06.10.08: Grant & Ziyi Are 'Lost For Words', Hollywood Prepares For Actor’s Strike

Britain’s rom-com king Hugh Grant will play a film star approached by a Chinese filmmaker (Ziyi Zhang of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fame) to appear in her movie in Susanne Bier’s comedy Lost For Words. When he starts falling for Ziyi, he has to rely on her flirtatious translator – who has the hots for Grant – to communicate his feelings; hilarious complications ensue. It’s been a long road for Bier to get to this stage. She was all set for Berlin Film Festival jury duty in February when she mysteriously pulled out on opening day. Chatter was that the Danish director had been forced to jet to LA to persuade a wavering Grant from bolting the stable. Words is a Working Title project, the London-based greenhouse where Grant’s best films have been cultivated (including Four Weddings And A Funeral), so co-honchos Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner were undoubtedly instrumental in keeping the reluctant star on board. With a script co-written by Dan Mazer (Borat) and Working Title sprinkling their market-savvy pixie dust, we like the sound of Words and are pleased that Bier (who recently directed Halle Berry in Things We Lost In The Fire) has retained her main attraction.

Hollywood Prepares For Strike
Listen: that sharp intake of breath is Hollywood dreading the worst (i.e. a production shutdown) as the Screen Actors Guild rattles sabres in its ongoing pow-wow with the producers’ guild (the AMPTP). The SAG is furious that its sister union, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), is trying to ratify its own deal with the AMPTP that many SAG-ites feel capitulates to the conglomerates. There’s plenty of membership crossover between SAG and AFTRA so a few hundred SAG members rallied yesterday to denounce the AFTRA deal. Bottom line? With a June 30 deadline approaching, the threat of an actor’s strike is looming large, which would be waayyyy more disastrous for the film industry than the writer’s strike. Click HERE if you want to immerse yourself in the nitty-gritty of Hollywood’s latest union wars…

Favreau Talks Iron Man 2
Jon Favreau popped up on MySpace yesterday to answer questions about Iron Man and its inevitable sequel. There’s no script for IM2 yet and Favreau is fretting after Marvel pencilled in a release date (April 2010) without consulting him or Robert Downey Jr. “We are both concerned about how realistic the date is in light of the fact that we have no script, story or even writers hired yet,” grumbled Favreau. “It might be better to follow the BB/DK [Batman Begins/Dark Knight], X/X2 three year release pattern than to scramble for a date.” Click HERE to peruse further Favreau musings on The Incredible Hulk and IM2’s potential villains.

De Palma Ready For Strangler
Never one to pass up a story where attractive young women meet grisly ends, Brian De Palma has taken up producer Gale Anne Hurd’s offer to direct a new version of The Boston Strangler, based on the book by Susan Kelly about a series of murders of young women by Albert DeSalvo, who confessed to the Strangler killings in 1965 only to later recant. Investigators were always sceptical of DeSalvo’s confession and he was never actually charged with the murders. He was killed in prison while serving time for an unrelated rape conviction.

- Matt Mueller