Overture Films Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Overture Films' remake of Sweden's critically acclaimed Let the Right One In has been decried as unnecessary by a lot of critics and film fans. But it's happening no matter how much digital ink we spend complaining about it, and at least they have gone and hired themselves one heck of a cast. In an official press release, Overture has announced that Richard Jenkins, Kodi Smit-McPhee, and Chloe Moretz have been cast in Let Me In.

The roles are the same, though the names have been Americanized. Smit-McPhee will be playing Owen, the lonely boy who befriends the strange smelling girl who haunts his apartment complex. Moretz will be playing Abby, the immortal with a child's face. Jenkins will play her caretaker, Hakan. (They haven't decided what to change the name to, I guess. I bet you'll see him renamed Hank or Henry before long.) While I haven't seen enough of Moretz to judge her work, I know Smit-McPhee and Jenkins will be fantastic. (If you haven't rented Romulus, My Father, do so! Its a wonderful film, and it'll give you a preview of what you can expect out of Smit-McPhee in The Road.)

Of course, the performances will all depend on how the troubling, eerie story is handled by director Matt Reeves. If the nuances of the characters are bungled, then it won't matter how good the cast is. Let Me In begins filming in New Mexico (now there's a departure from the Swedish snow) this fall, and will hit theaters January 15, 2010.

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Cinematical has just received this exclusive poster for Law Abiding Citizen, the latest action film from Set It Off and The Italian Job director F. Gary Gray. Starring Jamie Foxx as a jaded public defender who cuts a deal with the murderer of Gerard Butler's wife and child in exchange for a testimony that will fry bigger underworld fish. Not satisfied with the swift indifference of the justice system, Butler then decides to go on a city wide rampage against both the criminals and the complacent bureaucrats that ruined his life.

Only Butler's plan for due justice is more complicated than any of the clueless courtroom regulars can imagine, and it isn't until the titular Law Abiding Citizen intentionally allows himself to be arrested that the full extent of his wrath comes to scale.

If the trailer is any indication, F. Gary Gray's return to action films (after the regretful diversion that was Be Cool) looks to set the bar for revenge films in Hollywood. Not only is the cast great (which includes Leslie Bibb and Josh Stewart in addition to Foxx and Butler), but the sheer breadth of its explosiontastic search for justice - which looks like Die Hard: With a Vengeance swallowed Ransom, Death Sentence, and Se7en - is enough to draw a new line in the vigilante sand.

Law Abiding Citizen hits theaters October 16th from Overture Films.

Overture's latest smart rom-com move was to purchase Celeste and Jesse Forever, a script written by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones, who will also star as Celeste. Celeste and Jesse Forever is the tale of a divorcing couple that is struggling to keep their friendship together while also seeing other people. Suzanne and Jennifer Todd will produce under their Team Todd shingle. This is the first screenplay credit for both actors; Rashida Jones was, of course, the adorable (and three-dimensional!) fiancé Zooey in this spring's I Love You, Man, and she is currently on the TV show Parks and Recreation. McCormack has been on TV shows like In Plain Sight and Brothers & Sisters, as well as in films like Syriana and Team Todd-produced Prime and Must Love Dogs. As previously reported on Cinematical, the spec script was initially picked up by Fox Atomic.

Overture is also behind another upcoming cool romantic comedy written by and starring a talented and very funny woman, Charlyne Yi's Paper Heart. And while their other non-traditional rom-com, Last Chance Harvey, didn't do all that well, it seemed to be fairly popular with its target audience and garnered Dustin Hoffman a Golden Globes nom. And it was also behind Sunshine Cleaning, which, while it obviously wasn't a romantic comedy (or even that funny, despite what the trailers led you to believe), was an interesting and entertaining movie with women behind and in front of the camera. Amy Adams and Emily Blunt were strong leading ladies, and director Christine Jeffs and first-time screenwriter Megan Holley were behind the scenes.

Is it possible that there is a studio out there willing to take a chance on unique stories and fresh talent, and fresh female talent, at that? I'm rooting for them -- and for Rashida!

Well my friends are gone
And my hair is gray
And I ache in the places where I used to play
And I'm crazy for love but I'm not coming on
I'm just paying my rent every day In the tower of song
-- Tower of Song, Leonard Cohen

Harvey Shines (Dustin Hoffman) is a New York jingle-writer who doesn't quite toil in the tower of song; maybe in a small office in a nearby strip mall. But the rest of it applies; he's older, tired, headed to London for his daughter's wedding and obsessing about getting back fast in time for a job-related meeting. Harvey's dreading the trip before he even takes it, which guarantees it will be dreadful, but then he meets Kate Walker (Emma Thompson), another single, singular person unwilling to confront the terrifying possibility of happiness. ...

Written and directed by Joel Hopkins (who previously gave us the younger-skewed Jump Tomorrow), Last Chance Harvey may be easily -- in fact, too easily -- dismissed as "Before Sunrise for the sunset years," as Harvey and Kate meet accidentally, mesh immediately, dare to hope, get brought together by chance and separated by accident. Younger audiences will ignore Last Chance Harvey like a an overdue bill notice in the post, but if you've been around the block of life a few times -- on the bus or under it -- you'll find that it wins you over, bit by bit, in no small part thanks to the mix of effortless charm and contemplated sincerity Hoffman and Thompson bring to their work; the whole film has an air of lightweight gravity to it, and Hopkins may not be swinging for the fences, but he knows just how to swing and hit for a solid double.

No, there's not another Steve Martin out there who specializes in espionage thrillers. I'm talking about the funny Steve Martin -- the guy who's starred in films like Father of the Bride, My Blue Heaven and The Jerk. Yes, that Steve Martin. Apparently, while on set filming Bringing Down the House, Martin came up with an idea for an espionage thriller and pitched it to producers David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman. At first however, both men thought Martin was joking (and who wouldn't), but once they learned he was serious -- and heard the idea -- they immediately hopped onboard. After winding up at Disney (where it was eventually placed into turnaround), the flick has now found a home with Overture Films, as well as two highly-talented male leads. The Hollywood Reporter tells us that Don Cheadle and Guy Pearce have signed on to star in Traitor, with Jeffrey Nachmanoff directing off his own script (which is based on Martin's original idea). Go figure, huh?

In the film, Cheadle will play a CIA operative working undercover with a terrorist group who somehow becomes a terrorist suspect as well. Pearce, on the other hand, will star as an FBI agent investigating terrorist activities. At some point, I imagine one man will be searching for the other, unaware that they're both on the same team. That is unless Cheadle's undercover work takes him in a little too deep (hence the title) ... if you know what I mean. On the tone of the film, Hoberman says: "The movie deals with the subject of terrorism evenhandedly. It's not black and white but gray and religious-based." Nachmanoff, who's known for writing big-budgeted epics such as The Day After Tomorrow and the upcoming Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, will begin shooting Traitor this September in Toronto and Morocco. Pic marks the sixth one Overture Films has picked up for distribution this year; they're also set to release the Robert De Niro/Al Pacino thriller, Righteous Kill.

Though it wasn't technically screened at the Sundance Film Festival, Overture Films secured their first acquisition while in Park City, picking up the rights to Ferris Wheel, a drama produced by and starring Charlize Theron. Overture, a brand new production-distribution company, plans to shovel out two to three films per year before upping its annual slate to eight to twelve films; the Ferris Wheel deal was made after Overture execs watched only 45 minutes of the film, which currently is not yet complete.

Pic, which marks Bill Maher's (no, not that Bill Maher) directorial debut, revolves around a poor, irresponsible mother who leaves her daughter (AnnaSophia Robb) with her brother (Nick Stahl) for a little too long (since the word 'abandons' is used in the description, I take it this is a rather lengthy babysitting gig) to go party it up with the wrong crowd ... or, more specifically, Woody Harrelson. I tell ya, it's nice to see Theron trying desperately not to play the hot (wife? girlfriend? mistress? girl next door?) in every single film, as easy as it would be for her to do. I take it this will be another Theron role in which we'll find her all strung out, getting down with her bad self in a dramatic, kind-of-pretty-but-not-quite sort of way.

Script was penned by Zac Stanford, who made a splash at Sundance back in 2005 with The Chumscrubber -- the darkly twisted family drama which I found much more enjoyable than the film I always confuse it with, Thumbsucker.