Image Credit: Greg Gayne/The CW
After Rob Thomas launched a Kickstarter campaign to finance the Veronica Mars movie, the Internet went crazy. The $2 million goal was reached in less than a day, more incentives were added for new backers, and the fund continues to grow. EW’s Jeff Jensen — who also broke the news — sat down with Thomas, the creator of the cult TV show, to discuss the movie, the implications of using Kickstarter and much more about the Mars universe. Here are 10 things we learned:
A father, his daughter, and his son all navigating the rough waters of love and relationships — such is the story of upcoming film Stuck in Love, starring Greg Kinnear, Jennifer Connelly, and Logan Lerman.
Stuck in Love features Kinnear as Bill Borgens, a veteran novelist who hasn’t been able to write since his divorce three years earlier. Still obsessing over his ex-wife, Erica (Jennifer Connelly), Bill gets a talking-to for spying on Erica from his own daughter, Samantha (Lily Collins), also an aspiring writer. Samantha has her own relationship problems at college, where she’s recoiling at the very thought of first love with diehard romantic Lou (Logan Lerman). Meanwhile, Bill’s teenage son, Rusty (Nat Wolff), is trying to find his voice, both as a fantasy writer and as the unexpected boyfriend of his school’s dream girl.
EW has the exclusive new poster for Stuck in Love. Check it out below: READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: John B. Peters
Kristen Bell may be petite in person, but she packs a mighty wallop on screen, both as an acerbic comedic actress whose words can sweetly cut you, and as just a smart gal a lot of girls, and women, can look up to.
In The Lifeguard, premiering at this year’s Sundance Film Festival in the U.S. Dramatic Competition category, Bell takes a darker turn, playing a woman who quits her reporter job in New York and returns to where she grew up in Connecticut, taking a job as a lifeguard and falling into a dangerous relationship with a teenager. Check out this exclusive image of Bell, above, from the film. If her sullen expression is any indication, she’s settled into the doldrums, a purgatory stage of life with hints of The Graduate.
The star of TV’s Veronica Mars and now Showtime’s House of Lies chatted with EW about her great chemistry with The Lifeguard‘s first-time feature film director Liz W. Garcia, what it’s like filming House of Lies while pregnant (she’s due in the spring), and her reign as Gossip Girl‘s saucy narrator coming to an end with the conclusion of the six-season series. R.I.P!
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Describe your role in The Lifeguard and working with Liz Garcia. The premise seems to have certain similarities to The Graduate, in terms of someone trying to find themselves, albeit with darker consequences.
KRISTEN BELL: I had been looking for something that I felt spoke to me of someone going through a metamorphosis. I find change so interesting. I love Liz’s writing. She wrote this phenomenal script, One Percent More Human, that was set up numerous times, and she had plans for that to be her directorial debut with Kristen Stewart and Evan Rachel Wood, and then she got pregnant. She ended up pushing it, so The Lifeguard was her first movie. She doesn’t steer away from sexuality, which most female writers do. There’s a tenderness, which makes it clear she’s a female writer. The idea of what do you do when you get stuck somewhere in your life is what appealed to me. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Eliza Truitt
Cannes, take note.
Call it feminist, call it a full shift in the zeitgeist, call it the seeds of a movie industry revolution, but the Sundance Film Festival has shoved Hollywood into the 21st century when it comes to the inclusion of women filmmakers.
Last May, the Cannes Film Festival’s competitive Palme D’Or line-up sparked controversy over its dearth of female directors. This year’s annual Sundance fest in Park City, Utah, which runs from Jan. 17-27, for the very first time features an equal number of male and female directors in its 16-film U.S. Dramatic Competition category, ranging from Lynn Shelton’s Touchy Feely, starring Rosemarie DeWitt (pictured in the exclusive photo above), to Liz Garcia’s The Lifeguard, featuring Kristen Bell, Francesca Gregorini’s Emanuel and the Truth About Fishes, starring Jessica Biel, Jerusha Hess’s Austenland with Keri Russell, Lake Bell’s In a World, also starring the actress-director, and Stacie Passon’s Concussion.
EW connected with Shelton, Garcia, Gregorini, Hess, Passon, and Bell, as well as actresses Casey Wilson and June Diane Raphael, who co-wrote the saucy Sundance Midnight screening selection Ass Backwards, and Richard E. Robbins, who directed the CNN Films documentary Girl Rising, which will have scenes shown at Sundance. Absolute joy and excitement resonated through phone and email conversations with the filmmakers, who touted the bright future for women directors — Kathryn Bigelow’s name may be the biggest out there these days, but many more are on the horizon.
READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Gregg DeGuire/Getty Images
• Jeremy Renner is in talks to star opposite Bradley Cooper in director David O. Russell‘s untitled drama (previously called American Bulls—), based on a true story about a con artist (Cooper) compelled to work with the F.B.I. agent (Renner) who nabbed him in a far reaching sting operation known as Abscam. Christian Bale was initially set to play the con artist, and Cooper the F.B.I. agent, but the roles shifted around after Bale dropped out of the project. [Variety]
• Daniel Radcliffe and Zoe Kazan (Ruby Sparks) have signed up to star in The F Word, which sounds much less edgy than its title first implies: It’s an indie romantic comedy about a couple who meet and have great chemistry, but end up trying to just be friends — ergo, the title. Michael Dowse (Goon) is directing from a Black List script by Elan Mastai (The Samaritan). [Variety]
• Juliette Lewis is in talks to join the feature adaptation of Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer-winning play August: Osage County, as the dizzy youngest daughter to Meryl Streep‘s hard-hearted family matriarch. Julia Roberts is also set to star as the assertive eldest daughter. John Wells will direct from Letts’ adaptation of his play. [Deadline]
• Sam Claflin (Snow White and the Huntsman) and Emilia Clarke (HBO’s Game of Thrones) will star opposite Karl Urban in Overdrive, a thriller about American car thieves who relocate to France. Antonio Negret (Transit) will direct from a script by Michael Brandt and Derek Haas (Wanted). Claflin is also reportedly in the running for the role of Finnick in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, which would likely shoot soon after Overdrive finished production. [Variety]
• Kristen Bell will headline The Lifeguard, about a woman who leaves her job as a reporter in New York City to get her high school job as a lifeguard. Mamie Gummer (CBS’ The Good Wife), Martin Starr (Party Down), Alex Shaffer (Win Win), Josuha Harto (The Dark Knight), and Amy Madigan (Gone Babby Gone) costar. Liz W. Garcia (CBS’ Cold Case) will direct from her screenplay. [Deadline]
• As had been reported last week, Johnny Depp has signed up to star in Wes Anderson‘s next feature film, The Grand Budapest Hotel. [Deadline]
Read more:
Casting Net: Anthony Mackie may join ‘Captain America’ sequel as the Falcon. Plus: Richard Jenkins, Vince Vaughn
Daniel Radcliffe to star in supernatural thriller ‘Horns’
‘Catching Fire’ zeroing in on actors for Finnick and Beetee — REPORT
Hit and Run looks even more pee-in-your-pants funny, judging by its new red-band trailer. Dax Shepard, who not only stars but wrote, co-directed, co-produced, and even co-edited the film, plays a former getaway driver forced to abandon his witness protection program identity when a dreadlock-rocking Bradley Cooper comes knocking at his door, looking for his money. Cooper went to jail for a heist gone awry, and he’s still sore about it.
The first 10 seconds of the new trailer evoke a Nicholas Sparks chick flick — until it cuts to Shepard and Kristen Bell opening the motel-room door of a group of swinging senior citizens. And then all hell breaks loose.
Check out the really, really NSFW trailer below: READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Jason Merritt, Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images
The Wicked Witch of Oz might be turning green with envy (if she wasn’t already, obviously).
Idina Menzel, who won a Tony Award for originating the role of misunderstood Elphaba in Broadway’s Wicked, will be playing a different type of sorceress in Walt Disney Animation’s upcoming Frozen, loosely based on 1845′s The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen.
Kristen Bell will costar as Anna, a young girl who ventures to find Menzel’s Snow Queen and end the perpetual winter that has fallen over their mythical kingdom, the studio announced today.
