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.com
Bill 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.
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