Alec Baldwin Signs For Woody Allen’s Next; Jesse Eisenberg To Join As Well? By Russ Fischer/April 11, 2011 5:30 pm EST Briefly: While Alec Baldwin was once actively talking about retirement, we know better than to take talk like that too seriously. He says he’s done with 30 Rock after the next season, and in the meantime will shoot a part in Adam Shankman’s adaptation of the musical Rock of Ages....
Batman 3 Gets An Official Release Date By Peter Sciretta/April 30, 2010 11:59 am EST Last week, IMAX announced that they had signed a 20-film deal with Warner Bros. One of the most interesting parts of the news was that Batman 3 was listed as one of the films which might be released sometime between 2011 and 2013. For a project which had not yet been officially greenlit or announced publicly (Nolan had said that he was working on a story/script with David Goyer and brother Jonathan Nolan), it sure got fans excited....
Casting Bits: Elijah Wood In ‘Celese And Jesse Forever;’ Colin Hanks In ‘My Mother’s Curse;’ Paul Schneider In ‘Baby Makers’ By Russ Fischer/May 27, 2011 6:00 pm EST We reported on the last round of casting for Celeste and Jesse Forever just the other day, when Emma Roberts, Ari Graynor and Chris Messina joined the cast of the film that follows Rashida Jones (who co-wrote) and Andy Samberg as a couple who tries to maintain their friendship while still living in the same house during their divorce....
Disney Buys Ahmet Zappa Script Called ‘Monster Witness Relocation Program’ By Russ Fischer/Aug. 23, 2010 11:18 am EST Briefly: Disney has picked up a new spec script by Ahmet Zappa and Michael Wilson, called Monster Witness Relocation Program. Zappa came up with the basic story, and Deadline’s report suggests that Disney will develop the film as a project for Jaden Smith. The title alone probably made this a buy — Deadline offers no story details, but it isn’t too hard to imagine quite a few options....
By Russ Fischer/May 19, 2010 1:06 pm EST Briefly: Note to actresses: might not be a great idea to refer to your directors as Hitler. We don’t have a lot of info right now, but Deadline is reporting that Paramount will not be picking up Megan Fox’s option to appear in Transformers 3. Reportedly, the decision came down to Michael Bay, and he decided not to pull the trigger on hiring Fox....
Early Buzz: Disney’s Tangled By Peter Sciretta/May 31, 2010 8:00 am EST Over the weekend we received an anonymous e-mail from a /Film reader who claims to have seen Disney’s next computer animated feature film Tangled (formerly Rapunzel). The film is due out November 24th 2010, and aside from an international teaser trailer and concept art, we haven’t seen or heard much about it. So how does Walt Disney Animation Studios’ latest stand-up?...
Edgar Wright Gives Ant-Man Update By Peter Sciretta/June 29, 2010 10:30 pm EST Writer/director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Scott Pilgrim, Hot Fuzz) talked briefly with Box Office Magazine about his big screen adaptation of Marvel’s Ant-Man which has been long in development. Wright says he hasn’t yet started writing a second draft of the script, and won’t be able to until September. He also talks about his vision for the film....
Governments Of Paraguay And Argentina Won’t Support Kathryn Bigelow’s ‘Triple Frontier’ By Russ Fischer/May 12, 2010 10:08 am EST Officials in Paraguay and Argentina feel pretty touchy about the perception of their countries, specifically as it relates to the tourist trade. Want to make a movie that might cast part of those countries in a less than flattering light? Don’t expect them to cooperate. The Hurt Locker creators Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal have been working on a film called Triple Frontier, which is set in and named after a region that is formed by the intersection of Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina....
Hugh Laurie Won’t Be ‘Robocop’ Villain [Update: Clive Owen Might Be] By Angie Han/Aug. 24, 2012 6:00 am EST José Padilha’s Robocop remake has been adding one award-winning talent after another for the past few months, but now casting is taking one step back. Hugh Laurie has just backed out of the villain role, after entering talks back in June. Still remaining in the film are lead Joel Kinnaman, plus Gary Oldman, Samuel L....
John Woo Still Hoping To Remake ‘Le Samourai’…and ‘The Killer’? By Russ Fischer/Aug. 30, 2010 2:05 pm EST John Woo is in the middle of what might be a renaissance. It’s too early to really make that call, but he’s more active now in the wake of Red Cliff than he’s been in the past few years. And more active with interesting projects — if you haven’t seen Red Cliff it is definitely worth the time; Reign of Assassins looks promising; and there’s the IMAX film Flying Tigers that Woo is preparing to make....
Jonah Hill To Direct ‘The Kitchen Sink’ - Human, Vampire And Zombie Vs. Aliens By Peter Sciretta/March 1, 2011 7:18 pm EST From time to time I chat with industry friends about which screenplays they’re currently reading. Last week one of my friends was telling me about a screenplay he was checking out which was about “a human teenager, a vampire, and a zombie must save their town from an alien invasion....
Kimberly Peirce Now Set To Remake French Thriller ‘With A Friend Like Harry’ By Russ Fischer/July 26, 2012 2:30 pm EST I think the film With a Friend Like Harry (aka Harry, He’s Here to Help), a French thriller originally released in 2000, probably has a higher profile in France and Europe than it does here, which makes it good fodder for a US-based remake. The movie follows a young middle-class couple who run into Harry, who purports to be a high school friend of the husband....
Lauren Ambrose, DC Pierson, Cobie Smulders, Cedric The Entertainer And Tom Arnold Join Grassroots By Peter Sciretta/July 2, 2010 3:00 pm EST Lauren Ambrose (Six Feet Under, Can’t Hardly Wait), DC Pierson (Mystery Team, Derrick Comedy), Cobie Smulders (How I Met Your Mother), Cedric the Entertainer and Tom Arnold (True Lies) have been cast in writer-director Stephen Gyllenhaal’s quirky Seattle-based political comedy Grassroots. They join Jason Biggs and Joel David Moore Full details after the jump....
LOL: The Onion Reports “Al-Qaeda Calls Off Attack To Spare Life Of Twilight Author” By Peter Sciretta/June 30, 2010 8:00 am EST The Onion News Network has a report on an Al-Qaeda attack on the nation’s capital which was called off to reportedly spare the life of Twilight author Stephenie Meyer. Watch the video from this late breaking news report, embedded after the jump. LOL: The Onion Reports “Al-Qaeda Calls Off Attack To Spare Life Of Twilight Author”...
PHOTOS: ‘The Avengers’ Assemble In New York’s Central Park By Germain Lussier/Sept. 2, 2011 3:30 pm EST Joss Whedon and his crew spent plenty of time destroying the streets of Cleveland as the burg doubled for New York City, but sometimes there’s nothing like the real thing. Almost the full cast of The Avengers (Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr., Jeremy Renner, Scarlett Johansson, Stellan Skarsgard and Mark Ruffalo) was filming at the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park in Manhattan Friday and some really great photos have come online....
Ridley Scott Talks Alien Prequels By Adam Quigley/Sept. 5, 2010 1:18 pm EST We’ve known for years that Ridley Scott has wanted to return “to where the alien creatures were first found and explain how they were created” for his Alien prequels, and bit by bit, he’s been expanding on what such an origin story would entail. In an interview with The Independent, Scott spent a great deal of time not-so-modestly reflecting on his career, but also shared some brief details on the first of the 3D Alien prequels....
Rumor: Quentin Tarantino To Direct ‘The Shadow’? By Russ Fischer/Aug. 4, 2010 11:06 am EST [Shadow art above via Pop Art Machine]
Sam Mendes Is Directing New iPhone Commercials By Peter Sciretta/May 25, 2010 9:30 am EST It appears that Sam Mendes, the Academy Award-winning director of American Beauty, Road to Perdition, Revolutionary Road and Away We Go, is filming a commercial this week for Apple’s new iPhone which will be announced later this month. According to Engadget, the series of commercials are being referred to internally as the Mammoth / N90....
Screenwriting Bits: ‘Snow White And The Huntsman’, ‘The Smurfs 2,’ ‘Bastards’ By Germain Lussier/June 15, 2011 3:30 pm EST Snow White gets a rewrite, The Smurfs get a sequel and Bastards sells for big bucks. How’s that for alliteration? There’s a bunch of screenwriting news out there right now and, after the jump, we’ll give some context to the following: Screenwriter Hossein Amini has just been hired to do a rewrite of Universal’s Snow White and the Huntsman, the second Snow White film scheduled for release next year....
Sequel Bits: ‘Atlas Shrugged: Part 2’ Will Have New Cast & Director, Plus ‘Avatar,’ ‘Riddick’ And ‘Ghostbusters 3’ By Russ Fischer/Feb. 2, 2012 4:00 pm EST Here’s perhaps the most unusual collection of sequel news we’ll run this month. Let’s start with Atlas Shrugged: Part 2, which producers say will shoot this year and be ready for release in October, the better to take advantage of a charged pre-election political climate....
