Public Enemies - What Did You Think?
James Toback And Brett Ratner Move Forward With DeLorean Biopic
Posted on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 by Russ Fischer
Most film fans now know the name DeLorean thanks to Back to the Future, but there was a point where the entrepreneur was a headline-making designer. There’s a reason that the 9000 produced DeLorean cars are an iconic symbol of the ’80s. Well, two reasons: in addition to making a wild-looking car, John DeLorean allegedly trafficked drugs to generate cash for his struggling company. (He beat the charges; the ‘trafficking’ was actually an elaborate entrapment scheme.) We’ve known that James Toback was interested in making a DeLorean biopic, and now Variety confirms that it is moving forward. Ironically, his co-creators are men with reputations worthy of the subject’s. Toback’s script may be directed by Brett Ratner and produced by Robert Evans, thanks to Ratner’s first-look deal with Reliance Big Entertainment. Read More »
Vivendi Entertainment has finally set an October 16th 2009 release date for the anthology film project New York, I Love You. The movie is the next film from the producers of Paris, je t’aime, and features another anthology of short films, this time focusing on the stories of love in New York’s five boroughs.
The film includes short films directed by Jian Wen, Mira Nair, Brett Ratner, Allen Hughes, Shekhar Khapur, Natalie Portman, Fatih Akin, Joshua Marston and Randy Balsmyer. The film’s ensemble cast includes: Bradley Cooper, Andy Garcia, Hayden Christensen, Rachel Bilson, Natalie Portman, Irrfan Khan, Emilie Ohana, Orlando Bloom, Christina Ricci, Maggie Q, Ethan Hawke, James Caan, Blake Lively, Drea de Matteo, John Hurt, Shia LaBeouf, Burt Young, Chris Cooper, Eli Wallach and Cloris Leachman.
Capeshooters Screenwriters Also Working on Brett Ratner’s Youngblood
Posted on Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 by Peter Sciretta
Reliance Big Entertainment has found writers for the big screen film adaptation of Robb Liefeld’s comic book series Youngblood which Brett Ratner attached to direct. Liefeld tells MTV that J.P. Lavin and Chad Damiani have been working on a now half-way completed first draft of the screenplay. Lavin and Damiani are also attached to the Bryan Singer-produced Liefeld comic book adaptation Capeshooters at Warner Bros.
After Brett Ratner dropped out of directing Conan due to “scheduling conflicts,” V For Vendetta director James McTeigue was tipped to be the top choice to helm the project. CHUD is now reporting that while Nu-Image/Millenium want McTeigue, Lionsgate is interested in three different choices:
Hack director Brett Ratner might not have a chance to ruin the legacy of Conan after all. That’s right, the Rat has departed from the reboot due to scheduling issues. Producer Joe Gatta tells Empire:
“We’re currently in the process of hiring a director. For the past six months we were discussing the movie with Brett Ratner, and for more timing issues than anything else we had to part ways with Brett. We all wanted him to do it, believe me; just the timing didn’t work. But you never know what can happen.”
The current plan is to being production on August 24th in Bulgaria, and as soon as they find a director, the search will be on for a star to play the iconic role.
Rumor: Brett Ratner In Talks To Direct Milli Vanilli Movie
Posted on Tuesday, April 21st, 2009 by Peter Sciretta
The Daily Swarm is reporting a story from Hits Daily Double that hack director Brett Ratner is in talks to direct a movie based on the Milli Vanilli story for Universal. Rush Hour screenwriter Jeff Nathanson has written the screenplay about “one producer and two lip-syncing male models who sold millions of records and won a Grammy before their scam was revealed.” Kathleen Kennedy is attached as executive producer.
I hate to report on news or rumors from websites I’ve never heard of, especially when I can’t seem to find the news report on the source site, but sometimes the story is too good to pass up. The project is real, and was even announced in 2007, but as for the Ratner talks — For now lets mark this purely as a rumor.
As much as I dislike Ratner, I think he would be a good fit for this project, especially considering he can relate to the material — Ratner is a mediocre director pretending to be a good director. I kid, I kid… the shot was open, I had to take it. But honestly, tackling a Milli Vanilli biography could mean one less franchise film that Ratner might ruin. And that reason alone makes it worth it. I would rather Ratner stick to making movies about Milli Vanilli and Hugh Hefner over a remake of Conan or Beverly Hills Cop sequel.
via: Playlist
Movieline caught up with hack director Brett Ratner and was able to get “The Rat” to go on record about the many films listed on the director’s Internet Movie Database page. As suspected, most of them aren’t happening or are in early stages of development.
But the film Ratner claims is the “closest to getting made” is Trump Heist. The action crime comedy tells the story of a bunch of employees of the Trump Tower who conspire to rip off the building’s residents. Eddie Murphy is signed to play the leader of the crew of con artists and Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle and Chris Tucker are reportedly in consideration to join the cast. Ratner just hired Ocean’s Eleven scribe Ted Griffin to re-write the script.
Brett Ratner has a new publishing imprint, the Rat Press, through which he’s going to release new titles as well as make some of his favourite out-of-print books available again. Speaking to Movieline, the ever unpopular director announces his motivation in putting out editions of James Toback’s Jim, Lawrence Grobel’s compiled interviews with Marlon Brando and Robert Evans, and Scott Caan’s collections of photos.
Caan’s photo collection - which includes snaps of some of the actors Caan has worked with as well as “a lot of naked girls”, naked girls that Ratner seems almost too keen to tell us he’s into too - seems likely to sell out first, though for me it’s the Grobel interview collections that hold the most appeal. Pictures of naked girls are ten a penny, whereas this kind of long-haul interview journalism is relatively rare.
Can someone perform a drive-by on this project while blasting Harold Faltermeyer instrumentals? We’ve already seen a 180-spin with Beverly Hills Cop IV, with poolguy Brett Ratner originally playing to the kiddies, then predictably back-pedaling and labeling the film “hard R, brah” followed by a tepid review of the script and its more serious “standard cop movie” tone (Judge Reinhold gets murdered etc).
Apparently screenwriters Michael Brandt and Derek Haas, who remain hot from adapting Wanted and 3:10 to Yuma, have been tinkering with their original draft. CineFools just interviewed Brandt, who clarifies that the BHC4 script is a reworking of their older, unrelated script entitled Dying Day. This reminds me of how a script entitled “Simon Says” was used, adequately if not definitively so, for Die Hard 3. Brandt had this to say about the project’s progress…
A Look at the JJ Abrams/Brett Ratner Superman Movie That Never Was
Posted on Thursday, February 26th, 2009 by Peter Sciretta
In 2002, JJ Abrams wrote a script which was supposed to be the first film in a trilogy of Superman movies. Aint It Cool once wrote that the script read “like it’ll cost $400 million” and involved sequences featuring “air combat between five superpowered Kryptonians and fighter jets from 24 nations. Kryptonite missiles. Ass-kickin’ on a level we’ve never seen before on film.” A post-Matrix film project where Superman flies through the air fighting a villain using super-powered martial arts.
Over 30 pages of superfights, more action than 20 of Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns. Superman dies but returns from the dead, and the mind-numbingly horrible reveal that Lex Luthor is actually a second son of Krypton, and also has superpowers. A disaster. Brett Ratner was attached to direct, but the project eventually fell into development hell.
Apparently the project got far enough into development that illustrator Phil Saunders was creating concept art for the project for four months. Recently Saunders released a random image from the failed project on his blog, showing Superman facing off against a Kryptonian Battle Pod called a Rouser in Gotham City (yes, Gotham City). Saunders explained that Production Designer Owen Patterson wanted a straight one-point perspective view “so you could compare scale.” Click on the image above to enlarge.
via: SuperPunch
Brett Ratner Says Conan Star Should Be An Unknown
Posted on Thursday, February 19th, 2009 by Peter Sciretta
Who will replace Arnold Schwarzenegger as Conan The Barbarian in Brett Ratner’s planned reboot? Ratner says that it will probably be someone you’ve never heard of before.
Reliance Big Entertainment has aquired the rights to make a big screen film adaptation of Robb Liefeld’s comic book series Youngblood with Brett Ratner attached to direct. Ick. Ratner explained to Variety that “Most of the great graphic novels are gone, and ‘Youngblood’ is one of the few comicbooks left” that is available for the Rat to ruin… He didn’t say that end part obviously. But anyone that has seen Rush Hour 3 knows, that’s clearly what he meant. The project is being fast tracked.
When I was collecting/reading comic books during the big comic boom of the early 1990’s, Image Comics was all the rage and Youngblood was one of the top titles. I never could get into it beyond the cool larger-than-life art. Youngblood was a high-profile super-team sanctioned and overseen by the United States Government. At the time of its release, Youngblood #1 was the highest selling independent comic book ever, but according to wikia.com, Youngblood was criticized for poor writing and inconsistent art, but mostly for its lateness. So maybe the title is pefect for Ratner after all. You can buy the first volume of the series in hardcover on Amazon for around $25.
