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According to Variety, the Chanel biopic that's been gathering steam has finally gotten financing — Warner Bros. has signed on to back the flick, which will star Audrey Tautou. Karl Laderfeld will be on hand to make sure all of the actual Chanel couture and accessories will be magnifique. Filming begins mid-September. Read more at Variety.com.
French helmer Mathieu Kassovitz is not only attempting to distance himself from this weekend's Fox release Babylon A.D., he's claiming that the studio killed the Vin Diesel sci-fi thriller. In an interview with AMCtv, he blasts the action film as "pure violence and stupidity", and says that "parts of the movie are like a bad episode of 24". Kassovitz blames the studio for the film's alleged lameness ("I never had the chance to do one scene the way it was written or the way I wanted it to be… Bad producers, bad partners," he moans), although Fox is equally annoyed with him for shirking his press duties. With Kassovitz firing his agents at Endeavour and retreating to a Caribbean island, the studio is pressing ahead with Babylon A.D.'s release, which it says is actually tracking well with the action-loving fanboy demographic and should be on track to rival Death Race's opening.
More not-so-hot news for Tom Cruise’s movie studio UA: it’s being sued by 11 Nazi-bedecked extras who tumbled out of the back of a troop-carrier truck during last year's Valkyrie shoot in Berlin. The accident happened as the truck swung around a corner in the city center, with the extras ending up in hospital with an array of injuries (bumps, broken ribs, strained ligaments). The Valkyrie 11 are suing for an eye-popping $11 million, according to German mag Der Spiegel, to get over the trauma of their scrapes and bruises, which came about when the side railings on the truck gave way. Their lawyer alleges that an internal studio memo mentioning the rickety railings proves UA knew the trucks weren’t safe. (Cruise wasn’t on set at the time of the mishap.) Naturally, she doesn't really expect UA to fork over a million bucks for each of her clients - in fact, she's still waiting for the studio to respond to her initial missive. But she is intent on reaching a settlement. (How about an all-expenses-paid vacation for her clients to the Scientology Celebrity Center in LA?) More at Spiegel Online
Continue reading "08.26.08: 'Valkyrie' Extras Sue UA, Keaton In 'Toy Story 3', Brolin Talks 'W'" »
Tropic Thunder managed to cling on to No. 1 at the box office for a second week, although it barely fended off The House Bunny, the $25 million sorority romp starring Scary Movie comedienne Anna Faris. Paramount estimates put Thunder’s weekend pillaging at $16.1 million, boosting the big-budget satire's take to $65.7 million and enough to squeak past Bunny’s $15.1 million. The No. 3 slot was filled by Death Race, which grabbed $12.3 million – a disappointing result for the Jason Statham-starring monster-car mash-up, which had been tipped to offer a stiffer challenge. Still lingering in the top five is The Dark Knight, which whipped up a further $10.3 million to bring its record-bashing haul to $489 million. Knight, however, is undoubtedly beginning to flag, with James Cameron no doubt breathing a huge sigh of relief that Titanic’s record of biggest domestic grosser ever is probably safe from the Bat onslaught. Rounding out the top ten were Star Wars: The Clone Wars, stoner-com Pineapple Express, horror rehash Mirrors, newbie The Longshots, durable musicfest Mamma Mia! and Universal’s Mummy 3. More at Variety
Now that we've entered the dog days of summer, Hollywood's revving box-office engine inevitably shifts down a gear as evidenced by this week's major releases. Universal's remake of the 1975 auto-thriller Death Race 2000 is aiming to cross the finish line first and, with its young-male demographic and traditional late-summer star Jason Statham, looks like the strongest contender to snatch pole position from Tropic Thunder - especially as the war-spoof comedy is expected to plummet by around 50 percent from its opening weekend. Also in this weekend's race are the Anna Faris-starring comedy The House Bunny, family-football tale The Longshots, starring Ice Cube and directed by Limp Bizkit-er Fred Durst, and Fox's PG-13 comedy The Rocker, starring The Office's Rainn Wilson. Even as the studios reach to the back of their shelves for any old B-movie to shove out, summer 2008 looks all but certain to at least match last year's record-busting haul of $4.16 billion. And for that, Hollywood can thank The Dark Knight juggernaut, which prevented the whiffy likes of The Love Guru, Speed Racer and Meet Dave from ruining their summer. More at Variety
Samuel L. Jackson has revealed to IGN that George Lucas has him in the frame to direct his long-in-development World War 2 action-drama Red Tails, about the exploits of a squadron of African-American military flyers known as the Tuskegee Airmen. Jackson’s got a history with Lucas after playing Mace Windu in the Star Wars prequels and reveals that Lucas sent him John Ridley’s latest Tails draft a couple of weeks ago. “At one point Lucas was asking me if I’d ever want to direct anything. I said, ‘I don’t know, man. I’m trying to find things.’ He said, ‘Well, let me send you this thing. Maybe you might want to direct it.’” And…? “I don’t know. I don’t have a year and a half of my life where I wanna stop acting.”
This has been on the cards for yonks, but The Lord Of The Rings three-pronged braintrust of Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens have officially signed on to collaborate with director Guillermo Del Toro on The Hobbit and its sequel. And Del Toro recently chatted to IGN Down Under, revealing, among other Hobbit-related titbits, that Gollum will be CG again.”I think that it worked perfectly on the [Lord of the Rings] trilogy and if it ain't broke, why fix it?"
Continue reading "08.20.08: 'Rings' Trio Join 'Hobbit', Toronto Unveils Line-up" »
Admitting that this is so far up the rumor spout it might never come out, CHUD claims a mysterious source has revealed to them that Sam Raimi desperately wants James Franco to play Jack Ryan in his relaunch of their spy thriller franchise. Paramount have already ploughed through three Ryans in bringing Tom Clancy's novels to the big screen (Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck), but the studio's not as keen on Franco as Raimi is (he worked with the Pineapple Express star on his Spider-Man trilogy). In fact, so resistant is the studio to Franco's charms – they're worried he's not a franchise-carrier – that Raimi's threatening to walk. Like we said, stick this one in the rumour file for now...
At the Tropic Thunder junket, Robert Downey Jr. strolled into a Four Seasons hotel suite dressed in wide-striped khaki trousers and a green army jacket with the name “Osiris” sewn into one of the pockets – the name of his black-face character in Thunder. Also sporting a goatee and with his hair spiked and styled like he’s planning to reapply for duty in the ’80s teen movies that launched his career, Downey Jr. – in amongst the Thunder-thumping – chatted about his upcoming gig playing Sherlock Holmes in Guy Ritchie’s edgy reimagining of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic sleuth character. The Brit director has rewritten the script for Warner Bros.' reboot, which is inspired as much by Lionel Wigram’s eponymous comic book as it is by Doyle’s tomes and knocks the Victorian stuffiness out of the tale to buff up Holmes as a bare-knuckle boxer and martial-arts expert…
When do you start shooting?
October 6. Going over to England.
Have you had many meetings with Guy Ritchie?
We’ve definitely got to spend some time together and I love his take on it. We’re both martial arts enthusiasts and historically, in the real origin stories of Sherlock Holmes, he’s kind of a bad-ass and a bare-knuckle boxer and studies the rare art of baritsu [fictional martial art created by Doyle for the final Holmes story, 1901’s The Adventure Of The Empty House]. If you look baritsu up, they can’t even really tell you what it is so it gives us a lot of leeway.
What drew you to this take on Holmes?
I love the idea of doing a period piece without trying to be too stylised. I loved 300 but I think that that’s been capitalised on in other films like that so I like the idea of doing a period piece where you don’t modernise it, you just realise how modern it was. In 1891, it was incredibly modern. And Sherlock Holmes is such a great character to be able to play.
How’s the English accent coming?
It hasn’t come to me yet. I’ve done R.P. [a.k.a. received pronunciation, a.k.a. The Queen’s English] before in Chaplin and Restoration but I don’t want to just do that. I feel like Sherlock Holmes is out there somewhere and I got my little ham radio on [makes like he’s trying to tune in a radio station] to find his frequency but I’ve got nothing yet.
So how does it feel being back on top of Hollywood?
Yeah, I’m so on top of it – I’m in the missionary position. I’ve been pretty much in every angle corresponding to Hollywood and it’s just great, you know? It’s great and it’s a lot of work and it’s anxiety-provoking. Because be careful what you wish for – here I am, promoting a movie while my heart says I should not be promoting Tropic Thunder at all because I need to have my ham radio going for Sherlock Holmes. It’s mandatory that I get this inspiration and what if I miss that train? I’ll be depriving the moviegoing public of what it is that I promise them I’ll be able to do, which is more often than not deliver.
The Dark Knight has finally tumbled from its No. 1 perch, unable to fend off Ben Stiller's war-spoof onslaught Tropic Thunder. Studio estimates put the R-rated comedy’s take at $26 million for the weekend (and $37 million for its five-day opening frame) which was enough to drop Knight into second place. The Bat-sequel, however, did batter another record into submission, boosting its haul to $471.5 million with another $16.8 million in the bank to sail past Star Wars as the second biggest domestic grosser of all time. The outrageous (and outrageously expensive) Thunder’s take fell slightly short of Paramount’s lofty expectations but not by much, while The Clone Wars squeaked to $15.5 million, a slightly disappointing result for Lucas’ flog-the-hobbling-horse Star Wars empire. The Kiefer Sutherland frightfest Mirrors did okay at $11.1 million while Pineapple Express dropped to fifth place with $10 million, bringing its take up to $63 million - no doubt Sony and Judd Apatow were expecting bigger numbers for the stoner comedy, even with Thunder storming onto the playing field. Good news for Woody Allen, though: he managed to claw his way into the top 10 with Vicky Cristina Barcelona, landing at No. 10 with $3.7 million - which, in Woody-world, virtually qualifies as a $100 million opening. More at Variety
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