After his star-making turn in Thor, Chris Hemsworth is likely to find himself in the same sort of position his Star Trek co-star Chris Pine did a couple years back. Like Chris Pine, Hemsworth has a couple films in the can that might be released in the future (and his are higher profile: Red Dawn and The Cabin in the Woods) and he’s already cast in a few other big projects, like Snow White and the Huntsman and that little movie The Avengers. In fact, it looks like he’s already outpacing Chris Pine when it comes to lining up jobs.
Now the actor is looking like the latest surfer on the wave of reality-based ensemble military thrillers. Sony has just picked up a pitch called Shadow Runner (sounds like a mid-tier video game) and set Chris Hemsworth to star. He’ll play an elite military type who takes on “impossible tasks.” Does Paramount have the copyright on impossible tasks thanks to the M:I franchise? Read More »
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Snow White gets a rewrite, The Smurfs get a sequel and Bastards sells for big bucks. How’s that for alliteration? There’s a bunch of screenwriting news out there right now and, after the jump, we’ll give some context to the following:
- Screenwriter Hossein Amini has just been hired to do a rewrite of Universal’s Snow White and the Huntsman, the second Snow White film scheduled for release next year.
- Even though The Smurfs has yet to open in theaters, the producers are already getting ready to write a sequel.
- After the success of The Hangover Part II and Bridesmaids, Paramount has just purchased an R-rated comedy spec-script called Bastards by Justin Malen.
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The backstory of the new telling of Jack Ryan‘s origin story is becoming quite an origin story of its own. Paramount has been trying to kickstart the rebirth of the Jack Ryan franchise for two years — it stalled out in 2002 with the Ben Affleck-led The Sum of All Fears.
Now the latest screenwriter to try to stick an adrenaline needle in the franchise’s nearly-flatlined chest is David Koepp. But is he doctoring the script, or starting from scratch? Read More »
Sometimes stars align. Talks recently broke down to get Viggo Mortensen into the key Huntsman role in Snow White and the Hunstman, and now with The Wolverine on hold for several reasons, Hugh Jackman has been offered the part. If he accepts, that could push the film into an entirely different realm of mainstream appeal. Read More »
After the success of Star Trek, Paramount decided to enter the Chris Pine business in a serious way. The company set the actor to star in Star Trek 2 and tapped him for the reboot of Tom Clancy‘s Jack Ryan character, who had previously been played by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck. But development of the Jack Ryan film has been more difficult than perhaps the studio expected, and now it sounds like that film is being pushed back to make way for a fall shoot for Star Trek 2. Read More »
For the past couple months, a shortlist has been going around of possible directors for Moscow, Paramount’s new film / reboot of the film series featuring Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan character. (Chris Pine stars as Ryan this time out.) The names were generally all big: Sam Raimi, Gore Verbinski, Timur Bekmambetov and Kevin MacDonald, for example.
The name that wasn’t on one of the main lists going around is Jack Bender, who exec produced Lost and directed many episodes of the show. But now he’s reportedly the guy closest to sitting in Moscow’s director’s chair. Read More »
Just the other day there was a mention that George Clooney might be interested in taking up the mantle of Jack Ryan, the hero of Tom Clancy novels and films like The Hunt For Red October and Patriot Games. Now there’s confirmation, via Anne Thompson, that Clooney’s name is indeed in the mix. But more important, the Hossein Aimini script that was commissioned last year to reboot the franchise, currently just the Untitled Tom Clancy Project, should arrive shortly, and then Paramount will be able to make a decision about really moving forward. Read More »
His recent, loud homage to Mad Max and killer viruses, Doomsday, was mostly ignored and deflated quickly at the box office, but genre director Neil Marshall is still going strong. He’s now attached to his second project of the month, an L.A.-set action mystery vehicle for Hugh Jackman at Universal entitled Drive that looks to be his next film. An adaptation of author James Sallis‘s neo-noir of the same name, Jackman will star as a Hollywood stunt driver who enjoys a double-life as a getaway man for robberies. In the book, one of the heists backfires and Jackman’s character earns a bounty on his life.
“This is something I haven’t done before, and I’ve wanted to bring a British sensibility to an L.A. shoot and a scorched classic film noir concept,” Marshall told Variety. “Hoss is a fantastic writer, and he’s written three amazing car chases in the film. He’s turned them into dramatic scenes as opposed to the usual crash, bang, wallop. I would like to be shooting it this summer.”
Last week it was announced that Marshall will also direct Sacrilege, a Western horror flick that he ambitiously described as “Unforgiven by way of H.P. Lovecraft,” with a dash of The Thing. Drive was adapted by Hossein Amini, who wrote The Golden Compass sequel The Subtle Knife as well as the long-delayed Elmore Leonard crime adaptation Killshot (um, IMDB says it’s due April ’08).
I’m curious what Marshall means by bringing a “British sensibility” to L.A. for Drive. His currently has one of the more active mid-level fanboy-centric careers in the industry right now, and it will be interesting to see if he continues to build on the promise seen with The Descent or if he goes the way of a Simon West.
Discuss: Drive or Sacrilege, which sounds cooler? If you skipped it, why did you miss Doomsday? What didn’t grab you about it? If you saw it, worth the ticket?
