Nicole Kidman to Star in “Indiana Jones-like Adventure” Entitled The 8th Wonder

Posted on Wednesday, September 17th, 2008 by Hunter Stephenson

It feels as if I am typing this item behind a curtain that flutters with the energy of Nicole Kidman’s online hecklers and haterz. Today the trades report that the actress has signed to star in The 8th Wonder, a new globe-trotting action adventure tent pole that aspires to “be to Raiders of the Lost Ark what the Bourne movies are to James Bond movies: a character-driven, treasure-hunting thriller.” Further details were not revealed, but the flick will be produced by Kidman and Laurence Mark (I Robot, The Lookout, and yes, Cutthroat Island) from a script to be written by Simon Kinberg (Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes, Jumper, X3).

While her Botox really kills me—every time I see a still from Australia, I think about blowfish and bad advice—Kidman’s performances in Van Sant’s To Die For and von Trier’s Dogville hulahoop the majority of A-list actresses out there. I’ll hold judgement until a director is announced, but if the project is in the vein of Romancing the Stone and Indiana Jones rather than another same-old SFX vapid-fest like Tomb Raider and National Treasure, it could be a welcome monkey wrench in the genre’s boy’s club. Cue a guy lifting up an Arnold Palmer in Hollywood and omnipotently dishing, “Yeah, but she isn’t bankable.”

Simon Kinberg takes on The Hardy Men

Posted on Wednesday, April 18th, 2007 by Peter Sciretta

Fox has hired Mr. & Mrs. Smith screenwriter Simon Kinberg to do a complete overhaul of The Hardy Men.

Kinberg has also written: xXx 2, X-Men: The Last Stand, and the upcoming Hayden Christensen/Samuel L. Jackson sci-fi thriller Jumper.

As we previously reported, Ben Stiller and Tom Cruise star as once wunderkind youth sleuths, have grown up. Long estranged, they’re brought together to solve one last case. The action comedy is based on the classic mystery book series The Hardy Boys. The movie re-teams Stiller with Night at the Museum director Shawn Levy. The studio hopes to put the film into production by 2008.

Cruise first met Stiller after seeing his Cruise impersonation on The Ben Stiller Show. The two starred together in a 2000 short film titled Mission: Improbable, in which Stiller portrayed a stuntman for Cruise on Mission: Impossible 2. You can see that short film at this link.

The original Hardy Boys book series was produced between 1927 and 1979 under the pen name Franklin W. Dixon. Although various ghostwriters were employed, under contract of secrecy, to pen the actual stories. In the book series, the brother amateur detectives solved mysteries in the fictional city of Bayport (on Barmet Bay) with their famous father, Fenton Hardy, a private detective formerly with the New York Police Department (something Veronica Mars later stole payed homage to).