Quentin Tarantino‘s uberviolent WWII project Inglorious Bastards has finally found its star — and its home. Reps for Brad Pitt confirm that the prolific father is in negotiations to play Lieut. Aldo Raine. (A source says rumors that Tarantino is also courting Leonardo DiCaprio for the role of Col. Hans Landa are false.) After three weeks of very public negotiations — and after everyone with a Hollywood zip code has seemingly seen a copy of the script — sources say the movie will land at Universal Pictures. Dealmaking has been handed off to the studio’s lawyers, and while nothing is set in stone, it appears that the studio will partner with Tarantino and producer/domestic distributor Harvey Weinstein to cofinance the film and handle international distribution.
Archive: July 2008 (1-10 of 23)
Darren Aronofsky to direct a new 'RoboCop'
Darren Aronofsky (The Fountain, Requiem for a Dream) is taking his filmmaking talents to the masses with the next installment of RoboCop with David Self (Road to Perdition) to write the screenplay. Set for a 2010 release, RoboCop will mark one of MGM’s first greenlight’s under new president of production Mary Parent. The film will mark the fourth in the series of RoboCop movies, debuting initially in 1987 with Peter Weller in the lead.
An Oscar for Heath Ledger in 'The Dark Knight'?
Thanks to The Dark Knight,
you might actually care about the Oscars next year. Though summer
blockbusters don’t usually show up in the big races at the Academy
Awards, the film’s glowing reviews make it a possible contender in the
Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay categories, and it will surely
be considered a front-runner for technical prizes. But its greatest
Oscar hope has to be Heath Ledger, who’ll likely become the
seventh-ever posthumous acting nominee for his mesmerizing performance
as the Joker. And it’s safe to say that several million Dark Knight fans would tune in to the telecast to see if he can become the second such winner (after Network‘s Peter Finch in 1977).
The Academy Awards could use the boost. For the last several years,
the gala has been filled with lesser-known nominees and seen its
ratings plummet. This past ceremony, all four acting winners were
foreigners, only one major-category victor (Juno) grossed more than $75 million—and the show attracted an all-time-low audience of 32 million.
Next year’s telecast could end up being quite the A-list affair. Possible contenders include Brad Pitt, who ages in reverse for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; Angelina Jolie, playing the mother of a missing child in Clint Eastwood’s Changeling; Will Smith, reteaming with Pursuit of Happyness director Gabriele Muccino, in the character study Seven Pounds; Nicole Kidman, once more under the tutelage of Moulin Rouge maestro Baz Luhrmann in the epic Australia; and the Titanic duo of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, who’ll reunite for the first time in the suburban drama Revolutionary Road.
Of course, not all of next year’s nomination slots will be filled by blockbusters. But the presence of hits like The Dark Knight
could go a long way toward keeping Oscar viewers from changing the
Bat-channel. What say you, PopWatchers? Does Ledger deserve to be in
the running for an Oscar nod? If the Academy starts paying more
attention to well-crafted popcorn flicks, would it raise your overall
interest in the Oscar telecast? (And if you can’t wait for this week’s
EW cover story on The Dark Knight, by all means click here and read it online!)
Ferrell and McKay developing 'Anchorman 2'
Ron Burgundy fans rejoice! It looks like Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, the brains behind Anchorman, are ready to put the sexist, freewheeling newscaster back in the anchor chair. McKay tells EW.com that he and Ferrell have begun work on a sequel that could jump ahead a decade to the ’80s. (We can see it now: Ron discovers hair mousse.) DreamWorks says it hasn’t yet talked to the duo, but that doesn’t mean Ferrell and McKay aren’t dreaming up inappropriate new plots. “The audience will now allow us to do even crazier stuff,” McKay says, “and that’s really all we’re looking for in our careers.”
Nia Vardalos prepares another big-screen comeback
Can Nia Vardalos make a comeback? The My Big Fat Greek Wedding sweetheart has scored a sweet theatrical distribution deal from Fox Searchlight (Juno) for her already-completed romantic comedy My Life in Ruins, which the studio will release in 2009. Directed by Donald Petrie (How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days) and written by Mike Reiss (The Simpsons Movie), Ruins features Vardalos as a travel guide leading a motley group of tourists on a tour of her native Greece. Richard Dreyfuss, Harland Williams, and Rachel Dratch costar. Produced by the Greek Wedding team of Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson, and Gary Goetzman, Ruins has scored really high marks in audience test screenings, and the studio is hopeful it’ll mark a return to form for Vardalos, who starred in and won an Oscar nomination for writing 2002′s My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which grossed $241.4 mil domestically. Her last two efforts, the television show My Big Fat Greek Life and the drag-queen comedy Connie and Carla, didn’t connect nearly as well.
Christian Siriano to design collection for 'Eloise in Paris'
The always fierce Christian Siriano is getting his chance at the big screen. The latest Project Runway winner will be designing a couture collection to be featured in the final scene of the indie film Eloise in Paris, starring Uma Thurman and newcomer Jordana Beatty as Eloise. Siriano’s collection will be part of — big shocker — a Paris Fashion Week that Eloise and Nanny (Thurman) are attending. Set to begin filming in New York and Paris in September, the film will be directed by Charles Shyer (Father of the Bride, Alfie) and released sometime in 2009.
Matt Fraction lands movie deals for 'Casanova' and 'Last of the Independents'
San Diego Comic-Con is nigh, and hipster comic book writer Matt Fraction is already enjoying the spoils of Hollywood’s yearly bum-rush to embrace all things geektastic: He’s just inked a deal with producer Rick Alexander (MGM’s Adventures in the Land of Zametherea) and manager-producer Jeff Krelitz to turn two of his co-creations, Casanova and Last of the Independents, into movies. A major A-list actor is already mulling over the lead in Casanova, an adventure-caper about a thief-turned-spy, which Alexander promises will evolve into a "mega-budget, effects-intensive action spectacular." (He says he’s aiming to unleash the "spectacular" during the Fourth of July weekend 2010.) This is merely the first of what the producers hope will be a Bond-type franchise. Casanova "[will] live on but be played by a different actor each time out," says Krelitz, who notes that the duo will hire a scriptwriter only after securing a star and director. As for the swaggering bank-heist thriller Independent? It already has a screenwriter — that’d be newcomer Alex Litvak — so producers are currently shopping for a director with hopes of an early 2009 shoot. — By Nisha Gopalan
Documentary on 'Runway' winner Jay McCarroll debuts tonight
A year and a half after he became Project Runway‘s first winner, Jay McCarroll had approximately 11 minutes to save his career. That’s how long a show at New York’s Fashion Week lasts, and when he debuted his first post-win collection there in September 2006… well, things got messy: A model suffered a wardrobe malfunction and none of the purchased pieces reached their buyer. But Jay bounced back. Today he’s teaching at Philadelphia University, has a new line on QVC ("It’s comfortable but still super funky!" he reports) and is the subject of Eleven Minutes, a documentary by filmmakers Michael Selditch and Rob Tate which has its West Coast debut tonight at Outfest, the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, at the same time as the season premiere of Project Runway, Season 5 ("Ironic isn’t it?" cracks McCarroll). "It’s kind of anti-Bravo branded," says Tate of the doc, which chronicles nearly every moment leading to that notorious showing. "That’s the irony," explains Selditch. "Part of the story is Jay’s struggle to be taken seriously as a fashion designer and not just a reality TV star. But people pigeonhole him into, ‘Oh, sing and dance, be funny!’" True to form, McCarroll is ready with a quip: "We wanted to show how much work it really is. It’s so much more than ‘Christian Siriano’s fierce!’"
Justin Theroux to write 'Iron Man 2'
Hollywood is finally noticing Justin Theroux for something other than his soulful eyes and killer cheek bones. Sources tell EW.com that the celebrated character actor (Mulholland Drive, Six Feet Under) has just landed the sweetest writing gig in town: He’s taking on the script for Iron Man 2. Marvel Studios won’t confirm the deal, but Theroux has generated a lot of interest after early screenings of Tropic Thunder, the Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr. comedy (out Aug. 13) he co-wrote with Etan Cohen and Stiller. Theroux made his directorial debut with last year’s Billy Crudup/Mandy Moore dramedy Dedication and will now get first crack at writing the sequel to this summer’s highest-grossing film so far.
Michael Bay talks 'Transformers 2' and 'Friday the 13th' remake
During a break on the set of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen — described to us as a "remote air force base" at an "undisclosed location" — horror franchise reviver and blockbuster director extraordinaire Michael Bay hopped on the phone to give us the scoop on the Transformers sequel, his other projects in the works, and his reaction to that Dark Knight script circling the Internet with his name on it…
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What can you tell us about Transformers 2? Or, better yet, what will you tell us?
MICHAEL BAY: When we were writing the script, I said to the writers, "I hate sequels that try to make it to the third movie. Pretend like we’re never having a third movie, so let’s go for broke on the second one. I hate those cliffhangers! Let’s just make this movie stand on its own." I really feel this movie is not a forced sequel. I think the script is really good, and I think it’s got a lot of new stuff in it. There are a lot of rumors out there, but we’ve released a lot of fake stuff. We’ve done a really good job of keeping things secret.
Can you give us a hint of something that is true then?
[Laughs] No.
C’mon, anything?
There are some great, new robots that are really inventive.
You recently wrapped production on your update of Friday the 13th, and horror buffs out there are dying to know: what’s it going to be about?
It’s a reconception of the original. We’re introducing a whole group of new kids. What we always try to do is add a little bit of freshness to these movies that were really scary back then and update them for a new audience.
AFTER THE JUMP: Bay continues on Friday the 13th ("You’re just not going to believe the first 12 minutes!") and talks Ouija boards.
So are you following the same plot as the very first Friday the 13th?
It’s a little different. I don’t want to give it away because of the Internet crazies.
There’s been rumors that you’re going to include plots from all three Friday the 13ths into your remake. Is that true?
The first two, yeah.
Where did you film the Crystal Lake scenes?
In Austin, where we also shot Texas Chainsaw. Austin gives you a lot of looks.
Is there anything else you are willing to divulge about it?
I
haven’t seen the director’s cut because he’s still cutting, but I know
this one will really be scary; it’s also funny, as well. It’s a fun
college adventure that goes awry. It’s not a movie I would ever show my
mom! (Laughs) We don’t make these for our mothers; we make these for
the fans out there.
Speaking of those fans, what do you say to people who are worried that an update of Friday the 13th will ruin the original?
There
are always haters out there, and you can’t get rid of that. We try to
be faithful, and we’re fans ourselves. It’s like when I did Transformers —
I listened to the fans, you know, but you still have to make your own
movie by respecting what was done and trying to give it a whole new
twist.
How have you given it a new twist?
You’re just not going to believe the first 12 minutes! It’s a twist in itself.
And you’re actually working on a remake of Nightmare on Elm Street, too, right?
Don’t know yet. We haven’t made our deal, but it’s worth every penny.
What are you working on next? Ouija?
It’s something we’re playing with, yes. I’m just producing it. As far as being a director, I’m not sure what I’m doing next.
What will Ouija even be about?
We’re
just meeting with writers now. There’s a plot that I actually wrote the
outline for; we’re just trying to get the script right.
Finally, I just have to ask, did you happen to see the "Michael Bay’s Rejected The Dark Knight Script" floating around online?
[Laughs] That’s complete bulls—! I might’ve read one line of that.
Did you find it funny at all?
It’s just, where do people find all of this time?
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