SheldonTurner Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Regency Heads 'Down River'
Filed under: Action », Thrillers », Deals », Scripts »
In real life, when dudes get stranded somewhere, they might have to eat each other to stay alive, but they remain relatively amicable. Put some stranded men in a movie, however, and they go nuts. Riffing on the world of Lord of the Flies, The Hollywood Reporter posts that Regency has put down seven figures for an adventure thriller pitch by Sheldon Turner called Down River.The film will focus on "four twentysomething masters of the corporate world." Being tough and all, they decide to go on a completely realistic, down and dirty adventure trip to the Amazon, rather than one of those carefully planned adventure tours that looks dangerous, but isn't. THR says that Turner created the adult Flies story "after hearing stories of studio executives crowing about their annual 'roughing it' nature trips that always ended up with the men retiring in the evenings to plush, Four Seasons-like lodgings."
"Things go awry when their tour guide is killed and the men have to face not only dangerous wildlife and tribesman but also one another." Well, you get what you ask for. Will we get a Ralph and a Jack? Or, will they all turn into savages and be equally dangerous? Whatever happens, it should be bloody and action-packed. Turner's pen has been hot lately, penning The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning and X-Men Origins: Magneto lately.
Leo DiCaprio Will Lead a Conspiracy of Fools
Filed under: Drama », Thrillers », Casting », Deals », Warner Brothers », Newsstand »
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A deal has been 'preemptively' sealed between Warner Bros. and Leo DiCaprio for him to star in Conspiracy of Fools, based on the book by Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald about the collapse of Enron. Variety reports that the studio paid seven figures for the book option and screenplay. DiCaprio will play a new employee at Enron who slowly uncovers the fraud that led to the company's collapse in 2001. The script is being written by Sheldon Turner, who wrote The Longest Yard as well as the forthcoming Magneto, an X-Men spin-off. "Kurt made the factual stuff read like a thriller, and it felt right to tell the story from the point of view of an outsider," Variety quotes Turner as saying. "The goal was to take it away from feeling like a staid look at a corporation and turn it into a character study."
DiCaprio currently has his name on a few other projects, including a much-talked about project that would explore the early days of Theodore Roosevelt and an adaptation of the Robert Ludlum thriller, The Chancellor Manuscript. If the Conspiracy deal goes through, it would continue the successful collaboration between DiCaprio and Warner Bros. that spawned last year's smash-hit The Departed.
Sheldon Turner Writes About the Super Freak
Filed under: Comedy », Music & Musicals », Scripts »
If you've been around a while, Rick James is the Super Freak to you, or maybe you even remember him during his AWOL days in Toronto as Ricky Matthews. If you're younger, you probably remember the immortal words spoken by Dave Chappelle, "I'm Rick James, bitch!" (A phrase James apparently used during that period -- and you thought Chappelle's Show was all fiction!) In February, Martha Fischer shared an article on Terrance Howard that said he was in talks to star as Mr. James. While I don't know if this is the same movie, there is definitely a super-freaky film in the works.Variety has reported that Sheldon Turner, writer of The Longest Yard and Magneto, the X-Men spin-off, will pen the script, which will be produced by Jennifer Klein. The pair acquired the rights to an unpublished manuscript that James wrote about his life, before he passed away in 2004, that they plan to publish when the film comes out. They've also secured the rights to his music -- really, what would the film be without that very kinky girl? According to Turner, it will not be a "typical rags-to-riches-to-drugs music biopic," and instead will follow James' partying and feuding. In that case, this might just be the most fun biopic ever. When was the last time we had a film based on a musician that wasn't fuelled by drama?
Adrian Lyne, Prince of Thieves
Filed under: Drama », Thrillers », Deals », Mystery & Suspense », Warner Brothers », Scripts », Newsstand »
After a break of nearly five years since his last film (Unfaithful), Adrian Lyne has suddenly rediscovered his interest in Hollywood: He's got two projects on his plate, though neither is likely hit screens before mid-2007 at the earliest. The first, Two Minutes to Midnight, is alleged by the IMDb to be in pre-production, but has been in the news only as a project in which Tom Cruise was briefly interested; no cast is listed, and there's been no mention of the film in the trades since the Cruise rumor -- heaven knows if it's actually being made. The second, announced in The Hollywood Reporter this morning, will be based on Prince of Thieves, an award-winning crime novel by Chuck Hogan. This one is in the very early stages; Warner Bros. will be producing, and they've just hired outrageously busy screenwriter Sheldon Turner (who, coincidentally (?), also had a hand in the Two Minutes to Midnight script) to adapt.I actually read Hogan's novel pretty recently and, while the writing wasn't as good as I'd hoped (it having won a Hammett Award for "excellence in crime writing" and all), there's definitely a movie in there. The book revolves around four small-time criminal who pull a bank heist together, but the focus is much more on their relationships than the heist, which happens at book's open. Needless to say, the job isn't pulled off quite as cleanly as they'd hoped, and things snowball in unexpected ways. There's a lot of tension in the story, and some great characters for big-name actors to really sink their teeth into. This is a project I'll be watching, for sure.
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