In the vein of Da Vinci’s Notebook’s meta-tastic song “Title of Song,” comes a brilliant trailer for a movie that everyone’s seen at least once a year, every year:
Created by Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney, you can find more of their videos here or even catch them live at the SXSW festival this weekend where they will be showing their short film “Eagles Are Turning People Into Horses.”
Chick lit flicks are becoming the rage, it seems, and every where you turn, it seems another celeb is signing on to be in them.
For example, back in February, Empire Online announced rather snarkily that Ginnifer Goodwin (Margene from “Big Love”) would be starring in the adaptation of Emily Giffin‘s novel Something Borrowed. Directed by Luke Greenfield (The Girl Next Door), Goodwin would play Rachel, a well-meaning Manhattan lawyer who “accidentally” sleeps with her best friend Darcy’s fiance after a drunken 30th birthday party and realizes that she’s in love with him.
Now from The Hollywood Reporter comes news that “The Office” star John Krasinski is in talks to join Goodwin as the second male lead, sort of. It’s a little complicated, as Alcon Entertainment has also acquired the rights to the second book Something Blue which follows best friend Darcy’s single mother escapades in London with her writer-friend Ethan.
Except, THR claims that Krasinski would be playing Rachel’s male confidant in the first movie and Darcy’s eventual romantic interest for the second movie and unless there’s a character I’m missing or they tweak the hell out of the second book, I really don’t see how they’re going to pull that off.
Filming will begin this spring.
When I was seven years old, I remember thinking that I’d figured out the “trick” behind what you should do when you meet a wish-granting magical being and submitted a book report where I said that if a genie granted me three wishes, I’d wish for more wishes.
When Zach Bonner was seven years old, he founded a non-profit organization, walked 280 miles from Tampa to Tallahassee in Florida, and raised over $25,000 in supplies and donations to aid homeless children.
Guess which of the two of us has optioned the rights to an autobiographical movie about his life?
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the John Templeton Foundation through the Philanthropy Project and Anonymous Content has hired David Anspaugh (Rudy, The Game of Their Lives) to direct a film about Bonner’s life and his non-profit organization Little Red Wagon. Patrick Sheane Duncan (Mr. Holland’s Opus) is currently writing the screenplay and filming is to start in the spring to coincide with Bonner’s latest project, a “walk across America” to raise more funds to aid homeless children.
I’ve been thinking about non-profit organizations lately and I recognize that there are so many types. My experiences have mostly been with groups who form educational NPOs so that they can put on anime conventions, and after four years of doing volunteer work at a senior staff level, I can definitely say that anyone who gets paid to work for an NPO is indeed doing “real work.”
That Bonner—who is now 13—is still interested in non-profit work and his cause bodes well for the strength of his character, and I hope that he gets through his teenage years with that same character intact.
There is no word yet on who would be cast in the principal roles.
Back in 2008, Justin Timberlake appeared in an ad for Pepsi during the Super Bowl, shilling their “stuff” program where you traded points or bottle caps or something like that for .mp3s, TV, etc. It was well-received and added yet another feather to his comedic cap.
It looks like that entire chapeau is ready for its debut as Timberlake will be joining the cast of Bad Teacher which also stars former girlfriend Cameron Diaz (Knight and Day) and Lucy Punch (You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger). Diaz will play the eponymous gold-digging seventh grade teacher who goes after rich-boy substitute teacher Timberlake who is already dating her colleague Punch.
Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky (Year One) are the screenwriters behind this comedy while Jake Kasdan (Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story) is directing and Columbia Pictures is distributing. Other members of the cast will include Molly Shannon, Eric Stonestreet, Jason Segal, and John Michael Higgins.
If there’s anything I do admire about Cameron Diaz, it’s that she’s got a great sense of comedic timing. I also like the fact that Justin Timberlake isn’t above having a little fun at his own image’s expense (“Dick in a Box,” anyone?). Put these two stars together in a comedy, and I can’t wait to see what happens.
And who knows? Maybe they’ll even get back together!
Borys Kit from The Hollywood Reporter is noting that director Darren Aronofsky (The Wrestler) and Angelina Jolie have quietly teamed up to shop a project around to the various studios.
Based on the 2009 novel by Ron Rash, Serena will tell the story of an ambitious Depression-era timber baron’s new wife whose monstrous behavior threatens the life of her husband’s illegitimate child. Christopher Kyle (K-19: The Widowmaker, Alexander) adapted the screenplay and Nick Wechsler (The Time Traveler’s Wife, The Road) is on board as producer.
Despite her recent dramas having achieved critical success, the box office numbers tell a different story. Changeling raked in only $35 million in the U.S. but its total worldwide gross is almost $113 million while A Mighty Heart only took in $18 million worldwide with about half of that being its domestic gross. Still, Kit re-relates the notion that Jolie is box office gold, calling her “one of the few female actresses who can make or break a movie.”
Personally, I think this is definitely a role that Jolie would sink her teeth right into and chew for all its worth, but I also think that Aronofsky’s the kind of director who could rein in some of her exuberance and re-direct that emotion into the acting.
Jolie will have a chance to prove her paycheck’s worth again with spy thriller Salt and its U.S. release July 23 and The Tourist, which she is currently filming with new co-star Johnny Depp.
The thing about adapting “chick lit” novels into film is that already the studio knows that there’s an audience for it, which is a good thing. The tricky thing is that the audience is invariably going to be made up of some people who are not in the novel’s targeted demographic, and this audience has to be entertained as well.
Which is why I’m not surprised that Universal Pictures and Spyglass Entertainment have finally settled on director Andy Fickman (The Game Plan, You Again) to lead its adaptation of Sophie Kinsella’s The Undomestic Goddess.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Fickman will be reporting to both Spyglass and Tribeca Productions, working from a script by Aline Brosh McKenna (The Devil Wears Prada).
Goddess is the story of a workaholic London attorney named Samantha Sweeting who suffers a brief mental episode at work after making a costly error and escapes to the English countryside. There, she is mistaken for a candidate for a maid position at a country estate and decides to just go with it rather than facing her problems back in the big city. The production will keep the setting the same, but it sounds to me like they’re going to turn Sweeting into an American, which irks me only a little.
To say that Fickman’s recent films haven’t been good is definitely a matter of opinion as even though The Game Plan only scored a 27% on the Tomatometer, it ranked #1 in box office sales for its opening weekend in September 2007 and has a total worldwide gross of $147 million. It was also the top DVD rental for three weeks in a row upon its release in January 2008.
It doesn’t hurt that he’ll have McKenna’s adaptation to work from and the fact that Sweeting is a more empathic character than the one in Kinsella’s Confessions of a Shopaholic may also help the film’s chances.
Ultimately, I think the success of this film is going to be based entirely on whom they get to play the leads and how many great character actors they can get to fulfill the supporting roles. This could almost be a job for Amy Adams, but I doubt she’d want to do another romantic comedy so soon after Leap Year only made it to #6 on its opening weekend.
With the success of its stop motion-animated film Coraline, Laika Entertainment has been adding feature films to its production slate, and now we can add one more to the list.
According to The Hollywood Reporter Chris McCoy and Jan Pinkava will be writing Little White Lie for the animation house under Pinkava’s direction (he also directed the Oscar-winning short film Geri’s Game).
McCoy (who also has a story credit for Ratatouille) is credited with the original story, but neither THR nor Empire magazine seem to know what the story’s about—which makes me wonder if Laika’s withholding information just to get people more interested in finding out more about the movie and the story. If so, well… they’ve got me hooked.
Other films on Laika’s slate include an adaptation of Alan Snow’s Here Be Monsters! and Paranorman which features a young teenager who has to defend his small town from a zombie attack.
It is with optimistic feelings that I bring to you the news that right after he shoots a sequel to Avatar — and hopefully brings some closure to those who are “suffering” from post-Avatar depression — James Cameron is finally going to start work on the live-action version of Battle Angel Alita.
In a conversation with Larry Carroll at MTV’s Splash Page.com blog, Cameron’s producing partner Jon Landau revealed that because Avatar is to Cameron what Star Wars is to George Lucas, Cameron had always intended to make that movie first, but is now looking to continue further development on the manga/anime-turned-movie (which may be retitled Alita: Battle Angel, although Landau could have been joking):
[Alita] is something that Jim is very, very passionate about. It was actually brought to our attention by another filmmaker, Guillermo del Toro; Guillermo saw those things in the property that he thought would really relate to Jim, and Jim responded to it immediately.
and
We had a wonderful writer who came in and collaborated with Jim, Laeta Kalogridis [Night Watch, Shutter Island], who worked on it; Laeta brought to our attention that there was much more to this world of Battle Angel than we ever knew… We were familiar with the anime that had been produced, we were familiar with one of the main books. But she opened us up to the other nine books that exist, and how rich that world is.
The fact that Cameron and Landau are going deeper into the well of the Alita universe to find a good plot is fantastic news and as much as I disliked Avatar for its paper-thin plot, inconsistent characterization, and inconsistent theme (scroll to the last bit before the update), I’m excited to see Cameron’s latest technical and movie wizardry applied to an anime series I really liked.
I think in this case, how the movie shakes out will rest completely on the screenwriter’s head and hands; if Kalogridis remains the sole screenwriter and can apply the same kind of reverence towards the source material as Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyen did towards the Lord of the Rings books, we may have a winner.
Once upon a time, there was a studio in Hollywood called MGM Studios which had once been three separate studios. Through the studio system, it created a slew of great movies that are considered classics like The Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind and Ben-Hur (both versions) as well as the Tom and Jerry cartoon shorts (as created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera).
Then, TV came along in the 1950s, and while the studio struggled, it also persevered and created a few good series such as “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” and “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father” and re-invigorated the Tom and Jerry cartoons by hiring Chuck Jones to direct them. It was during this era when people started buying and selling the studio as a whole or parts of the studio and when the studio started relying on big budget tentpoles to bring in the dough for an entire year.
You can follow the rest of this convoluted story by starting at this section of the studio’s Wikipedia page, but it gets a little dizzying. Suffice to say, there are now a bunch of companies and/or banks who lent money to the studio which has lost a lot of money and they want it back.
When we last left MGM, things appeared to be on the up-and-up because the studio had been granted a reprieve from paying back its loans, which meant that anyone who was interested in buying the company had a bit longer to think about it and/or complete their due diligence (aka, investigation into whether or not it would make sense for them to buy a debt-ridden movie studio).
Those same lenders who are being lead by JPMorgan Chase are getting anxious now, says Carl DiOrio at The Hollywood Reporter, and only six of the 12 studios and entities which had submitted non-binding bids have been invited to the second round of bidding. Three of the six were identified as Time Warner, Lionsgate, and Access Industries.
The more I read about this and as I start to see values like $3.7 billion attributed to the amount of debt retained by MGM, the more abstract this whole idea appears to me. DiOrio suggests that half that value is all the company and the lenders could expect to get from a sale and that bankruptcy re-organization is more likely if the lenders don’t like that dollar amount.
At this point in time, if I held a note on MGM Studios, I’d probably welcome the chance to cherry-pick at the film library and try to pick up the pieces that could get me the most value later on, such as the James Bond film library and the rights to re-broadcast Gone With the Wind. When that much money is involved, sometimes it’s just best to cut your losses and run, and apologize to your own investors later.
Of course, there is a concrete human element that I can’t ignore and it’s that of the hundreds of employees who had nothing to do with making the bad artistic decisions that helped lead to the company’s downfall who work at the main branch of the company and would lose their jobs in the worst economic recession of the 21st century. I’m talking about people like Marvin the Mailroom Guy and Administrative Assistant Andrea, not Tom Cruise’s sister, Paula Wagner, who is currently the head of the United Artists division of MGM. But that’s the only reason I would suggest to my fellow lenders that we would accept a low offer, and that’s just not good enough.
In the end, though, I would bet that just because it was one of the original Hollywood studios, there’s going to be another last-minute save or consortium or something that will swoop in and make everything better.
Because wouldn’t that make for a better ending to the movie?
Related Posts: James Bond franchise future in doubt and/or in safe hands
As at least almost every character in the Star Wars universe has said at least once, I’ve got a bad feeling about producer Judd Apatow’s next movie.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, he’s re-teaming up with “Freaks and Geeks” creator Paul Feig to produce an untitled comedy for Universal Pictures and Kristen Wiig who played one of Katherine Heigl’s sister bosses in Knocked Up.
Wiig wrote the screenplay with comic actress Annie Mumolo and THR says it will be about two women who are battling to plan a friend’s wedding party. Feig will direct and be the executive producer, the two women will also get co-producer credit, and in addition to Apatow, Barry Mendel (Whip It) will also help call the shots.
Now, I’ll be the first person to admit that I know absolutely nothing about what it means to be a movie producer. However, if it’s anything like being an editor, then I know that some producers can have a great impact on how a movie gets made and in what direction a story can take.
I’m really glad that Wiig and Mumolo have producer credits because they’ll be able to really push to retain those elements of the script that male audiences won’t understand but female audiences can find hilarious. At the same time, I also hope this becomes a “wedding comedy” that doesn’t alienate the male part of the equation or pump up the female bits too much because too much focus on one gender’s view of the whole thing could lead to charges of the movie being either misogynist or misandrist, something Apatow’s already familiar with.
No word yet on who Wiig’s co-star will be or when filming will commence.
Despite his implying in his Valentine’s Day review that anyone who liked the movie shouldn’t be taken out on a second date, I still retain a fondness for Chicago Sun-Times movie critic Roger Ebert because he’s an old-school newspaperman who has successfully made the transition to new media.
That he’s also battled various cancers and the loss of his lower jaw while doing so and still manages to maintain a busy writing schedule is no small feat, and so this Esquire magazine profile of Ebert is something that’s I really needed to read right now.
Also? Fuck Disney for making his so pissed off that he had to resort to capslocks-style shouting.
And speaking of actors who became directors in the 1990s, Mel Gibson’s comeback doesn’t seem to be going well.
While his Edge of Darkness has a 55% fresh rating on the Tomatometer, it has only grossed $37 million in its first two and a half weeks of release. For a film with a reported $80 million budget, that’s not so good.
Perhaps audiences needs to see him getting beaten up some more, is what his business manager and/or agent is thinking, for Gibson and his production studio Icon Productions took an action movie screenplay with them to the European Film Festival and sold the hell out of it, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Called How I Spent My Summer Vacation, Gibson stars and co-wrote the screenplay about a career criminal (Gibson) who gets sent to a Mexican prison and how he survives the experience. The film was directed by Adrian Grunberg, Gibson’s first assistant director on his Apocalypto.
Thanks to a flurry of deals with international distributors, Vacation will be shown in Benelux, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Greece, the Philippines, Portugal, Scandinavia, South Africa, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, and the Middle East. Though there is no word on who will distribute in the U.S. and Canada, Icon Productions will handle distribution in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, and the U.K.
Filming starts in an actual Mexican prison in March.
They say wine and cheese get better with age; I’m not so sure the same can be said about actor-directors from the 1990s.
Take Kevin Costner, for example. According to Variety, his next project will be to direct and star in a film called A Little War of Our Own about a sheriff who has to prevent an outbreak of violence in his town against the backdrop of World War II.
Fully financed by Beacon Pictures, Armyan Bernstein is re-teaming up with Costner as producer (last picture they worked together on was The Guardian) and the pair are looking for a second male lead to play opposite Costner as a German U-boat commander from Dan Gordon’s screenplay.
Don’t get me wrong; I love some of the movies he’s done or been in, but for some reason, almost all the films Kevin Costner has made in the 2000s haven’t lived up to the same promise of the work that propelled him into stardom in the first place.
If I had to peg Costner down as an actor, he does folksy and charming well (Tin Cup), he does tired and cynical well (Bull Durham). He’s good in Westerns (Dances With Wolves) and he’s a great romantic hero (The Bodyguard). But Denzel Washington who is the same age as he is can do the same things and has earned more recent acting Academy Award nominations and statues than Costner.
Maybe it was a mistake for Costner to continue being a director/producer and bog himself down in those details because they take away from the acting process. Maybe he’s just not the kind of guy who can multitask like that.
In any case, Little War will start filming in the fall.
Someday, I would really like to meet Brian Grazer, look him in the eye and say, “What the hell were you thinking?!”
The latest WTF-ery from the man who produced Real Genius and The Da Vinci Code—but who also produced Undercover Brother and Fun With Dick and Jane—is that Twilight werewolf Taylor Lautner will be playing the titular role in the Stretch Armstrong movie that will now be released in 2012 due to being filmed for 3D.
According to The Hollywood Reporter‘s Heat Vision blog, the plot now goes something like this:
The story developed for the movie, being produced by Imagine and Hasbro, sees an uptight spy who stumbles across a stretching formula, which he takes and must now adjust to in everyday life and when fighting crime.
When I think of Lautner, I don’t think of the word “uptight,” but I think I get why they used the word because now Armstrong has got to expand his boundaries and his imagination to fight crime, yadda, yadda. It’s just the plot seems so boring and now the movie’s starring someone I only like because he looks pretty.
Also noted by THR is the fact that Battleship is getting a sci-fi veneer onto its action plot and that the release date for that film is also getting pushed back to Memorial Day 2012. I’m not sure what director Peter Berg is thinking either because the game is all about the Cold War and it’s also the original turn-based strategy game… hey wait, could he be changing the thought behind the game mechanics and drawing inspiration from Starcraft?
Related Posts: Production date set for Brian Grazer’s Stretch Armstrong movie, Universal and Hasbro sign a six-year pact (updated)
Oh, Kevin Smith, I think you won my heart back again.
That’s what I’m talking about! Well-framed talking heads dialogue, snappy banter, crude sexual humor… that’s the Kevin Smith whose films I’ve loved.
All is forgiven for caving in on the movie title. Cop Out (formerly known as A Couple of Dicks) hits the streets on February 26, 2010.
Related Posts: Trailer Watch: Cop Out trailer