There is a staggering amount of casting news today thanks in part to the in-progress European Film Market at the Berlin Film Festival, where producers take projects to gather foreign distribution deals and financing. So let’s get right to it.
First up, the Princess Diana film Caught in Flight, which will be directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel (The Invasion, Downfall) has found a new Princess. Last year Jessica Chastain was in talks for the role — there was a moment where she was in talks for every big female role, it seems — but now Diana will be played by Naomi Watts. Losing Chastain is unfortunate, but if Watts is the replacement I can’t see too many complaints being aired.
Written by Stephen Jeffreys, the film will shoot later this year with an emphasis on the last two years of Diana’s life; that is, after her 1995 divorce, and through her relationship with heart surgeon Dr. Hasnat Khan. “It charts how finding true personal happiness for the first time allowed her to achieve her defining successes evolving into a major international campaigner and humanitarian.” [Deadline]
After the break, Haley Joel Osment goes back to science fiction, and we catch up with two new roles for Katherine Heigl that were announced not long ago. Read More »
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Posted on Thursday, December 1st, 2011 by Angie Han
Two projects based on world-famous properties you probably loved growing up are inching just a little bit closer to the big screen. MGM has tapped Todd Berger to adapt Martin Handford‘s children’s book series Where’s Waldo? into a feature, while over at Warner Bros., Invictus and Sherlock Holmes writer Anthony Peckham has entered talks to do a rewrite of Matt Reeves‘ The Twilight Zone. More details after the jump.
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Posted on Thursday, September 1st, 2011 by Angie Han
If you happened to catch a screening of Attack the Block this summer, you probably walked away thinking the same thing we did: this John Boyega kid is going to be a huge star. Well, Boyega’s now landed his first part since Attack the Block opened, and it sounds like a great one. He’ll play the lead, Donnie, in HBO’s series Da Brick, a fictionalized telling of the earliest days of Mike Tyson‘s boxing career. Spike Lee is set to direct the pilot episode from a script by John Ridley (Three Kings), and will also executive produce along with Tyson, Ridley, Jim Lefkowitz, and Entourage creator Doug Ellin.
Da Brick centers around a young man in modern-day Newark, NJ who gets released from juvenile detention on his 18th birthday. The series will aim to deal with larger issues like “what it means to be a young, black man in supposedly post-racial America” and “what it means to be a man both for himself, and to those around him.” As long as the British Boyega can pull off a convincing Jersey accent, this seems like pitch-perfect casting. [Deadline]
After the jump, In Plain Sight‘s Rachel Boston faces a possible apocalypse with Julia Stiles and America Ferrera, and Harry Lloyd, a.k.a. Viserys Targaryen, joins Vera Farmiga and Mark Strong in Closer to the Moon.
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Trailers are an under-appreciated art form insofar that many times they’re seen as vehicles for showing footage, explaining films away, or showing their hand about what moviegoers can expect. Foreign, domestic, independent, big budget: I celebrate all levels of trailers and hopefully this column will satisfactorily give you a baseline of what beta wave I’m operating on, because what better way to hone your skills as a thoughtful moviegoer than by deconstructing these little pieces of advertising? Some of the best authors will tell you that writing a short story is a lot harder than writing a long one, that you have to weigh every sentence. What better medium to see how this theory plays itself out beyond that than with movie trailers?
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Jim Henson’s Muppets have always have a little subversion to them be it Miss Piggy’s sexual innuendo or their more recent viral videos. Well, Lionsgate seems to be on board with that idea as they’ve just acquired Happytime Murders, a dark, comedic murder mystery set in a world where Muppets and humans co-exist. It’s written by Todd Berger with Brian Henson, son of Jim, set to direct. Read more about the film after the jump. Read More »
The Jim Henson Co has begun to develop a puppet film noir detective comedy titled Happytime Murders. If we knew nothing else about this project, I would still spend $10 on a movie ticket. The story follows a puppet detective who is hired to solve a string of murders around a popular children’s television show called the Happytime Gang. The film will be populated with a mixture of human and puppet characters (to clarify, not “muppets”), and will be released under an alternative label “for content created specifically and exclusively for adult audiences.” Sounds promising. But here are two reasons why the film could suck:
1. Unfortunately, Brian Henson, the guy behind some of the worst of the Muppet movies (Treasure Island, Christmas Carol) is helming the project. To be fair, Henson directed episode of Stephen King’s Nightmares and Dreamscapes titled Battleground. It was filmed entirely without dialogue, and told the story of toy soldiers who come to life and kill a hit man played by William Hurt. Could be that children films just aren’t Henson’s area of expertise?
2. The film is being scripted by Todd Berger, the screenwriter behind the horrible 2005 Tom Arnold television movie Chasing Christmas. Berger most recently penned the direct to dvd Kung Fu Panda: Secrets of the Furious Five short film for Dreamworks Animation.
source: Variety
