the most anticipated...

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He-Man returns to big screen
Joel Silver teams with WB for adaptation
By MICHAEL FLEMING



Marks


Silver

Warner Bros. and producer Joel Silver are working with Mattel to turn "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe" into a live-action film.
Justin Marks is set to write the script. Silver will produce.

Deal, which is contingent on Mattel formally approving an outline for the project, is another example of Hollywood overhauling a 1980s-era pop-culture touchstone in the hopes of seeding a tentpole pic. The sale comes just a few weeks before the July preem of DreamWorks' Michael Bay-directed "Transformers," which began as an '80s animated series and toy line.

He-Man was born as a Mattel action figure, and the toymaker created an animated series in hopes of selling dolls. The series became a cult favorite, but the brand was hardly helped by its first bigscreen incarnation, the campy 1987 flop "Masters of the Universe" that starred Dolph Lundgren as the title character and Frank Langella as his nemesis Skeletor.  

The toymaker, which now licenses "He-Man" for high-end merchandise sold to hardcore collectors, has been wary of going Hollywood again. An attempt by Fox 2000 to make another movie, this time with director John Woo, ended in futility as the toymaker didn't spark to the screen plans.

For Mattel, the stakes are potentially high as success could mean an entire relaunch of a toy line.

The franchise has been reimagined by the producer and the writers and pitched to Mattel as a classic good vs. evil battle, using the kind of visual effects strategy employed in "300." A warrior is touted as the last hope of a magical land called Eternia, which is being ravaged by technology and the evil Skeletor.

Many of the characters in the Middle Earth-like universe will be informed by the mythology created in the four different cartoon series done since the 1980s.

The story was hatched by Marks and Neil Ellice, the latter of whom will co-produce. Silver Pictures, which is turning the Japanese animated series "Speed Racer" into a live-action film to be directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski, sparked to the potential. Silver Pictures exec Navid McIlhargey brought it in and will be involved in a producing capacity.

The viability of the "He-Man" universe is evidenced by the traffic that has occurred since rumors of a screen resurrection hit the Internet. Contrary to Web rumor, the lead role has not yet been cast.

WMA-repped Marks is writing a number of scripts, including "One Free Murder," for producer Kevin Misher. But he's found a niche reimagining branded properties. He's turning the animated series "Voltron" into a live-action film for producer Mark Gordon; he's developing a screen version of the vidgame "Street Fighter" for Hyde Park; and he's scripting a feature for Warners based on DC Comics character the Green Arrow.

[zakk]

he-man stripovi su izlazili do skora, možda još i izlaze - mrzi me da gledam,
a i voltron je imao strip inkarnaciju, prošle godine valjda.
transformersi kao da nisu ni prestajali

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Comedian Lee Evans ("There's Something About Mary") has signed up to co-write and star in a bizarre new comedy entitled "I Was Hitler's Weatherman" reports Time Out London.

Evans will star as young Jew who goes into hiding during the war and assumes the identity of Nazi meteorologist Ernest Deisin.

He excels at the job however, so much so that he is soon promoted to Hitler's personal meteorologist. Stuart Urban ("Our Friends in the North") will direct.

Evans has co-written the script with Stuart Silver, and acclaimed thesp Stanley Tucci is currently in talks to play Hitler.

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Warner Bros. Pictures has acquired the film rights to Irish author Derek Landy's debut comic-horror novel "Skulduggery Pleasant" reports Variety.

Set in contemporary Dublin, the story follows a wise-cracking skeleton detective and his young female accomplice, who together try to stop the return of the evil Faceless Ones.

The deal includes any potential sequels in the planned nine-book series. Landy ("Boy Eats Girl," "Dead Bodies"), who has penned several horror films, will adapt.

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IGN News is reporting that Christophe Gans ("Silent Hill") has signed on to direct a $70 million big screen version of the Capcom action title "Onimusha."

The story focuses on a 16th Century Samurai who is after a resurrected bad-guy and on a mission to save a princess. Shooting will begin later this year in China for a 2009 release.

Gans will be working from a Leslie Kruger and John Collee ("Master and Commander") script. There is no word on cast so far, but several studios have expressed interest.

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John Woo is attached to direct and produce the video game adaptation "Ninja Gold" for Fox Atomic reports Reuters.
"Ninja" centers on a ninja warrior, part of a centuries-old legacy and bloodline, forced to confront the reality of covert warfare in the modern world. The Yakuza, the Russian mob and millions in stolen South African gold figure into the action.

Game creator Warren Spector ("Deus Ex," "Thief: Deadly Shadows") worked with Woo to create the cast of characters, themes, and story. As a result he'll be able to handle the film without the need to heavily consult with the game creators.

A script is in the works with filming aiming to begin next year, no timetable as yet for the game. The film however will be more "reality-based" than the game.

"John Woo's Stranglehold," a game that serves as a virtual sequel to his classic "Hard Boiled," hits PS3 & XBox 360 in August.

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Dennis Iliadis ("Hardcore") is in negotiations to direct Rogue Pictures' remake of the 1972 horror flick "The Last House on the Left."

Adam Alleca ("Home") has been hired to rewrite the script, which tells the story of a pair of teen girls who are kidnapped, raped and murdered by a gang of thugs.

The killers unwittingly seek refuge in the home of one of the victim's parents. When they learn what their guests did, they exact revenge.

Wes Craven, who wrote and directed the original, is producing the remake with partners Marianne Maddalena and Sean S. Cunningham.

The aim is to do a remake that's loyal to the original, but aim for a more realistic tone than the original video nasty - most notably the exaggerated killers.

The original remains banned in several countries. Scribe Alleca previously approached Craven about remaking his 1991 effort "The People Under the Stairs."

Shooting begins on 'Left' sometime next year.

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Depp set to play poisoned Russian exile Litvinenko


Jason Burke in Paris
Sunday May 27, 2007
The Observer


Johnny Depp is lined up to play murdered Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko in the film of a book that still has no ending, his widow told reporters at the Cannes film festival yesterday.
Marina Litvinenko was at the festival for the showing of a controversial documentary about the death of her husband, who was poisoned with a radioactive substance in London last year.

Rebellion: the Litvinenko Affair was directed by a close friend of the former spy and in effect accuses the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, of organising the murder, as well as of embezzling humanitarian funds and laundering profits from the mafia.

'It is a very factual document... which shows who Litvinenko was and who are the people who try to keep a free press alive in Russia,' said Thierry Fremaux, artistic director of the festival.
'I'm very happy everyone around the world will see this. It's very important to know what happened in London in November, said Marina Litvinenko. It's very important it never happens again, in any country, to anybody.

'Believe me, it's not easy to be here at the Cannes Film Festival, where there are all these superstars. But the world has changed.'

The film has already been bought by distributors across Europe. Warner Bros has acquired the film rights for Marina Litvinenko's book and American director Michael Mann, known for The Last of The Mohicans and Heat, is being tipped as a likely director.

Last week, the UK's director of public prosecutions recommended that Andrei Lugovoi, a former KGB officer currently in Russia, should be tried for Litvinenko's murder. Lugovoi, who now heads a private security firm, had tea with Litvinenko at London's Millennium Mayfair Hotel on the day he fell ill. Traces of the radioactive isotope polonium-210 have also been found in a string of places Lugovoi visited in London.

Lugovoi denied any involvement in the Litvinenko's death and said the charges against him were 'politically motivated'. The formal submission of a request for Lugovoi's extradition is expected to take place before the end of the week. However, the Kremlin said Russia's constitution did not allow its nationals to be extradited.

The Cannes festival, usually known more for glamour than diplomatic rows, has already caused controversy on the international political stage in recent days.

The festival was targeted by Tehran after a feature-length cartoon, Persepolis, based on the best-selling books by exiled Iranian author Marjane Satrapi, was shown mid-week.

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Exclusive: Weitz Brothers Making Elric
Paul to direct fantasy adaptation?

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So his adaptation of The Golden Compass is already being hyped by studio New Line as the new Lord Of The Rings (rather inaccurately if you ask us, since the books share little in common). But that's not enough fantasy limelight for the guy who, up until now, was best known for small-scale comedies like American Pie and About A Boy. Nope, along with his brother and former co-director Paul, Chris Weitz is going to take on the biggest fantasty-literature property as yet untouched by movieland: Michael Moorcock's Elric saga.

Elric of Melniboné, aka Elric Kinslayer, aka The White Wolf first appeared in print in 1961, and is the anti-hero of more than a dozen books. A physically weak, perpetually sickly albino who's the outcast Emperor of a race of cruel, ancient decadent people, he's no musclebound Conan-type, instead drawing his power from the spirit-sucking runesword Stormbringer, an evil entity with whom he struggles for his own soul. And he's frankly one of the greatest fantasy characters out there – albeit one who's going to be fiendishly hard to make work on screen.

"Of the great classic fantasy series it's the one that hasn't been done yet," Weitz tells Empire online. "My brother Paul and I liked those books growing up and we've met Michael Moorcock and he trusts us to take those books forward." The Weitz's Depth Of Field production company will be behind the adaptation, although no director is yet attached. Weitz does have one in mind, though: "I'd really like it if my brother directed them," he says.

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They're already planning a "Justice League" movie, so it comes as no surprise that Warner Bros. Pictures has also picked up DC Comics title "Teen Titans" for a big-screen treatment says The Hollywood Reporter.

Starting in 1964 as a sort of junior Justice League, the team comprised of Robin, Kid Flash, Aqualad, Wonder Girl and Speedy.

It hit big success in the 80's when they were re-imagined as college age young adults which allowed it to explore mature themes. Robin become Nightwing, and characters Cyborg, Starfire and Raven were introduced.

This live-action version, said to be a dark and serious adaptation, is being produced by Akiva Goldsman's Weed Road productions. Mark Verheiden will pen the script.

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Denise Richards will star in "A Beautiful Life," a drama to be directed by Argentine filmmaker Alejandro Chomski ("Reggaeton," "Today and Tomorrow") reports Variety.

Richards will play an exotic dancer and marks a first for Richards who moves from broader mainstream pics to an edgy indie film. Wendy Hammond penned the script.

Jesse Garcia ("Quinceanera"), Dana Delany, Debi Mazar and Michael Madsen also star. Shooting begins in Los Angeles this summer.

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Hideo Nakata ("The Ring 2") is attached to direct 20th Century Fox and Regency Enterprises's "Inhuman" says The Hollywood Reporter.

Loosely based on a Japanese murder case, Taka Ichise ("The Grudge"), Roy Lee and Doug Davison will produce using a script by Eric Heisserer ("Dionaea House," "Alien Wars").

Nakata and Ichise previously worked together on the original Japanese films that inspired the US "The Ring" and "Dark Water" remakes.

Ovaj Dionaea House sam citao, to je Warnerov projekat, nevidjeno smece...

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Paul W. S. Anderson has signed on to direct and relaunch Universal Pictures' action project "Spy Hunter," based on Midway Games' popular 1980s arcade game.

Anderson will soon script a treatment that a scribe will then adapt into "Hunter's" script. It's expected it will be Anderson's follow-up project to the remake of "Death Race 2000" which begins shooting in August.

John Woo and The Rock had previously been attached to a big-budget version of "Hunter" that fell apart due to budgetary reasons.

"Hunter" is an action/driving game featuring the G-6155 Interceptor, a fictitious car that is beset by a wide array of enemy vehicles.

Chuck Gordon, Adrian Askarieh ("Hitman") and Jeremy Bolt are serving as producers. Anderson remains attached to produce the video game adaptation "Castlevania."

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Jim Carrey will star in the sub-$20 million dark comedy "I Love You Phillip Morris" reports Variety.

Based on a book by Houston Chronicle crime reporter Steve McVicker, the fact-based film casts Carrey as Steven Russell, a married father whose exploits landed him in the Texas criminal justice system. He fell madly in love with his cellmate, who eventually was set free, which led Russell to escape from Texas prisons four times.

"Bad Santa" scribes Glenn Ficarra and John Requa penned the script and will make their directing debut. Timing is unsure as Carrey is plotting back-to-back films to be finished before the SAG contract expires next summer.

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John McTiernan is set to direct the Las Vegas action thriller High Stakes for Persistent Pictures and Velvet Octopus, says The Hollywood Reporter.

Written by Ronnie Christensen, the story revolves around two friends who find themselves in over their heads when they realize they are the living collateral of a high-stakes bet.

Matt Rhodes is producing the project, which is scheduled to begin shooting in the fall in Shreveport, La., and Las Vegas.

McTiernan, whose credits include Die Hard, Die Hard: With a Vengeance and The Thomas Crown Affair, most recently directed the John Travolta-Samuel L. Jackson starrer Basic.

[milan]

Je l to onaj scenario gde postoji scena car chase-a dugachka 20 minuta?

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ne to je RUN a scena je valjda 50 minuta:)

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Matt Damon will reteam with his "Bourne" director Paul Greengrass on an adaptation of "Imperial Life in the Emerald City" for Universal reports Variety.

Damon would play a composite character based on figures in Washington Post scribe Rajiv Chandrasekaran's tome about chaos in Iraq.

At present, scheduling issues are being worked out.

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Oren Moverman is adapting Orson Scott Card's "Empire" into a large-scale drama by Warner Bros. and Silver Pictures reports Variety.

Set in the near future, the novel casts an America in chaos. The assassination of the president and veep plunges America into civil war and a team of special forces operatives try to unravel the conspiracy and save the country.

Card's novel "Ender's Game" is also being developed by WB as a big-scale sci-fi film by director Wolfgang Petersen.

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Walt Disney Studios has entered into a multiyear, first-look deal with legendary comics creator Stan Lee and his production company POW! Entertainment.

Specifics were not disclosed, but Lee and his production company will develop and produce all forms of entertainment for various platforms.

"The big thing is we're trying to do projects that are high concept, stories that will lend themselves to franchises," said Lee, whose POW! stands for Purveyors of Wonder.

Lee is the co-creator of many of the most popular Marvel Comics superheroes that have gone on to starring roles in today's tentpole movie marketplace, from Spider-Man to the Fantastic Four to the Hulk.

"Stan has so many fantastic new ideas for films, and we can't wait to get started," said Oren Aviv, president of production at Walt Disney Studios. "Stan Lee is a living legend in the world of pop culture, and his characters and stories have been the inspiration for some of Hollywood's biggest blockbusters. We're very excited to be working with him and his talented team in creating some incredible new motion picture experiences."

A major component of the agreement is home entertainment, as Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment president Bob Chapek was instrumental in bringing the deal to Disney. Chapek will work closely with Lee on many of his projects.

"(We) feel very fortunate to be collaborating with him on a wide range of new projects for all divisions of our company," Chapek said. "His track record is impressive by any measure, and (the home entertainment unit) is sure to benefit from his creations."

Lee made his first non-Marvel venture at the height of the dot-com boom with Stan Lee Media, with the intent of creating superheroes for the Internet. The venture collapsed, however, amid a stock manipulation scheme.

Lee, who was never implicated, created POW! in 2005. The venture so far has seen the creation of a Sci Fi Channel movie as well as two direct-to-DVD movies, "Mosaic" and "The Condor."

He also craeted the 2003 Spike TV cartoon series "Stripperella," featuring the voice talent of Pamela Anderson.

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Amy Smart has been cast alongside Kiefer Sutherland and Paula Patton in Alexandre Aja's in 20th Century Fox's remake of the Korean horror film "Mirrors," currently in production in Romania says Bloody Disgusting.

The story follows a security guard at a high-end department store who begins to investigate mysterious deaths occurring in front of the stores' mirrors. He soon discovers that there are murderous reflections out for revenge.

Cameron Boyce, Erica Gluck, Mary Beth Peil, John Shrapnel, Jason Flemyng, Tim Ahern, Julian Glover, Josh Cole, Ezra Buzzington, Ioana Abur, Bart Sidles and Roz McCutcheon also star.

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It's eccentric vs. disappointing in the race to helm the upcoming "Wolverine" spin-off feature film for 20th Century Fox.

The IESB reports that there are two names on the short list of directors the studio has in mind - DJ Caruso & Len Wiseman.

Caruso has been a player in the movie field for many years, initially a producer of mid-90's thrillers like "Drop Zone," "Point of No Return" and "Nick of Time." Lately though he's been more known for his directorial work on films like "Taking Lives," "The Salton Sea," "Two for the Money" and the recent hit "Disturbia". He's also worked on shows like "The Shield" and "Smallville."

Len Wiseman on the other hand is still a fresh face, mostly known for his work writing and directing the "Underworld" movies, his movie star looks, and a gorgeous wife in the form of Kate Beckinsale. His first major job is this Summer's upcoming "Live Free or Die Hard."

Caruso seems to be the favourite, but is being highly sought by others at the moment. If "Die Hard" is a success for Fox however, it makes sense for Wiseman to be attached.

David Goyer has already signed on to direct the "Magneto" spin-off movie.

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Tobe Hooper ("Texas Chainsaw Massacre," "Poltergeist") is tipped to direct the thriller "Training Ground" for the London-based Midsummer Films says Shock Til You Drop.

The story follows eight backpackers traveling along the Silk Road who lose their mode of transportation via an avalanche.

Seeking a nearby town they stumble upon a desolate Al Qaeda training camp and discover plans for the destruction of several U.S. cities, unbeknownst to them Los Angeles has already suffered a dirty bomb attack.

They make off with the plans and are subsequently hunted down by the Al Qaeda members eager to get their information back.

Andy Briggs penned the script, and shooting begins this Fall in Romania.

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He's talked a bit about his upcoming horror film "Red State", now "Clerks" helmer Kevin Smith has finally spilled the beans on his next comedy - "Zack and Miri Make a Porno" - to The Los Angeles Times.

Smith describes the film as "a bawdy sex comedy with heart" and the story as being "about two friends who have managed to trudge into their 30s with a satisfying lack of accomplishment. But a 15-year high school reunion and dire rent problems spark the novel moneymaking idea of pulling together an amateur porn enterprise."

The idea, vaguely similar to last year's "The Amateurs," and Smith's reputation was good enough for Harvey Weinstein who's forking over a cool $15 million to finance the project.

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Joel Eisenberg ("Out of the Black") and Iron Mountain Media have picked up the life rights to renowned publisher William M. Gaines says The Hollywood Reporter.

"Ghoulishly Yours, William M. Gaines," will revolve around the banding together of an anti-establishment group of comic book creators, led by a reluctant Gaines, as they produce their controversial yet hugely popular line of comic books like "Tales From the Crypt" and Mad magazine.

Those publications later led Gaines to face Senate subcommittee hearings over accusations of perpetuating juvenile delinquency.

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Print Page
20 Movies Not Coming Soon to a Theater Near You
Despite big names, strong buzz, and built-in fans, some films still find 'development hell' a very real place.

By Stephen Saito

In a summer full of threequels, it might seem as though Hollywood has run out of original ideas — but we beg to differ. For every Shrek the Third, there are hundreds of scripts (and even some completed films) in studio vaults that have been waiting to emerge. Some have stars ranging from Tom Hanks to Johnny Depp attached and still find themselves waiting to see the light of day. For every film that collects dust but eventually gets its happy, Hollywood ending — like Dreamgirls or the full-steam-ahead Speed Racer — there is a dream project like Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon, which likely died with the director.
Here are just 20 of the films we'd still like to see dug out of development hell and brought to a multiplex near you.


The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
Potential Cast: Natalie Portman and Tobey Maguire

Michael Chabon is probably sick of his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by now. The author went through 10 drafts of his 2000 novel about Sam Clay and Josef Kavalier, two immigrant cousins who meet each other in America during World War II to create a comic book called The Escapist. With a few superhero moves of its own, the film was greenlit by producer Scott Rudin at Paramount with The Hours director Stephen Daldry onboard to direct, while Tobey Maguire and Natalie Portman were set to star. However, the stars weren't aligned at Paramount, who put the film in turnaround in 2007 after turnover in the studio's management.

Project Status: Chabon said recently in a Washington Post web chat that Rudin "assures me that there is no reason to despair and that it will all come back together again."


Closer star Natalie Portman never got around to joining The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.
A Cold Case
Potential Cast: Tom Hanks

Perhaps the title was self-fulfilling Before Kathryn Morris's Lily Rush ever solved her first moldy mystery on the CBS procedural with a similar title, A Cold Case was ready to be Tom Hanks's dramatic follow-up to the 2004 comedies The Ladykillers and The Terminal. One Hour Photo helmer Mark Romanek had signed on to bring his acutely dark vision to the film based on the true-life story of New York investigator Andy Rosenzwieg, who before retiring set out to solve the 27-year-old murder of his best friend. John Sayles and Forrest Gump scribe Eric Roth worked on the adaptation of Philip Gourevitch's bestseller, but A Cold Case frosted over when Hanks chose to conduct The Polar Express instead.

Project Status: Romanek has scared up The Wolf Man as his next film, but Hanks reportedly is still attached to the project, so we can only wait and see if Hollywood warms up to A Cold Case again.


Tom Hanks may have cracked The Da Vinci Code, but A Cold Case is a different matter.
A Confederacy of Dunces
Potential Cast: Will Ferrell, Mos Def, Drew Barrymore, and Lily Tomlin

The 2003 Nantucket Film Festival seemed like the end of a long journey for producer Scott Kramer. Back in the early '80s as an executive a Fox, Kramer had set up an adaptation of John Kennedy Toole's Pulitzer Prize-winning, New Orleans-set character study of the portly underachiever Ignatius J. Reilly, starring John Belushi and Richard Pryor and set to be directed by Harold Ramis. Now Will Ferrell, Mos Def, and All the Real Girls' David Gordon Green picked up where they had left off by participating in a public table-read of the Confederacy adaptation, co-written by Kramer and Steven Soderbergh and set to start filming by the end of the year. But as is wont to happen on films with the eccentricity of Confederacy, Paramount shuffled their feet, even with Ferrell and Drew Barrymore onboard, and Dunces was done in by studio ambivalence and issues concerning ownership of the book rights.

Project Status: Green told Roger Ebert in April 2006 that "the project is in development once again." However, Green is currently directing the Judd Apatow-produced stoner comedy The Pineapple Express.


Will Ferrell slayed audiences in Anchorman, but his dramatic A Confederacy of Dunces has been weighted down in development.
Dino
Potential Cast: Tom Hanks, John Travolta, Hugh Grant, Adam Sandler, and Jim Carrey

Amidst the 1990's swing of nostalgia for the retro cool of the 1950s, Warner Bros. commissioned a script from Casino screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi about the life of Dean Martin, which would reunite Pileggi with Casino director Martin Scorsese. A planned cast of Tom Hanks as Martin, John Travolta as Frank Sinatra, Hugh Grant as Peter Lawford, Adam Sandler as Joey Bishop, and Jim Carrey as Jerry Lewis was lined up for Scorsese's first biopic since 1981's Raging Bull. But Dino suffered a kick to the head when Warner Bros. allowed Scorsese a window to direct Gangs of New York for Miramax. Its long and expensive shoot led to the Rat Pack pic being shown the door.

Project Status: Scorsese would fulfill his commitment to Warner Bros. in 2003 by making The Aviator, a biopic about Howard Hughes, but Dino remains on the shelf.


Click's Adam Sandler was set to star as Rat Packer Joey Bishop in Dino until the project was checkmated.
The Dreyfus Affair
Potential Cast: Ben Affleck and Don Cheadle

Now that Brokeback Mountain has brought cowboys out of the closet, it finally might be time for a studio to take The Dreyfus Affair out of its closet as well. Everyone from Barbara Streisand to Nancy Drew helmer Andrew Fleming has wanted to direct an adaptation of Peter Lefcourt's satire about the national pastime turning into a national identity crisis when two baseball teammates round third base with each other. During the film's pre-production at Disney, Garth Brooks caused a stir when he took an interest to star in the film, if only the main character Randy wasn't gay. Ben Affleck and Don Cheadle would get as close as anyone to actually making the film in the late 1990s, with New Line for Dr. Doolittle director Betty Thomas. But as Lefcourt recently said in a panel discussion, one of the stars bowed out when a studio head told him his career wouldn't recover from playing a gay character on screen.

Project Status: Thanks to the Brokeback effect, Lefcourt is once again inching towards the plate with another adaptation.


Talk to Me's Don Cheadle was ready to play ball in the gay baseball satire The Dreyfus Affair
Dieter
Potential Cast: Mike Myers, Jack Black, Will Ferrell, and David Hasselhoff

If Saturday Night Live character Mary Catherine Gallagher could make it to the big screen, it should've been a walk in the park for Dieter, Mike Myers' effeminate German talk-show host. In fact, Universal felt the same way in 2000 and gave Myers the leeway to concoct a wild adventure involving his Kraftwerk-inspired creation traveling to America to rescue his beloved monkey from the clutches of David Hasselhoff. With Will Ferrell and Jack Black signed on to play Dieter's U.S. compatriots, Dieter was all set to be Myers' first success away from the Austin Powers franchise. However, shortly before production, Myers wouldn't approve the script that he actually cowrote, leading to an ugly legal battle between Myers and the film's producer Brian Grazer.

Project status: Myers and Grazer ultimately settled their differences out of court and even made a movie together (The Cat in the Hat), but Dieter's monkey remains caged.


Nacho Libre's Jack Black couldn't save the day for Mike Myers' Dieter.
Halo

Even by Hollywood standards, it was strange to see Master Chief hand deliver the Halo script, written by 28 Days Later scribe Alex Garland, to all the major studios, and stranger still when no studio immediately committed to the film adaptation of the mega-selling Xbox game in early 2005. Studios held firm when faced with the demands of the game's creator Microsoft, which included complete creative control and a $10 million fee for the rights. Since established franchises are few and far between, Fox and Universal agreed to team up on the project and, shortly after, Peter Jackson came aboard to produce with Pan's Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro in talks to direct. But that's where Master Chief started to run out of bullets. In 2006, Del Toro bowed out to direct Hellboy 2 and Jackson hired first-time director Neill Blomkamp to shore up the alien flood. Unfortunately, the studios balked at the cost of bringing the flood to the screen, which was said to be close to $200 million.

Project Status: Jackson has said recently that he hopes the release of Halo 3 the video game will make studio heads realize what they're missing.


The Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson may be one of the most powerful men in Hollywood, but he couldn't lift up Halo.
Hands on a Hard Body
Potential Cast: Billy Bob Thornton, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, and Hilary Swank

Robert Altman's films were known for their open-ended conclusions, and the late Nashville director continued that tradition even in death, leaving behind an array of work as scattered as the dialogue in his films. The unfinished projects include a tell-all autobiography and a satiric film called Paint about a murder mystery in the art world that would've starred Salma Hayek. Yet the furthest along was a fictional adaptation of the documentary Hands on a Hard Body, which was planned to start shooting in February 2007. Billy Bob Thornton, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, and Hilary Swank were all prepared to put their hands on the $10 million Picturehouse comedy about eccentric characters who hope to win a truck by holding on to it the longest.

Project Status: Picturehouse chief Bob Berney was publicly skeptical of an Altman-less Hard Body, but left the door open by not making an official decision. If a project does come to pass, might we suggest A Prairie Home Companion's assistant director Paul Thomas Anderson for the gig?


The Rock carried a big gun in Doom, but he could never put his Hands on a Hard Body.
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Potential Cast: Tom Cruise

True to its ambitious title, Dave Eggers' memoir of his unexpected guardianship of his eight-year-old brother after both their parents die of cancer was hailed by critics in 2000, became a bestseller, and ultimately became the subject of a bidding war between New Line and Miramax. Eggers chose New Line after the studio offered him $2 million, complete creative control, and the right to cowrite the screenplay. New Line could also offer Paul Thomas Anderson, who had just completed Magnolia for the studio and could possibly lure Tom Cruise to star. But once About a Boy author Nick Hornby and High Fidelity scribe D.V. DeVincentis turned in a script, New Line made the heartbreaking move to put the film into turnaround. Universal picked up rights to the film for Kimberly Peirce, director of Boys Don't Cry, but she left the tearjerker and finally settled into the Iraq War drama Stop-Loss.

Project Status: There may be too much in development costs going against Genius, but we're still hoping it's a Work in progress.


Tom Cruise evaded aliens in War of the Worlds, but missed a chance at showing his human side in A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.
The Man Who Killed Don Quixote
Cast: Johnny Depp and Jean Rochefort

For anyone who wants the whole story on how The Man Who Killed Don Quixote conquered Terry Gilliam, just rent the "unmaking of" documentary Lost in La Mancha. A quick recap: Gilliam had set out to adapt Miguel de Cervantes' classic about the self-styled conquistador, starring Jean Rochefort as the titular protagonist and a pre-Pirates Johnny Depp as the contemporary marketing exec who drops into the past and gets mistaken for Quixote's sidekick Sancho Panza. A hernia injury to Rochefort, a hailstorm that literally wiped out the production, and a host of other obstacles left Gilliam chasing windmills himself after the film's financing fell through.

Project Status: No stranger to long-gestating projects — including an adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Good Omens — Gilliam remains hopeful about finishing Don Quixote, saying in 2006 that he and cowriter Tony Grisoni were close to getting back the rights to their script. At least the Brazil director is in good company: Orson Welles adaptation of Quixote was also left unfinished.


Johnny Depp was the ultimate candy man in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but he might not have been meant to be The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.
Megalopolis
Potential Cast: Nicolas Cage, Russell Crowe, Robert De Niro, Paul Newman, and Kevin Spacey.

Francis Ford Coppola has almost as impressive a career of films that never came to fruition as he does of films that have. Coppola's list of projects-not-made include his long-in-the-works adaptation of Jack Kerouac's On the Road (which he will now produce for Motorcycle Diaries director Walter Salles) and a personal take on Pinocchio (following the tragic death of his son in 1985) that led to a lengthy legal battle with Warner Bros. over the film's rights. As much as we'd like to see either of those films directed by Coppola, The Godfather director really broke our heart when he announced he was scrapping Megalopolis, an ultra-ambitious epic about the battles between art and commerce, history and the future, told through the architectural restructuring of New York City. The film, however, was hatched in early 2001 and crumbled in that same year following the September 11 attacks.

Project Status: Coppola isn't ruling out a return to the sci-fi epic, recently telling Ain't It Cool News, "I have abandoned that as of now. I plan to begin a process of making one personal movie after another and if something leads me back to look at that, which I'm sure it might, I'll see what makes sense to me."


Adaptation's Nicolas Cage never got a chance to reunite with his uncle Francis Ford Coppola on Megalopolis.
The Onion Movie
Cast: Steven Seagal

Unlike the rest of the films on this list, The Onion Movie was actually produced, but you won't find any trace of it on IMDB. The trail of tears begins back in late 2003, when the minds behind the satirical rag signed with Fox Searchlight to make a no-holds-barred sketch-comedy movie. Under the guidance of producer and well known spoofer David Zucker of Airplane fame, The Onion's then-editor Robert Siegel and writer Todd Hanson penned a script that tackled cultural mores with skits called "Who Is the Rapist?" and even convinced Steven Seagal to play himself as a superhero named "Cock Puncher." Fox Searchlight didn't see the humor. Now the only evidence that the film even exists is a review on the website JoBlo from a reader who "wanted to poke my eyes out" after seeing a test screening.

Project Status: In March 2007, The Onion's president Sean Mills said they were no longer associated with the film — but call us a glutton for punishment or just eternal optimists for still wanting a peek.


Steven Seagal actually played a character named Cock Puncher even though The Onion Movie got punched out
Rendezvous With Rama
Potential Cast: Morgan Freeman

When Morgan Freeman started his own production company in 1997, the first film announced was Rendezvous With Rama, an adaptation of 2001: A Space Odyssey author Arthur C. Clarke's novel about a human crew who investigates an alien starship. Regarded as a classic among the sci-fi community, Rama also boasted a director worthy of such material, Freeman's Se7en helmer David Fincher. Ever since then, the film has become a veritable black hole of Freeman and Fincher's careers, emerging every so often online in the form of a conceptual sketch or a teaser clip, but nothing more. As Fincher went on to direct Fight Club and Panic Room, the $100-million film always seemed to be next on the director's slate, yet we're still waiting for this Rendezvous to happen.

Project Status: Freeman's Revelations Entertainment still has a poster of Rama prominently displayed on its home page with Fincher as the film's director.


10 Items or Less star Morgan Freeman is still holding out hope that he'll Rendezvous with Rama.
Save Us Joe Louis
Potential Cast: Terrence Howard

We're as surprised as anybody that two films written by What Makes Sammy Run? author Budd Schulberg, a writer best known for his script for 1954's On the Waterfront, are making this list of unmade classics. The most intriguing, however, is Save Us Joe Louis, a drama about the 1930s rivalry between the African-American boxer and German Max Schmelling shortly before World War II. Spike Lee, who planned to direct the film in September 2001, told The New York Times earlier that year, "The subject matter is wonderful: Hitler, Goebbels, F.D.R., Mussolini. We see it in the same genre as the David Lean epics such as Lawrence of Arabia and The Bridge on the River Kwai." Nonetheless Joe Louis wasn't heard from again until 2005, when Lee insisted that the film would follow Inside Man. He even found a leading man in Hustle and Flow's Terrence Howard, but Lee's busy schedule after his first hit in years has left the director without time to lace up his boxing gloves.

Project Status: Call it a TKO for now, since Lee has the potential Tom Cruise thriller Selling Time and a sequel to Inside Man in the works.


Terrence Howard had another chance for Pride if only Spike Lee could pull together the biopic Save Us Joe Louis.
Tripoli
Potential Cast: Russell Crowe

Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe had been looking for a follow up to Gladiator and thought they found it when they set sail to the shores of Tripoli, a period drama penned by The Departed screenwriter William Monaghan. Crowe would play William Eaton, the U.S. diplomat during the Jefferson Administration who in the early 1800s sought to overthrow the ruler of Tripoli on the Barbary Coast by uniting the region's Christian and Muslim soldiers. Ben Kingsley had signed on to star alongside Crowe, and filming was supposed to start in 2003 after Scott had finished making Matchstick Men. But Fox, the studio producing Tripoli, had another Russell Crowe oceanic epic in the works with Master and Commander and deemed Tripoli not seaworthy at the time.

Project Status: Since Crowe and Scott disembarked from Tripoli to do two other films together, Keanu Reeves has been bandied about as a potential replacement for the lead, and Monaghan said in a 2007 IGN interview that "Tripoli will get made. There's no way it can't be."


Tripoli would've reunited Russell Crowe with Gladiator director Ridley Scott.
The Turtle and the Hare
Potential Cast: Michael Caine, Brenda Blethyn, Bob Hoskins, and Orlando Jones

After Chicken Run had become a massive international hit in 1999, the claymation geniuses at Aardman Animation set their sights on a faux documentary about the world's most famous race. By the time production started on the stop-motion film in February 2001, Michael Caine stepped up to the starting line in the role of Maurice the Tortoise, with Brenda Blethyn, Bob Hoskins, and Orlando Jones rounding out the cast of voices. But when the filmmakers decided the script needed some work in July 2001, Tortoise slowed to a halt and Aardman decided not to split hares by turning their full attention towards Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

Project Status: The Aesop's fable fell further down Aardman's list of priorities when computer-animated films became all the craze, and the studio turned its attention to the CG rat's tale Flushed Away. Still, Aardman signed a new production deal at Sony, so Tortoise is said to be closer to coming out of its shell.


Children of Men's Michael Caine knew slow and steady would win the race playing the Tortoise in the Aardman film, but the race never started.
Untitled Phil Spector biopic
Potential Cast: Tom Cruise

Long before Phil Spector was on trial for murder, Tom Cruise began developing a biopic of the legendary music producer who shepherded into superstardom artists ranging from the Ronettes to Ike and Tina Turner. Cruise enlisted his Jerry Maguire director Cameron Crowe, but their script about the "wall of sound" inventor stumbled when the duo couldn't figure out an ending. Even though Crowe left the Spector project to direct Almost Famous, Spector's specter has never really left Crowe: the director cast the music producer's daughter in bit parts in Almost Famous and Elizabethtown. Also, in an eerie coincidence, Lana Clarkson, the slain actress at the center of Spector's trial, made her acting debut in Crowe's Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

Project Status: Though the jury is literally out on Spector's real-life fate, the music producer is more likely to be the subject of a TV movie than a big screen one. Still, who wouldn't pay to see Cruise as a crazily coiffed Spector?


Cameron Crowe had the musical know-how for a Phil Spector biopic from his days at Rolling Stone, just not an ending for the film.
Used Guys
Potential Cast: Jim Carrey, Ben Stiller, and Emily Mortimer

Used Guys' futuristic premise may be downright quaint by the time someone revives this Ben Stiller-Jim Carrey comedy that an unnamed senior executive at Fox told The New York Times was a "prescription for unhappiness." With an estimated budget of $112 million, two $20 million comedy kings, and a decidedly strange premise about a world where men had been eradicated and replaced by "pleasure clones" — two of whom would be played by Stiller and Carrey —the film was a gamble. After all, who wants to be stuck with the next Adventures of Pluto Nash? But with Meet the Fockers director Jay Roach onboard to direct, Used Guys seemed like a safe bet. Profit participation beyond the two stars' regular fees and Carrey's commitment to another film (Ripley's Believe It Or Not, which also ultimately did not happen) were cited as reasons why we'll never get to see Roach's planned egg-shaped cars.

Project Status: Just like the men of Used Guys, the project seems extinct.


The Number 23 star Jim Carrey was ready to play a Used Guy until Fox pulled the plug.
What Makes Sammy Run
Potential Cast: Ben Stiller

While we can't say for certain what makes Sammy run, we do know that he's running a marathon and not a sprint. That may be because Budd Schulberg's What Makes Sammy Run is the ultimate Hollywood insider novel and, at the time of its publication in 1941, any studio wanting to adapt the tale of the ruthless and self-serving Hollywood screenwriter Sammy Glick would most likely find themselves part of its sordid storyline. Ben Stiller bought the rights to the book in the mid-1990s and wrote a script with Jerry Stahl, the man he played in Permanent Midnight, to direct for Warner Bros. In 2001, when Stiller moved his production company to DreamWorks, the then-burgeoning studio paid $2.6 million to Warners to have the project move along with him, but the ubiquitous Stiller hasn't been able to fit the film into his schedule.

Project Status: Stiller is currently directing Tropic Thunder, his first film since Zoolander which means Sammy will have to keep running offscreen.


Ben Stiller wanted to put his days of monkeying around in films like Night at the Museum behind him with the drama What Makes Sammy Run?
Wonder Woman
Potential Cast: Sandra Bullock

Not even Wonder Woman's golden lasso has been able to rein in the seemingly endless development that keeps Princess Diana of the Amazon in perpetual procession to the silver screen. As with all DC Comics characters, Wonder Woman seemed bound for the big screen via DC's corporate sibling, Warner Bros. However, no one besides Lynda Carter has ever been formally fitted for Wonder Woman's halter top since producer Joel Silver took control of the project in 2001. While Sandra Bullock and Jennifer Lopez were bandied about to put on the bulletproof bracelets, Antz screenwriter Todd Alcott took a stab at the film, followed by a series of scribes leading up to Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon being hired to helm in 2005. His version, said to be set in the present day and star an unknown, wasn't deemed wondrous by the studio. Warner Bros. unceremoniously dumped Whedon by buying a version set during World War II and written by two unknowns, though the studio claimed it was only a preemptive measure against a plagiarism lawsuit.

Project Status: Silver is considering leaving Wonder Woman in a league of her own until she can join a film about the DC all-star crime-fighting squad, the Justice League.

[crippled_avenger]

Real life husband and wife Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany will team for the psychological thriller "Born" reports Variety.

The story revolves around a couple who settle down in a seemingly idyllic English town to raise a family. Their perfect life is shaken when the husband, a claymation artist, discovers his characters are acting out a nightmare that comes to life.

Guillermo del Toro, Lawrence Gordon and Lloyd Levin will produce. Stop-motion animated sequences, produced by Chiodo Bros. Prods. ("Elf," "Team America") will be integrated into the pic.

Daniel Simpson will direct and co-wrote the project with Clive Barker and Paul Kaye. Production begins mid-August in the UK.

[crippled_avenger]

Timur Bekmambetov ("Night Watch," "Day Watch") is currently working on the comic adaptation "Wanted" and revealed some surprising details about the project.

The Mark Miller comic followed an ordinary office worker who discovers that he's actually the son of one of the greatest supervillains that ever lived, and now that his father is dead he must take his place.

Bekmambetov however revealed to MTV News that some definite changes are in order for the story - namely that the supervillain group whom he and his father belong to will now have a more mystical quality:

"He soon finds himself carrying out the death orders of the Fates, literal weavers of every human's lifeline...We built a huge textile factory in Prague. The production designer, John Myhre, built this huge set and we've created a mythology in this world of weavers. The hero will discover the whole world. It looks ordinary, but it's not. It's an industrial world filled with weaving machines, lots of traps, lot of looms flying back and forth and predicting the future. The looms weave these fabrics, and the fabrics have a pattern, like a binary code, that has information. The weavers can read the fabric - they see the structure of it and they can read its messages. Then they know who has to be killed to keep the balance of the world."

Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman and James McAvoy star in the film which is due out late next year.

[Meho Krljic]

Ne znam da li da se nerviram ili da se radujem što je za ekranizaciju odabran jedan od manje interesantnih 'alternativnih' superhero stripova iz poslednje decenije. S jedne strane, ima toliko boljih predložaka za ovaj tretman (nekih napisanih i od strane samog Millara), s druge, ZNAM da će u transferu u drugi medij čak i Wanted koji nije mnogo pametan ni u originalu, zaglupeti, pa je bolje da se nisu dohvatili nečeg boljeg.

[crippled_avenger]

William Hurt has joined the all-star cast of Universal Pictures "The Incredible Hulk" says The Hollywood Reporter.

Louis Leterrier directs the story which sees Bruce Banner/Hulk (Edward Norton) on the run, trying to avoid capture long enough to cure the condition that turns him into a monster.

Hurt will play Gen. Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross, the man who has dedicated his life to capturing the Hulk -- and who also is the father of Banner's love interest, Betty Ross (Liv Tyler).

Roth plays the villain Emil Blonsky/the Abomination, whilst Zak Penn wrote the script. Shooting begins this Summer in Toronto.

[crippled_avenger]

Jennifer Aniston will produce and potentially star in the DreamWorks period musical "Goree Girls" reports Reuters.

Margaret Nagle ("The Lost Boys of the Sudan") is adapting a 2003 Texas Monthly article about a group of eight women serving time in Texas' Goree Prison during the 1940s.

They formed one of the first all-female country and western acts in the country and captured the hearts of millions of fans in the process before they were eventually pardoned.

[crippled_avenger]

Director Martin Campbell ("Casino Royale," "Goldfinger," "The Mask of Zorro") is attached to helm Paramount's thriller "36" says The Hollywood Reporter.

A remake of the acclaimed 2004 French-language thriller "36 quai des orfevres," the story revolves around two detectives who try to solve a series of armored car robberies in the hopes of landing a promotion promised to whoever catches the perpetrators.

Author-screenwriter Richard Price ("Freedomland," "Mad Dog and Glory") has been tapped to overhaul Dean Georgaris' screenplay and reimagine the two detectives in their 30s. Robert De Niro, who is producing and was attached to star, will now bow out of the acting role due to the reinvention.

Campbell is presently readying 20th Century Fox's thriller "Unstoppable" as his next project.

[crippled_avenger]

Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige has confirmed the company's next independently financed project will be a new version of "Captain America" reports Sci-Fi Wire.

Mixing a period story with a contemporary one, the PG-13 superhero film is currently being penned by David Self ("Road to Perdition") with a director to be announced shortly.

"We'll have to play with Captain America as being a patriotic propoganda machine on one hand but also being a very human Steve Rogers, ... [an] interesting, fascinating hero in his own right," Feige told reporters on the set of "Iron Man."

Shooting begins this time next year.

[crippled_avenger]

Sam Neill, Guy Pearce and Miranda Otto will star in new Australian crime drama "How to Change in 9 Weeks" for Icon Films says The Hollywood Reporter.

The thriller is based on the story of a 15-year-old Australian student, Rachel Barber, who went missing in Melbourne in 1999 and was found to have been murdered by a former childhood friend, Caroline Reid.

Newcomers Kate Bell and Ruth Murphy have been cast in the key roles of Barber and Reid while Pearce and Otto will star as Rachel's parents. Neill plays Caroline's father, David Reid, and Rebecca Gibney plays her mother. Justine Clarke also stars.

One unusual element is that director Simone North and producer Tony Cavanaugh have enlisted Sidney Lumet to serve as a mentor for North in her debut feature as a writer-director.

Shooting begins this week in Queensland this week before moving to Melbourne. "Weeks" is scheduled for release in Australia in early 2008.

[crippled_avenger]

The manager of Carice van Houten ("Black Book") has told the Dutch press that she will play the wife of Tom Cruise's character in Bryan Singer's WWII drama "Valkyrie"..."

[crippled_avenger]

Universal Pictures and Imagine Entertainment have set David Goyer to write and direct a new take on the H.G. Wells classic "The Invisible Man" reports Variety.

Conceived as a sequel to Wells' original tale, the story centers on a British nephew of the original Invisible Man.

Once he discovers his uncle's formula for achieving invisibility, he is recruited by British intelligence agency MI5 during WWII.

Brian Grazer will produce. Goyer recently directed "The Invisible," "Blade: Trinity," and is planning to helm "X-Men" spinoff "Magneto."

[Will-O'-The-Wisp]

AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!


LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Ahead of Friday's opening of "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer," Marvel Studios has begun the process of bringing another of its comics to the big screen: the elite superhero team the Avengers.    

Zak Penn, who wrote the screenplay for Marvel's upcoming "The Incredible Hulk," is slated to pen the live-action adaptation that would be titled "The Avengers."

On the other side of town, Warner Bros. Pictures is developing its superhero superteam, "Justice League of America," with Kieran Mulroney and Michele Mulroney having submitted a draft adapting the DC Comics series.

While Penn has not begun his screenplay, those who have read the Mulroneys' draft give it a thumbs-up, and a search for directors is about to begin.

One challenge facing the writers is which heroes to include in their scripts.

While the roster for the Avengers has changed since its inception in 1963, growing to include the likes of Spider-Man and X-Men hero Wolverine, the classic iteration of the team consisted of Iron Man, Captain America, Thor and the diminutive Ant-Man and Wasp. Other members have been the Hulk, the bow-and-arrow-wielding Hawkeye and the probability-altering gypsy Scarlet Witch.

Many of these heroes are getting their own starring portrayals in other movies, with
Robert Downey Jr. as "Iron Man" already shooting; "Hulk" scheduled for a summer start, with Ed Norton starring; a "Thor" script being written by Mark Protosevich; and "Ant-Man" being developed by Edgar Wright ("Hot Fuzz"). Marvel wants to wait until all those films have entered the market before unleashing "The Avengers."

Marvel, which had licensed out some of its characters to various studios, owns the rights to most of the Avengers with the exception of Hulk, which Universal has.

"Avengers" has acted as the company's answer to DC Comics' best-seller "Justice League of America," which was banded together such A-list heroes as Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Aquaman, Flash and Green Lantern as well as the Martian Manhunter.

One question that the respective companies will have to address before either movie is green lighted is whether to include the marquee superheroes such as Superman and the Hulk in ensemble projects.

If "The Avengers" and "Justice League" ultimately do include the biggest names among the superhero fraternity, then the question would turn to casting. Should Warners try to get
Christian Bale and
Brandon Routh, who star as Superman and Batman in their respective movies, into the ensemble films? Should Marvel talk to Norton and Downey about starring in "Avengers?"

The answers could be years in the making.

[crippled_avenger]

Talking with IGN UK, film producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura revealed that he's still hoping to move ahead with a sequel to 2005's supernatural actioneer "Constantine".

He says "I know all the filmmakers want to try to make number two. We love the character. We're hoping that we can find a way to make even, I'll say, a darker, harder version of it. We're not at that place yet where we really have the ability to get that done, but I know Keanu wants to play that and all of us think that there is a natural, new and darker adventure with Constantine."

di Bonaventura also talked briefly about the two "G.I. Joe" scripts in development and the maligned Skip Woods' draft - "Skip had literally, from the day he finished his contract to the day that draft came in, seven weeks [to complete it] because of the timeline that was being required by the overall deal. So, it has been judged in some circles, I think, harshly, and I think unfortunately like all creative processes it was just the very beginning of it. And I know that Skip is working hard on his next draft and is going to nail it."

He adds that the process is going to take some time - "Snake-Eyes and Scarlett, Nemesis and Destro and Cobra and Duke and Heavy Duty: These guys have to be rendered as characters that the fan base recognizes and loves, and in a way that the movie can deliver a cool experience that you want to relate to. And that's an evolutionary process."

[crippled_avenger]

Y tu mamá también" stars Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna are re-teaming for the dramedy "Rudo y Cursi" (aka "Rough and Corny") which is currently shooting in Mexico.

Penned & directed by Carlos Cuarón (Alfonso's brother), the story is a tale of love and hate between professional soccer-playing brothers says Reuters.

Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu co-produce. Filming began three weeks ago near a Cuarón-owned banana plantation in Cihuatlan.

[crippled_avenger]

Jude Law and Forest Whitaker are set to headline futuristic adventure thriller "Repossession Mambo" for Universal Pictures says The Hollywood Reporter.

Miguel Sapochnik makes his feature directorial debut on the film, which centers on a repo man made up of artificial organs who, after receiving a heart transplant, struggles to make payments and must go on the run from his former partner.

Eric Garcia and Garrett Lerner penned the screenplay. A September start date is being targeted.

[crippled_avenger]

Talking with News 24, FHM's sexiest South African woman Tanya van Graan will appear in both the upcoming third "Starship Troopers" film and a new Jean Claude Van Damme project.

The model confirmed that she'll begin shooting "Starship Troopers: Marauder" in Cape Town in a few weeks. The project, which began shooting recently at Table Mountain, sees Casper van Dien cast again as Johnny Rico. Graan says she plays "one of the seven troopers who must help to save the earth."

Shooting on the presently untitled Van Damme film begins in July in Cape Town. Graan's role is more of a cameo in that one.

[crippled_avenger]

A flurry of casting rumors have sprung up in the last few hours on the upcoming "Watchmen" comic adaptation that Zack Snyder ("300") is directing.

A posting on actor Paddy Consindine's official site (via Coming Soon) indicates the actor is no longer up for the role of Rorschach, and the offer has now gone out to Jackie Earle Haley ("Little Children," "All the King's Men").

Coming Soon talked with Haley's "Little Children" co-star Patrick Wilson about Snyder's recent comments that he's pretty much set for the role of Nite Owl. Wilson replied "I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about this stuff. It's been confirmed on a lot of websites, I'll just say that."

Pushed further, he added "I would blab my mouth cause I certainly haven't been told to keep quiet. It's just out of respect for them trying to get everybody else on board before I go ahead and blab my mouth, but it's pretty cool. It's exciting stuff."

Finally, Aint it Cool reports that with Keanu Reeves and Billy Crudup no longer set to play Dr. Manhattan, actor Jason Patric ("Speed II," "Sleepers") is now the current favourite for that role.

They also indicate that Thomas Jane has beat out the likes of Ron Pearlman and Nathan Fillion for the role of the ill-fated The Comedian.

[crippled_avenger]

Owen Wilson and Nick Nolte have joined the Ben Stiller-directed DreamWorks comedy "Tropic Thunder" reports Variety.

The story follows a group of actors who go on location to shoot a war movie, only to find that reality replicates their plot.

Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr., Brandon Jackson, Steve Coogan, Danny McBride, Bill Hader, Jay Baruchel, Matt Levin and Andrea De Oliveira are already onboard to star.

Stiller, who wrote the script with Justin Theroux and Etan Cohen, will begin filming this summer in Hawaii and Los Angeles.

[crippled_avenger]

Michael Bay's production company Platinum Dunes will begin production this August on the thriller "Half to Death" reports Filmjerk.

The story follows a young college freshman living the same day over and over again, one that always ends with her brutal murder by an unknown attacker. As a result she must race to find the killer to stop it from happening.

Finnish video director Antti Jokinen will make his feature directing debut, from a screenplay by one-time "Buffy" comic book writer Scott Lobdell.

[milan]

from a screenplay by one-time "Buffy" comic book writer Scott Lobdell.

Lobdel je inache gotovo sam pisao sve XMen naslove od pochetka 90ih pa do negde 98. godine - bilo je tu jos pisaca ali je on sam stvorio taj XMen filing koji je mene i privukao ovoj franshizi. Posebno bih istakao Generation X serijal koji je vodio prvih 30ak brojeva...

[crippled_avenger]

Comedian Jack Black and director Todd Phillips ("Road Trip," "Starsky and Hutch") are teaming for Warner Bros. comedy "Man-Witch" reports Variety.

In the comedy, Black will play a schoolteacher who suddenly discovers he has witchlike abilities.

Taken in by a coven, he is persuaded to attend a school for witches, only to discover that his classmates are all girls.

Jay Reiss ("Lonny the Great") is penning the script and Phillips is being eyed to direct.

[Ghoul]

In the comedy, Black will play a schoolteacher who suddenly discovers he has witchlike abilities.

Taken in by a coven, he is persuaded to attend a school for witches, only to discover that his classmates are all girls.

iako ne volim bleka, moram reci da sam se glasno nasmejao procitavsi ovaj sinopsis

[crippled_avenger]

Aardman Features ("Wallace & Gromit," "Chicken Run") has unveiled four film projects as part of their new three-year deal with Sony Pictures. According to Variety, the four films on their slate include:

"The Cat Burglars" - A claymation comedic heist movie about milk-thieving stray cats. Steve Box directs, "Life on Mars" creators Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharoah will write, and the tone has been described as both "family-friendly Tarantino" and "Ocean's Eleven meets Wallace & Gromit."

"Pirates" - Comedy adventure based on the "Pirates" series of books penned by Gideon Defoe. Andy Riley and Kevin Cecil (TV's "Hyperdrive") will pen the script, and "Chicken Run" helmer Peter Lord will direct.

"Operation Rudolph" - A Christmas action movie showing Santa's North Pole operation as an exhilarating ultra-high-tech military procedure on a massive scale, revealing how Santa and his huge army of combat elves get around the whole world in one night. "Borat" co-writer Peter Baynham is penning the script.

"Untitled Nick Park Project" - Details are not yet released, but it is not another "Wallace & Gromit."

[crippled_avenger]

The Kingdom' Gambles That Entertainment Can Trump Politics
Frank Connor/Universal Pictures
From left, Ali Suliman, the director Peter Berg and Ashraf Barhom on the set of "The Kingdom," a terror thriller that stars Jamie Foxx.

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By MICHAEL CIEPLY
Published: June 19, 2007
LOS ANGELES, June 18 — "The Kingdom," a coming film about the F.B.I.'s pursuit of Islamic bad guys in a not particularly hospitable Saudi Arabia, appears on the surface to tread on treacherous and polarized political ground. But after a test screening before a deliberately diversified audience in the London borough of Wandsworth earlier this year, the director Peter Berg began to suspect that his terror thriller might survive its birth into a contentious world, after all.

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The Kingdom
Syriana
World Trade Center
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Munich Asked who would rate the film "excellent," eight Muslim men and women in traditional dress — presumably some of the picture's toughest customers — were among those who raised their hands, Mr. Berg said over breakfast here last week.

Asked why, another young Muslim woman responded with an unexpectedly salty term for high-powered action.

By Mr. Berg's account, the screening audience in a working-class British neighborhood had bought into the film's notion that conventional movie values — buddy bonding, boisterous action and a relentless determination to get the bad guys — could bridge the deepest cultural chasm. Universal Pictures will soon discover whether ticket buyers around the world feel the same.

In a somewhat unusual gambit Universal marketers have begun to punctuate the summer movie season with extensive promotional screenings of "The Kingdom," though it is not scheduled for release until Sept. 28. Fox successfully did something similar last year with its off-center comedy "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan."

Universal's idea is to show that however little viewers may hunger for movies about real terror — "Syriana," "World Trade Center" and the Universal-distributed "Munich" and "United 93" found limited audiences for their downbeat, introspective takes — "The Kingdom" is different. It's Middle Eastern politics with considerably less agonizing.

Cooked up four years ago by Mr. Berg; Michael Mann, who is a producer on the film; and the writer Matthew Michael Carnahan, "The Kingdom" is intended, in Mr. Carnahan's words, to figure out "what would a murder investigation look like on Mars?"

The film follows a team of F.B.I. investigators, led by Jamie Foxx's special agent Ronald Fleury, as they break political barriers and cultural taboos to investigate a bombing in Saudi Arabia not unlike the real-life attacks on Western residential compounds in Riyadh. Those occurred in May 2003, just as Mr. Berg began working on "The Kingdom."

The film's buddy is a Saudi police colonel played by Ashraf Barhom ("Paradise Now"). Its baddie is the bomb-building leader of an Islamic terror cell. The heroes' modus operandi carries a whiff of "Rambo" and more than a touch of Mr. Mann's trademark creation, the classic police show "Miami Vice."

"We wanted to get guys who do procedural homicide work," Mr. Mann explained in a telephone interview. "Two of those guys from the most oppositional backgrounds you can imagine, a Saudi cop and an African-American from Washington, would have more things in common, wanting to make bad things not happen, than all the cultural differences between them."

Viewers conditioned by the self-doubting Israeli assassins of Steven Spielberg's "Munich" or the mind-bending complexities of Stephen Gaghan's "Syriana" may be startled by Mr. Berg's more kinetic approach. Mr. Foxx's character is perfectly willing to join a T-shirted Jennifer Garner and colleagues blasting their way through a trouble-infested Saudi neighborhood when the situation calls for it, local standards of female propriety notwithstanding.

A lack of filmmaking infrastructure and precedents ruled out shooting in Saudi Arabia. (Even "Lawrence of Arabia," whose story spanned the Arabian desert, was largely shot in Morocco and Spain.) But Mr. Berg, 43, known to many for his portrayal of Dr. Billy Kronk on the series "Chicago Hope" and who is an executive producer on the television series "Friday Night Lights," still pursued an air of authenticity.

With the help of a Saudi friend, he visited the kingdom, though he received no official support from the Saudi government, he said. The film was shot in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, as well as in Washington and Arizona.

Initially several Saudis were retained to provide cultural advice, though one, Mr. Berg said, was distanced from the project after he developed a crush on Ms. Garner. Rich Klein of the Kissinger McLarty Associates consulting firm was a key political adviser.

"It became an exercise in honesty," said Mr. Klein, a former State Department official who patrolled matters as small as the styling of the characters' thobes — long-sleeved Saudi robes — or the likely back-story of an American diplomat played by Jeremy Piven.

The Saudi embassy's press office in Washington did not respond to queries about the film.

In editing "The Kingdom," Mr. Berg said he tinkered only slightly to keep the movie's sympathies from straying into a zone that might seem unacceptably anti-Muslim or pro-Western. A softer scene, for instance, portrays a Muslim family praying. It went in and out of the movie several times, Mr. Berg said, but finally remained in, as necessary leavening.

"Everybody wants good," Scott Stuber, the film's other producer, said, speaking of the prayer scene. "It's important for the good people to band together."

Mr. Carnahan said he wrote drafts that were far more political and "nihilistic" than the finished film. And he fretted for a time that Mr. Berg's insistence on honoring basic values of the buddy-cop genre might be "dumbing this movie down." But, Mr. Carnahan said, he also came to believe that wrapping his notions about shared responsibility for the world's ills "in conventional movie plot and conventional movie characters" was the way to reach people.

According to at least some independent evidence, that is beginning to occur. "The Kingdom" drew applause at a recent screening in Los Angeles, and a fair number of whoops when Saudi and American heroes scored on the movie villains.

And, not unlike "300" — an action film about ancient Spartans that earlier this year stirred unexpected debate about whether it was pro- or anti-President Bush — "The Kingdom" has already provoked some conflicting opinions about its real message.

"About time we had a pro-American movie," started one thread among several chewing over the film's sympathies on an IMDB.com message board recently. By contrast, Mr. Berg said, one of the traditionally dressed Muslim women at his London screening said she had read the movie as being "about the absurdity of military solutions" to Middle Eastern problems.

For Universal, which spent more than $70 million to make the film and will invest tens of millions more to market it, the task will be to keep such ferment from overwhelming its own message: that even the most divisive situations can be served by a popcorn movie, if done right.

"We now accept the fact that this is the dynamic of the world we live in," said Marc Shmuger, Universal's chairman, speaking of the attempt by Mr. Berg and company to plant a genuine entertainment on top of an all-too real problem.

"I love that," he added. "I really respond to that."

[Ghoul]

Mamoru Oshii, best known internationally for the two Ghost in the Shell movies, will direct The Sky Crawlers, an animated feature scheduled for Japanese release in 2008.

The Sky Crawlers is based on series of novels by Hiroshi Mori concerning an alternate present day where young "Kildren" fight a war as entertainment for adults. After reading the novel, Director Oshii praised it as "a work that should be made into a movie for young people now....It is time to face this new perception to our existence through the Kildren, who live indefinitely in eternal adolescence, and this theme should be dealt with now."

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