Posted on Wednesday, February 8th, 2012 by Angie Han
When it first came out in 1964, Mary Poppins was a smash hit both commercially and critically: it out-earned The Sound of Music and My Fair Lady at the box office, received thirteen Academy Award nominations and won five. Now, nearly fifty years later, Disney is looking toward returning to the Mary Poppins well — but don’t worry, it’s not a sequel. The studio is close to picking up Saving Mr. Banks, Kelly Marcel’s 2011 Black List script about Walt Disney‘s 14-year effort to persuade author P.L. Travers to sell the movie rights to her tale.
While that may not sound like the sexiest premise in the world, the prickly relationship between Travers and Disney should provide more than enough drama to power a film. Especially if the story falls into hands as capable as those of Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep, both of whom are rumored to be eyeing the leads. More details after the jump.
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Posted on Wednesday, December 14th, 2011 by Angie Han
Briefly: Sony has just announced release dates for two very different projects I’d very nearly forgotten about. Variety reports that Paul Greengrass‘ reality-based Somali pirate tale Captain Phillips is now slated for a March 22, 2013 opening, while Salim Akil‘s music-themed drama Sparkle will hit August 10, 2012.
The former stars Tom Hanks as real-life hero Captain Richard Phillips, who offered himself as a hostage to Somali pirates in exchange for the safety of his cargo ship’s crew. Adapted by Billy Ray (State of Play) from Phillips’ memoir A Captain’s Duty, Captain Phillips comes from The Social Network producers Scott Rudin, Michael De Luca, Dana Brunetti, and Kevin Spacey. The March 2013 date pits Captain Phillips against DreamWorks Animation’s The Croods, which is aimed at a younger demographic.
Akil’s Sparkle is a remake of the 1976 drama of the same title, and is a fictionalized take on the story of Diana Ross and The Supremes. Starring Jordin Sparks, Derek Luke, and Whitney Houston (in her first big-screen role since 1996′s The Preacher’s Wife), the film will feature original music from R. Kelly. Sparkle‘s August release coincides with the opening two rather dissimilar films — Jonathan Levine’s zombie romance Warm Bodies and Jay Roach’s political comedy Dog Fight.
The first trailer for Stephen Daldry‘s adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer‘s novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close tried to live in the area between quirky, endearing and sentimental. The balance didn’t work for me, especially thanks to the reliance on U2 as the score for the trailer. As a result I think that first look at the movie pegged it as little more than cloying Oscar bait.
Now there is a new trailer that goes straight for the sentiment by opening with the character played by Tom Hanks calling his wife, played by Sandra Bullock, from one of the high floors of the World Trade Center on the morning of 9/11. From there, the trailer swirls into minor portraits of some of the film’s characters and situations as it follows that couple’s son (newcomer Thomas Horn) through the turbulent days that follow 9/11, but there still isn’t much explanation of the story. See for yourself below. Read More »
Director Ron Howard decoded the first two and now it’s Mark Romanek‘s turn to crack the case. He’s reportedly the frontrunner to helm The Lost Symbol, the third installment in Dan Brown‘s massively successful series of mysteries centered on symbologist Robert Langdon. In the previous two films, The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons, Langdon was played by Tom Hanks and while the Oscar-winner has yet to commit to this sequel, he’s expected to return. Read more about Romaneck and The Lost Symbol itself after the jump. Read More »
Here’s the trailer for Stephen Daldry‘s adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer‘s novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, based on a script by Eric Roth. The movie has been a curiosity for me for months in part because the book is a piece of post-modernism that doesn’t lend itself easily to adaptation, and in part because Daldry chose a non-actor, Thomas Horn, to play the central role of 11-year old Oskar Schell. Sure, he’s got established stars like Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock as buffers, but that’s still a ballsy move. Get the first taste of what came of that big risk-taking, after the break. Read More »
The Wire‘s Michael K. Williams (who, like John Goodman, just guest-appeared on Community) was in the running for the title role in Quentin Tarantino‘s Django Unchained, and though he lost the part to Jamie Foxx, he may still end up in the film, in a part written just for him.
Hopefully another new job won’t get in the way; Williams will now also be a producer and actor in Life Garland‘s indie thriller The Suspect, written by Stuart Connelly. Here’s how the writer describes the film: “Two African American social scientists pose as bank robbers in an effort to understand the racial dynamics of small-town law enforcement. However, their experiment takes an unplanned, deadly turn.” That’s a great premise that could be the beginning of a compelling film. We’ll definitely follow the development. Shadow and Act reveals that Isaiah Washington is also set for the film.
After the break, David Duchovny rides a sub, and The Last Stand and Cloud Atlas get new actors. Read More »
This isn’t the sort of movie that we normally see Hugh Grant agree to make. The guy is drawn to romcoms of various stripes, with the last vaguely edgy movie he made possibly being the ’96 thriller Extreme Measures.
So it’s a big surprise — and not an unpleasant one — to see Grant booking a role in Cloud Atlas, the century-spanning, genre-hopping literary adaptation from co-writers and co-directors Tom Tykwer and Andy & Lana Wachowski. Read More »
My interest in the Tom Tykwer and Andy and Lana Wachowski adaptation of David Mitchell‘s novel Cloud Atlas just grew even more. We’ve reported on the film a fair few times, and it continues to sound wild. The book is an odd beast, with six stories, each presented in halves and nested within one another, that cover hundreds of years, dozens of characters and quite a few genres from nautical adventure to post-apocalyptic societal reboot.
Then there’s the fact that Tykwer and the Wacowskis are directing the film together, but with parallel film units. And the topline cast, which includes Tom Hanks, Hugo Weaving, Halle Berry, Susan Sarandon, Jim Broadbent and Bae Doona, is all set to play multiple roles. Now actor Ben Whishaw says that the actors will swap gender and race, too. (For Hanks, it’ll be Bosom Buddies 2.0.) How can you not be excited for this movie? Read More »
