New Films in Production

[willoneill]

So 7 years from now, are we going to be seeing and trailer for "Alien Vs. Predator Vs. Prometheus"? Or is this new film no longer related in any way at all?

[flyonthewall2983]

It's an original story, with no connection to either franchise. That it was conceived while the supposed Alien prequel was being written was just a happy accident. That's how it looks to me, anyway.

[Sledge.]

Steve Buscemi to direct William S. Burroughs' novel 'Queer'

I checked through search and I didn't see anyone else posting this. Personally, I'm really excited for this to come out.

[Dadapass]

Hasn't he been trying to direct this for awhile? Not sure where I heard this.

[ambrose]

Ingmar & I

[James Mills]

Ingmar & I

Thanks for that find. I'm excited for this, it sounds pretty interesting:

Mankell's Bergman film won't be a straight biopic. Instead, he says, it will pick away at one important question, namely, ''what price did he pay for his absolute, uncompromising way of relating himself to his art. You have to turn that question around and ask - what price did his family pay? This is exactly what I would like to talk about because this will give it some interesting meaning for other people. You can be a taxi driver, you can have a small company and you can experience the same thing - that you sacrifice certain things in life until it is too late to understand what you have done. Ingmar was a very, very lonely person when he was old … and he realised that he had treated people badly.''

[ambrose]

Anthony Hopkins in talks to play Alfred Hitchcock

[Finch]

Brian dePalma to remake Crime D'Amour as "Passion"

[swo17]

Coens to reremake The Ladykillers?

[matrixschmatrix]

Coens to reremake The Ladykillers?

Haha, they were originally going to script and not direct that one, too. I'm a tepid defender of the Ladykillers remake, but learn from your mistakes, man.

[Stefan Andersson]

Manoel de Oliveira starts shooting A Igreja do Diabo later in the year in Rio de Janeiro, for release in Brazil later this year (ImdB says October 2011), according to a short statement on various Portuguese online news sites. Fernanda Montenegro (Central Station) stars. The film is based on three short stories by Machado de Assis; one of those, Midnight Mass (A Missa do Galo), has been filmed earlier (1974, 10 mins.) as a short subject starring Montenegro, and by Nelson Pereira dos Santos (1981, 24 mins.)

[Finch]

Excellent Guillermo Del Toro interview in the New Yorker that goes into great detail on his At the Mountains of Madness adaptation: the Uni executives liked his presentation in mid-December but as of yet, the picture is NOT greenlit.

[Dadapass]

Apparently Chantal Akerman is shooting or has finished shooting her latest film Almayer's Folly. This was mentioned on CC's blog on Dec. 15 but it's news to me.

[Mr Sausage]

News to me as well, and I'm a huge Conrad fan. I'm excited on that alone.

[John Cope]

Bale reunites with Anderson and Ballard.

[ianungstad]

According to an article on the playlist, Paul Thomas Anderson has apparently secured independent financing for two projects formerly in limbo, The Master and Inherent Vice. Hopefully they are able to shoot The Master later this year. The socialite who's putting up the money for both pictures is also funding John Hillcoat's indie film The Wettest County in the World and Catherine Bigelow's new untitled indie.

[mfunk9786]

I want to kiss this socialite on the lips. But she'll probably be killed off or forced into paranoia-induced suicide by scientologists first.

But seriously, I wonder how I can send this woman a thank you note?

[ianungstad]

Apparently Nicolas Winding Refn will direct the long gestating remake of Logan's Run for Warners. Ryan Gosling is attached to star.

[ianungstad]

I want to kiss this socialite on the lips. But she'll probably be killed off or forced into paranoia-induced suicide by scientologists first.

But seriously, I wonder how I can send this woman a thank you note?

The Wettest County in the World is also a film that's getting a second life. It was originally set up at the studios and eventually got shelved before getting indie financing. Megan Ellison also co-financed True Grit, which seems to be making a mint. It's nice to see that someone can have success financing challenging, auteur driven fare instead of middle of the road studio pictures. The industry needs more Megan Ellisons and Scott Rudins.

[John Cope]

Apparently Nicolas Winding Refn will direct the long gestating remake of Logan's Run for Warners. Ryan Gosling is attached to star.

More on this. I'm tremendously excited about the prospects here as Refn is a truly great director and Gosling is a superb and often savagely strong actor, exactly the kind of high profile presence Refn needs to match him. Clearly their collaboration must have worked out well enough on the upcoming Drive, so that too is encouraging. Their union could be a Scorsese-De Niro in the making.

Refn can make a nothing budget go very, very far so the thought of him actually being given studio support is also deeply exciting. Hopefully his appropriation by The Machine will be one of those happy instances in which the money men recognize the singular something he brings to the table and just let him go unhindered.

Also, somebody on Facebook told me that the original book LR is based on deals much more heavily in machismo driven ideas than the first film did. Refn, obviously, is perfect to mine for that.

[ambrose]

Dakota Fanning to play Princess Margaret in Girls' Night Out.

[ianungstad]

Variety has an article about Peter Greenaway's upcoming projects:

Peter Greenaway is set to helm and pen his first romantic comedy, "4 Storms and 2 Babies."
Pic is produced by Mike Downey and Sam Taylor's London-based Film & Music Entertainment and Kees Kasander's Dutch shingle Kasander Film. It is skedded to lense in Amsterdam after Greenaway completes "Goltzius and the Pelican Company," which is in pre-production in Rotterdam and Croatia.

"4 Storms" is an unconventional love story about two men and a woman who becomes pregnant after a night of three-way sex with them. Pic comes out of the longterm production deal between F&ME and Kasander unveiled in October, which is expected to be worth more than $17.5 million in production spend.

From wiki:

Goltzius and the Pelican Company is a 2011 film about Hendrik Goltzius, a late 16th century Dutch printer and engraver of erotic prints. He seduces the Margrave of Alsace into paying for a printing press to make and publish illustrated books. Goltzius promises him an extraordinary book of pictures of the Old Testament Biblical stories. Erotic tales of Lot and his daughters, David and Bathsheba, Samson and Delilah and John the Baptist and Salome. To tempt the Margrave further, Goltzius and his printing company will offer to perform dramatizations of these erotic stories for his court.

[chizbooga]

No doubt this is the wrong forum, but this looks interesting.

[ianungstad]

Michel Gondry is developing a script and is attached to direct a film based off the Phillip Dick novel Ubik. (great book!) They plan to start shopping the project to the studios soon...honestly I have doubts it will get picked up. The studios would just consider Ubik too expensive and odd to finance and market.

I suppose Gondry's plan could be to dumb down the source material and make it more commercial. (Almost everyone else does with Dick's work)

Don't see this project leaving the development phase...but I guess it's interesting news.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Binoche and Amalric join Cronenberg's Cosmopolis