Category: News

Much props go to 27 Dresses star Katherine Heigl who—as of today—started being just one year younger than me at 30. Much disgust goes to her manager for not turning down the role of Nicole in My Father the Hero 14 years ago, because it gave the world this cringe-worthy scene (via EW’s Popwatch blog).

Just in case you didn’t get enough of suave golden boy Aaron Eckhart in The Dark Knight this summer, you’re in luck. Hollywood Reporter noted last week that Eckhart will be the star of his very first action flick called Battle: Los Angeles for Columbia Pictures—hopefully not to be confused with Battlefield Earth in posterity.

This Battle is also a science fiction film, about a Marine platoon leader (Eckhart) and his squad who are fighting aliens in Los Angeles during an invasion. The script is by Chris Bertolini, whose last major work was adapting The General’s Daughter for its 1999 release; Jonathan Liebesman who apparently did a decent enough job directing Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning will take the helm for this one.

I’m definitely ready to believe Eckhart as a Marine, mostly because of the stark earnestness he brought to Harvey Dent in Knight. I’m also curious as to finding out more about this movie because with the advent of a different kind of sci-fi with the “new” “Battlestar Galactica” TV series and the revamped “Doctor Who,” I gotta know exactly where these aliens are supposed to be coming from and how far in the future this film will be set.

I mean, you’d think we’d have mined the “Let’s fight aliens on our own turf” genre enough with just Independence Day alone, right?

Awards season is in danger yet again as federally-negotiated talks between the AMPTP and SAG broke down last week, according to Variety, which will prompt the SAG leadership to ask its members if they want to go on strike.

The name-calling started immediately, with the AMPTP calling SAG leaders (warning: PDF enclosed) “out of touch with reality” with regards to the touchy economic situation that the huge conglomerates are finding themselves in, mostly because most studio funding comes from banks — which everyone knows are in a little bit of trouble these days.

However, one tidbit from the SAG notice on that section of their website points to why the SAG leaders and negotiators may be insisting on a better deal than what everyone else has gotten this year:

We remain committed to avoiding a strike but now more than ever we cannot allow our employers to experiment with our careers. The WGA has already learned that the new media terms they agreed to with the AMPTP are not being honored…. (emphasis mine)

This casts an entirely different light on SAG for me now, because if they’re not budging because the conglomerates are reneging on the contract details that everyone else received — or worse yet, there’s a loophole in the signed contract that anticipated this economic crisis — then that’s all the reason one would need to attempt to negotiate for a better contract than what was left on the table this summer.

Time to do some reading up on these contracts…

Related Posts: AMPTP vs. SAG: The Feds step in

Variety reports that Get Smart director Peter Segal has gotten the nod to work on the Shazam!-saying Captain Marvel again as part of a three-year, first-look deal that Segal and his Callahan Filmworks production partner Michael Ewing signed with Warner Bros. It seems that both he and Ewing worked on the film two years ago when it was at New Line, and now they get to take a crack at it and John August’s (both Charlie’s Angels movies) script again.

The other initial story idea that is a part of this deal is Liam McBain: International Tennis Star and Proper English Geezer—which sounds like Talladega Nights, but in England—written by rookie Chip Hall, whose production credits include four episodes of “King of the Hill.”

This may not be the “more news” that Gordon was hoping for back in August, but it’s a start.

Related Posts: DC/Warner still talking about maybe making more super-hero movies

Now if you’re anything like me, the instant you read that headline, you thought to yourself, “No way! WB’s making a film based on a webcomic? How awesome is that?” And you’re right; that would be pretty awesome.

Except, Control-Alt-Delete isn’t the same as the six-year old Ctrl-Alt-Delete which is about two guys who like video games and their friends. And according to the plot details that Hollywood Reporter picked up—it’s like Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and The Matrix had a child—it definitely isn’t the same plot as the 93 minute Canadian film called Control Alt Delete (no dashes, see?) that screened at the Toronto Film Festival which is about a guy (Canada’s own Tyler Labine, from “Reaper”) whose post-girlfriend Internet porn-addiction-turned-full-on-computer-fetish is affecting his job as a computer programmer racing against the clock to fix the Y2K problem in 1999.

Tim Kelleher and Danny Zuker are the screenwriters for the WB movie, and between them, their largest feature credit is First Kid, while their longest TV writing credit is the title for a 1988 vehicle for Tony Danza called The Garbage Picking Field Goal Kicking Philadelphia Phenomenon—both Kelleher’s. Tyler’s brother Cameron Labine is the writer/director behind the Canadian movie which has yet to find a distributor, and his largest feature credit is as an oddly named character in the 1994 U.S. adaptation of Little Women.

I don’t know about you, but the premise of Labine’s film sounds more interesting to me. But what do you think? Is there room for two movies and a webcomic named after the three buttons of Windows death? Or should somebody put the name in mothballs and call it a night?

I have to be at the keyboard. I’m there 10 hours a day, every day, and if I’m not, I get nervous and twitchy. My wife and I took our first vacation in 20 years and she said, “You’re gonna go to London. You’re gonna have a good time and not do any writing.” Within two days I was vibrating so badly that I got a little notebook in the pharmacist’s and was in the bathroom working on my next novel.
—Screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski, on whether or not he has a set writing schedule

Well, not exactly. Vanity Fair obtained this really diva-like memo from Thomas Kinkaide—whose “paintings of light” were hilariously lampooned in a Photoshop Phriday bit I still love from four years ago—that he sent to the crew members of his direct-to-DVD movie The Christmas Cottage, which comes out this week. Cottage stars Peter O’Toole, Marcia Gay Hayden, and Jared Padalecki as a younger Kinkaide. I wonder exactly how many “Supernatural” fangirls will be buying this piece of crap just because Padalecki’s in it.

Anyway, some of what he wrote on the list was pretty dodgy from a filmmaker’s perspective, according to the experts VF consulted. However, some of the stuff was just plain weird:

Hidden details whenever possible, References to my children (from youngest to oldest as follows): Evie, Winsor, Chandler and Merritt. References to my anniversary date, the number 52, the number 82, and the number 5282 (for fun, notice how many times this appears in my major published works). Hidden N’s throughout — preferably thirty N’s, commemorating one N for each year since the events happened.

or even downright disgusting:

I get rid of the “ugly parts” in my paintings.

Ugh.

And the worst part of it all is that sales to his hardcore base fans will go through the fucking roof, which will encourage him to make even more schlocky movies which may even make it into theaters.

Ever since creators and executive producers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar left their jobs at “Smallville” without giving an official public statement on the reason why, I’ve wondered what they were going to do next. I mean, what do you do after you’ve already made a major name for yourself amongst the geek community by helping to revitalize one of its most iconic heroes?

You work on another story that involves iconic geek heroes, of course.

Hollywood Reporter turned in a story very early this morning about how Gough and Millar will be writing the script for Warner Bros. adaptation of “Robotech,” which itself is an adaptation and re-imagining of the original series “Macross.”

This means that they will probably not be using the script that Lawrence Kasdan (Dreamcatcher, Wyatt Earp, The Accidental Tourist) wrote, which makes me curious because I really like Kasdan’s work.

Hey, at least the production’s going somewhere… right?

There are a few categories of roles that Meryl Streep chooses, and from the sounds of it, her role in film based on a true-life novel called Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World—though conventional Hollywood wisdom would probably shorten the title to just Dewey—will be that of the Everywoman Who Witnesses/Takes Part In an Extraordinary Event, as noted in Variety. Streep will be playing Vicki Myron, the author of the book, who had observed the kindness of the residents in Spencer, Iowa after a kitten had wandered into the library after hours, through its book drop slot. That must have been one skinny kitten.

New Line will be distributing, and Pamela Gray is writing the script. Considering that Gray’s last project with Streep was Music of the Heart (where an Everywoman Takes Part in an Extraordinary Event with Inner City Kids) this will probably be a walk in the park for Streep, who will then announce later on that her next project will be playing a gay pimp in drag or something like that.

There’s a fine line between a great cinematic re-imagining of a classic novel and a torturous hack job. Based on the details in Variety‘s article about Screen Gems handing directorial duties to Will Gluck (creator and executive producer for the failed TV show “The Loop”) for their film Easy A, I was leaning towards it being more of the latter, but now I’m not so sure.

See, Easy A is supposed to be a re-imagining of The Scarlett Letter, that book you probably read in high school and manipulated your then-boyfriend into doing art for your book report… if you’re like me, that is. If you’ve never read Letter before, all you really need to know is that it contains more guilt, repression, long-term suffering, and emosity than a song by Morrissey due to its focus on Puritan values in the 1600s, the sin of adultery, and redemption.

Easy A, on the other hand, will be about a junior in high school who pretends to be the school slut for some financial of personal gain. Even before double-checking, I knew that a woman couldn’t have written the script, and was rewarded when I read the earlier Variety article that says it was written on spec by playwright Bert V. Royal.

I was all ready to roast him, with my phasers set to “Maim,” when I read this review from two years ago of his breakout play “Dog Sees God” in The Villager:

Bert V. Royal stabs the satirical needle into not only Schulz’s comic strip but also the entire teen angst genre. “Dog Sees God” pokes fun at everything from the teen classics Clueless and Fast Times at Ridgemont High to many of the silly, adolescent TV shows on which some of the play’s actors star [which included Eliza Dushku from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and Logan Marshall Green from “The OC”]. Although the characters are typical teen stereotypes, and the juvenile jokes about getting stoned, drunk and laid are certainly sophomoric clichés, most of the humor is witty and intelligent, and there are many great one-liners.

So for now, I’m undecided on how this could play out. How ’bout you?

Brad Pitt and the gang at Plan B must really like reading or literature, which is a rarity in Hollywood. In addition to a planned adaptation of best-selling novel Eat, Pray, Love that will be directed by Ryan Murphy and an untitled David Fincher film based on non-fiction stories “Beautiful Boy” and “Tweak,” Variety reported that Plan B and Paramount got Marc Forster (whose last film was Quantum of Solace, and why the hell aren’t you in the theaters watching it right now???) to direct the movie adaptation of the best-selling semi-epistolary novel World War Z.

Considering Forster’s wish to return to smaller budgeted movies I think PItt and Plan B made the right choice, and they approached him in the right way. Forster’s already said in interviews that “when they pitched it to me, it reminded me of the paranoid conspiracy films of the ’70s like All the President’s Men.” Pair his sentiments up with stellar mind of scriptwriter J. Michael Straczynski— he whose “Babylon 5” was a revolution in storytelling for the small screen—and that adds up to one zombie movie I’d really love to see.

That’s the question that probably haunting the minds of the executives over at Paramount Vantage and Overture the most as flaming liberal documentarian Michael Moore races both a wildly fluctuating worldwide economy, his $222 million dollar whipping boy’s departure from public office, and the arrival of a new public official who’s not as easy to poke holes through to finish a new film that Hollywood Reporter called “an end-of-the-empire” sort of movie.

Untitled for now, Moore’s latest project was originally going to be the international foreign policy follow-up to his Fahrenheit 9/11 but when the global economy started to tank, he switched his focus. There’s no word yet as to which public figures will regret being on camera, which foolhardy crazy conservatives or liberals he got to mouth off, or even which pop culture phenomenon he will attempt to copy for filler bits.

However, I think that everything that needs to be said about how the economy collapsed has already been said, most notably by the crews at This American Life and NPR News when they did their two big shows on the financial meltdown that may have sunk John McCain’s 2008 presidential dreams. I highly urge all of you to read the transcript for “The Giant Pool of Money” or buy the podcast for “Another Frightening Show About the Economy” because not only will you have a greater understanding of why everything’s all screwed up, you know exactly what to tell your state representative when it comes to making sure the “right” people are getting help and not the “wrong” people.

It must be really good to be Jaden Smith, Will Smith’s son.

I mean, not only do you have parents who are pretty hip (despite their Scientologist fandom), you also get to be in a movie with your dad that’s a decent 66% fresh on the Tomatometer. Now, Variety reports that your dad and Jerry Weintraub want to remake the first Karate Kid movie, and you’re going to be the star.

Filming will be in Beijing, and the script will be written by Chris Murphy (whom IMDB claims has mostly worked in the industry as a “key digital video assist operator”) to contain the elements of the first movie that made it great: a youth who is being bullied takes steps to fight back against his tormemtors with the help of an unusual mentor.

But taking in the fact that the younger Smith is only 10 and his height (in the picture above, his father’s 6′ 2″ and his mother’s 5′ 0″; you do the math), aren’t you getting shades of 3 Ninjas, too?

[The part where the bombs are on the ferries] speaks to the innate goodness of human behavior. And let’s remember that Oscar ballots are due next January 12, just a week before Barack Obama is inaugurated. It’s safe to say most Hollywood types will also see that event as an example of innate human goodness. All of this only helps The Dark Knight‘s chances [at winning the Best Picture award], don’t you think?

—Entertainment Weekly’s Oscar pundit Dave Karger, on how the elections will affect the Oscars

Marvel Comics has taken another step towards getting Captain America, one of their first characters, a shot at big screen stardom with the announcement that Joe Johnston will be the film’s director, says Hollywood Reporter.

Producer Kevin Feige waxed enthusiastic about the choice, saying, “This is a guy who designed the vehicles for Star Wars, who storyboarded the convoy action sequence for Raiders of the Lost Ark…” Johnston’s other credits include Jumanji, Hidalgo, and the upcoming The Wolfman.

The studio is currently hearing pitches for the First Avenger: Captain America storyline, but I have to say honestly… how complicated does this story have to be? Hell, I could bang out a pitch right now:

Rebecca Barnes, a journalist for The Stars and Stripes is starting an assignment about an embedded Army platoon when they come under fire, and under overwhelming odds. She notices one soldier in particular do things that seem inhumanly possible, a soldier she didn’t see before when she met the platoon, and who seems to disappear right after the firefight. Becky reports back to her superior officers about this amazing man, wanting to switch her focus to doing the story on him. But her superior officers dismiss her, telling her that she’s not cleared to know or write anything about it, and tell her to write about puppies and kittens instead, like a good woman.

Becky’s a true-blue muckraker at heart, though, and starts doing some digging, uncovering some nasty secrets about the U.S. army getting involved in human scientific experimentation… and the world’s best soldier at the same time. Now the race is on, for Becky’s superior officers are trying to squelch the story, and the enemy is trying to get at Becky for what she knows…

See? Box office gold, I tell ya.