Wichita Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Cruise! Diaz! Spy Comedy! 'Wichita' (?!)
Filed under: Action », Comedy », Romance », Casting », Deals », RumorMonger », 20th Century Fox », Tom Cruise »
Don't hold your breath, but Tommy Boy may have chosen his next project. Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz "are in advanced negotiations" to star in an action comedy currently titled Wichita, according to Variety. Cruise is notoriously
If all goes well for 20th Century Fox, the idea is to throw the movie into the summer 2010 maelstrom. Fox already has The A-Team, Gulliver's Travels, and Predator set for the season. The bigger question is how Cruise would handle the role. The character he would play is described as "a secret agent who pops in and out of the life of a single woman." The movie is described as having "several action scenes," so it sounds like it would lean more on comedy and romance. The sole time Cruise has tried to be funny and romantic was his Academy Award-nominated performance 13 years ago in Cameron Crowe's Jerry Maguire. Cruise looks very good when he's running, and can play stoic and stiff in his sleep, but comedy is basically an undiscovered country for him.
The secondary question is James Mangold, who is set to direct. He has mad skills with actors (Girl, Interrupted, Walk the Line), but his only previous romantic comedy was Kate & Leopold with Meg Ryan and Hugh Jackman in 2001, which, alas, I haven't seen. Cameron Diaz is a definite asset as a comedic actress. Still, I'm wondering: is this a recipe for disaster?
Tom Cruise Meddling Leads to Pricey Rewrites
Filed under: Celebrities and Controversy », Scripts »
Oh, Tom Cruise ... you make it so hard not to bash you. Last time I wrote about ol' Tommy, I focused on the excellent, insane rumor that he and John Travolta wanted to redo Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. But this one doesn't seem to be a rumor. Variety reports that while screenwriters "have been taking haircuts on every deal," Tom's script doctors are making a ton -- sometimes as much as $250,000 a week for 2-6 weeks. The job: Take Cruise's notes and hone the scripts for his upcoming movies. The pressure is on to continue Tom's post-Tropic Thunder buzz!
The doctors and projects in question: Scott Frank is changing up Wichita so that Cruise can be an action hero, Richard Curtis made some changes to Lost for Words, and Paul Attanasio is flipping rewriting David Cronenberg's script for Matarese Circle. Furthermore, those free of script doctors are not immune to Tom's notes: Billy Ray "continues to hone" Motorcade, while Christopher McQuarrie does the same with The Tourist.
Actors always seem to meddle a bit with their scripts, but this takes that to a new level. And really, it hurts my heart to think that Tom Cruise is guiding Cronenberg's vision, or rather, tainting it. And why on earth are they paying so much to have a struggling star get his way? Thunder might have helped win him back favor, but not hundreds of thousands of dollars worth.
Bousman Goes to Wichita
Filed under: Horror », Independent », Deals », The Weinstein Co. », Newsstand », Cinematical Indie »
The Weinstein Company (via Dimension, the
subdivision that handles its genre flicks) has gone way, way out on a limb and hired Darren Lynn Bousman to direct a
horror movie. Boy, it's pretty ballsy of them to think that the guy whose career now consists only of movies with
"Saw" and a number in the title
can branch out into non-tool horror.The non-Saw flick is called Wichita, and it's "a thriller about an unthinkable crime that destroys the lives of eight characters." An unthinkable crime, huh? Why, that sounds sort of like...Saw to me. And Hostel. According to Bousman, however, it's totally not. In fact, it's a whole "new slant on horror"! Holy crap, Darren - really? Why, tell us more. "What's terrifying about this story is that it's based in reality and could happen to anyone...It's a slice of Americana gone bad and getting worse." Hmm. Seriously, how is that different from the conceit of Saw, Hostel (without the Americana), The Hills Have Eyes, and all of the other non-supernatural horror movies that are filling theaters these days? Basically, this is a movie by a first-time writer (Scott Milam, who I'll bet you anything was "inspired" by Saw) that a genre studio is turning over to a guy who is familiar with the horror formula that's popular right now. And, presto: box office gold!
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