For the past few months, Steven Soderbergh has been all over the place with the cast and crew of Contagion. They’ve been shooting in San Francisco over the past week or so, and will close out work in that city with a massive scene at Candlestick Park that involves over 1000 extras. (The production manager for the film described the scene at the 49ers home field as “like a large vaccination center.”)
Before that happens, we’ve got some set pics showing at least one urban setting for the film, which follows the outbreak and effects of a global pandemic. Read More »
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What is Page 2? Page 2 is a compilation of stories and news tidbits, which for whatever reason, didn’t make the front page of /Film. After the jump we’ve included 30 different items, fun images, videos, casting tidbits, articles of interest and more. It’s like a mystery grab bag of movie web related goodness. If you have any interesting items that we might’ve missed that you think should go in /Film’s Page 2 – email us!
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UPDATE: Without any explanation, Deadline’s story no longer mentions Matt Dillon, but does say the other male role is not yet cast. More info as we get it. Original article follows.
Over the past year we’ve known that Roman Polanski was prepping an adaptation of Yasmina Reza‘s Tony-winning play God of Carnage. And once free from prison and house arrest, Polanski evidently went to work on the movie in earnest, as it now has one hell of a cast. Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz and Matt Dillon are set to star as two New York couples who are led by their kids into a night of tearing each other (metaphorically) to pieces. Read More »
Relativity Media announced today that Peter Farrelly (of the famous comedy directing team The Farrelly Brothers), Brett Ratner, actress Elizabeth Banks, Bob Odenkirk and Griffin Dunne (The Accidental Husband) are directing a sketch comedy feature film. More directors are expected to be announced shortly. Originally set up at Overture Films, the yet-to-be-titled comedy project takes a unifying storyline for a series of sketch comedies in the vein of the 1970s hits Kentucky Fried Movie and Groove Tube. Not much more is known about the premise.
The growing cast includes Elizabeth Banks, Gerard Butler, Kieran Culkin, Hugh Jackman, Johnny Knoxville, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Chloe Moretz, Liev Schreiber, Sean William Scott, Tony Shalhoub, Emma Stone, Matt Walsh, Patrick Warburton, Naomi Watts, and Kate Winslet. The producers will announce additional cast members as further deals are solidified, and production will continue thru late May 2010.
I expect that we’ll be seeing more and more movies like this after the success of Valentine’s Day, which was able to cram an impressive ensemble cast into a modestly budgeted romantic comedy. And a Sketch movie allows you to cram even more stars and directors into a two hour feature for a low cost and time commitment. You can read the full press release after the jump.
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I’m excited about the upcoming version of Mildred Pierce to be directed by Todd Haynes. Already set to star Kate Winslet in the title role, the HBO mini-series has just added a couple more good names: Guy Pearce and Evan Rachel Wood. Sure, Wood’s career has been spotty, but there’s something that suggests she can do a lot more than what we’ve seen her manage recently. I really liked her in Woody Allen’s Whatever Works, for example.
The obvious guess is that Pearce will play the husband from whom Mildred Pierce splits and that Wood will play their daughter. But that’s unconfirmed for now. [Production Weekly]
After the break, it’s buddy comedy time again, and the Hugh Laurie/Catherine Keener indie gets another cast member. Read More »
Brief news on Contagion, the recently announced Steven Soderberg viral thriller penned by Scott Z. Burns. The film already has a hell of a cast: repeating Soderbergh star Matt Damon plus Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard and Jude Law are all in the lineup. Now Gwyneth Paltrow has joined as well, making this a cast that is sizable enough to span continents as a deadly virus spreads around the globe.
Burns and Soderbergh hatched the story while making The Informant!, and the script was inspired by the swine flu outbreak and discussions about “germs and how the nature of a virus could be used to deal with issues of sovereignty and as a metaphor for the way information and misinformation travel in contemporary society.”
The film isn’t sold to a distributor yet, but Soderberg & Co. are shopping it around based on a $60m budget. [
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This is really just confirmation of a story that broke last August: director Todd Haynes is adapting the classic James M. Cain novel Mildred Pierce into a television mini series starring Kate Winslet. That’s the old news. The new stuff, which confirms speculation from last summer, is that HBO has bought into the project and will broadcast the eventual result, which Haynes will begin shooting in April.
This is awesome news. Most should know the 1945 movie version of the book at least by reputation — it’s among the most iconic Joan Crawford roles, and the one which won her an Oscar.
But the film simplified the novel’s plot, contracted the timeline, cut out plenty of sex and skewed the whole thing to be more of a thriller. All reasonable — do whatever you want to a novel when adapting, as long as the result is good — and very much in keeping with trends at the time. But given five hours to play with, there’s ample reason to expect Haynes to be a lot more faithful to the original text. Far From Heaven proved he has total control over melodrama; this is one I can’t wait to see. [Variety]
Steven Soderbergh is putting off his Liberace biopic in favor of something with a little more heat and conventional appeal. Instead of Liberace, this fall Soderbergh will now shoot a script called Contagion by his The Informant! writer Scott Z. Burns. Said to be “an action-thriller about the outbreak of a deadly virus,” the script reportedly is constructed in a style much like that of Traffic. So expect several narrative strands that run parallel, with some of them finally (possibly) intertwining in some measure. Read More »
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