New Films in Production

[ianungstad]

Walter Hill announced at comi-con that he will write and direct a remake of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? Seems like it will be an indie and is being made with the Aldrich Company.

[ianungstad]

Community's Dan Harmon is teaming up with Charlie Kaufman on a stop motion animated film titled Anomalisa. It is an indie and they are trying to raise financing for the project on kickstarter.

I think kickstarter worked out pretty well for Paul Schrader's The Canyons. Best of luck to Dan/Charlie.

[R0lf]

Walter Hill announced at comi-con that he will write and direct a remake of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? Seems like it will be an indie and is being made with the Aldrich Company.

Now they just need FAYE DUNAWAY to play Blanche Hudson.

[Matt]

If they actually want to make this remake interesting (and not just a retread of the original, the Redgrave sisters version, or the French and Saunders spoof), they'll cast the same actress in both roles. Guaranteed Oscar nom if it's done right.

[knives]

Wouldn't that just turn it into a Morgiana redux? This is really well tread territory.

[Mr Sausage]

Wouldn't that just turn it into a Morgiana redux? This is really well tread territory.

Yes, but it hasn't been tread recently, so $$$

[eerik]

Pixar's sequel machine is now working at full speed. Finding Nemo 2.

[tarpilot]

I'm half-thankful, half-bitter that they're only sequilizing the Pixars I don't like

[mfunk9786]

I'm 100% thankful because I don't have to take it personally if it's bad. It's the Cars 2 effect. If this were Ratatouille 2 I would really be sweating it out.

[flyonthewall2983]

Don't you mean Rata-2ie?

[Stefan Andersson]

First images from and info about Pedro Costa´s segment of the Portuguese anthology Historias del Cinéma:
http://www.sentieriselvaggi.it/129/4733 ... 3%A4ki.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[ianungstad]

From the Hollywood Reporter:

Dutch director George Sluizer has finally finished Dark Blood, the movie actor River Phoenix was working on when he died at age 23 of a heart attack on Halloween night 1993 outside the Viper Room in West Hollywood.

Sluizer will present the film for the first time at the Netherlands Film Festival in Utrecht in September. It will compete for the festival's Golden Calf award. The Sept. 27 premiere will be in front of a special guest audience.

The Hollywood Reporter first broke the story last year that Sluizer was finishing the film he abandoned nearly two deacdes ago. The 80-year-old director secured postproduction and editing financing to complete the film from the Netherlands Film Fund as well as some cash via Dutch crowdfinancing site Cinecrowd.

Dutch production house Eyeworks helped Sluizer navigate the legal issues surrounding the film. After Phoenix's death, Sluizer confiscated the Dark Blood footage and took it back to the Netherlands. He kept it hidden, fearing, he said, that it otherwise might have been destroyed.

In the film, Phoenix plays Boy, a young widower living on a nuclear testing site in the desert. While he waits for the end of the world, Boy carves Katchina dolls that supposedly contain magical powers. His life is disrupted when a Hollywood jet-set couple traveling across the desert become stranded after their car breaks down. Boy rescues the couple and then takes them prisoner. Dark Blood also stars Judy Davis, Jonathan Pryce and Karen Black.

Sluizer is best known for his 1988 thriller Spoorloos, remade as The Vanishing (1993), starring Jeff Bridges and Kiefer Sutherland. Phoenix received an Oscar nomination for his supporting role in Sidney Lumet's Running on Empty (1988), played the young Indy in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) and also starred in such films as Stand by Me (1986) and My Own Private Idaho (1991). He was the brother of two-time Oscar nominee Joaquin Phoenix.

In addition to the Dark Blood premiere, the 2012 Netherlands Film Festival also will screen a retrospective of Sluizer's work and will publish a book on the director's life.

[Roger Ryan]

I hadn't realized that Sluizer was 80 already and, according to him, not in the best of health which helped motivate him to finish DARK BLOOD. The death of Phoenix and the abandonment of the film pretty much derailed Sluizer's hoped-for Hollywood career. I'm curious how the film will play out.

Here's a trailer and a short interview with Sluizer discussing the project.

[ianungstad]

Alejandro Jodorowsky just wrapped up production on his new film "The Dance of Reality". The film is supposedly autobiographical and he cast his son Adan Jodorowsky to play the role of a young version of his father. Hopefully with one film in the can, it will create some momentum to get his other projects off the ground. I really want that Jodorowsky/Lynch collaboration Kingshot! (They could drop Manson for all I care)

[knives]

I'm just glad we've got anything new. With Moebius dead he doesn't have as many routes for expression as before.

[stroszeck]

A friend just emailed me this: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1148205/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Ain't nothin sacred no more?

[knives]

It is no longer being called that plus it is technically a true story and therefore there is technically some more things that could be told, technically.

[Alan Smithee]

Pretty sure Lynch was just producing Kingshot. I'd still love to see it but don't expect his creative input. It seems like he's hinting at retirement even from his own films unfortunately.

[flyonthewall2983]

Terry Gilliam’s Next Movie is Wild Existential Sci-Fi The Zero Theorem, starring Christoph Waltz.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

RPatz™ to play T.E. Lawrence for Herzog

[bigP]

Poster and a couple of images from Kim Jee-woon's Schwarzenegger vehicle The Last Stand. Based on the strength of Kim Jee-woon's recent films, I'm looking forward to seeing how he handles the Hollywood system, and indeed, to see if the Hollywood system can handle him without interference. The same goes for Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon-ho, both working on their first major US productions this year.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Bong's film (Snowpiercer) isn't a U.S. production. There are/were some U.S. investors involved, but it's being produced by Park Chan-wook's (Korean) production company, and CJ put up almost the entire budget when the movie hit a funding snag a few weeks into production. Most of it was shot in Prague, supposedly because Korea doesn't have any studios big enough to handle the train set; the rest is being filmed in Korea.

[flyonthewall2983]

Unforgiven to be remade as a samurai story.

[Matt]

[Cross-posted from the Cruising thread because I'm exercising my executive privilege to be a tireless booster of this film]

James Franco To Team With 'I Want Your Love' Helmer Travis Mathews On "Homo-Sex-Art-Film"

Well, the news has broken on what this project actually is: James Franco Gets Inspired by Cruising, James Franco Teams With Gay Art-Porn Director Travis Mathews For a Cruising-Inspired Film, James Franco Has Sort-Of-Remade William Friedkin's 'Cruising' For An Art Project

I've seen the first cut and it's extremely good. Fans of ambiguity and of the original film will be pleased.

[flyonthewall2983]

This is an interesting development, considering he's also doing (or has done already) a documentary on Kink.com. And just focusing on what was cut, instead of putting it in the context of a serial-killer film, would make an interesting study on sado-masochism that doesn't vilify it.