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Wednesday, October 15, 2003
The Marvellous Movie Report
Hello, I was away over the weekend so I have some catching up to do, so lets get going.
Lots from CHUD:
From rabid fanboy speculation to actual possibility? New Line are actually really considering bringing Bruce Campbell on board to reprise his cult favourite role as Ash for a sequel to Freddy vs. Jason. What will they call it though? Will the mainstream audience even know who Ash is? On second thought, who cares as long as this gets made well? More Evil Dead news is that Sam Raimi is serious about doing a fourth film in the series once he gets finished with Spider-man sequels. Lets hope the film companies can leave him alone to make a good film without their interference.
In more ‘Former Arnie project going on without him’ news, the proposed third Conan movie is still set to go ahead, so expect people to connect The Rock to it shortly. Warner Brothers are still behind the King Conan script with the Wachowski Brothers producing. Oh boy, I just can’t wait for Warner to start associating this movie with The Matrix, that won’t be misleading at all, no sir.
Next for Pierce Brosnan is Mexicali where he will play an ex-stunt man (HA!) vacationing in Baja when he accidentally witnesses a murder. His wife is kidnapped and he must rescue her and return to the States alive. Pietro Scalia (any relation to Jack), who served as film editor for films like Gladiator, will make his directing debut with a script from A Man Apart’s Christian Gudegast and Paul Scheuring. Apparently this film has been knocking around for a few years, previously with Bill Paxton in the lead role and Roger Avary directing, oh well. After this, Brosnan will go back to Bond for his last film as the super spy, thank God.
Mark Ruffalo has replaced Val Kilmer as a cop on the trail of hired killer Tom Cruise in the upcoming Collateral from Michael Mann. Kilmer couldn’t fit the film into his schedule and so Ruffalo (My Life Without Me, Windtalkers) gets the gig, joining Jada Pinkett-Smith and Dennis Farina. I’ve never been keen on Cruise but with Michael Mann overseeing this, it has some potential.
CHUD also have a pretty cool picture of Thomas Jane as The Punisher from the upcoming film due out next summer. You have no idea how happy I was to see that big skull on his shirt.
Dark Horizons have some interesting pieces of news I picked out too:
Birth of the Pink Panther? Ivan Reitman will direct a prequel to the original series made so memorable by the incredibly talented, legendary Burt Kwok, I mean Peter Sellers. The top contender for the role of Inspector Clouseau this time around is Steve Martin who has yet to make a final decision, more than likely because stepping into the shoes of Sellers is a pretty intimidating prospect. While Martin is not directly comparable I think he’s a great comic actor and a good choice, and as long as he’s allowed to put his own spin on the character I can see it working pretty well.
Dark Horizons also broke some surprising news that two very faithful Foundation films based on Isaac Asimov’s novels of the same name are in the works. 20th Century Fox have employed Jeff Vintar to script the first two films who also wrote the adaptation of I, Robot due out next year with Will Smith. Apparently this is being treated as a sci-fi Lord of the Rings and though the potential is there, are Asimov’s classic books as widely known as Tolkien’s epics? I’d like to see these work and its admirable that Fox are willing to commit to two films in one go from what is as of yet a literary source not yet tested at the box office. I eagerly await the results.
Jean Claude Van Damme made some statements about upcoming film projects in an interview posted at Kasey’s Van Damme Page where he says that after doing a film called Cover Play and a sequel to Replicant, he would love to star in an adaptation of Swan Lake. I thought Van Damme was off drugs now?
MonkeyPeaches has a couple of news bits for us from the Far East:
John Woo has his eyes on an action musical, to be called Tale Of Chris Damon. Woo had not been confident in the viability of a musical until the likes of Moulin Rouge! and Chicago were so successful, and now it seems Warner Bros. are willing to put money behind this. The story will be set in America in the 1930s with this Chris Damon as the central character. He’s a petty criminal with aspirations to become a powerful member of the Mafia, but has an older brother suffering from pneumonia. During the film he will fall in love with a dance teacher and also have an affair with the mistress of a crime boss. He promises to blend singing, dancing and gang violence, and that casting is going ahead at the moment, though if it had been a Chinese film Chow Yun Fat would have been cast in the lead role already, doh! Woo was a huge fan of musicals growing up so this could be intriguing, but then again this is the man who wanted to do a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film a few years ago.
Wong Kar-Wai has signed a three picture deal with Fox Searchlight, a deal was made between Fox and his production company Block 2 Films to make at least three English language features. It does not look like Wong will be directing all of these himself as it was stated that he will supervise the film and select the director and actors as well as working with the screenwriters. Fox Searchlight will co-finance the films and one would presume they’d get exclusive distribution rights in the western hemisphere. The first of these films will be an action picture starring Chang Chen who appeared in Wong’s Happy Together and Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Wong also hopes that other stars like regular Tony Leung Chiu-Wai will get involved. The director’s current project 2046, which is approaching its fourth year in production, could very well be filming again in Shanghai, and it is hoped the film might actually be ready for next spring.
Finally The Wrestling Observer reported that The Rock has yet another film on his ‘to do’ list, Instant Karma from New Line. In it, Rock is a safecracker who is reincarnated as various animals after he bites the big one. This sounds like kiddie territory as this will feature various actors providing both human and animal voice roles. The cast is surprisingly stacked though, featuring Pierce Brosnan, Mira Sorvino, David Alan Grier and Eartha Kitt in humanoid form, while Dom DeLuise, Burt Reynolds and Gene Wilder will be providing animal voices. GENE WILDER? Dude, what the hell are you doing?!
That’s all from me so until next time, hasta la vista, California.
posted by Martin 4:14 AM | Comments
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