New Films in Production

[Derek Estes]

"I was talking with Martin Scorsese about doing what I guess you'd call a sequel to Taxi Driver, where he is older."

I wonder if Marty is talking back, or if Bobby is just hoping to revive his reputation. I read that Scorsese is planning on making smaller films for awhile, so he can have a little more control, and possibly more energy.

[filmfan]

Travis Bickle Meets the Fockers ?

It's time has long gone past for any reassessment or remake, or whatever you want to call it. DeNiro, if he does do it, will be doing it to renew his "artsy fartsy" roots. He just doesn't have it in him.

ALL the special elements that made it a special film have long disintegrated...let's just all move on.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

From Latino Review:

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Superman has found his sidekick. Sam Huntington has been cast as Daily Planet cub reporter Jimmy Olsen in Bryan Singer's Superman movie. The cast includes Brandon Routh as Clark Kent/Superman, Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor, Hugh Laurie as Daily Planet editor-in-chief Perry White and James Marsden as Richard White. Kate Bosworth is in negotiations to play Lois Lane. Olsen was a wide-eyed photographer who even had a watch with a Superman signal. Olsen had his own comic in the 1960s and '70s titled "Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen." Since the late '80s, the comics have portrayed Olsen in a more serious light.

[Grimfarrow]

Interesting news from Wild Bunch, who picked up international sales for THE WAYWARD CLOUD by Tsai Ming-Liang, which is set to create a brouhaha at Berlin this year (I can't wait).

Tran Anh Hung's "I Came With the Rain," an English-language project about a serial killer.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

From the IMDB:

Nicholson To Play Irish Gang Boss

Jack Nicholson is joining Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio in their upcoming movie The Departed - as an Irish gang boss. Nicholson has met with longtime pals DiCaprio and director Martin Scorsese about the movie, a remake of the Chinese film Internal Affairs, featuring Damon and DiCaprio as opposing undercover cops. He says, "(I've been) looking for a bad guy - I just did three comedies. (DiCaprio, Scorsese and I) had been looking for something to do together." Of his Boston Irishman role, he jokingly adds, "I won't have to act much." Mark Wahlberg will also appear in the movie, which has yet to cast a female psychiatrist.

Looks like this cast is shaping up. Although, dumbasses at the IMDB got the title of the original film wrong. *sigh*

[DrewReiber]

Can Wes still pull it off?

He's not going to pull off anything. He wrote the movie (and horror) off publicly quite some time ago, about the time Dimension had them re-write/re-film two-thirds of the picture... followed by Rick Baker's quitting the project and the coming of CGI werewolves (thanks Bob Weinstein, AGAIN, ugh).

Craven was saying that it was just about finishing the job now so he could get out of it, and do something else. That's why Red-Eye is a thriller instead. Trust me, I don't think there's a soul at Dimension that believes in this project, so we shouldn't either. However, Red-Eye comes out this year and the DP is Robert Yeoman! That cheers me up.

[Pinback]

He's not going to pull off anything. He wrote the movie (and horror) off publicly quite some time ago

Don't count on it...Craven is notoriously contradictory in his attitude to horror. Every time he has a big hit in the genre, he tries to distance himself from horror altogether and fails dismally (Music of the Heart anyone?). Next time he's forced into making a slasher film he'll be praising the artistic freedom and psychological depth that only horror films allow him to explore...

[DrewReiber]

Don't count on it...Craven is notoriously contradictory in his attitude to horror. Every time he has a big hit in the genre, he tries to distance himself from horror altogether and fails dismally (Music of the Heart anyone?). Next time he's forced into making a slasher film he'll be praising the artistic freedom and psychological depth that only horror films allow him to explore...

That's not what happened. Craven had been trying to break into drama for over a decade at that point in his career. I believe Music from the Heart was part of his deal for doing the additional Scream sequels. After all, he did it inbetween a commitment he had already made to making the trilogy.

As for "every time", what other examples are you speaking of? I don't recall anything like this, specifically, happening before in his career. And if it's just that one time, when he didn't even distance himself from the genre anyway, how is he "notorious" for it? Maybe you're just being a tad overreactive here.

Personally, I find his producing efforts far more offensive than anything else he's done. Avoiding "Wes Craven Presents" titles is one of the first things I tell people when first becoming their friend.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

The Super Bowl trailer for Batman Begins is up and can be found here.

[ellipsis7]

Scorsese, Di Caprio and Aviator scribe John Logan are looking at remaking Kurosawa's DRUNKEN ANGEL together, according to The Hollywood Reporter...

[Nihonophile]

Scorsese, Di Caprio and Aviator scribe John Logan are looking at remaking Kurosawa's DRUNKEN ANGEL together, according to The Hollywood Reporter...

Better them than that spielberg ikiru rapage. I have hopes he will take it in a new direction, thereby making a new movie but also fulfilling the obligation that Drunken Angel be remade.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

From FilmForce:

Exclusive Miami Vice Casting Buzz - Some Michael Mann vets to join it?

February 10, 2005 - IGN FilmForce was advised by a source that two veterans of Michael Mann films � specifically Wes Studi and Danny Trejo � were up for roles in the writer-director's big-screen remake of Miami Vice.

Studi appeared in Mann's Heat and Last of the Mohicans, while Trejo was a member of Robert De Niro's crew in Heat.

We asked Mr. Trejo's reps at Amsel, Eisenstadt & Frazier Talent Agency if he was up for the role of Lt. Martin Castillo, which was played on the original series by Edward James Olmos.

While not confirming that Trejo's part would be Castillo, AEF did advise IGN that "our office is currently in discussions regarding the project and Danny Trejo. ... He is under consideration for two roles in the project."

Mr. Studi's management � the ironically named Michael Mann Talent Agency � would not confirm or deny that Studi had been approached about Miami Vice, except to coyly suggest the fact that the actor has collaborated with Mann twice before should speak for itself.

Studi has appeared in Deep Rising, Mystery Men, Geronimo and the PBS telepic Skinwalkers. Trejo's credits include the Spy Kids series, From Dusk Till Dawn, Con Air and Once Upon a Time in Mexico.

Miami Vice begins filming April/May for a July 28, 2006 release

.
Also, some snazzy pics for the Vogons in the new Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

The trailer for Richard Linklater's remake of the Bad News Bears.

Oh dear...

[dx23]

Better them than that spielberg ikiru rapage.

Actually is Jim Sheridan doing the remake and it still in the planning stages.

[GringoTex]

Actually, I'm not sure how this could be anything but great. It's completely within Linklater's milieu.

[oldsheperd]

Just heard that Bob Dylan is finally going to let Todd Haynes make a movie of his life. Haynes is said to be looking to use seven different ators to prtray Dylan in an abstract manner. Haynes hopes to have a black woman to play one of the seven Dylans to show his inner black womaness.

[zedz]

I thought this was old news (so old I'd expect the film to be just about ready for release now). Was there some Bob approvals hold-up?

The film was going to be called 'I'm Not There,' after what might be Dylan's greatest unreleased song (if not his greatest song, period), so I'm assuming Haynes was hoping to include some treasures from the vaults on the soundtrack. Knowing how protective Dylan is of that stuff, this may have been a major hurdle. . .

[Lino]

This is apparently a remake of an old film which in the US was named Yokai Monsters: Spook Warfare.

This is the poster for the Miike remake, and the official site.

Looks interesting to say the least!

[Fletch F. Fletch]

From the Guardian:

Downey Jr and Gyllenhaal in serial killer thriller

Robert Downey Jr will star alongside Jake Gyllenhaal as a reporter trying to discover the killer's identity

Robert Downey Jr and Jake Gyllenhaal will star in David Fincher's long-awaited project, Zodiac. Mark Ruffalo, lately seen in Collateral and In the Cut, is also in this real-life story.

Zodiac tells of a serial killer who murdered at least 37 people in the San Francisco area in the 60s and 70s but was never caught. Downey Jr and Gyllenhaal will play Paul Avery and Robert Graysmith, the San Francisco Chronicle reporters who investigated the murders. Their paper was used by the killer as a means of communicating with authorities. Ruffalo will play the homicide inspector in charge of the case.

Zodiac will be the first project for Fincher since 2002's Panic Room, and sees him return to serial killing, a theme he first found international success with thanks to Seven (1995).

The script is by James Vanderbilt, and is based on two books written by San Francisco Chronicle reporter Graysmith, Zodiac and its 2000 sequel Zodiac Unmasked: The Identity of America's Most Elusive Serial Killer Revealed.

From JoBlo:

Gellar as a porn star?

After years of wondering what the hell SOUTHLAND TALES, Richard Kelly's follow-up to DONNIE DARKO, would actually be about (and whether it would actually get made), we finally have an answer. The film will star Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Seann William Scott and Sarah Michelle Gellar in the main three roles with a large ensemble supporting cast. Johnson will star in the film as Boxer Santaros, an action star with amnesia; Gellar will play Krysta Now, a porn star working on her own reality TV show; and, Scott will star as David Clark a Hermosa Beach police officer who "holds the key to a vast conspiracy." Kelly described the film in the press release as a "strange hybrid of the sensibilities of Andy Warhol and Philip K. Dick" set in the futuristic landscape of Los Angeles on July 4, 2008, as it stands on the brink of social, economic and environmental disaster. Rock's techno-pop poster boy Moby will provide the score for the film. And if you thought that's all Kelly had up his sleeve, boy oh boy were you mistaken. According to the release, "In addition to the feature film, an expanded version of SOUTHLAND TALES will be presented as a nine-part interactive experience with the prequel saga to be published as six separate 100 page graphic novels, each written by Kelly. The graphic novels will be released over a six month period early next year leading up to the film's release with the feature film comprised of the story's final three chapters." WOW. And that's still not it. Kelly says he plans for the SOUTHLAND TALES website (which is already live here) to be one of the "largest and most elaborate" ever created for a film. "The graphic novels will work in tandem with the website, creating a more epic multimedia experience for those interested in taking the plunge," says Kelly. Filming is scheduled to begin on August 1 in Los Angeles. Man, I never thought that Sarah Michelle Gellar portraying a porn star wouldn't be the best thing about any movie but I guess I was wrong...

[dvdane]

Having just seen "xXx 2", written by Simon Kinberg, I'm begining to get scared about what "X-men 3" will be like, especially considering that Kinberg is such a bad writer ("Elektra", "Fantastic Four"). While Zak Penn was called in to rewrite Kinbergs script for "Elektra", he also had rewritten a significant portion of "X-men 3", also a screenplay by Kinberg.

I'm beginning to suspect, that the real reason that Singer, Ott and "X-men 2" writers Dougherty and Harris, left the project and went on to "Superman Returns" was because the studio had chosen Kinbergs script instead of theirs.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

From The Guardian:

Stone bounces back with Ellroy cop saga

Thursday April 28, 2005

Contrary to early indications, the misfortunes of Alexander do not appear to have inflicted any lasting damage on its creator. Having licked his wounds following the film's poorly-received release last year, Oliver Stone looks poised to direct The Night Watchman, a cop thriller for Millennium Films.

Based on an original script by crime writer James Ellroy, The Night Watchman spins the tale of a disgraced LAPD officer who is out to clear his name and expose corruption within the force. The film is reportedly set during the early-to-mid 1990s, when the LAPD found itself in the spotlight due to the Rodney King affair and the trial of OJ Simpson.

The Night Watchman has already taken a long and circuitous route through development. Initially it was reported that David Fincher was due to direct the film for Warner Bros. The project was then shunted across to Universal, with Spike Lee attached to direct Keanu Reeves in the lead role. Lee has since bailed out to shoot the cat-and-mouse hostage thriller Inside Man with Denzel Washington. Reeves, however, remains on board.

In the meantime, there was further good news for Stone. Mauled by the critics and struggling at the US box office, his Grecian epic Alexander looked unlikely to recoup its $150m investment. But global receipts have now nudged it into the black. Latest figures show that the film has now made $167m at the worldwide box office.

From imdb:

De Niro and Scorsese Discuss 'Taxi Driver' Sequel

Screen legend Robert De Niro has reunited with iconic director Martin Scorsese to work on a sequel to their classic movie Taxi Driver. The Oscar-winning actor, who starred as disturbed Vietnam veteran Travis Bickle in the 1976 film, has confirmed the movie veterans are mulling over script ideas for a follow-up to the gritty original. Apart from his comedy turn in Meet The Parents and its recent sequel Meet The Fockers, De Niro has starred in a series of flop films - and critics are hoping Travis Bickle's resurrection will restore his reputation as one of the greatest dramatic actors of all time. De Niro, 61, says, "I was talking with Martin Scorsese about doing what I guess you'd call a sequel to Taxi Driver, where he is older."

Excuse me?

Schrader has shot down the idea of a Taxi Driver sequel... at least with his involvment.

SCHRADER DISMISSES CHANCE OF A TAXI DRIVER SEQUEL

TAXI DRIVER screenwriter PAUL SCHRADER has dismissed comments made by ROBERT DE NIRO that a sequel to the 1976 vigilante classic is being worked on.

Schrader, who is also a film-maker in his own right and has made movies including BLUE COLLAR, AMERICAN GIGOLO and AFFLICTION, admits he met up to discuss the idea of a follow-up with De Niro and director MARTIN SCORSESE, but that they soon threw the idea out.

In January (05), De Niro was reported as saying, "I was talking with Martin Scorsese about doing what I guess you'd call a sequel to Taxi Driver, where he is older."

However, dismissing the likelihood of a sequel, Schrader says, "Absolute bulls**t. We did meet about four years ago - Marty, Bob and me - at Bob's suggestion.

"But we came to the mutual decision that it was a very bad idea. The rumour must have surfaced from there.

"The concept just didn't work. TRAVIS (BICKLE, De Niro's character) is dead maybe six months after that movie ended. He was always on a suicide trip. If he didn't make it that time, how is he going to make it to middle age?

"I just couldn't imagine a middle-aged Travis. Could you?"
29/04/2005 20:03

[solaris72]

From Dark Horizons:

David Cronenberg, who is in Cannes with his In Competition film "A History of Violence," will next direct "Painkillers," a futuristic thriller says The Hollywood Reporter.

Producer Robert Lantos and Cronenberg confirmed the project on Friday, which has been in development for several years. Based on Cronenberg's first original screenplay in eight years, "Painkillers" is budgeted at $35 million and is being readied for release in late 2006.

The futuristic "Painkillers" follows a detective who is sent undercover to save humanity in a world where surgery is sex and pain is pleasure. The film has been budgeted at $35 million, the largest of any Cronenberg pic.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

It's good to hear that Miramax has finally stopped sitting on Gilliam's latest and seems to be making a push to have it released this summer.

Gilliam brings �Brothers Grimm� to Cannes
Filmmaker showed 20 minutes of the Matt Damon-starring film
The Associated Press
Updated: 2:34 p.m. ET May 13, 2005

In Terry Gilliam�s fertile imagination, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were more than fairy-tale collectors. They actually lived a fairy tale, complete with curses, monsters and an evil hag in a tower.

Gilliam and Miramax boss Harvey Weinstein showed off about 20 minutes of �The Brothers Grimm� to reporters at the Cannes Film Festival on Friday, looking to give their movie a publicity boost for its release amid the crowded summer blockbuster season.

�The Brothers Grimm� stars Matt Damon and Heath Ledger as the 19th century folklorists who gathered tales that have enchanted and terrorized generations of children.

The movie casts the Grimm siblings as hucksters who travel from town to town with a bag of tricks and a reputation as fearless monster slayers, spinning tall tales of supernatural terrors that they will exorcise � for a fee.

The Grimm boys get a dose of fairy-tale reality when they encounter a true curse, complete with a forest of trees that can move on its own, a horse that swallows a child and races off with it in its belly and a 500-year-old queen in a tower (Monica Bellucci) abducting young girls to steal their life energy and preserve her beauty.

The Cannes footage revealed a blend of gritty 19th century reality and the wild, surreal visuals Gilliam (�Brazil,� �The Fisher King,� �Twelve Monkeys�) is known for.

�I tried to bring it down to a real fairy-tale level,� Gilliam said. �I want the ground to be below us, because when it disappears, it�s a longer fall.�

The film, Gilliam�s first since 1998�s �Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,� has had a longer run to the finish line than most movies, with Gilliam laboring on it for two years and Miramax shuffling the release date repeatedly.

A year ago at Cannes, when the movie still was scheduled for release in late 2004, Miramax showed off a few minutes of �The Brothers Grimm.� The release later switched to early this year, then late this year, and finally shifted back to this August.

�Last year, we showed three minutes, this year, 20 minutes. This way, about four or five years from how, you�ll see the finished film,� Gilliam joked.

Gilliam has had epic battles with studios and financial backers on such films as �Brazil� and �The Adventures of Baron Munchausen,� and his uncompleted �The Man Who Killed Don Quixote� with Johnny Depp shut down after just six days of shooting in 2000 because of a series of freak troubles.

Weinstein and Gilliam reportedly clashed on �The Brothers Grimm,� but they appeared chummy at Cannes, and Weinstein said Miramax was releasing the film with a huge marketing blitz.

Delays on �The Brothers Grimm� resulted because Gilliam and his collaborators had to inject top-of-the-line effects and production values essentially at half-price, Weinstein said.

�It takes so long when the movie should cost $150 million and it only costs $75 million,� Weinstein said.

[Lino]

And you can watch this movie in full in about ONE year's time.

If you don't know this plasticine dynamic duo, you really should. They're from the same creators of Chicken Run, you know. Anyway, here's the trailer from their new and first feature film from Dreamworks.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

From The Guardian:

Terry Gilliam wants to resurrect his disastrous Don Quixote. But first he and Johnny Depp have to make a few million dollars. Andrew Pulver reports.

The last time anyone saw Terry Gilliam's work in a cinema, he was being chased across the Navarre desert by F16s and flash floods as his long-nurtured Don Quixote film was collapsing around his ears. The fact that the entire disastrous experience was captured in the documentary Lost in La Mancha only added undreamed-of dimensions to his professional humiliation. Which is why, nearly five years after his last film was driven into the Spanish dirt, it's a pleasure to see Gilliam happily bounding on to a movie theatre platform to introduce a 20-minute taster for his new film, The Brothers Grimm.

Though Gilliam seems a little uncertain that the clip-show will do his film justice ("I promise you," he says, "none of the best bits are in here"), he enters fully into the theatre of the occasion. He calls his leading lady, Monica Bellucci, to the stage and, after she plants a big smacker of a kiss on him, bellows: "I'll go and change my trousers now." The footage that follows - which will make up Gilliam's first proper movie since Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in 1998 - is a spectacular m�lange of extraordinary set design, swooping camerawork, creepy special effects and knockabout gags. Gilliam ought to be pleased: his Grimm, with an unrecognisable Matt Damon and Heath Ledger as siblings roaming the 18th-century German forests looking to help fearful villagers out of their spooky predicaments, looks set to be the commercial hit he has so long craved. Looks is the operative word, of course, because this is not much more than an extended trailer - mere cinematic titillation. Who knows what the final movie will be like?

But Gilliam has got some powerful help in his corner: the Weinstein brothers, Harvey and Bob, who took on the project in 2003 when, Gilliam says, original producers MGM pulled out their funding at the last minute. It's fair to say that Gilliam, who has a reputation as a wildly expensive cinematic visionary, might not be the best creative fit for the tough-minded, dollars-and-cents Weinsteins - you can't help but visualise two juggernauts crashing head-on into each other. But, if nothing else, Gilliam recognises their ability to get a movie out there. "They're going to sell the shit out of it, and make it a success. They're the best at it," he mutters after the show is finished.

Grimm has been a long time in the making, and Gilliam's occasionally fractious relationship with the brothers is at least partly responsible. "You know," he says, "the Weinsteins were real fairy godbrothers when MGM pulled out. As I said to Bob, this may not be a good marriage, because they are who they are, and I am who I am, and we just may not manage to get through this thing."

Eleven months ago, in June 2004, they were at loggerheads as to how to complete Grimm - "we got into a real battle" - and Gilliam decided to take a break and start filming another of his long-cherished projects, an adaptation of Mitch Cullin's novel Tideland. "It was about perception, really - different views of what the film should be. I can only do what I do; I don't know how to do anything else. They do what they do. There is no middle position. It was crazy. The worst thing you can do is compromise, then everyone loses that way."

After Tideland finished shooting, Gilliam came back for another look at The Brothers Grimm in January this year. "The six-month hiatus was good for everybody. I saw a couple of things I could change. You know what I did? I cut out the most expensive scene in the movie. It was something I'd thought about, but didn't have the balls to do until I'd walked away from it for a bit. It'll be on the DVD - the most expensive extra ever made. It's a great sequence, a fight in a tree. But Terry Jones spotted the problem. It made the movie broken-backed. It happens in the middle of the story and, as it's the most spectacular bit, where can you go after that? To cut out the most expensive scene, that was difficult. But at least we all came out liking the movie."

It's clear that Gilliam's horrible experience with the Don Quixote movie cast a shadow over his film-making activities for years. "The worst thing that happened was that, a year or so afterwards, four different projects I was working on all failed. It was a cumulative effect. That's why I ended up doing Grimms, simply because it was there. I wasn't certain about the film, but I had to work. I'd reached the point where I thought, if I don't fucking work, I don't have a clue who I am or what I can do. You start losing confidence in your abilities. Grimms was a long slog. By the end I'd lost even more confidence."

Here Gilliam gives one of his characteristic high-pitched giggles. "That's why I did Tideland. Tideland was the thing that saved my fucking ass. We had been trying to get the money before Grimms, but hadn't been able to. Then we got it, and we'd reached the point on Grimms when we were at loggerheads, so I said, 'Fuck it, I'll go and do this other film.' I guess I regained all the confidence I'd lost over this whole thing. And that made it easier to come back to Grimms and make the changes it needed. Confidence is the whole thing. As a director, if you lose confidence, you might as well be shot. You've no function."

In any case, the Don Quixote project may not be completely dead; the corpse is still twitching. Insurance companies got hold of the film when the production collapsed. "For the past two and a half years, I've been going through hoops trying to get the thing back. There are lawyers in the way. That's what I want to do next. In the autumn, Johnny Depp will be finished with Pirates of the Caribbean 2: he'll have made so much money, he'll have time and he'll be available next spring. Let's go to work."

Gilliam has been considerably aided by Depp's Hollywood ascension in the period since Quixote. He recalls another one of his legion of aborted projects, an adaptation of Good Omens, the Terry Pratchett/ Neil Gaiman collaboration. "We were going to do it after Quixote. Johnny Depp and Robin Williams. Sixty million budget. We only needed $15m from America. I go out there, we couldn't raise it. Not a penny. They said, Depp, he does these European art movies; Robin, his career's over. Now Johnny is sitting at the top of the pile. That's what's so awful about the system. No one thinks long-term."

Gilliam laughs as he thinks about it now. "Johnny and I made a deal when Quixote collapsed. He said, 'You make a commercial film, I'll make a commercial film, and we'll get the money to do Quixote.' He made Pirates. Grimms is my commercial film. We had a screening a few days ago, showed it to the producer of Tidelands, Jeremy Thomas. He didn't know anything about it beforehand. He saw it and said, 'I guarantee, it'll be $200m at least.' That was nice - a producer saying that. I hope he's right."

Here's a link to some pics from De Palma's latest -- an adaptation of James Ellroy's crime novel, Black Dahlia.

[dvdane]

Kitano is currently shooting his next film, which has the title Takeshis' and about which Kitano says, "500% Kitano".