Training Day helmer Antoine Fuqua is in final negotiations to direct Prisoners from hot new writer Aaron Guzikowski. Warner Bros-based Alcon Entertainment will produce the film. Prisoners centers on a small-town carpenter whose young daughter and best friend are kidnapped. After the cops fail to find them, the man takes the law into his own hands and runs up against the big-city detective assigned to the case. The script had been making the rounds across Hollywood and at one point Mark Wahlberg had expressed interest in producing and starring. That is no longer the case but with the studio setting October 22, 2010 as the release date, casting this actioner will certainly be an imperative.
Archive: September 2009 (1-10 of 68)
Sep 30
2009
05:19 PM ET
Sep 30
2009
12:19 PM ET
Desperately seeking Best Supporting Actors
And the Oscar for weakest category of the year goes to…Best Supporting Actor. I can’t recall another instance when an acting race had so few worthy contenders at this point in the year. Inglorious Basterds breakout Christoph Waltz became an instant frontrunner at Cannes, and Alfred Molina is a decent bet for his first career nod as An Education‘s strict dad. Ditto Stanley Tucci, who should score either for his killer role (literally) in The Lovely Bones or as Meryl Streep’s hubby in Julie & Julia. And…well, that’s basically it. The problem seems to be that many of the top overall contenders—Precious, Up in the Air, Nine—simply don’t have any meaty supporting male roles. (Up in the Air‘s Jason Bateman and Precious‘ Lenny Kravitz both do a fine job in tiny parts.) The supporting actress race, meanwhile, has an embarrassment of riches, thanks to the Precious triumvirate of Mo’Nique, Mariah Carey (seriously), and Paula Patton and Up in the Air‘s supporting standouts Anna Kendrick and Vera Farmiga; and though no one has seen Nine yet, it’s hard to imagine one or two of its cast won’t have a strong shot at making the cut.
So who could fill out the supporting actor ballot? Maybe Matt Damon for Clint Eastwood’s Mandela drama Invictus? George Clooney for the goofy Men Who Stare at Goats? Indie faves like Bright Star’s Paul Schneider or The Hurt Locker’s Anthony Mackie? Bill Murray is a classic scene stealer in the Toronto hit Get Low, but Sony Pictures Classics is planning a 2010 release for the film. That’s too bad: There will never be an easier path to an Oscar nomination again.
Are you as obsessed with the Oscars as I am? Then follow me on Twitter (@davekarger) for instant updates.
Photo credit: François Duhamel
Sep 30
2009
12:39 AM ET
Jessica Alba in negotiations to join 'Little Fockers'
Jessica Alba is bringing new life to the Meet the Parents trilogy as one of the first new cast members to join the third film in the franchise. The actress is in negotiations to join Little Fockers in a role the studio will only describe as one that “shakes up the relationships between the characters.” She will star alongside Ben Stiller, Teri Polo, Robert De Niro, Blythe Danner and Owen Wilson. Paul Weitz is directing the movie with Jay Roach and Jane Rosenthal producing. John Hamburg (I Love You, Man) rewrote the original script by Larry Stuckey.
Sep 28
2009
04:37 PM ET
The Roman Polanski case: How one movie explains it all
With the possible exception of the O.J. Simpson trial, it would be hard to think of a tabloid-ready celebrity scandal from the past 30 years that provokes a more purely, intensely, overheatedly emotional response than the Roman Polanski rape case of 1977. (He fled the country early in 1978.) It’s a safe bet that a lot of people, upon reading the headline that Polanski had been arrested in Zurich, with the possibility of extradition to the U.S. to stand trial on that charge, greeted the news with more or less the following sentiment: “Good! It’s about time that the authorities caught up with him. He can’t dodge the consequences of his crime forever. In a just world, there is no statute of limitations on what Roman Polanski did.”
About two years ago, I would have felt more or less the same way. But then, early in 2008, I saw the revelatory documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, which takes on the full and fascinatingly complex legal and moral drama of the case. Not just the emotions, but the facts. Not just the issue of whether Polanski committed an unspeakable crime (something that the film never disputes), but how it all played out, within the U.S. legal system, at the time. READ FULL STORY »
Sep 27
2009
02:11 PM ET
Box Office Report: 'Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs' makes $24.6 million
Seconds, anyone? Eating up $24.6 million worth of tickets, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs defied box office gravity by falling a minuscule 19 percent to win the top spot yet again. The CG family film capitalized on good buzz and a lack of kid-friendly fare in theaters to best three new wide releases, raising its total gross to $60 million. In a distant second place, Surrogates, starring Bruce Willis as an FBI agent in a futuristic world, opened to $15 million. That’s a middling bow for a headliner like Willis, but the Die Hard star can hardly be blamed: His image was totally absent from much of the movie’s marketing, including an odd poster campaign that featured human-robot hybrids in seductive poses.
At number three with $10 million, the much-hyped Fame remake failed to light up the sky like a flame, as it were. With no recognizable names among its youthful stars (the supporting cast features vets like Megan Mullally and Kelsey Grammer), the musical relied almost entirely on nostalgia for the 1980 original to fill seats. The weekend’s other new release, the outer space thriller Pandorum, failed to launch, earning just $4.4 million from 2,506 theaters for a decidedly earthbound per-screen average of $1,758.
But there was plenty of good news among holdovers this week on top of Meatballs‘ repeat victory. Raking in $6.9 million, Matt Damon’s off-kilter comedy The Informant! fell just 34 percent in its second weekend, a sure sign of good word of mouth for the Steven Soderbergh-directed pic. Meanwhile, Tyler Perry’s I Can Do Bad All By Myself stayed put for a third weekend in the top five with $4.8 million.
Further down the chart, a pack of limited-release pics tested the waters with mixed results. There were a few clear winners: Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story generated a whopping $240,000 from just four theaters for $60,000 per-screen average—the year’s best so far. The Audrey Tautou period biopic Coco Before Chanel grossed $177,000 at 5 location for a $35,400 average, and The Office star John Krasinski pulled in $20,600 at a single screen with his directorial debut, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. Meanwhile, slower starts were had by the Clive Owen drama The Boys Are Back ($51,000 from six screens) and I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, featuring macho blogger and best-selling author Tucker Max, which earned a so-so $369,000 from 120 theaters.
More box office news:
Box Office Report: ‘Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs’ wins Friday with $5.6 million
Box Office Preview: ‘Surrogates’ to challenge ‘Cloudy’ for top spot; ‘Fame’ looking at number three
Box Office: ‘Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs’ soars; ‘Jennifer’s Body’ sinks
Sep 26
2009
05:09 PM ET
Box Office Report: 'Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs' wins Friday with $5.6 million
Moviegoers still had an appetite for Meatballs on Friday, buying $5.6 million worth of tickets and prepping the CG kid pic for a possible second weekend at number one, according to Variety. The closest competition for that spot came from the Bruce Willis sci fi actioner Surrogates, which earned a so-so $5 million, while MGM’s much-hyped Fame remake pulled $3.55 million for a third-place finish. Be sure to check back tomorrow for a full box office recap.
More box office news:
Box Office Preview: ‘Surrogates’ to challenge ‘Cloudy’ for top spot; ‘Fame’ looking at number three
Box office: Friday estimates put ‘Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs’ at top of heap
Box Office Preview: ‘Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs’ will ‘rain’ at number one
Sep 26
2009
12:52 PM ET
Michael Moore's influence is undeniable. But is he helping his causes -- or his enemies?
Whatever you think of Michael Moore — whether you love him, hate him, or (like me) believe that he’s an ingeniously captivating big-picture muckraker who can truly be great when he sticks to reality (which he often does), but is anything but great when he proves overly willing to bend it — few would deny that he’s the most prominent, incendiary, and headline-grabbing, the most influential feature documentary filmmaker of our time. (I would say that the other pre-eminent nonfiction Big Cheese is Ken Burns, who works on PBS in what is by now almost a form of his own.)
But who, exactly, does Michael Moore influence, and how? The conventional wisdom, which I’d pretty much bought for most of his career, is that a Michael Moore film — take, for instance, Bowling for Columbine (2002) — inevitably preaches to the converted, but that, in addition, it probably makes a number of converts as well, and that by showcasing an issue like gun control on a major, widescreen canvas (in the form of an immensely entertaining, audacious, and revealing movie), Moore ultimately helps to bring that issue to light.
My feelings about all this began to shift in the aftermath of Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004). The movie was, at the time, the most present-tense and white-hot lightning rod of Moore’s career, an attack on a sitting president at a moment when many of the actions Moore was attacking were still warm. And so it was almost bound to provoke a counter-reaction as furious and vehement as the movie itself. In many ways, the film completed Moore’s evolution from controversial liberal-left filmmaker to scandalous leftist poster child in the new culture wars. READ FULL STORY »
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