Did Memorial Day weekend throw you off enough that you missed some of the bigger entertainment stories this week? Well, don’t fret, because it’s time to take a look at the Best Stories of the Week.
This week we’ve got updates on Gambit with Channing Tatum, Marvel’s developing Doctor Strange, an interview with Pete Docter about Pixar’s Inside Out, a new director for Jonny Quest, trailers for The End of the Tour and the remake of Point Break, and much more. Hit the jump to get caught up on a week’s worth of the biggest stories.
Update: The news of Disney shutting down Tron 3 broke after this roundup was published, but definitely factors into the big news of the week. We’ve added that below.
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Bobby Fischer was a child chess prodigy, the youngest chess grandmaster at the time he was crowned, and eventually the representative of democracy in a politically-charged showdown with Soviet grandmaster Boris Spassky that took place in 1972. Bobby Fischer also totally lost it as he aged, becoming a Holocaust denier and anti-Semite, despite his own Jewish heritage.
Pawn Sacrifice features Tobey Maguire as Fischer and Liev Schreiber as Spassky, and is structured in a familiar “slice of history” biopic format that shows us Fischer’s childhood and rise to prominence in the chess world while focusing on his duel with Spassky and his disintegrating mental state. Check out the first Pawn Sacrifice trailer below to see how Maguire plays the renowned and broken champion. Read More »
Tobey Maguire plays chess champion Bobby Fischer in the film Pawn Sacrifice, directed by The Last Samurai helmer Ed Zwick. The first real trailer for the film should arrive shortly, given that we’ve got a poster, but for now we’ll have to stick with this debut one-sheet. Fortunately it’s a great image, with Maguire front and center, looking intense and somewhat unhealthy. See the image below. Read More »
Few modern American historical figures are as mysterious and mythical as chess champion Bobby Fischer. The first American, and youngest World Chess Champion, who famously disappeared for several decades, has been the subject of multiple narrative and documentary films.
A new effort has recently moved up on the board. It’s called Pawn Sacrifice and will be directed by Ed Zwick with Tobey Maguire set to play Fischer. Now Peter Sarsgaard and Liev Schreiber have joined the film, which has been gestating for several years with David Fincher once attached to direct. It finally starts filming in October. Read More »
The ever-fruitful and edgy creative partnership between director David Cronenberg and actor Viggo Mortensen continues, with today’s announcement of a sequel to their captivating 2007 Russian mob film Eastern Promises. The pic above perfectly conveys our expectations. Deadline reports that producer Paul Webster is overseeing the project, which now has a completed script by Steve Knight, who penned the original and also wrote David Fincher’s planned Bobby Fischer biopic Pawn Sacrifice. At this time last year, we posted on the possibility of a follow-up.
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Ah, spring, the season when we hear about a whole bunch of possible new David Fincher projects that he’ll very possibly never end up actually making. We love it when Fincher does make a movie, but between each one there’s always that long span of time where he’ll be attached to one feature after another.
Place your bets now on which of the following we’ll see in a cinema within the next couple years: the revamped, 3D version of Heavy Metal (discussed a couple days ago), the Bobby Fischer movie Pawn Sacrifice, or a US adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Read More »
Hopefully you’ve read a bit of sarcasm into the title of this piece, because I truly expect that Tobey Maguire is quite likely happy to set aside the Spider-Man costume. There’s a very specific challenge to making big superhero films, but after three of them I’d expect that the challenge of playing something like his character in Brothers would be immensely more satisfying.
Oddly, I envision famous chess master Bobby Fischer as being somewhere between Peter Parker and Maguire’s character in Brothers. Now Maguire is producing the film Pawn Sacrifice (a fantastic title) and eyeing the lead role, which would have him playing Fischer circa 1972, when he beat Russian chess champ Boris Spassky. Read More »
