Week of « Prev | Next »
1-20 of 40 articles « Prev | Next »
Kick-Ass Gets A UK Distributor
20 November 2009 8:28 AM, PST
Good news, British readers: Kick-Ass, the really exciting, very funny and slightly twisted new film from Matthew Vaughn, has found a UK distributor. Yes, Universal will be bringing us the tale of superheroes minus superpowers, which is good news for audiences still waiting more than a month after it found a Us distributor.The film is based, of course, on the Mark Millar comics about a boy who decides to become a superhero without the benefit of superpowers, super-suits or super-anything else. Except for maybe super-ability-to-get-his-ass-kicked.It stars Aaron Johnson, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Chloe Moretz, Nicolas Cage and Mark Strong. We suspect that the UK release date will closely mirror the planned Us release on April 16, but we'll bring you confirmation of that as soon as we have it. »
New Jane Eyre Gets Hot-Right-Now Cast
20 November 2009 1:09 AM, PST
Reader, she's in talks to marry him. Mia Wasikowska, about to hit our screens as Alice in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, is in talks to star with the ace Michael Fassbender in Jane Eyre, a new adaptation of the classic novel.For those of you who slept through your literature classes, the novel by Charlotte Bronte tells the story of a young governess called Jane who goes to work for the surly and frightening Mr Rochester. Strange noises in the house and odd events seem to point to some sort of haunting or sinister goings-on, but it's only gradually that the truth becomes clear.While we're going to have to wait for Alice to make any call on Wasikowska's suitability for Jane, we reckon that Fassbender's a good call for Rochester, with both the ability to be moody and terrifying that's called for and the charisma to make him nevertheless appealing. »
Mike White To Write Santa Wars
19 November 2009 11:30 PM, PST
Here's a seasonal tale of mince pies, presents, false beards and vicious in-fighting: Mike White, best known for scripts like School Of Rock and last seen being attacked by the undead in a tiny cameo in Zombieland, has signed on to write Santa Wars, an incredible story of rival professional Santas that is, it turns out, based on a true story.Yes, it's all about the discord and bitter disagreement that developed between the two founders of the Amalgamated Order of Real Bearded Santas, who first formed the Santa union and then tore it apart, with the original board of directors largely expelled. Mix all this amid accusations of un-Santa-like behaviour between members, and the establishment of a rival Fraternal Order of Real Bearded Santas, and you surely have a Hollywood classic ready to go.It's all based on a radio show segment from This American Life, hosted by Ira Glass »
Today's Thor Cast News: Idris Elba
19 November 2009 10:54 PM, PST
Another day, another cast member for Kenneth Branagh's Marvel Comics blockbuster Thor. Earlier this week: The Warriors Three (Stuart Townsend, Ray Stevenson and Tadanobu Asano). Today: Heimdall, who'll be played by The Wire and The Office (Us) star Idris Elba.Heimdall is the brother of Sif (Jamie Alexander) and the guardian of Asgard, who stands sentry on the "rainbow bridge" Bifrost, the only way in or out of Chez Odin. He's super-strong and super-fast, and has super-senses that allow him to hear Earth from Asgard (and indeed "to detect the fluttering of a butterfly's wings a thousand worlds away"). He wears excellent armour, and likes an edged weapon, especially his enchanted sword that allows him to assume mortal form.Weirdly, for someone on the same side, he's given to battling Thor. In his earliest appearances he battled Thor to prevent him entering Asgard, then again to prevent him leaving, »
Spielberg And King Join Forces
19 November 2009 10:13 PM, PST
Stephen King's whopping new novel Under the Dome was only published a week ago, but plans are already afoot to develop it for the small screen. Steven Spielberg will executive produce, along with Stacey Snyder, Darryl Frank and Justin Falvey of Dreamworks TV, and King himself.The novel is a reworking of King's never-published "lost" work The Cannibals, in which the small Maine town of Chester's Mill is suddenly, inexplicably cut off by an invisible forcefield that doesn't allow exit or entry. Trapped inside, the society-in-microcosm starts to unravel.Yes, it sounds like The Simpsons Movie, but it's been hailed in some quarters as a return to old-school King after a gradual shift of direction and focus in recent years, and has drawn favourable comparisons to his much earlier end-of-the-world tome The Stand. King adaptations for TV have been a mixed bag. Tobe Hooper's Salem's Lot and the 1990 It, »
Uma Thurman Finds a Bel Ami
19 November 2009 10:00 PM, PST
The expression on Uma Thurman's face in this photo is easy to explain: that's her laughing as she realises she's just become the envy of every teenage girl in the world after landing a role opposite Robert Pattinson in Bel Ami.Just after playing Medusa in the forthcoming Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, it must come as something of a relief to Thurman to swop the snake hair for a corset for this adaptation of the Guy de Maupassant short story* about ambitious young Parisian journalist George Duroy (Pattinson) who furthers his career by sleeping his way to the top.Thurman plays the wife of an army friend of his, Forrestier, who refuses to have an affair with him but helps him with his writing and by introducing him to politicians and giving him political gossip. When her husband dies, the pair marry - but all »
Jason Lee Turns Director For Get Back
18 November 2009 11:56 PM, PST
The cancellation of My Name is Earl doesn't seem to have slowed Jason Lee down. He's just finished filming Kevin Pollak's Columbus Circle, and his old mucker Kevin Smith's A Couple of Dicks (not to mention Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel). He's got a live-action skateboarding comedy series in the works for Adult Swim (the Cartoon Network's grown-up half). And he's set to make his directorial debut with Get Back.Get Back is a time travelling adventure about two music obsessives transported to the 1960s, where one of them gets into a love triangle with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Matt Berenson, whose CV isn't the most impressive, it must be said (Daddy Day Care, Daddy Day Camp) is producing.It's not quite clear whether Lee will also star as one of the two timewarping musos, but we'd imagine that the probability is high.Lee's affable »
Teen Novel Cycler Headed For The Screen
18 November 2009 11:48 PM, PST
You know what you're getting with most teen novels: boy meets girl, girl isn't sure how she feels about boy, boy and girl figure it out. Occasionally there's a vampire thrown in for good measure, but in Cycler, which has just been optioned for the screen, there's a different twist: for four days every month Jill turns into Jack,Written by Lauren McLaughlin, a former Lionsgate executive who's already written the screenplay and a sequel, the story provides an unusual twist on the "time of the month", with teenager Jill worried about who'll ask her to prom but also concerned that Jack might turn up on that day instead. What's more, Jack has a crush on Jill's best friend and Jack's personality is getting stronger and stronger, lingering in Jill's head even after he's gone.It's an intriguing concept, one that goes a step further than the slightly similar body-swop »
Sam Neill Joins Guardians Of Ga'Hoole
18 November 2009 11:36 PM, PST
Sam Neill, who you might have spotted yesterday on the Daybreakers poster, has today signed up to join Zack Snyder's animated film Guardians of Ga'Hoole, currently in production in Sydney. He rounds out a largely antipodean cast, but one which appears not to include Hugh Jackman, who had been rumoured for a role. As long-time Event Horizon fans, we're secretly hoping that whatever his role, it includes the line, "Do you see? Do You See?" somewhere.Ahem. We do know that Jim Sturgess voices the lead role of Soren, a young owl kidnapped by the dastardly orphanage of St. Aggies, where young birds are secretly trained to become soldiers. Instead, Soren is determined to join the Guardians of Ga'Hoole and fight for truth, justice and the right to turn your head through nearly 360°.Also in the cast are (deep breath) Abbie Cornish, Emily Barclay, Emilie de Ravin, Ryan Kwanten, »
Misadventures For Eddie Murphy?
18 November 2009 11:33 PM, PST
Remember the days before Eddie Murphy starting churning out family comedy after family comedy? Those days could soon be returning. Paramount are looking for writers for Beverly Hills Cop 4, and Murphy is attached (currently only as producer, but we'll see) to The Misadventures of Fluffy. Which is not what it sounds like.Fluffy is, at the moment, developing as an R-rated comedy, again for Paramount. Sam Pitman and Adam Cole-Kelly (behind Tyler Perry's mooted The Diversification of Noah Miller) are currently writing the script, which is reportedly a social buddy-comedy a la Trading Places, about a journey across New York. Featuring talking animals.Talking animals have worked for Murphy before of course, to the tune of half a billion in box office for the Dr Doolittle films. But this sounds like rather a different proposition, and we hope to see him in front of the camera on this one, »
Amy Adams' Ten Best Days
18 November 2009 10:58 PM, PST
Amy Adams is turning producer on her next project. The breakout star of Junebug, who's since gone on to bowl us over in Julie and Julia, Enchanted and Doubt, is clearly fan enough of Adena Halpern's novel My Ten Best Days that she wants to oversee its journey to the screen. That or she knows a starring role when she sees one.The novel is set in the afterlife: specifically Heaven, which is structured into seven levels, of which the seventh is the most desirable (meaning you can eat what you like and never get fat). Main character Alex wants to stay there with her Uncle Morris and her grandparents, in a perfect house that never needs cleaning, but is in danger of being demoted unless she can provide evidence of having lived a worthwhile life. Hence her homework essay on her ten best days.Now, we're slightly bummed »
Me And Orson Welles Premiere Report
18 November 2009 10:42 PM, PST
Though Me & Orson Welles is far from being a High School Musical wannabe (HSM rating: brief, restrained dancing scenes, two instances of singing) you’d be forgiven thinking the whole of East High had arrived in Leicester Square last night as Zac Efron turned up and the crowd went wild.Playing a young actor in one of Orson Welles first theatre productions on Broadway, Zac Efron, the teenybopper’s idol of choice, is keen to shed his singin’ an’ dancin’ musical image - but that doesn’t stop hordes of teenage girls screaming his name, waggling their posters and occasionally swooning from his sheer dreamboatiness.Charm personified, dressed up in an immaculate suit, his hair perfect, totally at ease while women shrieked and fainted nearby, Efron was mostly keen to compliment his costar, the newcomer Christian McKay.“You heard the guy talk? He’s the most charismatic individual I’ve »
Exclusive: New Daybreakers Poster
18 November 2009 6:48 AM, PST
Another day, another animal-biting vampire called Edward - but while this one's still a bit mopey, Ethan Hawke's take on the undead in Daybreakers is very different from Twilight. For one thing, he lives in a world full of vampires. For another, the blood they all depend on is running out.Directed by the Spierig brothers, the film also stars Sam Neill channelling Event Horizon as the smooth-but-sinister head of a major blood corporation and Willem Dafoe as the leader of a group of rebels against the bloodsucking status quo.Daybreakers is out, after a very long delay, next January 8. »
Lee Daniels To Direct Selma
17 November 2009 11:54 PM, PST
Lee Daniels, whose acclaimed drama, Precious, may well be a contender for Best Picture at next year’s Oscars, has lined up his next film – and, if all goes well, it could be an Oscar-botherer too.For he’ll direct Selma, named after the Alabama town that played host to a historic civil rights march in 1965; a march that was often disrupted by violence and ugly racism; a march that marked a turning point for African-Americans in their struggle for equality; a march that involved major names in the civil rights movement, including Martin Luther King Jr. and Amelia Boynton; and a march that took three attempts before it finally reached its target, Montgomery, a town just 54 miles away.It’s an astonishing story of hope and determination in the face of overwhelming odds – you can read more about the march here – and should make for a cracking and stirring film, »
Justin Theroux Plays Space Invaders
17 November 2009 11:38 PM, PST
Sci-fi rom-com Space Invader (nothing to do with the arcade game, you'll be pleased to hear) has been in Development Hell for a while now. In early 2007 it was being talked up as a vehicle for Arrested Development's Will Arnett, with a script by Futurama alumnus Mike Lisbe. Three years later, Justin Theroux, the actor-turned-screenwriter who wrote Tropic Thunder and Iron Man 2, has come aboard to pen a new draft.Theroux may also direct the film, which is reportedly about a guy who becomes a space station janitor to keep tabs on his girlfriend, who he suspects is knocking off a Zapp Brannigan-style space blowhard. Will Arnett is still starring, according to THR, but whether Lisbe and his co-writer Nate Reger are still involved, having orginally sold the project to Fox, is unclear.That everyman-in-space scenario is kind of familiar, particularly in Britain, from things like The Hitch-Hiker's »
Jennifer Hudson To Play Winnie Mandela
17 November 2009 11:29 PM, PST
Jennifer Hudson, Oscar-winner for Dreamgirls and the best thing to come out of American Idol ever, has landed a part as Winnie Madikizela-Mandela in Winnie, in a film that's practically bound to be as controversial as Mandela herself. Madikizela-Mandela was, of course, the wife of Nelson Mandela, who she married in 1957 and had daughters with. From a relatively privileged background, she trained and worked as a social worked and, on Mandela's imprisonment in 1963, became an outspoken opponent of apartheid who did a huge amount to keep her husband's name alive both nationally and internationally.In later years, however, she became a figure of controversy, following a speech that appeared to advocate violence and her involvement in the kidnapping and murder of a 14 year-old police informant. She and Mandela were separated by the time he became Prime Minister of South Africa, and her career was further dogged by »
47 Ronin Finds A Master
17 November 2009 11:02 PM, PST
It's been almost a year since the news broke that Keanu Reaves would be starring in 47 Ronin, Universal's 18th Century samurai epic. But now the project has finally gained a director, in the form of commercials director Carl Erik Rinsch.This will be Rinsch's feature debut, and it's unusual for a first-timer to land such a huge project. But his ads for the likes of Lexus, BMW and Mercedes have long been attracting favourable attention, and nobody seems in doubt about his confidence and ability behind a camera. And he goes out with Ridley Scott's daughter, so those connections can't hurt. If you recognise his name, it might be because he was, for a short while, in talks for the Alien prequel until Sir Ridders was persuaded to do it himself.Ronin, as you probably learned at the movies, are masterless samurai, and the story of the 47 Ronin, one of Japan's key national legends, »
Better Living Through Crime For Fuqua
17 November 2009 10:56 PM, PST
Antoine Fuqua, the director of Training Day and Shooter, has signed on for another crime thriller, called Miss: Better Living Through Crime.The film, based on a French graphic novel, will be produced by Spike Lee.Written by Philippe Thirault, Marc Riou and Mark Vigoroux, Miss: Better Living Through Crime tells the tale of Nola and Slim, a white hooker and black pimp who team up together and embark on a life of crime and murder in New York at the turn of the 20th Century.Sounds very intriguing, and the period setting means this could be right up Fuqua’s street. We'd love to see Lee's take on this material, of course, but it will also be mighty interesting to see how this collaboration between the two pans out. Is this the beginning of a beautiful friendship?John Ridley, who wrote the script for the upcoming George Lucas-produced WWII flick, »
Eric Dane Loves Burlesque
17 November 2009 10:51 PM, PST
Eric Dane, lately of Grey's Anatomy and last seen on the big screen in Marley & Me, has signed up to join the cast of Burlesque, the Christina Aguilera-story of a small town girl with a big voice who dared to dream of moving to the city and dancing about in her scanties.The cast also includes Cher as the owner of the burlesque club, Stanley Tucci, Alan Cumming, Kristen Bell and Cam Gigandet as a struggling piano player / bar man. Gee, wonder which of those is the love interest? (For those of you who said Bell, congratulations: like Go West, you're the king of wishful thinking).Dane will join the line-up as "a charming, successful businessman who offers to buy Tess (Cher) out of the burlesque club and vies for Ali's heart."Shooting started on November 9, with Steve Antin writing and directing. For those of you who don't know who he is, »
New Nine Trailer Online
17 November 2009 8:09 AM, PST
Has that dreary grey weather got you down? Are you longing for more spangles and diamante showgirl costumes? Well, there is a solution: here's the new Nine trailer, featuring lots and lots of Kate Hudson wearing lots of sparkles and singing about her love of Italian cinema. As you do.The film of course stars Daniel Day-Lewis as Italian film director Guido, based relatively closely on the real Federico Fellini, to whose 8 1/2 this is a musical sequel. Guido experiences something of a mid-life crisis and reflects on his life today through the medium of imagining the women in his life doing elaborate dance numbers that are all about him.Nine is directed by Chicago's Rob Marshall, and is out here on December 18. »
1-20 of 40 articles « Prev | Next »
