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While everyone else was fascinated with (or hiding from) President Barack Obama’s celebration prep and actual inauguration, Hollywood was shivering its butts off at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, with the distribution companies theater-hopping and scouring the offerings since January 15 in their hopes to find the next Juno or The Wrestler. And what did they find?

Brooklyn’s Finest becomes first big-budget sale of festival
Senator and Sony’s home video department wrapped up Brooklyn’s Finest Saturday night, offering a reported $5M for the film, which stars Richard Gere, Don Cheadle, and Ethan Hawke as cops who find themselves at a similar low moral and morale point in their careers. Finest is likely to go back into the editing bays before its debut in the winter for awards season. (Source: Variety)

Fox Searchlight gives Adam a nod
Called the first specialty purchase of the festival, Fox got the worldwide rights to Adam, a film about two New Yorkers in a relationship and once of them has Asperger’s syndrome. The stars are Rose Byrne and Hugh Dancy. (Source: Hollywood Reporter)

Sony Classics gets an Education
A bidding war erupted over the North American and Latin American rights to An Education, which was eventually won by Sony Classics for $3 million. Education was written by Nick Hornby from a memoir by Lynn Barber about a 16-year old British schoolgirl who falls for an older man. (Source: Variety)

Shelton gives Magnolia a Humpday
Another bidding war erupted over Humpday, which went to Magnolia Pictures for about the mid-$500K according to the article. Lynn Shelton is the director of this flick, which is about two straight guys who decide to have gay sex and film it for an art project. And apparently, it’s going to be released On Demand before it goes into theaters… shouldn’t that be the other way around? (Source: Variety)

Lionsgate picks up The Winning Season
After having barely squeaked into the festival, director James Strouse is probably relieved that it did, for it went to Lionsgate. The comedic Season stars Sam Rockwell as an alcoholic who is forced to coach high school basketball as a part of his recovery. Haven’t we seen a plot or plot elements like this before? (Source: Variety)

I didn’t see Beerfest or Super Troopers, and that was by choice. However, based on the logline, I’m actually interested in learning more about Opposites Attract.

According to Hollywood Reporter, Opposites is a movie wherein a couple must work out their disagreements Freaky Friday-style where the woman gets to live out her dreams of peeing standing up and the man has to learn how to put a bra on rather than take one off. That, plus the several other types of life-lessons there are to be learned make this an interesting idea for a movie…as long as the right people are involved.

It will be brought to the big screen by director Jay Chandrasekhar of the Broken Lizard comedy team, but will not be a Broken Lizard picture. Instead, Bold Films is behind the venture. Considering that one of Bold’s last productions was the Emilio Estevez-written/directed/co-starred Bobby (both a critical flop and a commercial flop), I’m not entirely sure what kind of film they’ve got up their sleeves.

Other films on the Bold slate include Mini’s First Time (a dark comedy that made it to the Tribeca Film Festival and got a limited release), Come Early Morning (a critical success that got limited play), and Slingshot (which went straight to DVD after an outing at Tribeca).

It doesn’t help that the film is being written by first-time screenwriter Dan Ewen, whose only IMDB credit is that he’s the producer of a documentary about the real life races that inspired the Cannonball Run movie franchise.

So if Bold Films is into movies that stretch boundaries and taking risks with new writers, that’s a good thing. Chandrasekhar is into slapstick comedy, which is not entirely a bad thing, but I consider it to be the road too often traveled.

I think I have to wait to find out more.

From my good friend Gia Manry at Anime Vice and the Japanese-language Anime Anime blog comes the news that Sunrise is confirming that yes, they are making a live-action Cowboy Bebop movie and yes, Keanu Reeves will be playing the lead role of Spike Spiegel.

If I could actually read Japanese, I would tell you some more about these developments but I only survived one semester of it in college. Which just goes to show: Stay in Japanese class, kids!

Related Posts: Whoa… part 2: Keanu Reeves lets Cowboy Bebop plot details slip, wants to be Spike

In the movie biz, January equals festival season, or at least preparing movies to be screened at them. SXSW (pronounced “South by Southwest”) in Austin, Texas revealed part of their film lineup on Monday, and it will include a premiere of Seth Rogan’s new comedy Observe and Report.

Report is the story of a mall security guard (played by Rogen himself) who has an overinflated sense of himself. When a serial flasher strikes, he attempts to rise to the occasion to bring the perp to justice, at any cost, and one step ahead of the real police detective (Ray Liotta) who’s been assigned to the case.

(This, of course, is nothing like the other mall cop movie starring Kevin James that’s out this weekend, Paul Blart: Mall Cop—which incidentally started filming the same weekend as Rogen’s movie did. That one looks more like a parody of Die Hard and will not be on my viewing schedule.)

Other documentary films that are on the SXSW slate include:

Objectified: Director Gary Hustwit (Helvetica) takes a look at the creative process of several industrial designers.

New World Order: Directors Andrew Neel and Luke Meyer (Darkon) go underground with conspiracy theorists and the anti-globalist movement.

Winnebago Man: If you’ve ever wondered what happens to YouTube stars after their 15 minutes of fame are up, wonder no more. Filmmaker Ben Steinbauer goes in search of one of them, a Winnebago spokesperson whose obscenity-filled outtakes became a hit sensation. Check out one such vid here (obviously, NSFW due to the cursing).

For more details about the films, updated schedules, and everything else SXSW will have to offer in 2009, you can visit the homepage here.

Whew… there’s actually a lot that’s gone on this week in the ongoing fight between the AMPTP and SAG, so let’s recap, hmm?

Variety‘s Dave McNary reported on Monday that SAG board member Seymour Cassel (Uwe Boll’s Postal—yes, really) said that national executive director Doug Allen has been removed as the lead negotiator; a SAG spokesperson completely refuted that claim. Of course, Nikki Finke of Deadline Hollywood Daily is refuting that story as well, saying that the biased daily paper has been besieging all the media who reported it to take the story down and they have all refused.

Even more important than that, remember that very important two-day meeting the SAG board was going to call this week, which would decide whether or not they would ask the SAG membership if it wants to strike? Well, it took 30.5 hours for them to decide… absolutely nothing. From DHD, again:

At the end of the National Board plenary meeting this afternoon, a group of board members submitted a document to the Guild that purports to deal with the employment of the National Executive Director and the continuing approach to negotiations. After analyzing the document, Screen Actors Guild’s in-house and outside counsel have concluded that the document does not constitute a valid written assent, for several reasons, including a lack of sufficient signatures and the absence of any language on the document demonstrating the intent of the signers to grant their assent to the proposal. Guild National Executive Director and Chief Negotiator Doug Allen and the National Television and Theatrical Contract Negotiating Committee remain committed to advancing the cause of actors and our crucial contract negotiations.

So where are we? Right back where we started: without a new SAG contract, with little respect for either party, and with the hope that we can somehow remove this sword of Damocles over our heads.

When I first wrote about the new Karate Kid remake/re-do vehicle for Will Smith’s son Jaden Smith, like many of you, I wondered who they’d get to be his Mr. Miyagi.

Variety says we can wonder no longer, because Jackie Chan is in “final negotiations” to play the young bullied kid’s mentor (who is not necessarily named “Mr. Miyagi”). Considering that the original report said that Smith’s mentor would be “unusual,” I’d say Chan totally fits the bill.

This movie’s looking more interesting to me now.

From the Italian version of the famed Italian composer’s website (but not the English), The Playlist reports that Ennio Morricone will not be available to score Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds—and it’s all the studio’s fault.

Back in November, Variety wrote:

“Tarantino will finish shooting the film in February and has to deliver it by the end of April in time for Cannes,” the maestro Morricone told Variety from his home in Rome. “That doesn’t leave me enough time to do the music. Either I start working on it before he stops shooting—after we discuss it together—or I just can’t do it.”

But Morricone’s website says now that he’ll be scoring long-time collaborator Giuseppe Tornatore’s new film Baaria – La porta del vento rather than working on Basterds.

Which isn’t to say that the movie won’t have Morricone-written tunes in it…just not the whole thing.

And here I was looking forward to a little more originality from Tarantino.

It been a dark day for some movie fans this week.

For not only did the Los Angeles Times bring news that the long-hoped for Ender’s Game movie has been scrapped, but the previously announced screenwriter for Shazam! (aka, DC Comics’ movie about Captain Marvel) has written a very in-depth blog post about why that movie is dead in the water.

First off, buried towards the end of Monday’s L.A. Times article—which is really all about the sequel book by Orson Scott Card called Ender in Exile—is this section about the status of the film:

[The attempt to film Ender’s Game] has resulted in two decades of fizzled studio meetings, dead-end scripts and a marathon director search. The author said he was not interested in a “tough-hero action film” and refuses to condescend to green-screen Hollywood. Card imagines a “film where the human relationships are absolutely essential—an honest presentation of the story.”

Ender’s Game was recently in development with director Wolfgang Petersen (In the Line of Fire, The Perfect Storm, Troy) on board, but Card did not feel comfortable with the movie’s direction. That project was scrapped early in November.

Second, it was ComingSoon.net who spread the word of screenwriter John August’s blog post detailing how his script fell apart, and the part of the unraveling narrative that starts when the movie went to Warner Bros. is a doozy:

When we turned the new draft in to the studio, we got a reaction that made me wonder if anyone at Warners had actually read previous drafts or the associated notes. The studio felt the movie played too young. They wanted edgier. They wanted Billy to be older. They wanted Black Adam to appear much earlier.

(I pointed out that Black Adam appears on page one, but never got a response.)

Of course, August does have the last laugh…sorta:

I got paid well to write Shazam!, and I get to keep that money. The real cost is an opportunity cost—the other projects I could have written that might be in production now. More than anything, that’s one of the reasons production rewrites are so appealing to established writers: you know those movies are going to get made.

UPDATE (1/8/09): An “unnamed source close to the film” tells The Marvel Family Web that “the report of the Shazam! movie’s death” is (greatly?) exaggerated. I should point out that August only said that the project was “dead” in the sense that “(the version August developed) won’t be happening,” but that “it may come back in another incarnation, with another writer.”

But all is not lost, movie fans! For in the midst of the dashing of some cinephile’s hopes comes a glimmer of hope from Hollywood Reporter about the Jonah Hex movie.

Jimmy Hayward, who directed the animated Horton Hears a Who! will make his live-action debut with Jonah Hex, the Warner Bros. western based on the DC Comics character.

Um, yay?

I know that I’ve said that this isn’t a musicals blog, but considering how they are such an integral part of themovie-going experience, you really can’t get away from hearing about a new musical being greenlit for the big screen.

This time around, it’s Bye Bye Birdie that gets a nod, and Hollywood Reporter notes that the lucky director to get this project is Adam Shankman, likely because he did such a great job with Hairspray and his riding on the success of Bedtime Stories (worldwide gross of $98 million as of last night, and only on the 12th day of its run).

Of course, this being Hollywood, they can’t leave well enough alone:

Columbia has been developing an updated version for a number of years, with the logline at one point re-imagining the title character as a hip-hop star.

Ugh.

But you know what would be awesome in that ironic sort of way? If Justin Timberlake were to star in the Conrad Birdie role—because he actually does have acting chops.

And with the right screenwriter (which the project doesn’t have yet) the new Birdie could have just the right things to say about fleeting stardom and the slide into mediocrity.

That’s a movie I’d like to see.

Variety reports that John Curran will be the director of the Keira Knightley-starring biopic about the fiery romance between author F. Scott Fitzgerald and his schizophrenic wife Zelda Sayre (at right) called The Beautiful and the Damned.

This news confirms the fact that Fitzgerald has become en vogue again, what with his short story becoming the basis for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Variety‘s EIC Peter Bart warning Australia director Baz Luhrman against attempting to do another film of The Great Gatsby.

In a way, I can understand the interest in Fitzgerald’s work right now. He wrote during the 1920s, in an boom era that came right before the Great Depression; we’re currently at the cusp of what could possibly become another Great Depression because for the most part people are greedy, overly materialistic, and use their credit cards way too much. I also do think that there is a great story in the Fitzgerald-Sayre relationship that is perhaps rivaled by that of Sid and Nancy, but with more social climbing and less homicide.

Definitely looking forward to this one.

On the “Hells, yes” side of making Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane required viewing in American high schools, we have my pal Michael Pinto at Fanboy.com, who turned in a video-filled essay expressing this exact idea:

There are so many reasons to teach this film—the screenplay alone is a great example of theater, a play with a rightful place in every English class alongside every other classic from Shakespeare to Arthur Miller. What’s wonderful about Citizen Kane is that it’s a film about all of the universal themes like love, greed and hope—yet it’s also a wonderful period piece about the history of the United States.

Adam Sweeney over at Film School Rejects.com took this idea and cutely ran with it, saying: “Tell you what, I will agree that Citizen Kane be mandatory viewing for students in American History classes, but only if the study of Orson Welles’ obesity is covered in health classes. Deal, Pinto?”

Frankly speaking, I’m sorta ashamed that I’m a 31-year old, college-educated, Advanced Placement/International Baccalaureate Candidate-educated American who has not yet even seen Citizen Kane herself. (I know, and yet, I write for a movie blog. I am aware of the irony.) It’s something I know I should see, and once I get settled into my new apartment, it’s going in my “to watch” pile.

However, I think I’m also going to disagree with Pinto and say that I’m not entirely convinced that the average American teen would be able to appreciate what a motivated high school teacher would be doing by introducing it into the curriculum, thus dooming the experiment to failure. I have a friend who teaches AP high schoolers in the Bronx, and even they aren’t receptive to classic and awesome literature when it’s assigned, saying that having assigned Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Ubervilles over the winter break “ruined Christmas.”

What I can see, however, is an extra credit project for a non-AP class, where a student could choose between a myriad of films by both American and non-American directors about different periods in American history, compare and contrast the filmed version of events with the real history, talk about critical reception of the film in its day and contrast it with the reception now, etc.

Films they could choose from could include: Birth of a Nation, Avalon, Once Upon a Time in America, Gangs of New York, The Alamo (both versions), Last of the Mohicans, etc. And that’s just the list of Hollywood movies about American history.

Thoughts?

Killing almost every thought I had towards being excited about it, Variety reported that the uber-talented Hugh Jackman will not be able to star as Marc Antony in Steven Soderbergh’s next flick, Cleo, a 3-D live action musical about Cleopatra.

The article noted that people are speculating that he’s not able to do it due to scheduling conflicts, but no one’s sure exactly which project of Jackman’s is causing the problem.

I honestly can’t think of any other actor who can sing and dance who could be able to stand up next to lead Catherine Zeta-Jones when it comes to pure awesomeness in a musical, except for maybe Ewan McGregor (loved being surprised by his singing in Moulin Rouge) and bring that same kind of sexiness and charisma that Jackman brings to his roles.

Variety also noted in the article that Ray Winstone is still “in discussions” to play Julius Caesar, contradicting an earlier Movie Make-out.com report.