Father Geek here with Ol'Elston Gunn's latest report on the confirmed Movietown news that may have slipped by you while you were busy at work or fiddling with something else during the past week, but never fear AICN's got it all for you just like every other week in...
The Weekly Recap...
TAKEN FROM VARIETY AND HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
CASTING
* Aaron Eckhart joins Josh Hartnett, Hilary Swank and Scarlett Johansson in Brian De Palma's THE BLACK DAHLIA for Millennium Films and Signature Pictures. The movie is an adaptation of James Ellroy's 1940s-set novel about two LAPD cops who investigate the real-life case of the murder of fledgling actress Elizabeth Short. Shooting takes place next month in Bulgaria. Josh Friedman wrote the adaptation.
* Dustin Hoffman and Alan Rickman will star in the feature film adaptation of Patrick Suskind's international best seller PERFUME: THE STORY OF A MURDERER for Constantin Film. Hoffman will play Guiseppe Baldini, the perfume maker in 18th century Paris, and Rickman will be Antoine, the merchant father of a young woman who becomes the subject of obsession for Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, the central character in the film, to be played by British actor Ben Whishaw. Grenouille's obsession turns to murder when he seeks to bottle the scent of the beautiful young virgin.
* Nick Nolte is joining the cast of PEACEFUL WARRIOR, the adaptation of Dan Millman's WAY OF THE PEACEFUL WARRIOR, for Sobini Films, DEJ Prods. and Inferno Distribution. Victor Salva is directing the film from a screenplay by Kevin Bernhardt, Anthony DiPietro and Bob Dolman.
* Vincent Gallo, Liv Tyler and Asia Argento are in talks to star in Sean Lennon's adaptation of the Japanese novel COIN LOCKER BABIES by Ryu Murakami (ALMOST TRANSPARENT BLUE). Also credited as scribes are Jordan Galland, Peter Kline and Michele Civetta. Angry Films produces. Surreal story follows two troubled boys who were abandoned in adjacent train station lockers as infants and raised in orphanages. They set out together to seek revenge on the women who abandoned them. Lennon would play one of the boys.
* Hilary Swank is set to star in Warner Bros./Dark Castle's THE REAPING, portraying a specialist in debunking religious phenomena who's asked to come to a small town where the 10 plagues are occurring. James Cox (WONDERLAND) will direct based on a spec by Brian Rousso and penned by the team of Chad and Carey Hayes.
* Bruce Willis is set to star in SOLACE, a New Line thriller scripted by Ted Griffin and Sean Bailey, for director Shekar Kapur (ELIZABETH). Production will start in July. Willis will play a doctor with psychic powers who's enlisted by the police to help catch a serial killer. It turns out the killer has similar gifts. Contrafilm will produce.
* Neve Campbell is in final talks to join Jimi Mistry and Kristin Kreuk in the Indian epic PARTITION for Myriad Pictures and Sepia Films. Campbell will play the passionate but lonely Margaret Stilwell, a woman who helps Gian Singh, who resigns from the British Indian Army to live a quiet life in his village in northern India. His world is thrown into turmoil when he falls in love with a 17-year-old girl who is traumatized by the events that separate her from her family as India is divided into two countries. Vic Sarin directs from a script he co-wrote with Patricia Finn. Philip Glass and Ravi Shankar are composing the score.
* Cillian Murphy, Stephen Rea, Brendan Gleeson and rock star Bryan Ferry star in Neil Jordan's BREAKFAST ON PLUTO for Sony Pictures Classics, Pathe Pictures International, Parallel Films and Number 9 Films. Set in the 1970s, the film follows the exploits of Patrick Braden, who is billed as an endearing but deceptively tough young man who survives his harsh environment using his wit and charm.
* Sam Jackson is in talks to star in the New Line thriller FLIGHT 121 for director David Ellis (CELLULAR). Jackson plays an FBI agent on a long quest to bring a ruthless mob boss to justice. He finds a witness and takes him on a commercial flight from Hawaii to L.A. Trouble is, the mob boss has loaded the cargo with all kinds of venomous snakes. Pic was originally scripted by John Heffernan and most recently rewritten by Sebastian Gutierrez (GOTHIKA).
* Robert Downey Jr., Ray Wise, Frank Langella, Jeff Daniels and Tate Donovan have joined the cast of George Clooney's second directorial outing, GOOD NIGHT. AND GOOD LUCK. Also in the cast are David Strathairn, Patricia Clarkson and Clooney. It's the story of broadcaster Edward R. Murrow and his on-air confrontations with Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Producers are Section Eight, 2929 Entertainment and Participant Prods. Clooney wrote the film with producer Grant Heslov.
* Anthony Anderson will play a cop in Martin Scorsese's THE DEPARTED, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon and Jack Nicholson, for Warner Bros. Pictures. William Monahan (KINGDOM OF HEAVEN) adapted the material.
* Jennifer Lopez will star in BORDERTOWN for director Gregory Nava (SELENA), El Norte Prods., Nuyorican Prods., Mosaic Media Group and Mobius Entertainment. Nava-scripted dramatic thriller concerns a journalist who investigates a series of murders near American-owned factories on the border of Juarez and El Paso.
* Brittany Murphy is set to star in LOVE AND OTHER DISASTERS, a romantic comedy to be directed by Alek Keshishian (TRUTH OR DARE). Murphy will play an assistant at U.K. Vogue who's the catalyst for a group of young friends as they try to find love. Keshishian wrote the script, and he will produce with Ruby Film, Luc Besson's EuropaCorp and David Fincher.
* Leonor Watling (TALK TO HER), Victoria Abril (TIE ME UP, TIE ME DOWN), Giancarlo Giannini (HANNIBAL), Caspar Zafer (LA FEMME MUSKETEER), Jane Asher (BRIDESHEAD REVISITED), Ingrid Rubio (TAXI), Esther Nubiola (KRAMPACK) star in TIRANTE EL BLANCO, Vicente Aranda's highly-sexed historical romp and romancer based on an episode in a celebrated 15th century Spanish novel of the same title. It's about a knight hell-bent encharged with lifting the Turkish siege of Constantinople and hellbent on relieving Carmesina, the teen heir to the Byzantine Empire, of her virginity.
* Dean Cain, Laurie Holden, Tim Curry and Jennifer Tilly star in BAILEY'S BILLION$ about Bailey, a talking canine left a fortune by his billionaire owner, and the outraged relatives determined to get their hands on his loot. Jon Lovitz provides the voice of the dog. David Devine directed for Devine Entertainment, Echo Bridge Entertainment and Odeon Films.
* Owen Wilson will star in and produce a pair of comedy spec scripts: STALKER -- A LOVE STORY at Paramount and ME, YOU AND DUPREE at Universal. Wilso helped develop both projects. Paramount bought STALKER by the scripting team of Michael Carnes and Josh Gilbert and set up the project with Prospect Pictures. Story centers on a man who, after realizing too late that he's let the perfect woman get away, tries to win her back in all the wrong ways. Universal snapped up ME, YOU AND DUPREE by Michael LeSieur about a troubled newlywed couple whose problems are magnified when the groom's out-of-work meddlesome best man moves in and begins competing with him.
* Kate Bosworth is set to star in SEASONS OF DUST, a Depression-era drama written and to be directed by Tim Blake Nelson. Pic will shoot in August in Oklahoma, financed by Ascendant Pictures and Capital Films. Bosworth will play a farm girl whose world is turned upside-down when her father abruptly leaves. Joel and Ethan Coen are exec producers.
* Jennifer Aniston is attached to star opposite Vince Vaughn in the comedy THE BREAK-UP for director Peyton Reed and Universal Pictures. Jay Lavender and Jeremy Garelick are penning the script, which is based on an original idea by Vaughn, who also will produce.
* Wendy Crewson (THE CLEARING) will star opposite Bruce Greenwood in Disney's ANTARTICA. She will play the wife of a professor-explorer in the Frank Marshall-helmed rescue adventure, also starring Paul Walker and Jason Biggs.
* Selma Blair joins the cast of the remake of John Carpenter's classic horror/thriller THE FOG for Revolution Studios. Also joining the cast are DeRay Davis and Rade Serbedzija. Rupert Wainwright is directing the film. Cooper Layne is writing the new project. Tom Welling and Maggie Grace also star. Blair is stepping into the role originally portrayed by Adrienne Barbeau, a DJ and owner of a lighthouse. Davis plays Welling's best friend, and Serbedzija is a priest.
* Parker Posey has joined the cast of Bryan Singer's SUPERMAN movie for Warner Bros. She will play Kitty Koslowski, Lex Luthor's villainous henchwoman.
* Ashley Judd will start work in April on COME EARLY MORNING, a film to be shot in Arkansas that marks the directorial debut of actress Joey Lauren Adams, who wrote the script. Judd will play a thirtysomething woman who never left the small town where she grew up and has never been able to commit to a serious relationship. Firm Films and Bold Films is producing and providing the financing, respectively. Judd will then star in BUG, an adaptation of the Tracy Letts play to be directed by William Friedkin for Lions Gate. Letts wrote the script.
DIRECTOR/WRITER ATTACHMENTS
* Frank Oz is in talks to direct HORRIBLE BOSSES, written by Michael Markowitz, for New Line and Rat Entertainment. The dark comedy revolves around three friends who decide to team up to murder their unbearable bosses.
* Henry Selick is attached to direct an adaptation of the upcoming magical adventure children's book THE WALL AND THE WING as a CGI feature for Vinton Studios.
* Writer/director Terry George (HOTEL RWANDA) will now develop AMERICAN GANGSTER for Universal/Imagine. Denzel Washington and Benicio Del Toro were attached to star when Antoine Fuqua was set to direct. The pic is about Frank Lucas, the mastermind of a scheme to smuggle heroin into the U.S. in the caskets of soldiers killed in Vietnam. Steven Zaillian wrote the script which George will revise in order for the studio to produce for a reduced price.
* Jon Avnet will write and direct Phoenix Pictures' psychosexual thriller THE UNDERSTUDY based on an original screenplay by Andres Heinz which concerns a young understudy who walks a fine line between make-believe and insanity.
* Hideo Nakata will direct THE EYE for Paramount Pictures and C/W Prods. The project centers on a blind woman who receives a cornea transplant. However, she gets more than she bargains for when she begins seeing ghosts and premonitions.
* Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci will write the DreamWorks/Paramount live-action adaptation of THE TRANSFORMERS, based on the 1980s Hasbro toy line, for Angry Films and exec producer Steven Spielberg. Tom DeSanto wrote the screen story.
* Charles Segars (NATIONAL TREASURE) has sold his heist pitch FORT KNOX to Warner Bros. Pictures for Thunder Road Pictures to produce. Story is being kept secret but the Fort Knox-set project is said to involve many twists and turns and an unusual plot line.
* Kenneth Branagh will direct Kevin Kline and Bryce Dallas Howard in a film adaptation of Shakespeare's AS YOU LIKE IT for HBO Films. Branagh may play the small role of Touchstone, the comic relief in the film. Jimmy Yuill, David Oyelowo, Adrian Lester and Brian Blessed are set for supporting roles in the project which is set in the late 1800s. Shooting starts April 21 in England.
* Paramount has picked up the college comedy spec SENIOR WEEK from Erica Rivinoja for John Goldwyn and Lorne Michaels to produce. Story centers on a hard-working collegian who learns he won't be the class valedictorian and decides to spend his last week at school living the life he's missed for the past four years.
* Walt Disney Pictures has grabbed movie rights to the upcoming book BEYOND THE BLONDE and has set Lucy Dahl, daughter of author Roald, to adapt. Tollin/Robbins will produce. The book, written by Kathleen Flynn-Hui, is a romantic comedy set in the world of a New York salon. Dahl also sold the spec WILD CHILD about a Malibu bad girl in a British boarding school, to Working Title, which is scheduled to shoot in the summer with Jon Sherman directing. She is at work on the spec THE EX-WIFE.
* Director Andrucha Waddington (ME YOU THEM) will start shooting OS PENETRAS (PARTY CRASHERS) at the New Year's Eve street party on Copacabana beach. The story follows Marcos (Rodrigo Santoro) and Beto (Selton Mello) meeting when crashing a private party on Dec. 30 and stick together until Jan. 2. Conspiracao Filmes and Columbia will co-produce.
* Mark L. Smith's horror/suspense script VACANCY will be produced by Hal Lieberman for Screen Gems. It's about a young, married couple who, while stranded at a desolate motel, discover hidden video cameras in their room. They soon realize that unless they escape, they'll be the next victims of a snuff film.
* Phillip Noyce will direct MORAL HAZARD, an adaptation of a Kate Jennings novel that his Rumbalara Films will produce with Spitfire Pictures. The pic is being scripted by John Romano. The book is an autobiographical tale of a liberal poet and travel writer who marries an older man, and then is forced to take a lucrative yet cutthroat job on Wall Street when her husband falls seriously ill.
* Columbia has bought the film rights to playwright Seth Greenland's debut novel THE BONES for director David Mamet and producer John Calley. Greenland will adapt his darkly comic book, which tells the story of Frank Bones, a talented but self-destructive standup comic who reconnects with an old friend who's become the hottest comedy writer on television.
* German filmmaker Caroline Link (NOWHERE IN AFRICA) will make her English-language debut writing and directing an adaptation of Scott Campbell's novel AFTERMATH for Robert Cort Prods. Story centers on a renowned artist and the young dancer whose portrait he has been commissioned to paint. To complete the portrait, he must uncover the young woman's darkest secrets.
* Sony has purchased Ben Brandstrater and Jon Sadowski's spec script THIS BILL SMITH for Mosaic Media Group and Gold/Miller to produce. It's about a 60-year-old cancer patient who gets paired up with a 30-year-old cancer buddy who's an even bigger pain in the ass than he is.
* Gus Van Sant is in negotiations to direct THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE for New Line Cinema. Written by Audrey Niffenegger, the book is a loose retelling of THE ODYSSEY. The story centers on a man with a time-traveling gene that allows him to appear to his true love at different points in her life. Jeremy Leven adapted the book.
* Joss Whedon has signed to write and direct WONDER WOMAN, a live-action film adaptation of the DC Comics character for Warner Bros. Pictures. Joel Silver and Leonard Goldberg are producing. Wonder Woman is the superhero name of Diana, an Amazonian princess from Paradise Island, an uncharted island to which the Amazons fled to escape domination by the ancient Greeks and Romans. She has super strength, bracelets that deflect bullets and a golden lasso that ensnares victims and forces them to tell the truth. She has, at times, even had an invisible plane.
* New Line Cinema has picked up MAN SCOUT, a spec from "Anger Management""Anger Management" writer David Dorfman (ANGER MANAGEMENT) and producer John Jacobs. It's a high-concept comedy about a 32-year-old Boy Scout.
* Steven Soderbergh's next project will be the romantic thriller THE GOOD GERMAN, a project Section Eight will produce for Warner Bros. Pictures. Pic, which may be filmed in black and white, has a September start date. It follows an American journalist who finds himself drawn into a murder mystery when he returns to post-WWII Berlin to search for his wartime mistress. Paul Attanasio adapted the screenplay from Joseph Kanon's book.
* Peter Cattaneo (THE FULL MONTY) is set to direct WE'RE THE MILLERS for New Line Cinema. Steve Faber & Bob Fisher (upcoming WEDDING CRASHERS) wrote the script about a pot dealer who decides to get out of the business. His boss offers him an opportunity to make some retirement cash by performing one last job -- bringing 1,400 pounds of marijuana across the border -- for $1 million. The dealer sets about assembling the perfect American family, complete with a wife and two kids, in order to drive the pot across the border in a Winnebago.
* Rob McKittrick (upcoming WAITING) will direct THE WINGMAN for New Line Cinema. Written by Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, the romantic comedy centers on a man who, as a "wingman," is uncannily gifted at helping his friends pick up women. When he finally falls in love, it's with the one woman who can resist his powers. Paul Schiff is producing.
* Marc Levin has directed PROTOCOLS OF ZION inspired by an encounter the director had in a New York taxi not long after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. His driver, an Egyptian immigrant, made the claim that the Jews had been warned not to go to work at the World Trade Center on that day, referring to "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," a forgery created more than 100 years ago purporting to be the Jews' master plan to rule the world. The experience led Levin to embark on an odyssey in which he delves into the rise of religious intolerance and ethnic bigotry waged in the name of God. The film was produced by Levin and Steve Kalafer and co-produced by Jennifer Tuft in association with HBO/Cinemax Documentary Films. ThinkFilm has acquired the film.
* Helmer Frank Coraci (THE WATERBOY) is in talks to replace Juan Jose Campanella on CLICK for Columbia and Revolution Studios. Pic has a mid-June start date. Story concerns a workaholic architect who finds a universal remote that allows him to fast-forward and rewind to different parts of his life. Complications arise when the remote starts to overrule his choices. Script was written by Mark O'Keefe and Steven Wayne Koren (BRUCE ALMIGHTY) with revisions by Tim Herlihy. Happy Madison and Original Film are producing.
* Working Title has purchased the pitch ADOPTED by producers Aaron Kaplan and Sean Perrone and scribe Adam Sztykiel. Story concerns a couple who are desperately trying to adopt a baby but inadvertently adopt a full-grown man. Kaplan, Perrone and Sztykiel developed the idea for the script, which Sztykiel is writing. Kaplan and Perrone will produce.
* Warner Bros. grabbed STORMING THE COURT, an upcoming book about a group of Yale law students and profs who successfully sued the U.S. government and two presidents for detaining Haitian immigrants at Guantanamo Bay in the early 1990s.Michael Seitzman will write the script and direct. Nick Wechsler will produce.
* Harold Ramis will direct Topher Grace in a Universal romantic comedy based on the popular online service Friendster. Gustin Nash has been set to write the script. Ramis and Grace will develop the film with Double Features. Grace will play a character looking for love while navigating technology such as instant messaging, camera phones and Internet porn.
* South African helmer Darrell James is in pre-production on rugby pic NUMBER 10. Colin Moss will play a rugby player trying to secure a place on the national team. Rap musician Mandoza has been cast as a teammate; he also will contribute to the soundtrack. Gold Studios is producing the pic, from a script by Elsabe Roux.
MISCELLANEOUS PRODUCTION TIDBITS
* Paramount has purchased film rights to PREP, Curtis Sittenfeld's first novel, and set it with producers John Goldwyn and Sara Colleton. Set at an elite Boston boarding school, book centers on an angst-ridden teen girl from Indiana who battles loneliness and misery with humor as she struggles to fit in. Paramount, MTV Films and Benderspink are developing another project called PREP, based on Jake Coburn's novel about criminal behavior in Manhattan prepprep schools.
* New Line has bought film rights to the upcoming book KILLING YOURSELF TO LIVE: 85% A TRUE STORY, by Spin magazine senior editor Chuck Klosterman, for Karz Entertainment to produce. Book centers on the author's struggle through an early midlife crisis while on assignment for Spin to visit sites where famous musicians met untimely deaths. Tour serves as a backdrop to Klosterman's reflection on problems that plague his daily existence, particularly the conflict with three women in his life.
* Producer Jeannie Bendel has optioned VICTORIA'S SECRET SERVICE, an upcoming comicbook series by Darren Davis, and signed a first-look producing deal with Energy Entertainment. Project centers on an American girl selected to join a clandestine organization formed by Queen Victoria during her reign over the British Empire.
* Actors Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna have launched a production company in Mexico City. Dubbed Canana after the crisscrossing bullet belts worn by Mexican revolutionaries, the company plans to start out making two films a year, focusing on Mexican- and Latin American-themed features.
GUNN SHOTS
(NOT from the trades)
* From the creators of STEP INTO LIQUID, DUST TO GLORY is an all out action-adventure documenting the most notorious and dangerous race in the world, the SCORE Tecate Baja 1000. Rivaling the Indy 500 and 24 Hours of Daytona, the race across Mexico's Baja Peninsula is unpredictable, grueling and raw - much like the uncharted American West of yesteryear. Thousands of participants, generations of families and racing icons such as Robby Gordon, Mario Andretti, Jimmy Vasser and Motorcycle Supercross Legend Mike "Mouse" McCoy joined together to experience the thrill and the glory of the infamous race - a true event of sheer human determination. The IFC FILMS' release in theaters April 1st. Check out http://www.d2gfilm.com for more information on the film.
If you have a movie to promote, a screening to push, movie gossip missed by the trades, fire a **one-paragraph, 50 words-or-less** GUNN SHOT to elstongunn@hotmail.com. If it's not **one paragraph, 50 words-or-less,** it'll be tossed. Sorry.
