Posted on Wednesday, August 24th, 2011 by Angie Han
Modern Family star Eric Stonestreet has signed up to play silent film star Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle in an HBO biopic titled The Day the Laughter Stopped. Arbuckle was one of the most popular, most successful actors of his time, but his career fell apart after he was accused of raping and murdering actress Virginia Rappe. Although he was eventually acquitted, he never completely recovered. He enjoyed only a very brief comeback before he died of a heart attack in 1933 at the age of 46.
Barry Levinson is set to direct the film from a script penned by John Adams screenwriter Kirk Ellis. The project is apparently something of a dream come true for Stonestreet, who’s been looking for a potential Arbuckle project since the late ’90s. [Vulture]
After the jump, the Old Spice guy gets a new gig, ABC picks up a split-personality drama, and USA announces return dates for some of its most popular shows.
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When John Travolta was cast as notorious gangster John Gotti, one had to assume that was the lead role of the movie. But when the title to the film was changed from Gotti: Three Generations to Gotti: In the Shadow Of My Father it became pretty obvious, Gotti Sr. wasn’t the plum role. The role of John Gotti Jr. was and Ben Foster has just been cast to play him.
Despite some ongoing controversy, Gotti: In the Shadow Of My Father is scheduled to begin pre-production next month for a January start date. Foster and Travolta will co-star with Al Pacino and Kelly Preston under the direction of Barry Levinson. The real Gotti Jr. is a consultant on the project, which was recently in the news because Joe Pesci, once cast as Gotti’s second in command, filed a lawsuit against the production company, Fiore Films. Read more about Foster, his role and the latest on the film after the jump. Read More »
The development of a film about father and son crime figures John ‘The Teflon Don’ Gotti and John Gotti, Jr. has already turned into something of a saga, with Nick Cassavetes set to direct, then departing and leaving a void ultimately filled by Barry Levinson. John Travola, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci were cast, and now Joe Pesci is suing the production, which we’ll get to in a moment. Lindsay Lohan was reportedly cast, then quite or was fired, then cast again, and now evidently not part of the project. There’s probably more, but that’s enough to start with.
Fiore Films has now announced what may be the final title for the film, Gotti: In the Shadow of My Father, along with a shoot date for January 2012. And there’s a rumor that Dominic Cooper will join the cast as well. Read More »
Barry Levinson is going to direct Al Pacino in Gotti: Three Generations, but before that picture shoots they’ll also do another film. The Humbling is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Philip Roth from Millennium/Nu Image. This will make three films in a row for the Levinson/Pacino team, beginning with the acclaimed portrait of the late Dr. Jack Kevorkian, You Don’t Know Jack.
In addition, Barry Levinson has quite a lot to say about the John Gotti movie that he inherited when Nick Cassavetes vacated the director’s chair. More on that after the break. Read More »
Barry Levinson is moving from the horrors of man’s manipulations with nature to man’s own horrible nature. Last year he put together the low-key ‘found footage’ eco-horror thriller The Bay, which will be released this year by Lionsgate. And now he has been tapped as the director for Gotti: Three Generations, which recently saw the departure of planned director Nick Cassavetes. Read More »
Oscar-winning filmmaker Barry Levinson has just found a distributor for his first horror film, a found footage tale of what happens when a deadly disease moves from the sea onto the land, called The Bay. Lionsgate has acquired the rights to the film, which was produced by the team behind Paranormal Activity and Insidious: Jason Blum, Steven Schneider and Oren Peli. Read the official press release and more after the break. Read More »
Barry Levinson has worked steadily for the last few years on films that weren’t exactly high-profile smashes (Man of the Year, What Just Happened) but scored big with the Jack Kevorkian film You Don’t Know Jack for HBO. He is finishing up the enviro-horror film The Bay right now.
And the director now has a follow-up film set. He will direct O.K.C., an indie about the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing perpetrated by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, which was the largest terrorist attack on US soil prior to 9/11. Read More »
Late last year we heard that Barry Levinson (Good Morning Vietnam, Rain Man) was going into production on a low-budget ‘eco-horror’ film that was originally referred to as Isopod. The basic story for what became called The Bay was said to feature “the aftermath of a viral outbreak on the Eastern Seaboard” and it sounded as if the film would be built from a collection of character-filmed footage, emergency reports and other sources. (The Paranormal Activity team of Oren Peli, Steven Schneider and Brian Kavanagh Jones are producing, contributing to the expectation for something pretty low-fi.)
Now there’s a new synopsis for the film, which makes things a little bit more clear. Read More »
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