If Brad Pitt is true to his word, we won’t be watching him act well into his dotage. The actor has turned into a perpetually entertaining personality, and an occasionally great actor. He has worked with a great many top-tier directors and has been able to straddle the line between making commercially appealing movies and serious art-house fare. But it sounds as if he’s taking cues from his friend Steven Soderbergh, who has a similar career. Pitt says that he expects to be done with acting in three years. Read More »
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Here’s an update to the developing news on Steve McQueen‘s third film, Twelve Years a Slave, that is pretty minor in terms of word count, but potentially huge for the movie. We know that Chiwetel Ejiofor will play Solomon Northrup, a free black man kidnapped in Washington in 1841 and made to serve as a slave for over a decade. Michael Fassbender, who featured in McQueen’s last two films, Hunger and Shame, will also play a role.
Brad Pitt‘s company Plan B is producing the film, and now the actor will take a role in the movie, too. Read More »
It’s time for another round of Hypothetical Movie Contract Info. Early this year we heard that Warner Bros. is looking at making a new film called Cannonball Run. That is, of course, the name of an early ’80s racing comedy that spawned a sequel and one or two tenuously-connected DTV films. I probably wouldn’t call this a remake, as a new Cannonball Run is likely to bear as much resemblance to the 1981 film as Steven Soderberg’s Ocean’s Eleven did to the Rat Pack movie with which it shares a name.
That’s not an idle mention of Ocean’s Eleven. Not only did Rat Pack-ers figure into the original Cannonball Run; the current report is that Guy Ritchie, previously mentioned as a possible director, is still the studio pick for the film. And he wants to enlist Brad Pitt and George Clooney, the better to make an Oceans Eleven-style film.
Or perhaps we should say ‘commercial’ instead of ‘film,’ as General Motors is also nearing a deal to finance the movie, as a showcase for the best cars GM can build. Read More »
Posted on Monday, October 10th, 2011 by Angie Han
Though some fans have expressed their displeasure with the changes that Marc Forster has made in his cinematic adaptation of Max Brooks‘ zombie apocalypse novel World War Z, it seems the movie version is staying faithful to the source material in at least one way: a devotion to chillingly realistic detail. So much so, in fact, that Forster’s Budapest set was recently visited by a real-life SWAT team, who were none too happy with having to confiscate some 85 “prop” firearms that turned out to be fully functional and extremely dangerous weapons. Um, oops. Read more after the jump.
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Posted on Friday, October 7th, 2011 by Angie Han
Jena Malone has landed the part of Southern Gothic writer Carson McCullers in Lonely Hunter, a biopic written and directed by Deborah Kampmeier (Hounddog). The film will encompass some 35 years of McCullers’ 50-year life, including her struggles with alcoholism, various illnesses, and a tumultuous marriage. McCullers is probably best known for her debut novel The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, but she also published poems, plays, and short stories throughout her lifetime and was part of the same literary circle as Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote.
Malone appeared in Sucker Punch earlier this year, and will star in next year’s lesbian werewolf romance Jack and Diane. Lonely Hunter is scheduled to begin shooting in spring 2012. [The Hollywood Reporter]
After the jump, World War Z gets a late addition and Vinessa Shaw struggles with the downside of smelling really, really good.
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The first trailer for Happy Feet Two was the epitome of the word “teaser.” It was little more than a bunch of penguins dancing in unison to Justin Timberlake’s Sexy Back. With the film’s release date now just over a month out, Warner Bros. has finally released a full, theatrical trailer that not only gives us an idea of the story also samples the almost mind-blowingly impressive voice cast this time around (Elijah Wood, Robin Williams, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Hank Azaria, Sofia Vergara, Pink, Hugo Weaving). Plus, it proves that these Happy Feet movies are about much more than dancing. Don’t worry, though. There’s still plenty of dancing. Check it out after the jump. Read More »
Is this the Akira situation all over again? You might remember that a few months ago, when Warner Bros. was really trying to get the live-action version of Akira going under the direction of Albert Hughes, there were a great many stories about how the studio wanted to cast the film. The primary thrust seemed to be that the teenage characters in the original manga and anime were going to be significantly older in the live-action version. That all became a non-issue when Hughes bowed out and the film was slowed-down as it was re-budgeted and set up for Jaume Collet-Serra to direct, however.
The same thing could be happening again, however, with the adaptation of Hiroshi Sakurazaka‘s All You Need is Kill, for which Brad Pitt is reportedly being sought. Read More »
Moneyball is a baseball movie, an underdog tale, a true story and a Brad Pitt vehicle. But more than any of those things, Moneyball is a character study about what it’s like to stand up against everyone and everything because you have faith in an idea.
In 2001, the Oakland Athletics, with a payroll of about $40 million – almost a third of the ultra-rich New York Yankees – made the playoffs. The next year, three of their marquee players were poached by other teams for bigger contracts and, with little money and few resources, general manager Billy Beane (Pitt) was forced to embrace a whole new way of looking at baseball to stay competitive.
Directed by Bennett Miller, who directed Philip Seymour Hoffman (also in this movie) to an Oscar in Capote, Moneyball plays like an exciting fantasy baseball draft if everyone was in on the intricacies but, at its heart, it’s really about the struggle of being different. And that’s something we can all relate to. Read More »
