Father Geek here posting up yet another of Elston Gunn's great weekly updates. Lots of strange and crazy stuff happened this week; AOL and TIME/Warner merge, whats that going to do to our TV's and our local theaters, Lucas Online strikes a deal with Latitude 90, whats that mean to us, only time will tell. Well, here's Elston's WEEKLY RECAP...
TAKEN FROM VARIETY AND HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
CASTING
* George Clooney will reprise Frank Sinatra's role from OCEAN'S 11 in a remake for director Steven Soderbergh and Warner Bros. The studio and the producer want to continue casting many stars for the pic.
* Cate Blanchett may play an FBI agent (not Clarice Starling) in HANNIBAL for producer Dino De Laurentiis and director Ridley Scott. Steve Zaillan would have to rewrite the script to explain the new character, but can use the basic storyline.
* Paul Hogan is readying to reprise his Australian hero character in CROCODILE DUNDEE IN HOLLYWOOD for producer Lance Hool and Silver Lion Films. Paramount will distribute and the script by Hogan, Matthew Berry and Eric Abrams is said to need further development.
* Patrick Swayze and Natasha Richardson join Billy Bob Thornton and Charlize Theron in Miramax's redneck infidelity pic WAKIN' UP IN RENO for director Jordan Brady. Swayze is also in final talks to join PUFF THE MAGIC DRAGON.
* Jane Horrocks (LITTLE VOICE) and Ian Hart will star in BORN ROMANTIC for writer/director David Kane about three clumsy men who take dance lessons at a salsa club in London in order to woo three women.
* Pierce Brosnan will star in and produce BURNT SIENNA for MGM based on an upcoming novel by David Morrell (FIRST BLOOD.) The story follows an ex-Marine pilot who is now an artist in Mexico. He refuses to paint the portrait of a wife of an arms dealer and finds his life turning upside down as a result. He then joins a CIA mission to bring the dealer down.
* Steve Martin is attached to star in LONG LOST for Miramax and director Griffin Dunne. Patty Max and Sarah Piley pitched the project about a 1970s cultural icon, a singer whose songs "made the whole world cry" and his fallen status. He meets a woman and the two manipulate each other for their own gains.
* John Travolta might star in TRAVEL AGENT about a man who travels back in time six months to stop an assassination plot. Andy Davis may direct the Gregory Hansen script.
* Tom Cruise may star in Columbia's FERTIG based on the real life of Wendell Fertig, an American soldier who served in the Pacific Theater in WWII. William Nicholson wrote the script.
* Jon Bon Jovi joins PAY IT FORWARD with Helen Hunt, Kevin Spacey and Haley Joel Osment.
* Julianne Moore will play a physical therapist and Bruce Willis' wife in M. Night Shyamalan's UNBREAKABLE for Disney. Shooting will begin April 17.
* Bette Midler will star in the urban prison drama FINDERS KEEPERS also starring Master P, Richard T. Jones and Gabriel Casseus. John Luessenhop will direct a script he wrote with Avery Duff.
DIRECTOR/WRITER ATTACHMENTS
* Sam Raimi is in talks with Columbia Pictures to direct SPIDER MAN after he blew execs away in a meeting to discuss the character and David Koepp's script. However, they must resolve scheduling conflicts with Raimi's next pic THE GIFT.
* Jan De Bont will direct and produce DUST for Blue Tulip Prods., Village Roadshow and Warner Bros. The ecological disaster project is based on a novel by Charles Pellegrino, who inspired JURASSIC PARK.
* Barry Sonnenfeld may direct THE UGLY TRUTH with Ben Affleck and Gwyneth Paltrow considering taking roles in the pic about a romantically challenged woman who takes lessons from a sloppy, sexist TV personality.
* Markus Redmond and Ivy Williams have written the college thriller I WOULD DIE FOR YOU, picked up by Columbia Pictures, about a college senior who has a one night stand with his old high school sweetheart while away from campus. She follows him back to college so she can ruin his life in order to win back his love.
* Scott Rosenberg will rewrite his adaptation of Michael Connelly's novel BLACK ICE for Columbia Pictures about a homicide detective who discovers his partner dead from an apparent suicide, but finds out it may not have been suicide, and the body may not have even been his partner's.
* Tommy O'Haver (BILLY'S HOLLYWOOD SCREEN KISS) will direct the teen comedy GETTING OVER ALLISON for Dimension Films. R. Lee Fleming Jr. (SHE'S ALL THAT) wrote the script about a boy about to enter his senior year in high school when his girlfriend dumps him. Production should begin in the spring.
* Martyn Burke will write and direct the Bette Midler pic THE MEDDLERS about three mothers who try to play matchmakers for each of their sons.
* Kevin Kerslake will write and direct DIZZY, a snowboarding romantic actioner for producers Todd Black and Jason Blumenthal.
* David Fincher may direct PASSENGERS based on Robert Silverberg's short story. It's a sci-fi drama about aliens who take human form for wild three-day romps. A man tries to find a woman he was with while she was under the alien influence, but when he finds her she has no recollection of him.
* Richard LaGravenese (LIVING OUT LOUD) is in final talks to write and direct AS BEES IN HONEY DROWN for Universal based on the Douglas Carter Beane play about a gay man pretending to be straight so he can further his career when a female producer pretends to take interest in him and promise him fame and fortune.
* Chuck Leavitt will adapt Angela Amato and Joe Sharkey's novel LADY GOLD for Icon Prods. about the friendship between a Mafia informant and a cop. Mel Gibson may direct.
* Drew Daywalt and David Schneider will direct STARK RAVING MAD about a group of twenty somethings who rent a restaurant to throw a rave party as a cover for breaking into the bank next to the restaurant.
* Hugh Wilson will direct Sandra Bullock in the comedy MISS CONGENIALITY about an FBI agent who goes undercover in a beauty pageant. Production begins in the spring.
* Roman Polanski will adapt and direct THE PIANIST which follows the survival of musician Wladyslaw Szpilman in Warsaw between 1939 and 1945.
MISCELLANEOUS PRODUCTION TIDBITS
* Miramax picked up the feature film rights to Gail Carson Levine's novel ELLA ENCHANTED about a young girl who is placed under a spell by a blundering fairy so that she has to obey every command she receives. She then tries to find out how to reverse the spell and marry the prince of her dreams.
* Paramount picked up the rights to Robert Stone's (DOG SOLDIERS, HALL OF MIRRORS) novel DAMASCUS GATE.
* Columbia Pictures bought Nelson DeMille's (THE GENERAL'S DAUGHTER) THE LION'S GAME and may also pick up his PLUM ISLAND. GAME is about an ex-NYPD detective and his investigation of an Arab terrorist who comes to the U.S. to avenge the murder of his family, who were killed n a 1986 Libya bombing. DeMille may also write a sequel to THE GENERAL'S DAUGHTER with Paul Brenner going back to VietNam on a case. Travolta and Paramount may be interested.
* Catherine Zeta-Jones dropped out of Oliver Stone's BEYOND BORDERS starring Kevin Costner. Julia Roberts has been offered the female lead in the pic set against the backdrop of several humanitarian efforts around the world.
* Warner Bros. will greenlight the live-action/animated feature CATS AND DOGS about a turf war between cats and dogs--the cats want to destroy a vaccination for dog allergies and the dogs want try to protect it. Larry Guterman will direct.
* Edward Norton, Milos Forman and writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski (PEOPLE VS. LARRY FLYNT) may collaborate on a Howard Hughes biopic.
* David Iganatius sold his treatment TANDEM COUPLE about a marriage falling apart to Jerry Bruckheimer. Ignatius's novel A FIRING OFFENSE was picked up by Tom Cruise's production co. at Paramount.
* Columbia picked up the rights to DEMOLITION ANGEL by Robert Crais about a female bomb squad detective and a male ATF agent going after a serial bomber.
* Beacon Pictures picked up IN A DARK WOOD, a pitch by Gregg Chabut and Kevin Peterka, inspired by a book by Michael Cadnum. The Sheriff of Nottingham is not such a bad guy but had bad PR in Sherwood Forest and it has ruined his life. He tries to redeem himself by teaming up with Robin Hood (who made his life miserable) in order to save the king.
* New Line got the screen rights to the upcoming nonfiction book GEEKS about two guys who used the Internet to escape their Idaho Mormon town.
* Warner Bros. has optioned Stan Lee's unpublished manuscript THE GUARDIAN--BOOK ONE: THE UNBOUND written by Larry Shultz and Dave Smeds and follows 18-year old John Porter who holds the key to defeat an evil organization.
* Billy Bob Thornton has dropped out of THE SHIPPING NEWS and will likely next direct CINDERELLA MAN in which Ben Affleck is in talks to star as a Depression-era boxer who became a national hero.
Clooney/Soderberg doing OCEAN'S 11? Is this a welcome remake? Cate Blanchett and HANNIBAL and Sam Raimi and SPIDER MAN all have one problem: THE GIFT. Let's hope all is worked out. (I'm anxious to see THE GIFT.) CROCODILE DUNDEE IN HOLLYWOOD? We'll see. Bette Midler is busy with THE MEDDLERS and FIDERS KEEPERS. Billy Bob Thornton is busy with WAKIN' UP IN RENO (which added the interesting combo of Patrick Swayze and Natasha Richardson) and CINDERELLA MAN (he also co-wrote THE GIFT.) Ben Affleck is mulling his next with CINDERELLA MAN and THE UGLY TRUTH. We got another high school flick coming with GETTING OVER ALLISON. That Steve Martin project sounds funny. David Fincher and PASSENGERS? Need more info. Same with Jan De Bont and DUST. Julia Roberts doing an Oliver Stone pic? Different. How many Howard Hughes biopics are there in the works? The Stan Lee stuff sounds cool. Jon Bon Jovi joins a good cast in PAY IT FORWARD. Roman Polanski, Hugh Wilson and Mel Gibson look to be directing again soon. I wonder what will happen now to THE SHIPPING NEWS. Any takers?
Have a good one. Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday.
Elston Gunn
elstongunn@hotmail.com
