Posted on Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 by Russ Fischer
Often with these aggregated casting pieces the idea is to group together a number of fairly small stories. In this case the names are big — Robert De Niro, Rachel McAdams, Woody Allen, Ryan Gosling, Steve Carrell — but the films are either ones we don’t know much about or have recently covered in detail. Essentially, we don’t have too much to add to the news about any of these projects at this point other than: “hey, now this person is on board.”
Take Dark Fields, the thriller directed by Neil Burger that will star Bradley Cooper. There was recently unconfirmed word that Elizabeth Banks is joining the cast, and while that remains to be confirmed, Variety now says that Robert De Niro is on board. He’ll play “a brilliant financial mogul who begins pursuing Cooper’s character,” who is a New York writer “who comes into possession of a designer drug that gives him newfound intelligence and success.” Time was I would have been thrilled to heard about De Niro being part of a film like this. Can Burger make this one work? Hope so.
After the break, McAdams augments Allen, and Ryan Gosling might do a comedy. Read More »
Posted on Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 by Russ Fischer
Briefly: I just talked about this film yesterday, when Marion Cotillard was announced as a member of the cast for Woody Allen’s upcoming film to be shot in Paris later this year. You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger is the film Allen shot in 2009, and has been planned for release in various markets this September. Now Sony Pictures Classics has bought the film for US distribution, and will release it this fall.
The film “revolves around different members of a family, their tangled love lives and their attempts to try to solve their problems,” which could apply equally to several of Allen’s other films. It stars Antonio Banderas, Josh Brolin, Anthony Hopkins, Naomi Watts, Gemma Jones, Freida Pinto and Lucy Punch. [Variety]
Posted on Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 by Russ Fischer
We still know very little about Woody Allen’s next film; he is one of the most protective filmmakers around when it comes to new projects. Typically Allen refuses to share any details about a work in progress, and he doesn’t actually give a new movie a title until it is finished.
We’ve now got one more piece of Allen’s next puzzle, however: it will star the Oscar-winning Marion Cotillard. Read More »
Posted on Friday, February 19th, 2010 by Russ Fischer
Owen Wilson is often thought of in light of his broad comedies, but he’s not stuck doing silly stuff. There’s his long association with Wes Anderson, a project currently in the works with James L. Brooks, and now Wilson has signed on to be in Woody Allen’s next movie. We don’t yet know what the film is called or whether it is a drama, a comedy or something in between. We know that Carla Bruni may have a role, and not much else.
Meanwhile, Allen’s next movie is You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, which stars Antonio Banderas, Josh Brolin, Anthony Hopkins, Naomi Watts, Gemma Jones, Freida Pinto and Lucy Punch and opens in September. [THR]
After the break, Ethan Hawke and Kristen Scott Thomas go to Paris, and Kevin Bacon goes to Thailand. Read More »
Posted on Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 by Peter Sciretta
Retro Whale has created a series of art based on the favorite filmmakers of film geeks. She has created quirky little portraits of 20 great filmmakers, which you can purchase as art prints, magnets, or 4×4 clapboard coasters (which are wall mountable).
Posted on Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 by Russ Fischer
Casting news will be thin until next week; Hollywood basically rolls up the sidewalks when a holiday like Thanksgiving comes around. Don’t expect much news. But we’ve got a weird note and a good one to get today going.
Woody Allen is working at a breakneck pace. There’s You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, his latest London-set film, which is already in post-production. He’s already thinking about his follow-up, which is said to be a romantic drama set in Paris. Back in June he met French president Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, and shortly after that he offered Bruni a role in his next film. Now she says she’s accepted, though in classic style for anyone taking a role in an upcoming Allen film, she doesn’t know what she’ll be playing. “He offered me a role in his next movie,” Bruni-Sarkozy told Canal Plus. “I don’t know for what character, but I said yes. I’m not an actress at all. Maybe I will be terrible. But, in my life, I cannot let such a chance go.” [Bloomberg] Read More »
Posted on Monday, October 26th, 2009 by Russ Fischer
Sounds like the punchline to a joke about a carnival fortune teller. Woody Allen has been quietly making his next film, and as per usual we’ve known almost nothing about it up until now. (Even his casts sometimes don’t get full scripts during production; Allen is quite good at keeping his films locked down.) Along with the title You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, we also have a brief synopsis, which you can find right after the jump. Read More »
After being cold-shouldered by the US studios, Woody Allen turned to globe trotting for both the finance and the settings for his projects. Match Point, Scoop, Cassandra’s Dream and his untitled 2009 project have all been set in London, Vicky Cristina Barcelona took place in, well, Barcelona, and now it looks as though he’s heading to Brazil for his 2011 production.
Woody Allen is working on his new movie to be filmed in London this Summer, and the cast he’s planned includes Josh Brolin, Anthony Hopkins, Antonio Banderas, Naomi Watts and, until recently, also featured Nicole Kidman. She recently bowed out, however, when the schedule for Rabbit Hole was set and clashed with Woody’s plan. Rabbit Hole took precedence as Kidman is not just acting in it, she’s also producing. As a result, Woody Allen has now replaced Ms. Kidman and his choice is a fascinating one. Against all of my intuition, he’s gone for the British actress Lucy Punch, who you probably know best from CBS sitcom The Class or Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz.
I just got back from ShowWest in Las Vegas. ShoWest is a convention for theater owners where, among other things, Hollywood previews some of their upcoming movies. You’ve seen some of my ShoWest overage on the site over the last week, but there was so much going on that I couldn’t get to it all. Frosty from Collider joins me in this video blog wrap-up, where we take a look at nearly everything that we saw over the course of the four day convention. We broke it into two parts because it runs a little bit long. Here is some of the stuff we talked about:
Neill Blomkamp’s District 9, Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes, Tron 2 3-D, Beauty and the Beast in 3-D, Angels & Demons, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, Woody Allen’s new film Whatever Works, The Hurt Locker, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, The Hangover, Terminator Salvation, Robert Zemeckis’ A Christmas Carol, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, The Proposal, The Princess and the Frog, Men in Black 3, Spider-Man 4, Ghostbusters 3, The Ugly Truth, Julie and Julia, and The Year One.
In the last 5 minutes of the video, George (El Guapo) from Latino Review, Alex from First Showing, Ed from Coming Soon, and Katey from Cinemablend make a cameo appearance and briefly discuss their favorite things from the con. A big thanks goes to Katey Rich for producing this segment. She did the camera work and helped us organize the talking points. Without her, we would have been babbling even more than we did. Part 2 is after the jump.
