Cool News
ELSTON GUNN
Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
The man. The myth. Elston Gunn.
TAKEN FROM VARIETY AND HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
CASTING
* Robert DeNiro, Greg Kinnear and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos are in final talks to star in Lions Gate Films' horror-thriller GODSEND for director Nick Hamm, 2929 Entertainment and Artists Production Group. Shooting begins in November in Toronto for a 2003 release. Mark Bomback wrote the script about a couple who lose their son in an accidental shooting and enlist the help of a scientist to try and bring their child back.
* Kyra Sedgwick and Nicky Katt have joined Michael Caine, Robert Duvall and Haley Joel Osment in New Line's SECONDHAND LIONS for director Tim McCanlies (THE IRON GIANT).
* Matthew Broderick is in talks to star in PROVIDENCE for Disney and writer/director Jeff Nathanson. Broderick will play a filmmaker who finds a financier for his project, only to discover the producer is an undercover FBI agent working on a sting operation involving the mob. The film was inspired by the true story of a sting operation focusing on two gangsters working for the late John Gotti.
* James Caan will star in CASTLE OF LIES, based on the life of William Larnach, a politician who built New Zealand's first castle before fatally shooting himself in Parliament in 1898 after financial ruin and a devastating affair between an ex wife and his son. Caan will also star in the indie pic JERICHO MANSIONS opposite Jennifer Tilly and Maribel Verdu. It's a psychological thriller set in an apartment building where a series of murders has occurred.
* Val Kilmer is in talks to star as the late porn legend John Holmes in Lions Gate Films' true-crime tale WONDERLAND for director James Cox. Christina Applegate, Kate Bosworth, Lisa Kudrow and Josh Lucas are in negotiations to round out the cast of the film. The project will not be a
biopic, but a true-crime tale focusing on Holmes' implication in what is known as the Laurel Canyon Murders in 1981, a quadruple homicide on Wonderland Avenue that also involved his teenage lover.
* Daryl Hannah will co-star with Brad Renfro and William Forsythe in the indie flick THE JOB for director Kenny Golde and Platform Entertainment. Shooting is scheduled to start Nov. 6 in Los Angeles. It's about a female hit woman who desperately wants to get out of her job. She's faced with killing a pregnant woman and the woman's husband, only to become haunted by her own past when she also becomes pregnant.
* Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson, Giovanni Ribisi and Anna Faris star in LOST IN TRANSLATION for writer/director Sofia Coppola (THE VIRGIN SUICIDES) and Focus Features. It's about two Americans who meet and spend a week together lost in Tokyo. Shooting is underway in Japan.
* Sean P. Hayes will provide the voice of the animated fish in Imagine/Universal's feature DR SEUSS' THE CAT IN THE HAT.
* Rapper Lil' Romeo will star in LIL' ROMEO AND LIL' JULIET for MGM and producers Mark Canton and Master P. Dallas Jackson is writing the script, which is a teenage/hip-hop take on Shakespeare's classic with the violence expressed through music and dance.
* Eugene Levy is in talks to star in New Line's buddy action/comedy THE MAN, about two undercover ATF agents with conflicting personalities who team up to bust an illegal firearm ring in San Francisco.
* Jennifer Aniston is in talks to star opposite Ben Stiller, Debra Messing and Philip Seymour Hoffman in the untitled John Hamburg comedy for Universal and Jersey Films.
* Kirsten Dunst is in talks to join Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet in ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND, written by Charlie Kaufman, for director Michel Gondry (HUMAN NATURE). Much of the story takes place in the recesses of the brain and centers on a guy who tries to delete a particularly steamy relationship he had with his ex-mate.
* Will Kemp will star alongside Hugh Jackman in Universal's VAN HELSING for writer/director Stephen Sommers (THE MUMMY). Production begins late fall.
DIRECTOR/WRITER ATTACHMENTS
* MGM purchased the script THE QUARTERBACK'S TALE by Jim Burnstein and Garrett Schiff or Marc Platt to produce. It's about a college grad who gets a publicity gig for an NFL team, where he is assigned to work with his hero. Through working with him on the player's farewell tour, he finds out the man is not what he expected him to be, and both are changed by the experience.
* Indonesian filmmakers Jose Poernomo and Rizal Mantovani will direct thriller THE WELL, with Mark L. Smith writing the script, for Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes. The story focuses on a group of recent college grads who go looking for a mystical treasure while backpacking through the dark rivers of Indonesia, only to uncover dangerous supernatural phenomena.
* Digital Domain and writers Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio (SHREK) will develop the screenplay PLANT LIFE by Tina Anderson and Steve Barr into a live-action/CGI project. It's about an office plant-lady who gains the ability to speak with plants and becomes the ultimate corporate spy.
* Maverick Films has picked up Sean Jacques' script DARKHORSE as well as an untitled music-driven romantic thriller pitch from Shintaro Shimosawa. The former is the story of a tough wheelman who is blackmailed into a new world of organized street racing, while the untitled thriller centers on an MTV pop star being stalked by a crazed fan.
* Darren Ashton will direct the comedy THUNDERSTRUCK from a script he co-wrote with Shaun Angus Hall about five AC/DC fans who vow to bury whoever dies first next to the Fremantle grave of Bon Scott, ex-AC/DC frontman. The story continues in the present after the death of one of the men.
* Patrice Leconte (GIRL ON THE BRIDGE) will direct the psychological comedy TOO INTIMATE SECRETS (CONFIDENCES TROP INTIMES), starring Sandrine Bonnaire, Fabrice Luchini, Michele Laroque and Michel Duchaussoy. Bonnaire plays a young woman who consults a psychologist but knocks on the wrong door. The person who answers doesn't have the nerve to tell her she's made a mistake. Jerome Tonnerre scripted the project which begins shooting in Paris in April.
* Revolution Studios and Roth/Arnold Prods grabbed the romantic comedy script DINNER FOR TWO, based on a British novel by Mike Gayle, from Christine Scowley and Adam Kleid. The plot is about a man who takes a job as an advice columnist for a teen magazine, only to find out that one of his advice seekers turns out to be his illegitimate daughter.
* Chris Hauty sold his script NEW SENSATION to New Line Cinema. It centers on a tough high school dropout who ends up working at a gentleman's club. She runs away and hides out at a prep school, where she takes on a new identity and begins a new life.
* Dimension Films has tapped tyro scribe Trevor Sands will script SIX BILLION DOLLAR MAN for Dimension Films. The film will be based on Martin Caidin's CYBORG novels, which were the basis for the Universal Television series "Six Million Dollar Man" in the 1970s.
* Phoenix Pictures and Benderspink will co-produce Bragi Schut's script THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE DEMETER, which expands upon the captain's log chapter of Bram Stoker's DRACULA, in which the crew members of the boat transporting
Dracula are mysteriously picked off one by one.
* MGM has tapped Dina Marie Chapman and Hopwood DePree (RHINOSKIN) to write GIRLS GONE WILD, the feature version based on the reality video phenomenon, featuring hard-partying, bare-all girls, of the same name. The feature,
which is targeting an R rating, will be a fictionalized story of a group of college coeds as they descend on Panama City Beach, Fla.
* Christopher Erskin is in talks to direct Cedric the Entertainer in the road comedy JOHNSON FAMILY VACATION for Fox Searchlight. It's about the comedic misadventures of a man and his dysfunctional family as they desperately make their way cross-country to their annual family reunion in
Texas.
* Lee Tamahori will direct Halle Berry in Paramount’s action/thriller THE GUIDE for producer Mark Gordon. The story centers on a Seneca Indian who has the gift of helping desperate people escape their bad situations by erasing their pasts and providing them with brand-new identities.
* Evolving Pictures Entertainment has snapped up an untitled romantic comedy screenplay from writer Harris Goldberg about a teen who heads to Mexico during spring break looking for excitement. While he's having fun videotaping the craziness around him, he accidentally finds himself caught up in an adventure making a fortune selling his videos.
* Brett Ratner is in discussions to direct a project with Mick Jagger producing about six fans who try to crash a Rolling Stones concert. Ratner is eyeing the Stones 40th anniversary tour as the backdrop of the Universal project.
MISCELLANEOUS PRODUCTION TIDBITS
* Paramount Pictures picked up the remake rights to the French romance READ MY LIPS for Baltimore/Spring Creek to produce. The original film was directed by Jacques Audiard and starred Emmanuelle Devos and Vincent Cassel.
* Disney snapped up the family comedy project HIS AND HERS from Edmonds Entertainment. It's about an interracial couple, both single parents, who fall in love, get married and find out that trying to bring their families together is not as easy as it may have seemed. Shonda Rhimes (CROSSROADS) wrote the script.
* Producer Thomas Langmann optioned the feature rights to Christophe Rocancourt's autobiography THE FRENCH HUSTLER. Rocancourt lied and cheated his way from poverty to the high-life in Hollywood in the 1990s, becoming the most wanted Frenchman in America. Over a decade, he pulled a series of hoaxes in which he posed as a Rockefeller, the son of producer Dino De Laurentiis and a European blue-blood, fooling everyone and swindling many before finally being caught by police in Canada last year.
* Chartoff Prods. has optioned the rights to the late Max Shulman's short story collection THE MANY LOVES OF DOBIE GILLIS. The short stories follow Dobie Gillis, an All-American 1950s teenage boy who is always looking for romance and lusts after the beautiful but shallow Thalia Menninger.
* Jim Henson Pictures and The Shop Productions will co-produce the CG animated feature film TIME DOGS. The story features a pair of dogs who travel through time to save their master and in the process save all dogs from a life of slavery. Christopher Leone and Laura Harckom are writing the script, with Leone is set to direct.
GUNN SHOTS
(NOT from the trades)
* The 2002 Screenwriting Expo offers you a two-day crash course in screenwriting craft by offering more than 130 seminars, workshops, and panels. Nov. 16th and 17th at the LA Convention Center, the Expo offers something to screenwriters of all levels and interest. Pre-register before November 1st and receive a free one-year subscription to Creative Screenwriting. For more info, visit www.screenwritingexpo.com.
Until next week…
Elston Gunn
elstongunn@hotmail.comBill Murray is in Sophia Coppola’s second film as a director?
That’s the greatest thing I’ve heard all week. Awesome. Just freakin’ awesome.
"Moriarty" out.
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... is that we'll get to see LIL' ROMEO AND LIL' JULIET! Yes! I for one am particularly looking forward to the "violence expressed through music and dance." It promises to be great. Of course. Yes...
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LIL' ROMEO AND LIL' JULIET is indeed the pick of this litter, but how's about THE QUARTERBACK'S TALE? I don't think I've ever seen that story before. MGM, you're definetly on the COMEBACK TRAIL!
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Being that I'm third, I'll provide the third greatest thing. Doesn't that new Sofia Coppola flick sound like that Ethan Hawke/Julie Delpy date flick, "Before Sunrise"? I think so...
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That wasn't even a Bon Scott era AC/DC song. Aside from that, everything looks perfectly fine, except for (1) the plague of
"Li'l" rappers making movies; (2) Val Kilmer continuing to act; (3) Eugene Levy remaking "Armed and Dangerous this far down the line; (4) Jim Carrey trying to re-gain his edge with a Charlie Kaufman film; (5) a hip-hop remix of National Lampoon's Vacation; (6) remaking a perfectly good French thriller/character study because the Denny's crowd can't read; (7) Time Dogs. Good Lord. It's Movie Wasteland. -
Oct 09, 2002 10:10:27 AM CDT
The big news is that L'il Juliet will be played by, you gues
by juggernaut125
Frank Stallone.
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Cedric the Entertainer travels through Texas with his family and suffers misadventures in NATIONAL LAMPOON'S BLACK VACATION. SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL - Six friends, all huge Rolling Stones fans, vow to be the first to be bit by Keith Richards in order to become walking dead as well. Nick Nolte and Gary Busey fight to the death in BUM FIGHT CLUB, based on the popular direct order video. First rule of Bum Fight Club: Don't touch my liquor. Val Kilmer stars in NEXT STOP WONDERLAND 2: LET'S KILL FOUR PEOPLE, 'KAY? He plays a porn star looking for that special someone to release his other urges. -
M. Night Shymalan laying the smackdown on people who frequent Denny's. But I must admit I'm MORTIFIED at the Lil Bow wow or whatever Romeo & Juliet movie. Holy christ how do these things get greenlighted......?
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First it's "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" (which is more than just a Drac spinnoff, I know), then there's Van Helsing, now there's this Demeter thing. At least one of 'em's got to be good, right? sk
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Mark Wahlberg stars in Guide to My Six Billion Dollar Johnson's Killer Rock Star Dinner for Two in Wild Mexico, wherein six coeds vie to be the first girl on tape to die on rock star-cum-secret government agent Wahlberg's cybernetically-enhanced unit. Comic hijinx ensue when Wahlberg discovers the winning girl is actually his illegitimate daughter. Hollywood ending provided by Seneca Indian Goddess Halle Berry erasing the entire episode while keeping the unit for herself.
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Marlee Matlin and Drea de Matteo are in negotiations to star in Read My Lips in Wild Mexico, which title is self-explanatory.
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Another example of an excellent foreign language flick that doesn't need remaking. I suppose they'll case Freddie Prinze Jr. and Julia Stiles
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Please, please, please no more movies about wacky, eccentric hitmen who: revisit their childhood, crossdress, travel back in time, become President of the United States, gain superpowers, fight their evil twins, or any other of the multitudes of asinine variations. Please, for the sake of everyones sanity, no more.
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A shoo-in to direct a remake of Harold and Maude? Who would be cast as the leads?
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it sounds like ur going to jump off a cliff or something. whats wrong? is Universal Soldier 4 getting you down?
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You are extremely unfunny. Maybe the Carrot top of posting
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Yes, violence expressed through music and dance. Just like the ending of Apocalypse Now. If The Bard came down from heaven and saw what people were doing with his works, he'd never stop throwing up. Also, does anyone get the feeling that Girls Gone Wild will not show any skin a la Coyote Ugly? Blame the Britany Generation. We're letting them get away with that shit.
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The spunky and sassy Toros and the hip-hop squad the Clovers are back again and headed for an international cheerleading competition until their road to cheer glory takes an unexpected turn when their plane crashes, marooning them on a desert island. With no adult survivors they are left to fend for themselves. The bitter rivalry continues between Isis (Gabrille Union) and Torrance (Kirsten Dunst) as both want to be in charge. The growing hostility between the squads degenerates into savagery and leads to a bloody and frightening climax in
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Not sure why everyone is upset about this Lil Romeo thing. Made the same movie about 40 years ago and it did rather well.
Not saying I'll watch Lil' Romeo and Lil' Juliet. I'd probably just pop in my copy of West Side Story instead. :-P -
Man, MGM is really grasping at breasts. I mean straws.
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VAN HELSING and THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE DEMETER both sound really good. The DEMETER film especially, because it sounds like a nice fleshing out of the events in DRACULA. The idea of building Dracula's attack on the ship into a full-blown movie is a great twist, and it has the makings of a good claustrophobic thriller. But LIL' ROMEO & LIL' JULIET...come on! Wasn't the proposed SHORTY project with Master P and Lil' Romeo bad enough? Please, give it a rest.
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a weak and inept retort. using big words? great. you can read the new york times and use a thesaurus. if ur using buzz as the ebert of net posting ur already in trouble
its too bad ur jokes and postings are so unfunny. i really think you could have been the next howie mandel -
Oct 10, 2002 5:54:43 AM CDT
How do I establish my credibility? Well, post an empty message
by gertrude perkins
I was GOING to say: do you guys have to say "comedic"? You know it's exactly the same word as "comic" you've just put two more letters in? (Same as "burglarised", although I'm sure I'll have fewer on my side. The verb was "to burgle". If a "burglar" has invaded your property you've been "burgled". Where did "Burglarised" come in?)
And JaguarT - thankyou. I don't hear many quotes from Hannah and Her Sisters here in ol Bournemouth -
Your ideas aren't so much funny as damn good. To cap the trilogy, the Gamesters of Triskalien wager against the Toros saving humanity from a band of feral Japanese high schoolers in "Bring It On 3: Battle Royale."
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and vow to be buried next to the band and yadda yadda yadda...tell the chimp these companies have buying ideas to aim more to the left when he throws his darts at scripts the ones he's been hitting SUCK...
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National Lampoon should sue whoever wrote that Johnson Family Vacation film. Jim Carrey + Charlie Kaufman in a movie that takes place partly in the recesses of the mind! That's freaking cool.
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Oct 10, 2002 5:10:34 PM CDT
Don't Feel Bad, Walrus! While Zo Might Be The Gallagher Of
by buzz maverik
... the Emo Phillips of Buzz Maverik imitators.
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And I think everyone's being a little too hard on the Walrus. Let's face it, he's got some pretty big shoes to fill. Also, should I have put the Hannah and Her Sisters reference in "quotes"? Is that proper movie line quote etiquitte? Alpha Zebra, thanks for the compliment and love the e-mail address.
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Oct 10, 2002 6:20:30 PM CDT
I'm The Don Rickles Of...Whatever. I Kid The Walrus & What&
by buzz maverik
I kid because I love. Ima niiice guy!
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Oct 11, 2002 1:48:43 AM CDT
A guy named Cox is doin the John Holmes flick? You can't mak
by jules windex
And the Lil' Romeo thing is the funnest damn thing I've ever heard.
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Lil' Juliette: O Homeo, Homeo! wherefo art thou Homeo? Deny thy fathuh an' dis thy name; Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, An' I'll no longuh be a Capulet. Sheeit!
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The above line should read: Or, if thou wit not, be but sworn my Luv, An' I's no longuh be a Capulet. Sheeit!......My ebonics are a little rusty...
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If they're lucky Mark Wahlberg will still have the prosthesis so they don't have to make a new one. Some local gossip columnist hinted that Val Kilmer may not need one. Unfortunately, those towels never dropped in Top Gun so I can't verify that
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