RichardLagravenese Tagged Articles at Cinematical

The acclaimed director Steven Soderbergh may be one of the most respected men in the business, but even he seems to have trouble finding a little extra cash these days. Now we all know what happened with is true-life sports tale, Moneyball, but by all accounts that isn't the only film that he is having trouble securing funding for. But on the bright side, it turns out it was much easier to sell studios a sexy spy thriller than it was a tale of number-crunchers. According to Variety, Lionsgate has snapped up Soderbergh's next slated flick, Knockout and secured financing for the action drama with Relativity Media offering to foot the bill.

The film is being described as in the "vein of La Femme Nikita" and will star Gina Carano. Soderbergh will be working with Lem Dobbs, who also worked on The Limey to write the script. Now Carano might be a household name for fans of Mixed Martial Arts, but for the world at large, a lead role in a Soderbergh film will probably be a much better introduction for the famed fighter. The director seems to be continuing to hire 'non-traditional' actors in his films, and if Soderbergh is looking to save some cash, luckily Carano will be able to do her own stunts.

As strange as a 'Soderbergh action film' may sound, it's hardly the wackiest idea he's had lately. After the jump; status reports on two of Soderbergh's other films...

Last spring, Stan Lee and Disney struck up a deal to develop three superhero-ish projects: Nick Rachet, Blaze, and Tigress. It was all very hush hush, with no indication as to what these new heroes would be other than potential comic books and franchises. But whatever they were, they had lured in the talents of Richard LaGravenese, Gary Goldman, and Zoe Green.

But now we know who and what Nick Rachet is. According to The Hollywood Reporter,
Rachet now has the Douglas Cook and David Weisberg at the keyboard. While we haven't heard much from them since Double Jeopardy, they've been busy writing Captain Kidd and Vespers for Disney.

Not surprisingly, Nick Rachet is an action star ... kinda. In real life, he's a mild-mannered and bumbling police officer but in an online game, he's a tough, sneering badass named Nick Rachet. His avatar ends up escaping from the game and usurps the real life of his player. THR describes it as a "lighthearted mystery thriller" with a "Jekyll and Hyde struggle" which is a plotline we've had an awful lot of recently.

The similarities to Gamer probably shatters my goofy 2008 theory that LaGravenese might lure in his Scottish P.S. I Love You star. But since there will likely be two actors in this Grand Theft Auto version of Jekyll and Hyde, maybe I'll prove prophetic and we'll see Gerard Butler in the mild-mannered half. That'd be fun.

The bidding war is over, and Fox 2000 has emerged triumphant, clutching the rights to Sara Gruen's bestseller Water for Elephants, which they are promptly putting on the fast track. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Francis Lawrence is attached to direct, and Richard LaGravenese is adapting it for the big screen.

I'll be honest and admit I haven't read the book -- I'm always behind when it comes to bestsellers because I tend to haunt the nonfiction and classic shelves. The book is the recollections of a 90-year-old man, who, in his youth, ran away and joined a B-level circus during the Depression. It's a job rife with animal and human cruelty. He falls in love with the wife of an abusive and mentally-ill animal trainer. While all of this suggests it is depressing as hell and ends badly, a glance through Amazon.com's reviews suggest otherwise.

Fox 2000 president Elizabeth Gabler acknowledges the riskiness of the subject matter, but is confident that the adaptation will attract "a lot of talented people," particuarly with LaGravenese's reputation as a solid "adapter". Here I want to say that an adaptation of a heart-wrenching and dramatic novel can't go wrong -- but it can. I can't really think of many New York Times bestsellers not named Cormac McCarthy or J.K. Rowling who end up with really solid and popular films. Otherwise, they tend to end up like Angela's Ashes and White Oleander which, while not terrible films, fell rather flat for most critics and fans of the material, and have largely been forgotten. Let's hope Water for Elephants will be one of the lucky ones -- and if you're a fan of the book, here's your chance to tell me what you hope they get right.

It's a fact of modern movie watching: as bland storytelling becomes more and more ascendant, you have to be on the lookout for clichés. And most of the time, we remember that -- and occasionally lose sight of the fact that there really are no cliché plots, just cliché execution of the moments within those plots. I can't think of a better example of that fact than the new big-budget tear-jerker P.S. I Love You, starring Hilary Swank and Gerard Butler as a young couple torn apart by untimely death. As P.S. I Love You opens, we witness young married couple Holly (Swank) and Gerry (Butler) fussing, feuding and fighting before they kiss and make up; then, after the credits, we jump ahead to ... Butler's wake. And while that leap is a little brusque, the real indicator of the movie we're in for comes soon after. A priest introduces the playing of Gerry's favorite song, and the opening chords of the Pogues's "Fairytale of New York" fill the air ... and then the song jumps ahead several bars, skips selectively through the verses, and then leaps to the chorus. Really? The music Jerry wanted played at his wake was a clumsily-edited version of a song, cut for no other reason than to move the movie forward faster? This is not playing a character's favorite song; this is cheap manipulation, designed to engage your feelings as swiftly and cheaply as the filmmakers can. And so goes the movie.

I have no objection to a film trying to warm my heart; what I object to is a film trying to microwave it. P.S. I Love You barrages us with high-frequency waves of cheap sentiment, lazy writing, absolute fabrication and only-in-the-movies nonsense, a purely mechanical process designed to make us feel sadness as swiftly as possible, imbuing the sort of emotional heat that, like the hot patches in a microwaved burrito, doesn't really spread through the entire film or endure beyond a few seconds. And I know it's unfair to compare one film to another, but P.S. I Love You is so clumsy that I found myself thinking of far better films about terminal illness (My Life Without Me) or the unexpected loss of a loved one (Truly, Madly, Deeply) not immediately after but, in fact, during the film's agonizingly long dead spots and bland, off-the-rack montages.

You know that really sexy actress who played a lesbian in Bound and a stripper in Showgirls? Yeah, Gina Gershon, right. Well, did you also know that Gina and her brother Dann just wrote a kid-friendly horror book called Camp Creepy Time? Yep, they did. And guess what? DreamWorks bought it to make a movie version! And here's the best part: They hired a really solid screenwriter to bang out the adaptation.

According to reliable sources, Camp Creepy Time (which won't hit bookstores until May) is about a young boy who discovers that what oughtta be an idyllic summer camp -- is actually a haven for aliens who love nothing more than turning human children into hideous monsters and shipping them across the cosmos as exhibits for interstellar zoos. Nifty! (That sound you're currently hearing is the clackity-clack of the Gershon siblings working on the sequel.)

Turning the as-yet-unpublished book into screenplay form will be Richard LaGravenese, whom astute movie fans will fondly remember as the guy who wrote The Fisher King, The Ref and A Little Princess. His previous page-to-screen adaptations also include The Bridges of Madison County, Unstrung Heroes and The Horse Whisperer. (Plus his very first screenplay was Rude Awakening, and I think that movie is pretty funny.)

Anyway, yeah: summer camp, aliens and monsters. I smell a smash hit as I sit here kicking myself for not hatching this concept five years ago.

[Thanks to Variety for the news and the pic.]