columbia pictures Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Last summer, it was reported that Columbia was setting up a remake of My Fair Lady and that Keira Knightley was pursuing the iconic, Cockney role of Eliza Doolittle. While Knightley has been "attached" ever since, The Telegraph reports that Scarlett Johansson was also vying for the role. But Knightley won out, and the Telegraph not only confirms that she's got the role, but that Joe Wright will be directing. Emma Thompson is writing the script.

Knightley has been taking singing lessons ever since the possibility came up (and I actually think she proved she had a good voice in The Edge of Love), and I think she'll be absolutely charming as Doolittle. But then I'm biased towards her. Even if you aren't (and I expect many "too skinny!" comments), I think the combination of Wright and Thompson pushes this into very, very promising territory. Thompson can do no wrong by me.

What will really tip the balance is who they cast as the grumpy, misogynist Professor Henry Higgins. The Telegraph reports that Daniel Craig is being considered, and he'd certainly be ideal as the grim Higgins, probably moreso than the dapper Hugh Jackman. I wouldn't mind seeing Patrick Wilson become a contender, and I half wonder if Gerard Butler's vocal chords were trotted out on Saturday Night Live as an audition. Just you wait, and practice your R's, and we'll see whose face Knightley must become accustomed to.

UPDATE: Screenrush caught up with Joe Wright, who says he never signed on, and is uninterested. Given the shakiness of the initial report, it's unclear whether Knightley's casting is official either.

Most of us didn't ask the Studio Powers That Be for a Ghost Rider 2, but it doesn't matter, because we'll be getting one. Back in January, the whispers began at Bloody-Disgusting that Columbia was gearing up another Ghost Rider run, and today it has come true. Variety reports that the studio is talking to none other than David S. Goyer to pen a new installment. Nicolas Cage is expected to return as Johnny Blaze, and former Marvel Studios' head Avi Arad will be producing.

Goyer was quick to say (via a spokesperson) that he wasn't officially signed, but that talks were underway to base Ghost Rider 2 on a script he did many years ago. If you'd like to know a little something about that script, you can read a review IGN did of it in 2000. Nothing ever dies thanks to the Internet and if nothing else, you can laugh at the rumors we once believed a decade ago. (Johnny Depp as Ghost Rider!)

At such early stages of fiery fuel injection, there's not much else to say. Since Mark Steven Johnson penned and directed the last one, it's probably safe to assume that if they want new writers, they'll probably want a new director. Variety hints that Columbia is keeping the property alive in order to retain its rights from Marvel, but it doesn't say whether or not they were up against a deadline. So, I'll quit talking and hand it over to the true Ghost Rider fans. Is there any hope for this one if Goyer gets involved? Anything you want to see from a particular Ghost Rider run? Speak up now, and maybe you can influence its pre-production.

I told you that He Man and the Masters of the Universe would find a new home. Mere weeks after being booted out of Warner Bros, Variety reports that the once and future king of Eternia has found a new home at Sony. As you might remember, Joel Silver and Warner Bros were unable to agree on a direction for He-Man, and Mattel promptly took its toys and went elsewhere.

But if you really dug everything to do with Warner Bros' version (which was reportedly titled Greyskull), you'll have some cause for lament. Sony plans on starting with an entirely clean slate, which means John Stevenson will no longer be directing, and that all the script work by Justin Marks and Evan Daugherty will be scrapped. All of those concepts belong to Warner Bros, not Mattel, who was only able to bring Sony the action figure.

One also has to be concerned with just who will be overseeing He-Man's latest incarnation. Escape Artists will be developing the project for Sony, and they've been responsible for The Taking of Pelham 123 remake, Knowing, Seven Pounds, and The Pursuit of Happyness. Without writers, a director, or cast attached, I don't want to predict doom and gloom but is that the kind of resume that screams success for He-Man?

One of the best parts of this job is when you're granted a look at some rescued or restored gem from the past. It's one thing to review a film when it's new, but it's something else altogether to be given a chance to weigh in on history. Seeing films like Beyond the Rocks (1922), Army of Shadows (1969) and Killer of Sheep (1977) and getting to write about them is very satisfying. A film that was once ignored or maligned can now be re-established as a classic, and established classics can also be debunked.

This past week I had the opportunity to see two out of 22 films that have recently been cleaned out of the Columbia Pictures vaults, dusted off, refurbished and re-struck. All 22 of them are classic examples of film noir, stories about femmes fatale, detectives, criminals, gamblers, lowlifes, killers, or just generally luckless souls who find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time; the genre more or less officially started at the tail end of WWII, as soldiers returned home to find America a very different and not altogether friendly place. Some of these 22 films are cult classics that have remained tantalizingly unseeable over the years, and many others are virtually unknown and waiting to be discovered.

Whatever you may think of Vin Diesel as an actor, you have to admire his dedication to his franchises. I mean, who else but Diesel would hang in for another round of extreme adventure sports and espionage? About a year ago we got the news that Diesel was reuniting with Rob Cohen for another installment of the xXx franchise, but according to The Hollywood Reporter there has been a small personnel change, and now Ericson Core (Invincible) will be stepping in to direct since Cohen is off to work on his period actioner Medieval.

Diesel likes to be in control of his franchises and xXx was no exception. Apparently, the muscly actor had to give Core his blessing before the DP/ Director could get to work, although I'm sure their previous working relationship on Fast and Furious probably helped. According to reports, the film will be called xXx: The Return of Xander Cage, and focus on Cage's return to the 'agency' after an eight-year absence. Now, if you remember, Cage was reported as dead in the second film, but Richard Wilkes (who wrote the original movie) will have to think of something, I guess.

Now I'll admit that I've seen both xXx films (I even went to the theater for the first one) and other than a marginally clever joke about the 'death of Bond' and some truly craptastic dialog, I don't remember much about it (and when it comes to Ice Cube's installment in the franchise, I think I'd probably be better off if I didn't remember that one, too). So I guess on the upside we can take solace in the fact the latest installment couldn't be worse than last time, or can it?

xXx: The Return of Xander Cage begins shooting early next year.

It looks like the cast for The Green Hornet is complete once more, and the masked man has a new Kato. Columbia Pictures announced that Jay Chou has been cast as the Hornet's trusty mechanic / ass kicker, replacing Stephen Chow . This will be his first American film, though audiences might remember him from The Curse of the Golden Flower or Kung Fu Dunk.

Chou is a superstar in Taiwan, and has an exhaustive resume as a singer, producer, actor, director, and writer. There's not much he hasn't done ... except martial arts. Unless his biography is wrong, he has no martial art experience, putting him right in line with that open casting call that was so widely reported. Will this mean Kato will take a bit of a backseat to the Hornet, and not be a powerhouse like Bruce Lee?

His acting has received very poor reviews from Asian critics, but his performance in Curse was complimented by American critics, so Hornet will be quite a test for him. I honestly can't remember a single thing about Golden Flower other than its epic and blinding color scheme, so I can't judge whether or not he'll be a good Kato. Nothing about the pre-production of Seth Rogen's Hornet has met expectations good or bad (Nicolas Cage as the villain?), and the project continues to feel like one giant exercise in Wait and See.

Movies with food-related themes at their core have always appealed to me: I like eating, I like watching movies, why not combine the two? Julie & Julia does so quite deftly, resulting in a lighthearted comedy that's very easy to like. And these days, a movie with intelligent humor and masterful comic performances is hard to find, so that should be enough to satisfy me. And it very nearly was, although I didn't feel quite appeased afterwards.

Nora Ephron directed the comedy, adapting two stories and squashing them together: Julie Powell cooking her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 2002 as detailed on her blog and in her book Julie and Julia; and Julia Child going from bored housewife in Paris to cookbook co-author, as detailed in the book My Life in France.

So, does anyone out there remember Remo Williams? Granted, he wasn't a household name like John McClane or Snake Plissken (I mean, he didn't even make Scott's list of '80s action heroes worth resurrecting), but for fans of that decade, Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins is a camp classic. But don't worry, because even if you don't remember the original, you're about to get another chance to meet the wisecracking secret agent thanks to Columbia Pictures. The Hollywood Reporter's Risky Business Blog has confirmed that producer Charles Roven (The Dark Knight) and Steve Chasman (Transporter) are setting up a reboot of the Remo Williams/Destroyer franchise with Sony and Atlas Entertainment.

The 1985 action-comedy originally starred Fred Ward as Sam Making, a street cop who is recruited into a secret government agency to take down an arms dealer and was based on the Destroyer series created by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir. But before Sam could get to work saving the world, there was the small matter of faking his own death, a quick name change, some reconstructive surgery, and training on a mystical Korean marital art by Master Chiun (as played by Joel Grey in some pretty ridiculous makeup). Charley and Vlas Parlapanides (War of Gods) have already been hired to write the new script, and even though Colombia partly controls the rights to the entire series of novels, the film is expected to be an origin story and center on the first book in the series.

Having seen the original, I have to ask: Is Remo WIlliams even worth a reboot? Well, I'll leave that to you, so sound off in the comments below or tell me what 80's action flick you'd like to see get an update instead...

The buzz might be mixed on this weekend's primitive buddy comedy Year One, but the combination of Jack Black and Michael Cera is a pretty irresistible one on-screen and off. Our friends at Moviefone caught up with the comedic duo, who were more than happy to talk about getting back to their prehistorical roots (both in the acting and follical sense of the word), define bromance, rip on each other's bad breath, and update us on the Arrested Development movie, School of Rock 2, and whether or not either of them will be doing some ghostbusting.

From the sound of it, neither actor really enjoyed being a caveman thanks to feathery wigs that just never stay out of your lunch (welcome to the fun of long hair, boys!), and the close encounters with bodily excrement. When asked what time period they'd like to return to, both opted for eras of a little more refinement:

If you guys could live during any time throughout the course of history, when would it be?
Black: My favorite time in history ... the Renaissance.
Cera: I would say ... the '30s. The 1930s.
Black: The '30s? Wait, isn't that the Depression?
Cera: Like '33, that was a great age.
Black: Come on, the Renaissance! Haven't you ever been to the Renaissance fair? Don't you wish that was real life? A little mead, a little roast ...

That knowledge undoes everything girls have been taught about men! I mean, for years girls have labored under the delusion that you wanted to return to the simpler days of hunting with spears, and cooking by fire. If you prefer civilization then please, start up some petitions or websites or something to set the record straighter ...