New Films in Production

[Jem]

Mr T making his comeback in Rocky 6 (VI)

The one-time poster boy for gold-chains, Mr T, will return to the film series that helped kick off his career.

The former "A-Team" star will reprise his role as boxer Clubber Lang in "Rocky 6", opposite Sylvester Stallone. The tough-talking 80's icon confirmed his involvement in the sequel on radio's Howard Stern show.

In the new movie, Clubber Lang - who played Rocky Balboa's opponent in "Rocky III" - will now be a commentator. Lang mightn't be the only series star making a comeback in the new sequel. The characters of Duke (played by Tony Burton in the films) and Paulie (played by Burt Young in all the flicks) are also reportedly pencilled in to return. Dolph's still waiting for his invo.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

From the Guardian:

DiCaprio and Scorsese to gang up again

Monday September 12, 2005

Actor Leonardo DiCaprio and director Martin Scorsese look set to renew their partnership with a film about the life of former US president Theodore Roosevelt.

Having already produced Gangs of New York and The Aviator, the pair are currently working on The Departed, about the Irish mafia in Boston.

Now Paramount has snapped up the rights to Edmund Morris's book The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt with the aim of developing it for DiCaprio and Scorsese.

The book documents the rise of the 26th president of the United States from a sickly Harvard-educated youngster to rancher and stocky commander of the Rough Riders, a multiracial brigade of American soldiers who fought in the Spanish-American war at the turn of the 20th century.

It then follows Roosevelt's move into politics, first becoming governor of New York, then vice-president and finally taking the reins of power after William McKinley's assassination.

The screenplay is being developed by Nicholas Meyer of Fatal Attraction fame.

Meyer told Empire Online: "We start at 25, as he begins to transform himself through sheer force of will from this asthmatic, nearsighted 125-pounder to this Sherman tank of a man, so tough that he once got shot on the way to make a speech and completed his talk, bleeding with a bullet in his chest."

DiCaprio has of course bulked up before, notably for Gangs of New York, for which he put on several stone of muscle to play stocky Five Points resident Amsterdam Vallon.

From Yahoo News:

Coppola to return to directing after eight-year break
LOS ANGELES (AFP) - The Oscar-winning maker of films such as "Apocalypse Now," Francis Ford Coppola, is to return to directing after an eight-year break in a big-screen adaptation of a Romanian short story.

Coppola, 66, is set to begin production in Bucharest on October 3 on the low-budget "Youth Without Youth," based on the novella by Romanian author and intellectual Mircea Eliade, according to entertainment bible Daily Variety.

The director, also famed for films such as "The Godfather Part II," will self-finance the film, that will star actors Tim Roth, Alexandra Maria Lara, Switzerland's Bruno Ganz and Marcel Iures.

The films tells the story of a professor whose life changes after a dramatic incident during in the run-up to World War II that forced him to flee his home as he is pursued through Romania, Switzerland, Malta and India.

"I was excited to discover, in this tale by Eliade, the key themes that I most hope to understand better: time, consciousness and the dreamlike basis of reality," Coppola said in a statement.

"For me, it is indeed a return to the ambitions I had for work in cinema as a student," he said of the film that his Zoetrope production company described as Coppola's "return to personal filmmaking."

The film will be Coppola's first directorial effort since 1997's "The Rainmaker," as he has focused in recent years on producing and running his hotel and wine estate in California, complaining that Hollywood only offered him gangster pictures, according to Variety.

[Titus]

The Coen Brothers have already had one future film announced, the presumed screwball comedy "Hail Caesar" with George Clooney, but it looks like they're revisiting their more serious side in the near-future as well.

They're supposedly going to make an adaptation of "No Country for Old Men". I haven't read the novel, but from what I understand it's extremely dark and elegiac in tone. It's ostensibly a man-on-the-run caper, but it's filled with philosophical contemplation. This seems commensurate with The Man Who Wasn't There, but they were able to channel their playfulness in TMWWT by playing around with genre conventions (considering "No Country..." doesn't seem to emphatically belong to a genre, this doesn't appear to be a possibility here). On top of this, the novel supposedly has very little comic-relief, whereas the Coen's have always been able to balance their drama with as much humor as most outright comedies. Seeing as how they're springboarding from someone else's work for a change, their typical humor may undermine the story's effect.

Has anyone read the novel? I'd love to hear some opinions from people who actually have first-hand knowledge of the source material.

[flyonthewall2983]

Keith Moon bio-pic in the works with Mike Myers in the lead and Roger Daltrey producing...

[Gordon]

Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged has been announced, with a screenplay by James V. Hart, who scripted Contact, Sahara and recently adapted Kurt Vonnegut's, Cat's Cradle. A mighty, complex, philosophic epic, deemed unfilmable in the past, it is great to finally hear that it may reach cinema screens, but it will remain to be seen how faithful it is to Rand's novel and her philosophy, "Objectivism". I would estimate that one would need at the very least 200 minutes to tell this story successfully.

No director is currently attached.

[ellipsis7]

Just to copy that Moon - Myers conjunction...

Me - I can't tell them apart!

[ben d banana]

Me - I can't tell them apart!

Moon was funny.

[Andre Jurieu]

Me - I can't tell them apart!

Moon was funny.

Oh, come on benny. The expression on Myers face when Kayne called out the President's bias during his stream of incoherent babble was hilarious.

[emcflat]

IMDb says new Svankmajer releases in the Czech Republic next month.

[flyonthewall2983]

I'm just wondering at which point in Moon's life they will cover. I just can't buy Mike Myers as anything but Keith during the last few years of his life.

[Lino]

IMDb says new Svankmajer releases in the Czech Republic next month.

And it looks promising - a horror story inspired by the writings of Edgar Allan Poe and the Marquis de Sade... Here he is directing.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Clint Eastwood's working on two separate Iwo Jima films -- Flags of Our Fathers and Lamps Before the Wind -- currently scheduled for simultaneous release next fall. Flags of Our Fathers has been in the pipeline for awhile but I think Lamps Before the Wind is a new announcement.

Sometime this month in Chicago, Clint Eastwood will complete principal photography on his latest movie, Flags of Our Fathers. It's the 26th feature film he has directed since he made Play Misty for Me in 1971. And just as he has done before (The Bridges of Madison County, Mystic River), he is basing it on a best-selling book. But this movie is different from all the others that he or anyone else has directed, for Flags is only half the story he wants to tell.

The book, by James Bradley and Ron Powers, recounts the ultimately tragic tale of six young U.S. Marines who happened to raise a huge American flag atop Mount Suribachi in the midst of the great battle for Iwo Jima during World War II, of how an Associated Press photographer squeezed off what he thought was a routine shot of them doing so that became an iconic image, of what happened to some of those kids (only three survived the next few days of battle) when they were hustled home to be heedlessly exploited by the U.S. government to raise civilian morale and, incidentally, sell billions of dollars' worth of war bonds. That story, rich in darkly ambiguous nuance, would have been more than enough to preoccupy Eastwood's attention for a couple of years.

But when Eastwood tried to buy the rights, he discovered that Steven Spielberg already had them, and so he moved on instead to Million Dollar Baby. Then, backstage at the 2004 Academy Awards (at which his Mystic River was a multiple nominee), Eastwood encountered Spielberg, and before the evening was out, they agreed to a Flags co-production, with Eastwood directing. Shortly thereafter, the project began to elicit an uncommon, almost obsessive, interest from its director. He has not often attempted fact-based movies, and he had never undertaken one that contained such huge combat scenes. He began to read more widely and deeply on the subject. And he began talking to both American and Japanese veterans of Iwo Jima, which remains the bloodiest engagement in Marine Corps history and the one for which the most Congressional Medals of Honor were awarded (27). As for the Japanese, only about 200 out of 22,000 defending soldiers survived. At some point in his research, Eastwood realized that he had to find a way to tell both sides of the story--"not in the Tora! Tora! Tora! way, where you cut back and forth between the two sides," he says, "but as separate films."

So, beginning next February, Eastwood will start shooting the companion movie, tentatively called Lamps Before the Wind, scheduled for simultaneous release with Flags next fall. Typically, Eastwood (who is an old friend of this writer's) is not able to articulate fully his rationale for this ambitious enterprise: "I don't know--sometimes you get a feeling about something. You have a premonition that you can get something decent out of it," he says. "You just have to trust your gut." He asked Paul Haggis, who wrote Flags, if he would like to write the Japanese version as well. The writer of Million Dollar Baby and director of Crash, Haggis was overbooked but thought an aspiring young Japanese-American screenwriter, Iris Yamashita, who had helped him research Flags, might be able to do it. She met with Eastwood, and once again his gut spoke; he gave her the job and liked her first draft so much that he bought it. It was she who insisted on giving him a few rewrites she thought her script still needed.

The article goes on to discuss the two films in some detail; evidently Flags of Our Fathers is more expansive (dealing not only with Iwo Jima but with the soldiers' home lives afterwards), whereas Lamps Before the Wind is focused squarely on the battle. I'm pretty excited for these two.

[Poncho Punch]

88 Minutes is currently filming on campus here at UBC. Something about a forensic pathology professor who's either poisoned or threatened with a bomb, and has to solve some mystery, I imagine. Takes place in Seattle. I guess it's in real-time like Nick Of Time is (or 24, or whatever that french movie Criterion put out is).

Some dude bumped into Al Pacino (physically) around the set, says he really is short.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

From Total Film:

[quote]With the web awash with rumours about Sin City 2, totalfilm.com has gone straight to the source to clear things up: co-director Robert Rodriguez. “Yeah, Frank Miller is writing some completely new material for the movie,â€

[Jem]

Amelie Helmer Has The Life of Pi

Monday October 24, 2005

AMELIE director Jean-Pierre Jeunet is the latest helmer to sign on to direct Fox 2000's adaptation of the Man Booker Prize-winning Yann Martel novel LIFE OF PI, reports VARIETY. Jeunet will also team with his writing partner Guillaume Laurant to pen the script.

Novel follows the journey of a 16-year-old boy from India to Canada. After a ship wreck, the boy becomes the sole human survivor on a lifeboat with a hyena, an injured zebra and a hungry tiger.

M. Night Shyamalan was the first director to sign onto the project, but left when the studio wouldn't wait for him to finish his LADY IN THE WATER first. Next to circle the film was Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN director Alfonso Cuaron, who left to direct CHILDREN OF MEN.

Gil Netter will produce with Fox 2000 president Elizabeth Gabler overseeing for the studio, which hopes to start production next summer in India and Baja California in the water tank used for TITANIC.

Mel Gibson's new movie: 'Apocalypto'

But action film 'not a big doomsday picture,' director says.

Mel Gibson talks with reporters about "Apocalypto," which is set in Mexico before the Spanish conquest.

VERACRUZ, Mexico (AP) -- Mel Gibson says a fascination with ancient cultures and great civilizations is what led him to make his upcoming movie "Apocalypto," starring unknown Mexican actors speaking in an ancient tongue.

[exte]

Um, the day you can afford to buy your own island in the Pacific, I'm sure you won't care that much about a table either. Anyway, this is pretty much the first thing he's written, aside from Passion, right? I'm really wondering how it'll be...

[Fletch F. Fletch]

Normally, I like to stay away from video game adaptations but after seeing Brotherhood of the Wolf I've been eagerly anticipating what Christophe Gans does next...

Based on Konami's popular Horror Survival game, the story was written by Roger Avary ("Killing Zoe"), and the film is directed by Christophe Gans ("Brotherhood of the Wolf").

The film tells the story of a woman (Radha Mitchell) desperate to save her dying child, who finds herself trapped in an alternate reality as she searches for her daughter in a dangerous world of demons.

Stills

From the Washington Post:

By AMY WESTFELDT
The Associated Press
Thursday, November 3, 2005; 12:19 AM

NEW YORK -- Oliver Stone has begun shooting one of the first Hollywood films about Sept. 11 in New York -- without recreating the large-scale devastation that's all too familiar to residents who lived through the 2001 attacks.

After months of meetings with community and family groups, producers of the untitled movie have promised to tread carefully on sensitive ground. Most of the major action portraying the World Trade Center collapse will be shot on a Los Angeles sound stage. And although news footage of the towers themselves will be shown during the film, it will play on television screens in the background.

"We're not doing the `Towering Inferno-Titanic' version," said Michael Shamberg, who's producing the Paramount film with his partner, Stacey Sher.

Stone started shooting scenes in New York last month for his untitled film, starring Nicolas Cage as one of two policemen who survived the towers' collapse and were rescued from the trade center ruins after 22 hours.

After holding dozens of meetings, producers decided to limit their filming in the city, shooting the bulk of the action in Los Angeles and staying away from the 16-acre trade center site.

Family members who met with the producers said they still weren't sure whether Hollywood would treat Sept. 11 with proper respect.

"Are there going to be love scenes in it? How do you portray it correctly?" said Lee Ielpi, who lost his firefighter son on Sept. 11, and met with producers about the film. "It has to be done with some reverence."

Others said they were concerned about how Stone _ whose more controversial films include "JFK," which offered conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination _ might interpret the attacks in the film. In October 2001, Stone was quoted as referring to the attacks as a "revolt" against multinational corporations. But in July, Stone called the untitled project "a work of collective passion, a serious meditation on what happened, and carries within a compassion that heals."

"It's an exploration of heroism in our country _ but it's international at the same time in its humanity," he said.

Charles Wolf, who lost his wife on Sept. 11, has met with producers and asked to see a copy of Andrea Berloff's script. He said he appreciated the outreach and sensitivity of the filmmakers, but wanted to make sure that the day's events, including details as precise as the officers' view of the elevator from the rubble, are represented accurately.

"I think they need to be factual. It's too close in people's minds," Wolf said. "`Based on a true story' should not happen here."

Because Berloff's script focuses entirely on police officers John McLoughlin and William J. Jimeno's experience on Sept. 11, the film will not interpret the politics or meaning of Sept. 11, the producers said. Stone has taken great care to portray the event as it happened, and has worked to make sure that Cage, Michael Pena and the other actors playing officers are using authentic equipment.

"We're not doing everyone's story that day," said Shamberg. "We're trusted with the accuracy of the particular story that we're telling."

The script about McLoughlin and Jimeno also focuses on their families. The filmmakers plan to show news footage of the towers on TV screens watched by actors, the producers said.

The Stone film may not be the first studio film about Sept. 11 to be released. "Flight 93," a Universal Studios film about the hijacked plane that left Newark, N.J., and crashed into a Pennsylvania field, is scheduled for an April release. Stone's film will be shooting in New York through mid-November and is tentatively scheduled to open Aug. 11, one month before the attacks' fifth anniversary.

Other Sept. 11 films are in development, including an adaptation of the book, "102 Minutes" and a TV miniseries based on the findings of the Sept. 11 commission.

Paramount hired Jennifer Brown, a former vice president for community development at the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. in charge of rebuilding the trade center site, to act as a liaison with the community. Brown set up more than a dozen meetings with business, community, family and survivor groups, along with police and fire officials.

Brown said that once people understood that the story was only about the officers and not about the entire story of Sept. 11, they were supportive.

"What we've heard mostly, is just to be real," she said.

Morton Takes "Control" Of Curtis
Posted: Friday November 4th, 2005 2:35pm
Source: Variety

Samantha Morton is in talks to star as Deborah Curtis, widow of Joy Division front man Ian Curtis, in "Control" helmer Anton Corbijn's bigscreen adaptation of Deborah Curtis' tome "Touching From a Distance" reports Variety.

Matt Greenhalgh has adapted the screenplay, which covers the last years in Curtis' life, leading up to his suicide in 1980. Filming begins early next year in England.

Plot centers on Curtis' struggle between feeling enduring love for his wife and beginning a burgeoning relationship with another woman, as well as his bouts with epilepsy and all-consuming performances with his band which would later become 'New Order' after his death.

[jmj713]

Sequelitis invades Russia

If this web site can be trusted, it appears that Georgi Daneliya, having just turned 75 years old, is working on a scenario for a computer-animated sequel to his cult classic Kin-Dza-Dza.

What follows is the nearly unintelligible translation from Babelfish. Perhaps if we have any Russian-speakers here they can confirm or deny any assertions about this article, or shed some light on things that didn't translate.

[Incoherent mess]

The Georgian fault stamp??

I hope Ruscico hurries it up with their promised edition of Kin-Dza-Dza. That film really needs a proper release, and Ruscico is probably about as proper as it can hope for.

Wow, I had no idea somebody non-Russian would know about this film, which is an amazing piece of cinema, and it's sad it isn't more widely known. I don't know about Ruscico; I emailed them and never got a reply. I would die of happiness if Criterion would get ahold of this title, and I even suggested this in one of the Home Theater Forum chats with Criterion a while back.

As far as proper translation, I'll update this post a bit later, when I have some time to translate the text.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Writer-producer David Ayer is in final negotiations to direct an update of "The Wild Bunch" for Warner Bros. Pictures based on his own script. Jerry Weintraub is producing for his Warner Bros.-based shingle Jerry Weintraub Prods. Weintraub Prods.' Susan Ekins and Mark Vahradian are executive producing. Jessica Goodman is overseeing production. "Wild Bunch," originally directed by Sam Peckinpah in 1969, followed an aging group of outlaws looking for a last score in the fading American West. Ayer's update is described as a thriller involving heists, drug cartels and the CIA, set in contemporary Mexico.

OH BOY OH BOY

[Ovader]

"Journey To Tulum"
Posted: Mon., May 16, 2005, 8:00pm PT
Source: Variety

Nearly 15 years after the filmmaker's death, "Catch Me If You Can" exec producers Tony Romano and Michel Shane have teamed with Italian filmmaker Marco Bartoccioni on "Journey to Tulum," which will be based on Fellini's relationship with Carlos Castaneda.

"Journey" is based on Fellini's little-known relationship with Castaneda, the author who first wrote of his experiences with mysticism in 1968 with "The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge."

Bartoccioni is working with Italian screenwriter Tonino Guerra, who received Oscar noms for co-writing Fellini's "Amarcord" as well as Michelangelo Antonioni's "Blowup." Bartoccioni also plans to add an American and a French scribe to the project.

Fellini, who died in 1993, described his adventures with Castaneda and his struggle to turn them into a film in six articles that appeared in Italy's Corriere della Sera. The articles were published in 1986 and illustrated by Italian artist Milo Manara.

Bartoccioni obtained rights to Fellini's work through 98-year-old screenwriter Tullio Pinelli, Fellini's collaborator on films such as "La Dolce Vita," "8½," and "Juliet of the Spirits."

Fellini spoke at length of his relationship with Castaneda in a two-part interview that appeared in the 1994 and 1995 editions of the Bright Lights Film Journal.

"Phenomena and wonders popped up," Fellini told interviewer Toni Maraini. "When he came to my hotel, he brought along some women. I never saw him again, but after that I found strange messages in my room and objects moved around. I think it was black magic."

The film will be shot on HD and combined with animation from Manara.

Bartoccioni, who is in Cannes working to assemble financing on the pic, told Variety that he would shoot the picture at Italy's Cinecitta studios in addition to Los Angeles and Mexico.

Although Bartoccioni has made a short film for Cinecitta, "Journey to Tulum" would be his feature-directing debut.

[Jem]

Depp back for Don Quixote: Gilliam
AFP. November 10, 2005

American director Terry Gilliam said in Prague today that he expects to resume work on Don Quixote, which was set to be the biggest European film ever made but was shelved five days into filming.

"There is a possibility now, for the first time, that we might get the script of Don Quixote back," Gilliam said during a news conference to mark the Czech premiere of his film The Brothers Grimm.

"If we can get the film out of the hands of the lawyers, then that will be my next project," said the former Monty Python member, adding that he felt "hopeful."

Although rights to the script have been frozen for several years because of a conflict between the French producer and a German insurance company, a decision could come "before the end of the year", Gilliam told AFP following the news conference.

Although Jean Rochefort will not be able to play Don Quixote, "the presence of Johnny Depp is secured," Gilliam added.

The 2002 documentary Lost in La Mancha depicted the troubles that beset the original production.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

From IFC's blog:

New project: He announced that he was working on a new film, "Mister Lonely," back in the summer, but last week Screen Daily (sub. only, sadly) reported that it's to star Anita Pallenberg as the Queen of England, Denis Lavant as Charlie Chaplin, Samantha Morton as Marilyn Monroe and Diego Luna as a Michael Jackson impersonator.

The plotline is outlandish, even by Korine's standards. This is a yarn about a young American lost in Paris, eking out a living as a Michael Jackson lookalike. By co-incidence, he meets Marilyn Monroe. He follows her to a commune in Scotland, joining her husband Charlie Chaplin and her daughter Shirley Temple. Fellow residents include The Pope, The Queen of England, Madonna and James Dean. The drama is also partly set In a Brazilian forest where a community of missionary nuns bring aid to the locals.

[Cinéslob]

Rumblings at Studio Ghibli:

November 12, 2005 - Next Studio Ghibli Film to be Directed by Miyazaki (but not the one you think)

According to a talk held by producer Toshio Suzuki at Meiji University, Ghibli's next film will be directed by Goro Miyazaki, a son of Miyazaki. Goro Miyazaki had been the director of Studio Ghibli Musuem until recently.

He used to work for a landscaping company before he became a director of the museum. The rooftop garden of Studio Ghibli was done by him.

The film will be released in the summer of 2006. Details will be announced on December 13 by Toho.

According to Mr. Suzuki, the elder Miyazaki is "still fiercely against the idea."

'Oo' and indeed 'er'!

[Lino]

Guillermo del Toro's new Pan's Labyrinth looks like it's going to be something really special. Here's the teaser poster and a link to some new photos from the film.

[Kinsayder]

The December issue of Studio Magazine reports that Alain Corneau is working on a remake of Melville's Deuxième Souffle. Filming is scheduled to begin next October with a budget of 24 million Euros.

Cast includes Daniel Auteuil in the Lino Ventura role, Monica Bellucci, Fabrice Luchini, Jacques Dutronc, Eric Cantona, Gilbert Melki and Philippe Nahon. For the remake, Corneau is going back to the original José Giovanni story and developing the love affair between the Auteuil and Bellucci characters.