Call Sheet: Sean Penn a GENIUS, Tom Cruise MI:4, Fincher casting DRAGON TATTOO plus Ethan Hawke, Will Ferrell, Jack Black, LITTLE FOCKERS, BABAR and Scarlett Johansson
Aug 10
There’s a lot to get through on this week’s Call Sheet casting wrap-up! Let’s get straight to it:
THR reports Sean Penn will play literary editor Maxwell Perkins in the biopic Genius. Perkins was the literary editor for such great authors as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe.
Vulture reports Tom Cruise has agreed to a reduced upfront payment for Mission Impossible 4, although he still has ‘points’ attached to any profit the film makes at the box office. The Mission Impossible 4 budget is set at a cosy $135 million. I don’t really care if he ‘star power’ or not, the guy should be in any Mission Impossible film while he still can. I bet he’s extremely happy this deal went through.
The newly-appointed director of (yet another) comic-book superhero movie X-Men: First Class, Matthew Vaughn, (who also directed this year’s Kick-Ass) has told Hero Complex that he accepted the offer from 20th Century Fox because he believes this might be his last chance to helm a big budget superhero movie. He (correctly) believes the audience will be getting sick and tired of all the comic book movies.
“It’s been mined to death and in some cases the quality control is not what it’s supposed to be. People are just going to get bored of it. I think [the opportunity to do one], it’s only going to be there two or three more times. Then, the genre is going to be dead for a while because the audience has just been pummelled too much. It is a crowded room. It’s too crowded.”
ComingSoon spoke to Vincent Cassel during the week and he revealed he’s returning to the character Kirill in Eastern Promises 2. When was the last time you heard of a sequel simply called ‘2’, with no sub-heading or creative plural included? David Cronenberg will be shooting this once he wraps A Dangerous Method.
Remember School Of Rock? That silly Jack Black comedy where he gets a bunch of school kids together to make a rock band? Yeah, well... THR reports the director Richard Linklater is collaborating with Black again on a film called Bernie. Legendary actress Shirley MacLaine is also attached to star as a widow Black (Bernie) kills and then “does whatever it takes to keep the illusion that she’s still alive.” So, it’s a sequel to Weekend At Bernie’s? Similar premise, similar titles… Oh dear.
Filmschoolrejects, reveals that Bryan Cranston (from TV’s Breaking Bad—a show I still need to catch up on) will star with Ryan Gosling in an adaptation of Drive , adapted from a book of the same name by James Sallis. Gosling plays a stunt driver by day and a getaway driver by night. Until Ryan Gosling gives me a reason to not watch anything he’s in, I’ll check out his flicks. Yes, even The Notebook.
News.com.au reckons Russell Crowe has signed on to star as fisherman Luther Fox in Phillip Noyce’s Dirt Music, based on the novel by Tim Winton. This is the role Heath Ledger was briefly attached to before he decided to play The Joker in some Batman movie.
Production Weekly confirms Sony is interested in Oscar winning actor Christoph Waltz (from Inglorious Basterds) playing a villain in the 3D Spider-Man reboot being directed by Marc Webb (that pun still makes me chuckle) and starring Andrew Garfield as the new Peter Parker.
Risky Business confirmed Will Ferrell will be starring in a Spanish-language comedy with English subtitles, titled Casa De Mi Padre (House Of My Father). The press release makes it sound like Ferrell has been forced to do the project in order to settle a lawsuit. Clever. Hopefully the film is, you know, actually funny.
“Ferrell’s participation is the result of “a closed-door settlement” of a pending lawsuit with the fictional Sanchez”
“NALA can’t comment regarding the circumstances surrounding why Will is attached to the project,” said Loquet. “We are just thrilled he is on board and are moving full steam ahead since we have one month to teach him Spanish.”
Sanchez himself merely remarked: “What comes around, goes around, Will Ferrell.”
Neither party would otherwise comment on the feud.
Yahoo reports Tim Blake Nelson has joined the cast of Everybody Loves Whales with John Krasinski, Drew Barrymore and Kristen Bell. It’s a true story about the 1988 rescue of a trio of California gray whales that got trapped under the ice of the Arctic Circle.
While we’re on sea mammals, how does a movie inspired by a true story about an injured dolphin named Winter who was rescued off the Florida Coast thanks to a boy who befriended her? It’s called Dolphin Tale and will star Harry Connick Jr., Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman, and will be shot in 3D… You don’t believe me, do you? Sorry to say, THR confirms it. Just… facepalm!
Now that he’s finished his Facebook movie The Social Network (yes, I will always refer to it as ‘the Facebook movie’) David Fincher is busy casting his next project, his take on The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, based on late Swedish author and journalist Stieg Larsson’s first book in his Millennium trilogy. Deadline reports Robin Wright has signed on to play the character Erika Berger, publisher of crusading finance magazine Millennium and also the occasional lover of journalist Mikael Blomkvist, played by Daniel Craig. Stellan Skarsgard has also signed on to star. Sony insists they are adapting solely from the novel and not remaking Niels Arden Oplev and Daniel Alfredson’s popular Swedish film.
Writer/director John Landis sold the rights to his 1981 classic An American Werewolf In London to Dimension Films last year, and now 24 Frames reveals Dimension have hired Fernley Phillips (The Number 23) to write the remake screenplay. Apparently it’ll be a ‘huge departure’ from Landis’ original film, taking a modern approach. So we should expect it to be in 3D and pointlessly glossy like The Final Destination? Ugh. I dread what might become of this.
24 Frames believe Tony Scott is only “a step away” from directing Paramount’s adaptation of John Grisham’s The Associate, with Shia Labeouf attached to star. Both Optimus Prime and Bumblebee are in talks to have supporting roles.
Deadline reports Viggo Mortensen and Amy Adams have joined the cast of On The Road, based on the 1957 book by Jack Kerouac.
Vulture reported during the week that Little Fockers will go back into production for a week of pick-ups in September with Dustin Hoffman rumoured to come back as Bernie Focker. It’s all in an effort to ‘save’ the movie which, remarkably, hasn’t turned out as funny as director Paul Weitz had hoped. Principal cast, including Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro are all involved in the pick-ups. Sounds serious.
Kevin Smith has tweeted his next film Red State will star Michael Parks and production will start on September 22nd.
Variety notes Ethan Hawke has signed on to indie drama A Late Quartet, playing a member of a string quartet that whose members have performed together for 25 years and have to adjust to one of them retiring due to Parkinson’s disease. Sounds like that’ll be heavy viewing.
Deadline reveals producers behind The Twilight Saga, Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey, are working with the owners of the rights to the character Babar, in order to bring us a Babar family-friendly movie. More CGI cartoon characters mixed with live action footage, I suspect.
Unfortunately, Deadline confirms Paramount have hired Davis Guggenheim to direct a 3D feature biopic based on the life and story of Justin Bieber. Yes—Justin Bieber. It’ll apparently be similar to 8 Mile with Justin playing himself. Paramount, trust me, it’ll be nothing like 8 Mile. I’d rather that dolphin film, thanks.
Heat Vision reports Cillian Murphy (28 Days Later, Inception) will join Amanda Seyfried and Justin Timberlake in Andrew Niccol‘s I’M.MORTAL.
Finally, Vulture has it on good authority that Scarlett Johansson will star alongside Vince Vaughn in David O. Russell‘s Old St. Louis, about a travelling salesman who’s life as an absentee father suddenly drastically changes when his daughter becomes part of his life. Sounds thrilling, right? Never mind, here’s an obligatory pic of Scarlett to spark your brain back into action.
See you next week!
Call Sheet: Kevin Bacon, Amanda Seyfield, Nicolas Cage, Elizabeth Banks, Emma Stone, Mark Wahlberg and Philip Seymour Hoffman
Jul 18
Call Sheet: A weekly run-down of movie casting news and rumours from around the web.
X-Men: First Class continues to throw names all over the place with regards to casting, but only now do I recognize one of the stars: Kevin Bacon. Variety reports Bacon will play a lead villain while 20th Century Fox have also signed Jennifer Lawrence to play Mystique. The director of Kick-Ass, Matthew Vaughn, is behind this new X-Men flick.
Deadline reckons Mark Ruffalo is in ‘late-stage talks’ to play The Hulk in the new Avengers movie after Marvel publicly announced Edward Norton can go get fucked, basically.
The Wrap reveals Zombieland co-stars Woody Harrelson and Emma Stone are joining an already well-established cast on the film Friends With Benefits. Being directed by Will Gluck, Friends With Benefits stars Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis as two friends who have recently emerged from disastrous relationships. Patricia Clarkson, Richard Jenkins, Jenna Elfman and Andy Samberg have also signed on. That’s a very intriguing cast, to say the least. Justin Timberlake again? Doesn’t he spend his time writing songs?
Riskybusiness reports that Chris Pratt and Kathryn Morris will join Brad Pitt, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jonah Hill, and Robin Wright on Bennett Miller’s highly anticipated Moneyball, which starts shooting next month.
THR reveals that that kid from The Sixth Sense, Haley Joel Osment, is all grown up and about to play a virgin who teaches sex education at a school in the film Sex Ed. A synopsis so awesome it has every spec screenwriter kicking themselves for not writing this first.
Planet Of The Apes prequel Rise Of The Apes had Brian Cox and Tom Felton join the cast over the week. They’ll accompany James Franco, Freida Pinto, John Lithgow, and Andy Serkis, who all signed on recently.
Director Steven Soderbergh has added John Hawkes to his film Contagion which has an impressive ensemble cast that includes Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, Laurence Fishburne, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law. Give this casting director a gold star!
Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson has joined the cast of this fifth Fast And The Furious. It’s called Fast Five. That is all.
There are few directors that perk my interest when it comes to fantasy and science fiction films (just not my bag, baby), but when I hear that Andrew Niccol is making a new flick, I pay attention. After Gattaca, The Truman Show, S1m0ne & Lord Of War, Niccol will next helm the film I’M.MORTAL and has signed one of the hottest actresses in Hollywood right now (literally and figuratively) Miss Amanda Seyfried. (Variety)
Remember that short film The Raven which created a stir online back in April? Latino Review reports the feature film adaptation has been picked up by Universal and Mark Wahlberg is set to star and produce. It was sounding good up until that ‘Mark Wahlberg’ part, huh.
Deadline revealed that Amy Adams will play Janis Joplin in the bio film about her rock n’ roll life. The film is being produced by Wyck Godfrey who is also behind The Twilight Saga. I’ll leave you with that thought.
Cigarettes and Red Vines got the scoop that Paul Thomas Anderson‘s next film The Master, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Jeremy Renner, will start production in August 2010. This is awesome because it’s PTA and PSH joining forces again. This makes me happy.
What does not make me happy is Nicolas Cage confirming on The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson that he’ll reprise his role Johnny Blaze in Ghost Rider 2. Did you go see the first one? Did you rent it? Someone saw it enough times to afford them a sequel.
Last but not least, Elizabeth Banks will play Tinkerbell in a live action adaptation for Disney called Tink. I’m in favour of this. Here’s why:
20th Century Fox celebrates 75 years with series of limited edition posters
Jun 19
To celebrate their 75 years in the business, 20th Century Fox have released a superb series of limited edition anniversary posters celebrating some of their most successful and memorable films. Titles include Star Wars, Alien, Independence Day, The Day The Earth Stood Still, X-Men 2, Walk The Line and many others.
The posters were released this week and are available to purchase (naturally) via Fox’s anniversary site. It’s a really nice series of some of the most iconic characters and scenes of all time. If I were still collecting posters I would have scooped some of these up.
source: the movie blog
Two goofy movies get goofy new titles: FANTASTIC FOUR reboot and DIE HARD 5 renamed
Jun 10
Once upon a time, the Fantastic Four films were rubbish. Then, at the same time Disney acquired Marvel, a Jessica Alba-less Fantastic Four reboot was announced, to the delight of comic book fans everywhere. Heroes / Smallville writer Michael Green was hired to write the script (he also wrote the upcoming Green Lantern adaptation); Hancock / I Am Legend producer Akiva Goldsman is on board as showrunner; beyond that no personnel have been attached to the project, no release date or even title announced.
Now, however, the Fantastic Four reboot has (apparently) been named: Fantastic Four Reborn. Great! Sounds like the eponymous four heroes are going to find themselves shoved back into the womb and sternly told to think about what they’ve done and try again (er, symbolically, of course).
And what about that Die Hard 5 thing that’s supposedly happening? Why, it’s been titled Die Hard 24/7, of course! What common numerical parlance will they pillage next? Perhaps we’ll see Die Hard 666 (where Kevin Smith turns out to be the devil) next, and then Die Hard 747 (on a plane, of course), followed by Die Hard 815: The Dharma Initiative, and then maybe Die Hard 911. Then there’ll be a four-dimensional reboot called Die Hard X: Yippee-Pi-Irrational Numbers, Motherfucker. At least, that’s how it’d play out if I ran Fox.
Anyway, these titles come from a top-secret super-spy mole infiltrating the evil 20th Century Fox corporation, so take them with a grain of salt.
What is this “genre” thing people keep talking about?
Jun 08
Action. Adventure. Comedy. What do these words mean? Crime. Drama. Epic/historical. Horror. Who decided that what criteria would demarcate these styles? Musical. Thriller. Science fiction. War. Western. Since when did a film’s target audience and target genre feed back into the production of the film itself?
When you browse your local video store, you’ll find the DVDs organised into strictly segregated shelves according to their genre. Die Hard is on the Action shelf, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind is on the Sci-Fi shelf, There’s Something About Mary is on the Comedy shelf. That’s all well and good. But where does Jaws go?
Jaws is a monster mystery movie, a movie that scares you by showing mauled bodies and giant, nightmarish beasts; it’s also a movie about humans and their relationships and interactions, and there are even a few sparse jokes thrown in for good measure. It echoes Moby-Dick in its men-on-a-boat style, and brings to mind the old Western archetypes: the sheriff, the doctor and the outlaw band together to rid the community of a potentially ruinous problem.
So Jaws is a monster-mystery-thriller-action-comedy-Western-adventure-drama. But what shelf is it on? I’m pretty sure it’s on the Thriller shelf at my local; god only knows why.
The point I’m making is that movies are rarely about just one thing, and the ones that are are usually relatively shallow or generic. So why do we insist on classifying the movies we watch according to some preconceived ideals of setting, tone, content, themes and characters?
A lot of the currently prominent film genres got their start in literature. Comedy has its roots in Ancient Greek plays, later deconstructed and recombined by William Shakespeare into a more Anglo-centric “comedy of manners” style; horror reaches back to folk tales of yore, myths of hideous beasts, whispered tales of possession, and religious superstition, greatly aided by 19th Century novels like Dracula and Frankenstein.
Science fiction has its roots in late 19th / early 20th Century works by the likes of HG Wells and Jules Verne, and takes further inspiration from the scientific explosion of the 20th Century; drama films, and particularly melodrama films, hark back to the Ancient Greek tragedies, designed to elicit sadness and tears from an audience; Sherlock Holmes novels and rampant criminality throughout the United States’ first few centuries inspired the crime, noir and Western genres; while musicals are holdovers from a bygone era of stage and theatre.
Action stands alone as being one of the few purely cinematic genres. The advent of editing, in combination with stunts, music, and the sheer energy of film, gave rise to the set-piece, and to a whole genre of films driven almost solely by action set-pieces.
Truly great films often transcend their genre; Jaws is just one example. Star Wars is a regurgitated mess of Western archetypes, Greek tragedy, high fantasy, and serialised space opera, yet it always winds up on the Science-Fiction shelf, much to the chagrin of SF fans.
Gone With The Wind deals with war, romance, drama, tragedy, and takes a historical setting, but it always winds up on the Classics shelf (a useless genre if ever there was one). The Godfather is a historical epic dealing with crime, death, revenge, family relationships, love, and the nature of violence, but it usually winds up under the catch-all Crime. The Shawshank Redemption is a slow-boiling character study, and a tale of loss, friendship, and redemption, while also taking a very close look at the reality of the American prison system, dealing with institutionalisation, corruption and (briefly) false justice. So why is it on the Drama shelf?
Because the vast majority of films produced in Hollywood are pushed through cookie-cutters into pre-determined shapes. It’s easier to market a film to someone if you can compare it to a film they already saw, and enjoyed, rather than saying “It’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen before in your entire life!”
A recent example is Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time, whose marketing dropped Jerry Bruckheimer’s name while reminding viewers of his relationship with Pirates Of The Caribbean. Notice they avoided mentioning that Bruckheimer also produced adventure films (National Treasure), action films (Transformers, Con Air), crime flicks (Bad Boys) and bad films (all of the above); they specifically mentioned Pirates so that you’d subconsciously link Prince Of Persia to swashbuckling, fun characters, over-the-top production design and a supernatural element linked to the whimsical and romantic story.
Prince Of Persia was conceived to cash in on the success of Pirates by following the same blueprint. Prince failed spectacularly, for various reasons; most importantly, it should have been a creative gamble, instead of a safe business plan.
This example is played out ad nauseum across Hollywood. Die Hard gave way to a never-ending raft of tough macho blokes shooting and punching their way through hordes of foreigners. Star Wars and Close Encounters saw a resurgence of science fiction in the 80s, some of which were good, most of which were inept. There’s Something About Mary kick-started the teen-comedy gross-out, where perennially hilarious bodily functions are combined with comedies of error and manners to create the prevalent comedic genre of the noughties.
So what’s the remedy to this constant pre-production pigeon-holing? After all, the studios wield all the power. If 20th Century Fox wants three superhero comic-book films a year, that’s exactly what it’ll get. If Universal wants two romantic comedies and an espionage flick by winter 2011, then you can expect a couple of chick-flicks and a new Bourne reboot to hit screens pretty soon. What’s missing from this equation?
Creative honesty. If you really want to tell a story about something, or someone, you don’t care about genres. You might be mindful of other artists who have tread similar ground before you, and you might accept or reject some of their ideas and techniques. You might be vaguely mindful of the type of demographic who will eventually buy your product, and look at the kind of stuff they’re buying to gauge what they’ll be interested in.
But ultimately, filmmakers need to make films for themselves, and studios need to stop regurgitating the same guff purely for the sake of profit, and have faith in talented filmmakers to do the right thing and bring them money with creativity, originality and honesty. That’s why non-genre-defined flicks are often better than even the best cookie-cutter genre films.
One of the few Hollywood filmmakers who can do whatever he wants and get away with it.
The article is done now, but here are some more examples for you anyway, just in case you don’t believe me:
American Beauty – postmodern comedy, satire, with narrative voice-over and dream sequences; dealing with everyday characters in everyday settings. On the Drama shelf.
Schindler’s List – a war film, a character study, a melodrama, and a historical epic. On the Drama shelf (because of all the Oscar nominations?).
Fight Club – a postmodern comedy, satire, and mystery, with a heavy narrative style, serving as a damning exploration of consumerism and the American Way. On the Thriller shelf (because of the twist ending?).
Starship Troopers – a heady examination of the political and moral nature of war, a rollicking sci-fi yarn heavy with symbolism, violence and vicious satire. On the Action shelf (because the violence is cartoony?).
Watchmen – a strongly sci-fi slanted tale of vigilantism and the nature of humanity, with scenes of graphic and disturbing violence, some romance, and overtones of rape and prejudice. On the Action shelf (because that’s where all the comic-book movies go, right?).
Pirates Of The Caribbean – a supernatural adventure film. On the Action shelf (because there are explosions and people dying in it, right?).
Jurassic Park – a thrilling exploration of the moral and physical implications of cloning extinct animals; an adventure with elements of horror. On the Action shelf (because there are guns in it, right?).
Unforgiven – a complex and dark character study set in 19th Century America, with strong performances and heavy elements of drama. On the Western shelf.
Any other examples you can think of? Or am I completely off track; is the concept of “genre” vital to the conception and production of big-budget films?
OPINIONS COUNT