND HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
CASTING
TAKEN FROM VARIETY AND HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
CASTING
* Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon will play Johnny Cash and June Carter, respectively, in the biopic WALK THE LINE for director James Mangold and Fox 2000. Mangold scripted with Gill Dennis. Production begins in the fall.
* Tom Welling ("Smallville") and Hilary Duff (AGENT CODY BANKS) are joining Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt in CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN for director Shawn Levy, 20th Century Fox and producer Robert Simonds. Shooting on the film begins March 31.
* Christopher Walken and actress Glenn Close are in negotiations to join Nicole Kidman, John and Joan Cusack and Roger Bart in THE STEPFORD WIVES for director Frank Oz and Paramount. Country star Faith Hill may also be up for a role. Paul Rudnick scripted.
* Soap star Josh Duhamel will play the title role in WIN A DATE WITH TAD HAMILTON, also starring Kate Bosworth and Topher Grace, for director Robert Luketic and DreamWorks.
* Scott Mechlowicz has joined Michelle Trachtenberg, Travis Wester and Jacob Pitts in the untitled Montecito Films comedy (aka UGLY AMERICANS) for director Jeff Schaffer. It's about four friends' misadventures as they travel Europe after graduating from high school. Production begins May 3. When Montecito picked up the project last year from writers Schaffer, Alec Berg and David Mandel, the intention was that the three would make it their directorial debut. DGA rules, however, doesn't allow three directors on a film so the trio has decided that Schaffer will take sole credit, though they'll all collaborate on directing chores.
* Josh Lucas will star with Jennifer Lopez and Robert Redford in AN UNFINISHED LIFE for director Lasse Hallstrom. Production starts in April on the story of a single mother forced to move in with her estranged father-in-law.
* Will Ferrell will star in ACTION NEWS, which he co-wrote with Adam McKay, who also directs, for DreamWorks. Shooting begins in July. Ferrell will play a pompous newscaster in the 1970s who's matched with an ambitious, very talented female colleague. He then comes to the stirring realization that his perfect hair and mustache, and the ability to read from a TelePrompTer, might not be good enough at his Portland TV station.
* John Travolta is in talks to star in the remake of the Jimmy Stewart classic HARVEY for MGM and Miramax. Craig Mazin updated the story about Elwood P. Dowd and the relationship he has with his best friend, an invisible 6-foot-tall rabbit.
* Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez will star in Miramax's SHALL WE DANCE?, a remake of the 1996 Japanese feature, for director Peter Chelsom. Shooting begins in June. Audrey Wells wrote the new script about a man who takes ballroom dancing lessons to impress a beautiful young dance teacher.
* Jim Carrey and Steven Spielberg are in negotiations to star in and direct, respectively, a remake of the 1947 Danny Kaye classic THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY for Paramount Pictures and producer Samuel Goldwyn Jr. It's being developed for Carrey and Spielberg to do within the next 12 months. The original movie was based on a short story by humorist James Thurber and centered on a timid man whose daydreams of being a swashbuckling hero were played out in fantasy sequences.
* Robin Wright Penn and Dallas Roberts will join Colin Farrell in A HOME AT THE END OF THE WORLD, based on the novel by Michael Cunningham, for director Michael Mayer.
* Christian Slater and Neve Campbell will star in the upcoming comedy CHURCHILL: THE HOLLYWOOD YEARS. Shooting begins March 23. It's about a group of U.S. movie moguls who arrive in the UK to shoot a film about the great English wartime prime minister. On the first day of the shoot, however, the filmmakers discover the actor playing Churchill to be a robust, unattractive cigar-smoker and instead replace him with a better-looking actor.
* Vin Diesel will star in and produce Revolution Studios' romantic comedy NY GIANT to be penned by Michael Ellis and Pamela Falk (THE WEDDING PLANNER). It's about a hotheaded football player who is forced to deal with an uptight female etiquette expert or risk losing his lucrative endorsement contract.
* Steve Harvey, Vanessa Williams, Bow Wow, Solange Knowles, Shannon Elizabeth and Gabby Soleil are joining Cedric the Entertainer in JOHNSON FAMILY VACATION for Fox Searchlight and director Christopher Erskin.
* Frankie Muniz will next voice the lead role in Alcon Entertainment's live-action/CG-animated family film RACING STRIPES about an abandoned baby zebra that grows up on a Kentucky farm believing he's a racehorse.
* Gerard Butler and Wes Bentley will star in the upcoming soccer drama THE GAME OF THEIR LIVES, based on the book by Geoffrey Douglas, for Crusader Entertainment. It's about the U.S. team that stunned the powerhouse English side in the 1950 World Cup by a 1-0 score. David Anspaugh (HOOSIERS, RUDY) directs.
* Sela Ward, John Slattery, Mika Boorem, Jonathan Jackson, January Jones and Rene Lavan join Diego Luna and Romola Garai in HAVANA NIGHTS: DIRTY DANCING 2 for Artisan Entertainment, Miramax Films and director Guy Ferland. The pic is set for release February 13.
* Thora Birch and Juliette Lewis will star as sisters in the indie thriller SILENCE BECOMES YOU for writer/director Stephanie Sinclaire. Toby Stephens (DIE ANOTHER DAY) will play the man who comes between them. Production is under way in Ireland.
* Johnny Knoxville and Cecile de France will star alongside Jackie Chan, Steve Coogan and Jim Broadbent in Walden Media's upcoming AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS for director Frank Coraci.
* Robin Tunney and Dennis Farina will join Cole Hauser in PAPARAZZI for director Paul Abascal, 20th Century Fox and Icon Prods. Shooting begins March 25. It's about a movie star who seeks revenge on a group of paparazzi who caused an accident that injured his son and wife.
* Christina Ricci, Scott Foley and Omar Epps will star in Dimension Films' horror pic CURSED, written by Kevin Williamson and to be directed by Wes Craven. Kristina Anapau, Scott Baio, James Brolin, Illeana Douglas, Jesse Eisenberg, Robert Forster, Judy Greer, Milo Ventimiglia and Corey Feldman also star. Rick Baker will design special makeup effects.
* Ray Romano and Kevin James are in talks to star in SCARED GUYS, being rewritten by John August, for Columbia Pictures. It's about two agoraphobic roommates who face the daunting challenge of racing across the street to a police station to stop a contract murder.
* Halle Berry will star in CATWOMAN for Warner Bros. and French filmmaker Pitof (VIDOCQ). The script was written by John Rogers and rewritten by Mike Ferris and John Brancato.
* Aaron Eckhart, Val Kilmer and Eric Schweig have joined the cast of Revolution Studios' western THE MISSING, directed by Ron Howard. Cate Blanchett and Tommy Lee Jones also star in project, based on the Thomas Eidson novel THE LAST RIDE.
DIRECTOR/WRITER ATTACHMENTS
* Author Michael Connelly (BLOOD WORK) will write the script for ANGEL CITY BULLET, a big-screen adaptation of his short story "Two Bagger." It's about a parolee and two cops assigned to watch him after he gets out of jail.
* Miguel Arteta (THE GOOD GIRL) and Nicole Holofcener (LOVELY & AMAZING) are teaming up for a remake of Lukas Moodysson's Swedish dramedy TOGETHER for Focus Features. Holofcener will adapt, with Arteta at the helm. Set in the 1970s, the story revolves around a commune of young people who find themselves questioning their social and political beliefs as the world rapidly changes around them.
* David Loughery sold his script LAKEVIEW TERRACE to Artisan Pictures for Overbrook Entertainment to produce. It's a thriller about a young interracial couple who move into their dream home and are increasingly harassed by their next-door neighbor, a tightly wound black LAPD officer. When the couple decides to fight back, the feud turns deadly.
* Kevin Bernhardt will adapt THE CHARM SCHOOL, Nelson DeMille's Cold War spy novel, for Crusader Entertainment. It's the story of a KGB plot to send sleeper spies into the U.S. It's set at a Soviet compound where American POWs teach agents how to be model Yanks.
* Scott Hicks is in negotiations to direct Fine Line Features' FIVE DOLLARS MORE, penned by Neal H. Dobrofsky and Tippi Dobrofsky, about a son forced to reunite with his con-artist father for a cross-country odyssey
* Neil Jordan will develop an untitled thriller written by Ann Biderman for Warner Bros. Pictures' Section Eight, with Steven Soderbergh producing. Biderman and Soderbergh developed the story about a vulnerable private investigator and a prostitute in modern-day New York City.
* Clint Eastwood grabbed the film rights to Pulitzer Prize-nominated historian James R. Hansen's FIRST MAN: A LIFE OF NEIL A. ARMSTRONG for a project he will produce and direct for Warner Bros. The book traces Armstrong's career from his time as a Korean War fighter pilot through his experiences in the U.S. space program.
* Dimension Films picked up the comedy pitch THE WHALE to be written by Jeremy Miller and Dan Cohn as a starring vehicle for Ice Cube, who also will produce. Set in Las Vegas, it's about a down-and-out gambling addict who teams with a hotel executive to rob a casino. Maverick Films and Vertigo Entertainment may also produce.
* Jonathan Hales (STAR WARS EPISODE II) is adapting the Marvel comicbook THE GARGOYLE for Columbia. The script will center on a young boy who spends much of his time talking to a gargoyle statue on top of his apartment building. The gargoyle comes to life when a 100-year-old curse is lifted, and it begins a hunt for the talisman that will return it to permanent flesh-and-blood form.
* Stephen Susco is in talks to adapt THE GRUDGE, an English-language remake of the Japanese horror hit JU-ON, for Senator International and Ghost House Pictures. The story centers on a murderous supernatural curse spawned from a grudge held by a person who dies in the grip of powerful anger. The curse is then passed from victim to victim across a quiet neighborhood.
* Forest Whitaker will direct the romantic comedy FIRST DAUGHTER for Regency Enterprises. Meanwhile, Alcon Entertainment is in pre-production on its own FIRST DAUGHTER to star Mandy Moore with Andy Cadiff directing. Regency's project begins in mid-May while Alcon starts shooting May 17. Regency's project is about the daughter of the U.S. president who insists on going to college without a retinue of Secret Service agents, while Alcon's story is about the president's daughter giving the Secret Service the slip to go on an unsupervised romantic European road trip.
* David Diamond and David Weissman (THE FAMILY MAN) will write a computer-animated film described as a musical history of rock 'n' roll for DreamWorks.
* Jean-Jacques Annaud (ENEMY AT THE GATES) will direct the period military drama SHORES OF TRIPOLI for Disney. It's the story of William Eaton, a U.S. Army officer assigned to Tunis in 1797 who argued against the U.S. government paying ransom to any of the Barbary Coast countries for safe passage through international waters.
* Stephen Kay (GET CARTER) will direct Senator International's horror project BOOGEYMAN for Ghost House Pictures. It's about a young man traumatized by memories of terrible events in his childhood bedroom. Years later, he reluctantly returns home to face his fears.
MISCELLANEOUS PRODUCTION TIDBITS
* Universal Pictures is developing a remake of THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON for Gary Ross' Larger Than Life to produce. Ross' father, Arthur, wrote the original 1954 screenplay. Ted Sarafian (TERMINATOR 3) will pen the script. The original featured the creature terrorizing archaeologists in the Amazon while falling in love with a beautiful girl.
* Disney grabbed the remake rights to the 1937 film TOPPER as a vehicle for director Adam Shankman and star Steve Martin. The original starred Cary Grant and was based on the novel by Thorne Smith about a man haunted by a married pair of madcap ghosts.
* The new production company Whitelight Entertainment has gathered up a slate of projects to develop, including the recently acquired Japanese property LUPIN THE THIRD. The story follows the adventures of the third in a line of master thieves, who involves himself with the pursuit of secrets, money and women. He is a master of disguise, linguistics and espionage traveling with the Lupin Gang on various adventures.
* Miramax has purchased film rights to Laurence Yep's trilogy THE TIGER'S APPRENTICE for Jane Startz (THE MIGHTY, TUCK EVERLASTING) to produce. The trilogy centers on a Chinese-American boy raised in San Francisco by his grandmother, whom he discovers is the guardian of a magical phoenix egg.
* Director Michael Caton-Jones has dropped out of the romantic comedy LAWS OF ATTRACTION to star Pierce Brosnan and Julianne Moore due to creative differences.
* Digital Production Solutions has acquired two stories by late STAR TREK creator Gene Roddenberry to turn into 3-D animated features: STARPOINT ACADEMY and GENE RODDENBERRY'S CHAR. The first story centers on an organization that recruits the best and brightest galactic teens and trains them as elite Astro Rangers on Starpoint Pharos, an artificial planet that's a cosmic United Nations. CHAR is about an intergalactic princess robbed of her birthright, raised as a normal girl on 24th-century Earth.
* If a war breaks out in Iraq, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps plan to capture soldiers on the front lines of battle on film and bring their stories to movie audiences in video spots not unlike the old Movietone film reels produced during World War II.
* Phoenix Pictures optioned the feature rights to Robert Heinlein's sci-fi novel THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS about a computer repairman and moon resident who gets caught up in a rebellion against the authority that controls it from Earth.
* Miramax Films picked up the screen rights to the James Siegel bestseller DERAILED about married ad exec Charles Schine, who misses his usual morning train to work, a move that causes his life to take a drastic turn for the worse.
* Paul Walker has dropped out of the race to star in SUPERMAN.
* Producer Bill Benenson has purchased the feature rights to Christopher Wilson's DANCING WITH THE DEVIL: THE WINDSORS AND JIMMY DONAHUE. The book asserts that the Duchess of Windsor had a sexual affair in the '50s with Donahue, a gay society figure who traveled in the same social circles as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.
* Twentieth Century Fox will open the romantic comedy DOWN WITH LOVE on May 16 to counter-program Warner Bros.' THE MATRIX RELOADED.
* James D. Stern (Chicago Bulls co-owner, Broadway's "The Producers" producer, MICHAEL JORDAN TO THE MAX director) has formed Endgame Entertainment, which has acquired the rights to Andy Berhman's bestselling memoir ELECTROBOY. It's about a bipolar overachiever who flourished and fell during the 1990s. Matthew Chapman (GRAVE GOODS) is writing the script. Stern also is directing and producing a documentary chronicling the integration of Chinese hoops star Yao Ming into the NBA.
GUNN SHOTS
(NOT from the trades)
* Check out Michael Russell's interview with Lawrence Kasdan at http://www.infocusmag.com/03march/kasdanuncut.htm
* 6 Reel Pictures, the film production company, which officially opened its doors in 2000 and produced the award-winning short film HANK AND EDGAR presented their latest high-definition filmed short entitled NICHE* at its own Hollywood premiere. For more info visit http://www.strazentertainment.com
* A large legal wrangle is on the brink with regards to the LARA CROFT: TOMB RAIDER franchise. It was revealed by a crew member that the shooting was delayed for several months, with talent threatening to leave. It is believed the case involves a possible suit against the original gaming software house, Core Design and who actually 'created' the popular female character. Top Lawyers in the US and UK are backing the claim along with a well-known UK newspaper. The case may go ahead before the UK release of the sequel.
* Gavin Heffernan has been working on a feature for 2 years called EXPIRATION. They just launched their website and trailer at www.expiration.ca
* Writers' Script Network will soon be changing its name to www.InkTip.com. Their submission/subscription deadline is almost here. For more info, visit: http://www.writerscriptnetwork.com/newsletterpref.php
* The 2002 Hollywood Gateway Screenwriting Contest Judges have announced Pamela Ribon's IT SKIPS A GENERATION as the winner. The 2003 Hollywood Gateway Screenwriting Contest will begin accepting submissions on June 1, 2003. The necessary application will be posted on May 31st, 2003 at http://HollywoodGateway.com.
* Eagle Films' sci-fi/fantasy film DESPISER hits home video nationwide on April 15. Check out: http://eaglefilms.com/despiser/DespiserWebsite.htm
