On Easter Sunday, I landed in New Orleans to sweat and drop by the set of RED, yet another comic book adaptation, but one packing the following A-list cast:
Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren (as a tea-sipping sniper with a 50-cal machine gun), Mary-Louise Parker, Star Trek’s Karl Urban, Brian Cox, Richard Dreyfuss, Nip/Tuck‘s Julian McMahon, and Ernest Borgnine
And I would be remiss not to list the movie’s possible scene hog: a stuffed toy pig with wild eyes toted around by Malkovich’s character…a paranoiac-genius. Shocked? The movie, due in October, is loosely based on a very lean 2003 WildStorm comic book series by Warren Ellis and artist Cully Hammer, whom we spoke with on set. Willis stars as a retired assassin named Frank Moses, a hermetic, once-valuable man now wanted dead by pesky/shady forces. Naturally, Moses seeks defense and camaraderie from a badass crew of vets (Malkovich, Mirren, and Freeman). The film, described as “hard PG-13,” is directed by Robert Schwentke, best known for the Fincher-aping Flightplan.
RED is an acronym for Retired Extremely Dangerous, and the ensemble aspect means the end product should comfortably fit into the current action zeitgeist of grizzled, last hurrah actioners (The Expendables) and specialized, quick-quip posses (The A-Team). However, on set producers compared the tone not to other genre properties but to Ocean’s Eleven with a splash of True Lies. Ellis and Hammer have both publicly endorsed the decision to forgo their comic book’s bloody, quasi-polemic seriousness in addition to much of the storyline (wherein Moses was a lone wolf). After the jump are thoughts from producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura (Transformers, Constantine), and my own observations (excluding a strip club excursion later that night with various web editors). Look for interviews with several cast members, including an expletive-liberated Willis in top form, closer to release.
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Summit Entertainment and Transformers/GI Joe producer Lorenzo Di Bonaventura are in talks to acquire the feature film rights to Andrew Klavan‘s young-adult book series Homelanders.
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1408 screenwriter Matthew Greenberg has been hired to pen a remake of another Stephen King adaptation, Pet Sematary. Transformers/G.I. Joe/1408 producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura is attached, and the project is set up at Paramount Pictures. Aside from the previous King adaptation, Greenberg’s screenwriting credits include a bunch of subpar genre efforts: Reign of Fire, Halloween H20 and The Prophecy II. No director has been attached.
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Paramount Pictures has acquired Chad St. John‘s action adventure spec screenplay The Further Adventures of Doc Holliday. St. Johnis one of the hottest screenwriters in Hollywood at the moment. He had not one, but two screenplays on the 2009 Black List, a listing of the best unproduced screenplays in Hollywood – Motor City about “A small time hood is framed and sent to prison, only to exact revenge years later” and The Days Before about “A man who possesses a time travel device uses it to go back in time to prevent an alien invasion.” St. John has also developing screenplays for the film adaptation of the Ronin and Sgt. Rock comic books.
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G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra/Transformers producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura has signed a deal to produce a big screen adaptation of Michael Scott’s six-part fantasy book series The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel. di Bonaventura tells Variety that “Michael’s fantastic series is a natural evolution from Harry Potter,” but will it come close to the popularity of the teen wizard series?
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Hey kids, maybe if you murder a couple hundred people for the mob, Mickey Rourke will star in your life story, too. Stay in school. Last month, we wrote about the beef had by true crime writer and biographer, Philip Carlo, with actor/model Channing Tatum portraying Richard “The Ice Man” Kuklinksi in a feature film based on his book The Ice Man. Carlo deemed Tatum unworthy to play the infamous goon, who died in prison in 2006. Rubbing in his dislike for the young actor, Carlo put in a commendable word for the veteran Rourke. Well, the disagreement between Carlo and mega-producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura led to the latter’s rights expiring on the project last month; in the meantime, Rourke got in touch with Carlo and now he’s apparently set to star. Carlo says via the NY Post that Rourke thinks the movie could “be his Raging Bull.” Not the smoothest comparison in my opinion…
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For all of the blame being placed on “flyover state people” for the success of G.I. Joe, the most outspoken journo-champions for this trendy daycare fare are based in L.A. and New York. It’s one thing to be an adult cashing a check by playing a literal piece of plastic—that is to say: gross—it’s another stumble entirely to be an intelligent adult cheering the result. But predictably, the careers of the actors involved in Joe will benefit, and Channing Tatum, the pin-up version of the guys who carouse Wal-Mart parking lots on Saturday night, is one of ‘em. Evidently, Tatum was to play the lead in a biopic about Richard Kuklinksi aka The Ice Man (above), possibly the most-publicized serial-murderer/mafia hitman of recent times. No more. Author Phil Carlo, who penned the adapted best-selling biography on the Ice Man, has humorously called bullshit on Tatum’s casting, thus placing the project in development hell (alongside its subject, no less)…
I really hated the idea of Channing Tatum,” Carlo tells the NY Post. I told [G.I. Joe mega-producer] Lorenzo di Bonaventura that this is not the guy to play one of the most feared killers of the 20th Century,” Carlo said. “I think Mickey Rourke would really be good. He’s got that sense of danger, and there’s a similarity between the two. But it’s not Channing Tatum.”
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When movie studios are developing big budget big screen movies based on Stretch Armstrong and Candyland, I knew it was only a matter of time before Hollywood started to mine some of the classic video games of the children of the 70′s/80′s. Universal has won a four-studio bidding war to win the film rights to the classic Atari video game Asteroids. Newcomer Matthew Lopez, who came out of Disney’s writing program and did work on Bedtime Stories, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and Race to Witch Mountain, has been hired to write the screen adaptation.
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