aaron sorkin Tagged Articles at Cinematical

If you were absolutely heartbroken at the loss of Sony's Moneyball, cheer up! It's still alive and swinging. Variety reports that the project has been revived with some new talent, though now it's in desperate need of a new director.

The good news is that the man in charge of repairing it all is none other than Aaron Sorkin, who is riding high at Sony thanks to The Social Nework. Everyone's favorite screenwriter is taking a crack at Steve Zaillian's original script, and is expected to have it finished by August. Sorkin is steering it back to the film the studio wanted all along: a nice sports film that focuses on Billy Beane, the Oakland A's, underdogs, and statistics. It's also retained the services of Brad Pitt, who is still attached to play Beane.

The bad but not altogether unexpected news is that Steven Soderbergh is off the project. His draft took a more documentary approach that Sony was certain would fail with moviegoers. I guess we'll never know, but I can't really blame Sony for being afraid of an approach that used an animated Bill James character. At least the director has a million other projects he can turn to for comfort. Will it be Making Jack Falcone? Liberace? Cleo? None of the above and out of nowhere? Very possibly.

Prehistoric caveman or action hero? As our own Jenni Miller recently posted, David Fincher is in talks to direct The Social Network (AKA "The Facebook Movie"). Naturally enough, speculation has begun on who could play Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. CNET News was told by "an entertainment industry source" that Michael Cera and Shia LaBeouf are among the top choices.

But they're on the top of the list for just about any movie featuring a 20-something lead, aren't they? Would either one be suited for the role? The red hot LaBeouf would seem the more logical choice ... except that he's already set for Money Never Sleeps (AKA Wall Street 2) and has The Associate (based on John Grisham's latest best seller) in development. One's about the financial industry, the other takes place in the legal system; a third movie set in the business world in the next couple of years might prematurely age his star.

Cera might be the better choice. Even though Year One flopped, he was the second banana and doesn't seem to have suffered from the box office fallout. The upcoming Youth in Revolt and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World could cement his appeal, setting him up for a dramatic turn with a very talented director. I'm curious to see if he can expand beyond his usual shtick; at the same time, his comic chops could come in handy, depending on Aaron Sorkin's script.

Would you rather see Michael Cera or Shia LaBeouf as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg? If not them, then who?

[via The Playlist]

It's looking very likely that David Fincher will be joining a social network soon. Make that The Social Network, a movie based on a script written by The West Wing's Aaron Sorkin about Facebook.

Just like in those good old dot com days, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg hatched the site in his dorm room in 2004, which now boasts over 200 million users. The Social Network will follow the site from its, uh, humble Harvard beginnings to marketing buzzword. By the way, Zuckerberg's net worth is $1.5 billion, according to Forbes' list of the world's billionaires in 2008.

IMDb lists the project as on track for 2011, and Variety says the team is hoping "to begin production later this year."

The real questions are whether or not the project will tackle some of the issues looming over Facebook, such as your right to privacy and who owns the information you upload to Facebook, and if the idea and/or code was Zuckerberg's to begin with.

Next up: Scorsese will direct a film based on the Tweets of Courtney Love.

O great Cinematical readership, we call upon you to exercise your remarkable intellect, imagination, and wit, so you can help name a new social networking thriller. (Especially those of you who know that there's a difference between Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace.) According to The Hollywood Reporter, none other than Dimension Films plans to make a teen thriller ripping off resembling Ten Little Indians, only "with a Web 2.0 twist."

Social networking may become a hot topic for movies. You might remember that plans were announced last year for Aaron Sorkin to write a movie about Facebook for producer Scott Rudin. The official Facebook group page for the project has logged more than 3,800 messages, and Sorkin has been responding with surprising frequency. In a post yesterday, for example, he appeared to indicate that the script has not been written yet.

So maybe Dimension Films can beat them to the punch. Dimension's Bob Weinstein is quoted by THR as saying: "Online social networking is a widespread phenomenon that interests me greatly. Combining it with a suspense thriller is a new and fresh way to explore this new trend." (By the way, his name was just claimed on Twitter with the message: "I just joined the 21st century," though it could be someone else.) Will they create a new, entirely fictional social network, or team up with one that already exists?

The flick is currently untitled, which is where you come in. What should the thriller be called? To get you started, James Rocchi suggested, via Twitter, the tagline: "You're Unfollowed!" followed by a pickaxe smash. Tell us your suggested titles in the comments section.

When it comes to George Clooney's political leanings, I have to tell you, I'm a little conflicted. Does it make me a hypocrite that I cringe whenever most actors wax poetic on the state of the union, but whenever Clooney gets a little high on the horse I tend to give him a pass -- maybe it's because I usually agree with him, or maybe like most of the world, I just can't seem to say no to 'The Clooney'. So while most of Clooney's political fare has been a relatively easy sell, his latest politically charged flick definitely will not fall into that category. Luckily for him, he has found the perfect partner in crime. Variety reports that Clooney has joined forces with Liberal darling Aaron Sorkin to write a script for the film version of Jonathan Mahler's book, The Challenge: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and the Fight Over Presidential Power.

Clooney is producing under his Smoke House banner, and is reportedly looking to direct and star as the Navy lawyer, Charles Swift. Along with the Georgetown U. law professor Neal Katyal, Swift worked tirelessly to ensure a fair trail for Osama bin Laden's driver, Salim Hamdan. Hamdan was captured back in 2001, and was convicted and sentenced to 5 1/2 years for providing material support to Al-Qaeda after being held at the infamous Guantanamo Bay prison. So even if you don't agree with Clooney and Sorkin's politics -- and I can guarantee that there are a lot of you out there who don't. I'll just be keeping my fingers crossed that The Challenge doesn't keep Sorkin so busy he doesn't have time for that other legal drama we have been hearing so much about.

So where does that leave me with actors and their politics? Plenty has already been said on the subject, so I won't rehash it all here. But while Iraq movies continue to crumble at the box-office, and the only presidents we are willing to dissect are the ones long past. I have to give Clooney credit for his willingness to tackle one hell of an unpopular subject -- don't you?

Call me skeptical, but I'm willing to sustain myself entirely on a diet of my own words if writer Aaron Sorkin and producer Scott Rudin can actually manage to make something entertaining out of a film about the formation of social networking site Facebook and the success of its founders, as Variety reports they are working on over at Sony.

Honestly, what can an Oscar-winning producer and an oft-acclaimed scribe do with a rags-to-riches arc and the sight of two guys tapping away at computers and taking meetings? Sure, at least Sorkin and Rudin are two talented guys in their own right, but I'm really missing whatever inherent, original, exceedingly relevant drama they might see in this project. Killing time at work on Facebook is one thing; this is something else.

On the one hand, I'd like to see this fall through, and on the other, I'd only be rewarded with a good flick if proven wrong. Regardless, here's what appears to be the official Facebook group of the whole shebang, and if any of you guys get wind of a Fox-backed MySpace project with a title like Major Tom or something, be a pal and pass it on.

When Stephen Frears' The Queen came out in 2006, all the buzz emphasized Helen Mirren's icy performance as London's reclusive royal highness. The ubiquitous praise lead to her Oscar win, but it overwhelmed recognition of the movie's secret weapon: Michael Sheen as Tony Blair, quietly pressuring his Majesty to face the public in the wake of Princess Diana's untimely demise. There's a reason why Sheen conveyed the nuances of Blair's role in the event, which transpired a mere three months after the Prime Minister rose to power -- he had practice. The Deal, a fantastic made-for-TV movie Frears directed in 2003, tracked Blair's cunning (and morally questionable) instincts in the years leading up to his position at the top of the Labor Party.

Sheen played Blair in The Deal first, and it's both a superior performance and a superior film. Whereas The Queen had a tabloid hook and only tangentially explored the deeper political ramifications of a reclusive national leader, The Deal delves into precisely how Blair managed to emerge at the top of British politics with a series of calculated maneuvers. Political drama at its finest, The Deal hit DVD in the United States last month, where it has been touted as "the prequel to The Queen." That's not quite fair; The Queen is the sequel to The Deal, and the two movies ought to be seen as a single, wholly fascinating package depicting British politics in the 1990s.

There are two reasons I find this (as yet unconfirmed) story interesting. One is that I'll soon be writing my review of Brett Morgen's new documentary Chicago 10, which comes out next week. The other is that I've been thinking about the 2009 Oscars (I like to jump ahead), which I presumed would include a number of nominations for Steven Spielberg's next film. For a few months now, we've believed that film would be, like Morgen's, about the trial of the "Chicago 7" and would be fittingly titled The Trial of the Chicago 7. First we heard the director was interested in the script, written by Charlie Wilson's War scribe Aaron Sorkin. Then we got that crazy news that Sacha Baron Cohen would play Abbie Hoffman. Finally we heard more people, specifically Colin Hanks, Jeff Daniels and Philip Seymour Hoffman, were joining the cast. However, now we have word from Collider that Spielberg "has decided to move on and will not be making the movie."

Note: It has since come out that the film has been delayed, not completely dumped.

Best Screenplay

Nominees:

Diablo Cody -- Juno

Joel & Ethan Coen -- No Country for Old Men

Christopher Hampton -- Atonement

Ronald Harwood -- The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Aaron Sorkin -- Charlie Wilson's War

Predicted Winner: Diablo Cody -- Juno

Often, it's not the finest writing that wins the screenplay award, it's the flashiest. Cinematical doesn't think Globe voters will be able to pass up Diablo Cody's hyper-verbose, show-offy script, chock full of memorable one-liners and quotable dialogue. Plus, Hollywood just can't get enough of her stripper-turned-screenwriter tale. Juno what I'm saying?

Now it's your turn to vote ...

With all the interesting projects Steven Spielberg had lined up to choose from after completing Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the news that he'd direct a movie about the Chicago 7 has come out of left field -- though we did hear a bit about it back in July. But as of yet, the guy hasn't denied the news that Sacha Baron Cohen will be playing Abbie Hoffman in a film titled The Trial of the Chicago Seven scripted by Aaron Sorkin (Charlie Wilson's War). Nor has Spielberg publicly commented on some other casting possibilities leaked in the new Vanity Fair article about Indiana Jones -- possibilities I apparently missed the first time around, because those photos were so eye-grabbing. One definite casting decision, according to that article, is Philip Seymour Hoffman as William Kunstler, the famous attorney who defended the 7 as they were tried on charges of conspiring to incite riots during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

The Vanity Fair writer, Jim Windolf, wrote about learning of this news while visiting Spielberg at his Amblin Entertainment office on the Universal lot. The writer claims to have glanced at a table on which headshots of Will Smith, Taye Diggs, Adam Arkin and Kevin Spacey were visibly linked to the Chicago Seven project. None of the actors' proposed roles were determined, however. Now, I don't want to assume that Spielberg planted those headshots for Windolf to see, but it does seem strange that such a sometime-secretive filmmaker would let something like this be leaked in such a way. It also seems strange to think that anybody, even Spielberg, would need a headshot of Smith in order to decide to cast him as Black Panther (and 8th of the originally Chicago 8) Bobby Seale, who I will assume Smith's being considered to play. Windolf also claims that Sorkin's script is somehow based on the documentary Chicago 10, which premiered at Sundance last year and is being given a limited release next month. As Jessica noted the other day, you could probably make that a must-see primer while you await Spielberg's film (and more news about it). Another idea is to check out Steal this Movie (often available for free online), which is also good to watch for the appearance of a very young Michael Cera as Abbie Hoffman's son, America.