worldwide pants Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Some major major news on the strike front seems to be leaking out today, with an official announcement expected to come at some point tomorrow (according to Deadline Hollywood). Looks like United Artists (aka the movie studio run by Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner) is in the process of inking a deal with the WGA that's very similar to the one they made with David Letterman's Worldwide Pants. Said deal, if it goes through, would allow United Artists to work with writers on whatever upcoming projects they have planned, making them the first such studio allowed to do this since the strike began. Damn. Score one for Tommy Boy! It's not yet known which films will take advantage of this interim deal right off the bat, but we do know that Oliver Stone's Pinkville was recently postponed due to problems with the script. Chances are, with the cast for that flick already in place, it will be one of the first delayed productions to be back in business. Of course, this is all subject to the deal actually going through.

On the other hand, United Artists could get right to work on a literary property they just optioned for seven figures. While all this interim agreement talk continues, The Hollywood Reporter tells us UA has optioned the film rights to Ranger's Apprentice, a fantasy series written by Australian author John Flanagan. According to HR, it "follows the adventures of an orphan boy named Will who becomes an apprentice ranger and fights to keep the mythical kingdom of Araluen safe from invaders, traitors and other dangers with the help of his master Halt." Yup, that sounds like just about every fantasy series being optioned these days, but what's even more interesting is that writer-director Paul Haggis was in talks to adapt and direct at one point before the strike happened and halted those discussions. Haggis doing big-budget fantasy? Bit of a stretch if you ask me -- what do you think?

David Letterman: Voice of a generation. National treasure. Documentarian? Yes, the man who almost single-handedly shaped my sense of humor when I was a teenager is backing a documentary about five young people running for office in their communities. Cameras will follow them around through Election Day, five weeks from now.

As reported in Variety, the film (as yet untitled) is being funded by Letterman's production company, Worldwide Pants. The candidates, all 18 except for one 20-year-old, are running for city council or mayor in their various communities; SlashFilm has more details on who they are and where they live, if you're curious.

Despite Letterman's involvement, the film is not expected to be a comedy, nor is it meant to mock the subjects. On the contrary, Letterman said in a statement that he admires them: "When I was their age I was still delivering papers on a paper route, and I wasn't even very good at that."

The film has some serious liberal street cred. It's being directed by Michael Moore's former assistant Jason Pollock and produced by Lawrence Bender, who also produced An Inconvenient Truth (and, somewhat less relevantly, most of Quentin Tarantino's films).

Worldwide Pants was initially set up specifically for Letterman's talk show back in the NBC days. Since then, always acting under Letterman's direction, it has produced TV shows such as "Ed," "Everybody Loves Raymond," and "The Bonnie Hunt Show." The company has only made one theatrical feature so far, the cult hit Strangers with Candy, in 2005.

[via SlashFilm.]