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Chris Pine Will Be the Next Jack Ryan
Filed under: Action, Thrillers, Casting, Deals, Paramount, Scripts, Newsstand, Remakes and Sequels
I can't help but make the obvious joke here, so I'll just go ahead and say it: Boldly going where no man has gone before, Chris Pine is not only Unstoppable, but he also knows The Art of Making Money. How? By attaching himself to every iconic reboot he can. Variety reports that Pine has entered into talks with Paramount to become the next Jack Ryan. "Talks" seems a fancy way of putting it, as Paramount president Adam Goodman is already talking him up as Ryan: "Tom Clancy created an unforgettable character with Jack Ryan. With Chris in this role, we've taken our first step in creating a re-boot that lives up to the successful lineage of the franchise."Paramount has been shaping a Jack Ryan reboot for some time. Last year, they were in negotiations with Sam Raimi to come on board to direct or develop a franchise, but he returned to the webslinger instead. Last December, Hossein Amini came aboard to write a new installment, which remains the draft Paramount is working with. There's no director attached yet.
Stepping into the CIA shoes of Jack Ryan really puts Pine well onto the Harrison Ford track. Not many actors can land one iconic character in their careers, let alone two. Of course, "iconic" is a loose compliment for Ryan as he's really more of a cool name than a strikingly memorable character. (Admit it -- the movies are cool, but Ryan is like Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt --he's just kind of moving things along in a bad-ass fashion.) Perhaps Pine can change that, and reboot Ryan into something clear and present in pop culture.
Tom Cruise's 'Wichita' Turns to 'Knight & Day'
Filed under: Action, Comedy, Drama, Romance, Thrillers, Casting, Tom Cruise
Tom Cruise has been in Boston (what, haven't you read the reports of Suri sightings in Beantown?) filming what was previously known as Witchita, a new film from Fox co-starring Cameron Diaz that is billed as a spy comedy romance thriller. Well, the film that has been blowing sh*t up in Massachusetts has the new title Knight & Day, as well as an impressive roster of new cast members.
In addition to Cruise, Diaz, Paul Dano, Maggie Grace, and Marc Blucas, Knight & Day has added Oscar nom Viola Davis, thespian Peter Sarsgaard, and sexpot Olivier Martinez to the cast.
As Jen Yamato pointed out, this sounds like it could be successfully aimed at the female audience, but can audiences accept the idea of Tom Cruise as a Clooney-type dreamboat? Can he still be funny? (Funny on purpose -- not funny like in Valkyrie.) Will female audiences be turned off by Diaz? James Mangold (3:10 to Yuma, Walk the Line) is directing, but the five (!) screenwriters include Dana Fox, who wrote Couples Retreat and What Stays in Vegas, and partner Scott Frank wrote Marley & Me and The Interpreter.
Color me skeptical. Cutesy title and a mixed bag of actors and writers? What do you think?
Jerry Bruckheimer Still Wants to Play 'Apaches'
Filed under: Action, Thrillers
The property has been bouncing around Hollywood for at least a dozen years, but producer Jerry Bruckheimer is intent on bringing Lorenzo Carcaterra's Apaches to the big screen. According to a recent Variety report, Jerry has hired the screenwriting team of Sean O'Keefe and Will Staples to take a shot at the source material. And no, it's not about actual Apache warriors. It's actually a crime story about a group of retired cops who go on a vigilante spree when the need arises. If this duo can bang out a workable draft, and that's something a lot of established writers have failed to do, then we may have a cool action flick to check out. The book even has a sequel called Chasers, so there's that to consider.Movie fans will remember Carcaterra's name from Sleepers, the Barry Levinson film that was based on the author's book, plus he's done a whole lot of work on Law and Order, in addition to writing various novels. As for O'Keefe and Staples, they seem to be one of those "hot" writing duos who have a lot of projects on the way ... but nothing on the shelves just yet. According to Variety they've penned scripts called World's Most Wanted, The Cruelest Mile, and The Murder of King Tut. And those sound like pretty cool titles to me.
As for Apaches, it feels like The Star Chamber meets Death Wish. Bring it on.
Chris Pine Knows 'The Art of Making Money'
Filed under: Action, Drama, Thrillers, Casting, Deals, Paramount, DIY/Filmmaking
His captain's chair on the Enterprise secure, Chris Pine has been eager to find roles in this time space continuum to help define him as something other than James T. Kirk. He nearly saw his first post-Trek feature Unstoppable go off the rails, but he's proving to be unstoppable himself as he has already lined up another project. Variety reports that Pine will be returning to Paramount for The Art of Making Money. D.J. Caruso is in talks to direct. (Will it be the start of another beautiful Caruso friendship like he enjoyed with Shia LaBeouf?)Money is based on a 2005 Rolling Stones article by Jason Kersten (which was then turned into a book) which followed the rise and fall of counterfeiter Art Williams. According to a nifty little bio by NPR, Williams grew up on the south side of Chicago, and turned to counterfeiting bills after being introduced to it by "a gentleman caller" of his mother's. After perfecting the very tricky $100 bill, he went on to produce more than $10 million dollars worth of counterfeit bills. But he wasn't all bad, as he and his girlfriend enjoyed donating many of the things purchased on buying sprees to thrift stores. Eventually Williams was caught and put in prison. He was released but found living legally too boring and cheap, so he promptly began manufacturing money again. Kersten said that "the great irony" of Williams' criminal career was that it proved he had the brains to run a Fortune 500 company if he could have just gone straight.
So, will Pine make a brilliant counterfeiter who enjoys playing Robin Hood from time to time? Will The Art of Making Money be the first of the hard hitting dramas Pine becomes known for, his Captain Kirk just an intriguing note on his resume? We shall see.
Movie Genres Lars von Trier Has Already Pwned
Filed under: Comedy, Documentary, Drama, Foreign Language, Music & Musicals, Romance, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Thrillers, Noir, Mystery & Suspense, Celebrities and Controversy, DIY/Filmmaking, Newsstand, Lists
Hot on the heels of his controversial psychological horror tale, Antichrist (Hey, it pulled him out of a deep depression!) Lars von Trier has revealed that his next film will be Planet Melancholia, a science fiction-romance-disaster movie that will combine von Trier's Dogme-style leanings with minimal special effects, and involve a plot that producing partner Peter Aalbaek Jensen called "romantic, in a Lord Byron sort of way." (Von Trier would only comment, "No more happy endings!" Because really, he's made way too many cheerful films.)
On the one hand, tackling the realm of science fiction seems totally uncharacteristic of the Danish auteur, who's known best for his association with the minimalist Dogme 95 movement and for making some wildly dark and provocative films. But on the other hand, what has von Trier's career been but a series of genre exercises? Even when he abandoned the stringent rules of Dogme filmmaking (to date he's only really made one true Dogme film, The Idiots) he kept the idea that creativity comes with constraint – and after all, what is a genre but a thematic constraint?
Never mind the fact that genre films are strictly no-nos in the Dogme world; some of von Trier's best films have been genre pics. Behold, after the jump:
Is Disney Prepping a Vampire Trilogy of Their Own?
Filed under: Horror, Thrillers, Disney
Hey, this just in: The Twilight franchise wrings a whole lot of cash out of its favorite demographic. And so it only stands to reason that Disney would want a piece of that particular pie. Which makes the following information slightly interesting and not even remotely surprising: It looks like Disney is planning a movie version of The Maker's Song trilogy, by Adrian Phoenix. Book one is called A Rush of Wings; book two is In the Blood; and book three (due for release in December) is called Beneath the Skin.So what makes us think that Mr. Phoenix's books are scheduled for movie-time? Well, this article at Jim Hill Media, which explains that various "Song"-related domain names have been recently purchased by the studio. Here's what Amazon.com tells us about A Rush of Wings: "Set in the brooding New Orleans area long established as the best location for all things vampiric, Phoenix's lively debut has it all: Rogue [FBI] agents, Bureau-ordered hits, mad-scientist experiments in psychopathology, vampires and fallen angels and a slicing-dicing serial killer. Smart, sexy FBI Special Agent Heather Wallace has been trying to catch the Cross-Country Killer for three years when the trail leads to New Orleans and Club Hell, where Dante Prejean performs with the Inferno, an industrial/goth rock band. Dante is a Cajun and a born vampire whose memories of his terrible past have been erased, leaving him vulnerable to the psychopathic killer, E, who knows all that Dante has forgotten."
On second thought, this doesn't exactly sound like pre-teen territory. (More like Anne Rice meets Brian Lumley.) Any fans of the Maker's Song series out there? Would it make for a good movie? How about three? Does it have ... glitter?
Oh, and a free lifetime subscription to Cinematical for anyone who can prove that Adrian Phoenix is the author's real name. Sounds more like a Watchmen character who moonlights for the X-Men.
Is Angelina Grabbing Charlize's 'Tourist' Bags?
Filed under: Action, Thrillers, Casting, Deals
A lot can change in a year. Back in 2008, Charlize Theron and Tom Cruise were getting ready for the U.S. remake of The Tourist. Now Miss Theron is out, and The Hollywood Reporter's Risky Biz Blog reports that sources say Angelina Jolie is in talks to replace her. But don't worry -- this won't result in the most epically awkward and strange pairing of all time. (Can you imagine Jolie and Cruise getting busy with sex and espionage?) See, Cruise has since left the project as well, and Sam Worthington has signed on -- an actor who is quickly making a big name for himself between Terminator : Salvation and the upcoming Avatar.The original, Anthony Zimmer, focused on a regular person pulled into a mess between a criminal, the mob, his mistress, and the law, because he resembled this criminal. When Theron signed on, however, the remake was said to focus on an "American vacationer who gets sucked into a dark world of espionage when an Interpol agent taps him to help her catch a sneaky bad guy." Not quite the same thing, but with all the changes going on, who knows how it will turn out? What Risky does say is that her role is "one-part seductress, one-part action," so it sounds like the final product will come out somewhere between the two plots.
But that's not the only changes coming to this long-in-gestation project. It seems that Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day helmer Bharat Nalluri is also out; so much for seeing him jump from retro comedy to international intrigue. I could ask who you think should replace the director, but it's not like this project is taking easy-to-guess jumps. Tom Cruise to Sam Worthington. Charlize Theron to Angelina Jolie... Stay tuned to see how it all turns out! But in the meantime, what do you think of the changes?
Fantastic Fest Review: District 13: Ultimatum
Filed under: Action, Thrillers, Magnolia, Theatrical Reviews, Fantastic Fest, Remakes and Sequels
When it reached American audiences two years after it opened in France, 2006's District 13 (or B13 here) served as a breezy introduction to the art of parkour, not to mention director Pierre Morel's knack for shooting action sequences both energetically and visibly (an underrated quality, that last one). Morel moved on to Taken, though, while parkour began to infiltrate more high-profile Hollywood fare, like Casino Royale and Live Free or Die Hard.
However, writer/producer/all-around action maven Luc Besson stuck around to cash in on the promise of a follow-up, and now we're greeted with District 13: Ultimatum, a competent if flabby rehash of the first film's race-against-time plot and dystopian setting.
Review: Bronson
Filed under: Comedy, Drama, Thrillers, Magnolia, Theatrical Reviews
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By Scott Weinberg. Reprinted from Sundance Film Festival, 2009
Raw, blistering, harsh and compelling in the way that only a really good "prison film" can be, Nicolas Wining Refn's Bronson is a rather rough experience. Fortunately it's also very smart, dark, intelligent and disturbing, supported by a force-of-nature lead performance and a screenplay that focuses more on the "character study" angle and less on the "wow, prison sure is disgusting" perspective.
Based (apparently very closely) on actual events, Bronson is about a British thug named Michael Peterson, a rough, gruff, and muscle-bound troublemaker who somehow earned the title of Britian's most violent prisoner. Incarcerated for a stupid (but non-violent) post office robbery, Peterson adopts the moniker of American film star Charles Bronson and begins a long and rather unpleasant life behind bars. Although he's more of a angry man than an outright evil one, poor Bronson has a serious problem keeping his temper in check. Stuck in a cell with little to do besides build muscles and pace around nervously, Bronson snatches every opportunity to dole out some raw-knuckled fisticuffs whenever the "screws" invade his cell.
A Silly Little Chat with James Moran, of 'Severance' and 'Girl Number 9'
Filed under: Horror, Independent, Thrillers, Interviews
Scott Weinberg: Regarding this online thing you've co-created .... what is it?
James Moran: Oh, are we doing the IMprompterview right now? Well, Girl Number 9 is a six-part web thriller. Starting on October 30. It's about...
Scott: How many parts?
James: Six.
Scott: When's it start?
James: Septober 90th.
Scott: What's it about?
James: Following a string of murders, a man is arrested - the evidence is all circumstantial, so they need to get a confession out of him, or he could walk...
Scott: Sounds a lot like Tron.
James: ...but as soon as they start the interrogation, they get drawn into his twisted mind games, and discover that all is not as it seems. And yes, if that gets people watching, then yes, it is EXACTLY like Tron. Every episode has a cliffhanger, there are twists and turns every couple of minutes, and it's very dark and scary.
Jeremy Renner Wants To Be An Avenger
Directors We Love: Jim Jarmusch
Indie Roundup: 'Sweetgrass,' 'Clarkworld,' 'Broken Embraces'
Shelf Life: Fight Club_thumbnail.jpg)
Watch: Famous 'Matrix' Scene Re-Created with LEGOs
