LasseHallstrom Tagged Articles at Cinematical

They've both been Mean Girls, both acted for Nick Cassavetes, both appeared in wedding movies and now both Rachel McAdams and Amanda Seyfried will have shared the honor of being the leading lady in a Nicholas Sparks adaptation. For McAdams, it was 2005's beloved weepy The Notebook; for Seyfried, rising fast after starring in the hugely popular Mamma Mia!, it's Dear John. According to Variety, the 22-year-old has been cast as Savannah, a virginal college student who falls in love with a soldier on leave (and named John, of course) immediately prior to 9/11. Kind of like Pearl Harbor but with more letters than explosions.

The soldier is being played by Channing Tatum, who will be fresh from G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra when Dear John hits theaters, likely a year from now. Meanwhile, Seyfried will have costarred in the third season of HBO's Big Love, which begins airing in January, and opposite Megan Fox in the Diablo Cody-scripted Jennifer's Body. Dear John is being directed by Lasse Hallström (Chocolat) from an adaptation scripted by Jamie Linden (We Are Marshall). Shooting begins next month in South Carolina.

Last October, Warner Brothers picked up the rights to a book in the works by Olen Steinhauer called The Tourist, a story focusing on a spy who is falsely accused of murder and has to clear his name. And now we're getting another movie called The Tourist. However, this one is based on the French thriller, Anthony Zimmer, and Variety reports that Bharat Nalluri -- the man who helmed Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day -- will direct it. Talk about confusion -- a movie based on another movie, but shares the same name as yet another movie.

Casanova director Lasse Hallstrom was originally set to direct the film, but left the project a while ago. Now Nalluri will take on Julian Fellowes' (Gosford Park) script, which focuses on "an American tourist who finds his life in danger when a female Interpol agent uses him as a dupe to flush out an elusive criminal with whom she once had an affair." It's sort of like a Dave / Moon Over Parador film -- Zimmer is this money launderer who changes his face and voice, and a common man who looks like Zimmer is pulled into the mess as bait.

Production on the film is set to begin late this summer, or early fall.

I'm frankly surprised that Lasse Hallström hadn't tried his hand at a Nicholas Sparks adaptation before now. Sparks' middlebrow weepies (so far we've gotten Message in a Bottle, A Walk to Remember and The Notebook) are perfectly suited for Hallström's slick, crowd-pleaser style and his prestige-picture tastes. Hallström and the producers of the forthcoming Dear John have clearly realized this, as the director has signed on for the film, which starts shooting in December.

Dear John is like every Nicholas Sparks plot rolled into one, with a shamelessly sentimental treatment of 9/11 thrown in for good measure. It's about a rebellious kid (played by Channing Tatum in the film) who joins the army for lack of anything better to do, but falls in love with a family-oriented college student while on leave in North Carolina. He decides that after his tour of duty is over he'll settle down and start a family with his new love, but September 11th gums up their plans and he has to choose between love and country.

Hallström is currently wrapping up Hachiko: A Dog's Story, where Richard Gere plays a college professor who takes in an abandoned dog. And Sparks is responsible for this fall's Nights in Rodanthe, starring Gere and Diane Lane, about a love affair between an unhappily married woman and a doctor trying to reconcile with his estranged son. I think I just swooned a little bit.

Last May, word came out that a remake of the Japanese tearjerker Hachiko monogatari was in the works, starring the actor who has had a bum rap when it comes to animals -- Richard Gere. The production was supposed to kick into action back in September, but as is usually the case, the project was delayed. Hachiko, A Dog's Story now has a new start date in January, and Variety reports that it's also got a co-star and director. Joan Allen (The Upside of Anger) has signed on to star with Gere, and Lasse Hallstrom (The Cider House Rules) will take the directorial chair.

The project is based on the true story of the Hachiko statue in Tokyo's Shibuya station. A teaching assistant had a devout dog who would meet him every day. When the man gets sick and doesn't return home, the dog continues to wait, for what Variety says is almost ten years. As the remake story goes, Gere is a college prof who takes in an abandoned dog, so I'm not sure if the dog gets abandoned twice, or if he gives it a new home after it waits around for its master for years. Either way, it's sure to be full of tears and heartbreak, just what every moviegoer is looking for! Annoyingly, there is no word on who Allen is playing. Gere's lady friend? A sinister person from the pound? Who knows. The film heads into production this January in Rhode Island, if there are no further delays.

Oscar-nominated screenwriter Dan Futterman, who also acts and plays Daniel Pearl in the new film A Mighty Heart, was on hand for Friday's A Mighty Heart press junket in Manhattan, and talked about his upcoming projects. He said he's lined up Sarah Jessica Parker to star in and Lasse Hallstrom to direct his next film, Finn at the Blue Line. "I wrote a romantic comedy with my wife. It's called Finn at the Blue Line," Futterman said. "We have a really good actress, Sarah Jessica Parker. Lasse Hallstrom said he wants to direct it. We're gonna try to get people to actually write a check for it. Hopefully that will get going shortly." No plot description was given, but the project is also mentioned, along with Parker and Hallstrom's names, in the official press notes that were passed out at the junket.

Futterman also announced that he has been hired to adapt Jonathan Tropper's romantic comedy novel Everything Changes, which is about a guy whose long-lost father shows up and gets involved in his life again -- particularly his love life. As for Futterman's acting career, someone mentioned a story floating around that said he was going to be giving up acting. He clarified that, saying "I'm not feeling terribly ambitious about acting and going after things. I've been writing more and am a little more interested in doing that, but I mean, if something like this [A Mighty Heart] comes up, of course I would jump at the chance to act with and work with people like this in a project like this."

I don't like picturing Jessica Lange dating Haley Joel Osment, but that is what popped into my head while reading about Sammy. The romantic comedy follows a relationship between a woman who communicates with animals (à la Lange in Broken Flowers) and a man who communicates with the dead (à la Osment in The Sixth Sense) . The script has been written by Delia Ephron, but instead of being directed by her sister Nora, the project has Lasse Hallstrom attached.

I pretend that I dislike Hallstrom as a director, but honestly the only film of his I've bothered to see is The Cider House Rules. Still, I have noticed that his career hasn't been going so well of late. His next film The Hoax is due in a month, and he's also set to direct Daughter of the Queen of Sheba, either of which could turn his luck around (he also mentioned plans for The Royal Physician's Visit last fall), but lowering himself to the level of a paranormal rom-com is not a good direction to go in. Seriously, what was the last successful romantic comedy with fantasy elements? I understand that Hallstrom could be desperate enough to make studio fluff, but unless he simply needs the paycheck, he can't hope for much good to come out of this.

I think there needs to be a commandment in Hollywood that goes something like this: "Thou shalt not remake a movie if there has already been a Muppet version of the story thou want to tell." If that rule had been etched on a tablet long ago, it would have kept Universal from deciding that the world needs another version of A Christmas Carol, which was quite ably done by Kermit and friends almost 15 years ago. But it wasn't, and they did. Universal's version, however will give the story an Exciting Twist!: It will be told through the eyes of Scrooge (ooh, edgy!), so we'll finally get to see what a pain in the ass that Bob Cratchit really is.

The one plus in this whole thing is that the film is going to be directed by Lasse Hallström, who at least knows what he's doing. It remains to be seen, of course, whether the screenplay (by Todd Komarnicki, primarily a producer) will give him anything to work with.