Tag: Book Adaptations (71-80 of 181)

Feb 7 2012 02:38 PM ET

'Alex Cross' gets October release date

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The intriguing reboot of the Alex Cross franchise featuring Tyler Perry as the detective once played by Morgan Freeman will get its start Oct. 26, Summit Entertainment announced today. Freeman had played the main character from James Patterson’s best-selling novels in Kiss the Girls (1997) and Along Came a Spider (2001), and the casting of Perry, most famous for playing for laughs in his Madea films, has raised eyebrows while also raising hopes that he might be able to introduce the character to a much broader audience. (Along Came a Spider grossed a respectable but not blockbuster $74 million.)

Based on the 2009 book, I, Alex Cross, the reboot follows the detective-with-an-M.D. on his hunt of a serial killer (Matthew Fox) who targets a member of Cross’ own family. Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious) is directing and Edward Burns, Rachel Nichols, and Jean Reno costar.

Read more:
Tyler Perry tops ‘Forbes’ list
Idris Elba out; Tyler Perry in as ‘Alex Cross’

Feb 7 2012 09:00 AM ET

'Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter' frees bloodsuckers to be evil again -- NEW PHOTOS

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It’s bizarre enough to imagine a world where our nation’s 16th president walks among vampires; thankfully, we don’t have to see him harboring a secret crush on one of them, too.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (out June 22) arrives at time when the scariest thing about bloodsuckers is how tame they’ve become. For decades they were merciless, seductive, and bloodthirsty villains, but now they’re more commonly seen as the sparkling, waifish, and weepy heroes of YA romantic chick-lit.

Look at this picture of ol’ Honest Abe: He’s mad as hell! And he’s not going to take it anymore, Stephenie Meyer! YAAARRGHH!

In this historical fantasy, produced by Tim Burton, vampires strike the same twitchy nerve among the citizenry that terrorists do in our real world.

“It’s not a sermon in any way, but it is interesting to look at vampires as the all-encompassing, unspeakable, unknowable evil,” says Benjamin Walker, who stars as the bearded slayer-in-chief. “This evil moves among us, and maybe lives next door. It’s an ideology that we don’t fully understand, but they live by it.” READ FULL STORY »

Feb 3 2012 04:15 PM ET

'Bridget Jones' sequel on track, says studio exec. But... -- UPDATE

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Image Credit: Everett Collection

UPDATE: Though he might still be attached, Hugh Grant is acknowledging some issues he has with the Bridget Jones threequel. EW obtained the following statement from Grant’s rep: “Hugh is keen that Bridget Jones 3 happens, but Renee, Colin and he all have some issue with the present script. They are hoping to help work them out. “

EARLIER: Amidst reports that the next Bridget Jones film was falling apart, Working Title Films issued a statement today to confirm that all was well. “Reports that Hugh Grant has exited Bridget Jones’s Baby are untrue,” said Working Title’s co-chairman Tim Bevan. “We are still working on the script hence the delay to the start of production, but the film is going ahead as planned.”

Back in 2009, Grant told a reporter that he was reluctant to appear in a third film. “I don’t think so, no. I think even Bridget Jones 2 was a mistake to be honest with you,” he said. “It wasn’t a very good script, and I resisted it for a long time, and so did Colin and so did Renee. But we got kind of conned into doing it.”

The sequel intends to reunite Renee Zellweger with Grant and Colin Firth. The original 2001 original grossed $282 million worldwide, and 2004′s Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason brought in another $263 million.

Read more:
Third Bridget Jones movie finally a go
Colin Firth: Talking Points

Feb 2 2012 08:13 PM ET

'Beautiful Creatures' movie adaptation finally underway, with Viola Davis attached

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In the fall of 2009, writer-director Richard LaGravenese (P.S. I Love You) signed on to adapt Beautiful Creatures, the first of three novels by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl about Ethan, a mortal boy living in the South, and Lena, the girl he loves with enigmatic powers she’s trying to keep hidden. Interest in the project has been high as Hollywood hunts for another Twilight-esque literary phenom to turn into a blockbuster franchise.

More than two years later, Alcon Entertainment has announced it will finance and produce LaGravenese’s adaptation of Beautiful Creatures, in partnership with Warner Bros. Academy Award nominee Viola Davis has signed on to play Amma, described as “a seer who looks after Ethan and his father after Ethan’s mother’s death.”  READ FULL STORY »

Feb 1 2012 04:43 PM ET

'The Hunger Games': How Donald Sutherland inspired two new President Snow scenes

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Donald Sutherland isn’t shy: he wrote to director Gary Ross about why he belonged in the Hunger Games cast.  The formidable actor sent Ross an impassioned email about playing the insidious President Coriolanus Snow, the long-standing ruler of author Suzanne Collins’ futuristic world who forces children to fight to their deaths as a way of keeping the masses in line. ”It was a long thoughtful analysis of the way power is wielded and why,” remembers Ross, “how it controls people and what the use of the Games were and how pernicious they were and the way that they were used as an instrument of political control.”

“It was so eloquent and brilliant,” continues Ross, “that it actually inspired me to write two extra scenes for him that I think are pivotal in the movie and that Suzanne really loves.” Ross was already shooting in Asheville, NC when he received the actor’s missive.  While on break he remembers wandering down to a clearing by the edge of a lake to ruminate over Sutherland’s ideas. “So I sat down in this chair and stared at the lake and came up with these two scenes,” he says. “And I realized that not only were the scenes vital but they actually fit a piece that was missing. That was a gift I got from the actor.”

SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! In this first installment of the film trilogy, Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss Everdeen and Sutherland’s Snow really only have one scene together. But Ross says to prepare for a doozy. “It’s only when she’s crowned that they confront one another and it’s very electric.” The Hunger Games hits theaters on March 23.

Read more:
‘Hunger Games’ central
‘Hunger Games’: Katniss and Peeta ready to set the Games on fire — EXCLUSIVE PHOTO
First look: Peeta and Gale

Jan 30 2012 04:01 PM ET

'Hunger Games': Jennifer Lawrence 'should be nominated' for an Oscar for work as Katniss

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Image Credit: Murray Close

 With less than two months to go before the March 23 premiere of The Hunger Games, the first installment of Suzanne Collins’ breathlessly addicting  trilogy, director Gary Ross is already predicting the possibility of another nomination for his 21-year-old star Jennifer Lawrence come next year’s Oscars. “The range in this performance, the emotional terrain that she investigates, the demands of what this role are,” he raves of Lawrence’s portrayal of series heroine Katniss Everdeen, a 16-year-old forced alongside other children into a televised fight-to-the-death. “It’s such an intensely physical role and an emotional one. She carries the entire movie. To be able to do that at that age is so kind of incredible that I was in a little bit of awe. Do I think she should be nominated? Absolutely.”

Ross and Lawrence bonded hard on the 83-day shoot, weathering the sweltering North Carolina heat and afternoon storms together. READ FULL STORY »

Dec 25 2011 12:22 PM ET

'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo': Steven Zaillian on changing the story and ending

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Image Credit: Anders Linden/Columbia Pictures

[Spoiler Alert: Plot points for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, book and movie, are discussed here.]

Fans of Stieg Larsson’s original novel may have noticed that David Fincher’s adaptation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo made a few changes to the story, although more in terms of what was left out than what was stuck in. That’s because any adaptation of a book of this length is going to need a bit of streamlining unless you want to opt for the recent trend of Hollywood mitosis that’s splitting everything up into an infinite series of Part 1s and Part 2s.

Fincher estimates that about 350 pages had to go in order to get the story down to watchable movie length, and according to screenwriter Steven Zaillian, much of that was in the very beginning. “I think there were probably about a hundred pages setting everything up,” Zaillian tells EW, “in terms of Blomkvist and his situation. There’s probably another 50 or 60 pages of [Larsson] doing the same thing with Salander. Those things obviously had to go.” One of the few subplots to get dropped entirely was Blomkvist’s romantic liaison with Cecilia Vanger, one of the more amiable of the clan he is investigating, which the filmmakers skipped for both time and to tone down the emphasis on the protagonist’s philandering. “Mikael had a relationship with her that went on for a lot of pages,” laughs Zaillian. “I’m a fan of the book—I like it very much—but when I was reading it at a certain point I thought, am I reading Shampoo? Is this Warren Beatty or is this Mikael Blomkvist? I didn’t drop those things in order to make him more sympathetic. It was really just that they were unnecessary to the story.”

But probably the biggest change that readers will pick up on is in the ending, where two strands of the narrative have been fused into one. It’s nothing too major, but when you’re working with a novel as popular as this, everything becomes sacred text. “I wasn’t trying to do something different or trying to fix something,” says Zaillian. “I just thought it was a good idea. when I read the book, I thought, ‘Why are we going so far afield for this mystery to be resolved? Might it be a little more interesting if it’s solved a little closer to home?’ That’s all there was to it. I kind of felt it was right for the character.”

Dec 21 2011 03:53 PM ET

Harrison Ford, Abigail Breslin set to play 'Ender's Game'

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Image Credit: Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic.com

The race to find the next Hunger Games – i.e. an adaptation of a book series aimed at the YA crowd and beloved by swarms of passionate, ticket-buying fans — just found itself a new frontrunner today, with the news that Harrison Ford and Abigail Breslin have signed onto the adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game. (EW has confirmed Variety‘s initial report.)  READ FULL STORY »

Dec 15 2011 11:19 PM ET

Reese Witherspoon joins movie about West Memphis Three

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Already this year, there have been two separate documentaries about the West Memphis Three, in the wake of their release after 18 years in jail. And now Variety is reporting that Reese Witherspoon has signed onto a feature film adaptation of the true-crime story, based on the book Devil’s Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three by Mara Leveritt, and directed by Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter).

Witherspoon would reportedly play the mother of one of the three young boys Jessie Misskelley Jr., Jason Baldwin and Damien Echols were accused and convicted of murdering, who comes to believe that the trio were in fact wrongly incarcerated.

Read more:
West Memphis Three doc ‘Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory’ to debut on HBO — EXCLUSIVE TRAILER
Peter Jackson announces completion of West Memphis Three documentary
Victim’s parents lobby Oscars to exclude West Memphis 3 documentary

Dec 13 2011 04:04 PM ET

The first 'Great Gatsby' photos will beat you back ceaselessly into the past

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Do you ever feel like you have lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream? Do you look at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shiver when you find what a grotesque thing a rose is, and how raw the sunlight is upon the scarcely created grass? Then you’re sure to fall in tragic love with the first two images from next year’s 3-D adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, helmed by director Baz Luhrmann and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, and Tobey Maguire. What thoroughness! What realism! And yet, they make me sad because I’ve never seen such…such beautiful shirts before. READ FULL STORY »

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