As I am sure many of you have noticed I have stopped reporting on all of the casting and directing updates that come out of the pages of Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. Sure, a few of them peak my interest and get posted, but for the most part I believe it comes rather redundant. Every single movie news website/blog does this on a daily basis in a cut and paste format and I was just of the opinion it took up space and made this site no different than any of the others and where is the fun in that?
However, that doesn’t mean some of the announced projects aren’t of interest, it just means they aren’t necessarily worthy of their own post, so I have decided to take a stab at simplifying things and hope to be able to do this on a weekly basis as I bring you the first production update of 2009. This gives me the chance to do a little bit of cut and paste of my own, but in a much simpler format that doesn’t require a TON of posts.
I realize now I should have added studios where applicable and you can believe that will happen next week, but for now check out the latest movie productions ripped from the trade headlines. And remember, not all of these are sure things. Some I have added to the database and linked to in such a situation, but a lot of these are in the very early stages of production and some don’t even have screenwriters.
Title: Beat the Reaper
Director: None announced
Screenwriter: None announced
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio
Storyline: The protagonist in the novel penned by Josh Bazell is a Manhattan emergency room doctor, whose life becomes complicated when a mobster recognizes the doc from his former life as a hitman who went into the witness protection program.
Title: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Director: Jon Turteltaub
Screenwriter: Lawrence Konner, Matt Lopez, Mark Rosenthal
Cast: Teresa Palmer, Nicolas Cage, Jay Baruchel
Storyline: Taking its cues from the classic Goethe and Paul Dukas-inpsired Mickey Mouse portion of “Fantasia,” the live-action feature centers on an apprentice (Baruchel) who is left to tend to a magic workshop when his sorcerer master (Cage) leaves it in his hands. The apprentice gets a broomstick to do his chores for him, but things get out of control when the broom develops a mind of its own.
Title: Nowhere Boy
Director: Sam Taylor-Wood
Screenwriter: Robert Bernstein
Cast: Kristin Scott Thomas, Anne-Marie Duff, Aaron Johnson
Storyline: A John Lennon biopic in which Scott-Thomas has been cast as Lennon’s tough talking aunt Mimi who played a major role in bringing the would-be rock icon up. Anne-Marie Duff will play his mother Julia while newcomer Aaron Johnson will play the young Lennon in the Ecosse Films’ production.
Title: Minimum Wage
Director: Mark Waters
Screenwriter: Tegan West and Scott Atkinson
Cast: None announced
Storyline: The story centers on a corrupt corporate executive who is convicted of fraud and sentenced to a year living on minimum wage in the town his company bankrupted.
Title: Chloe
Director: Atom Egoyan
Screenwriter: Erin Cressida Wilson
Cast: Julianne Moore, Liam Neeson, Amanda Seyfried
Storyline: Moore will play a successful doctor who suspects her husband (Neeson) of cheating. She tests his fidelity by hiring an escort (Seyfried) to seduce him. The move creates complications that put her family in danger. Erin Cressida Wilson wrote the script.
Title: Juliet
Director: James Mangold
Screenwriter: None announced
Cast: None announced
Storyline: Based on the upcoming novel “Juliet,” a novel by Danish author Anne Fortier, the story, which takes a cue from “Romeo and Juliet,” toggles from medieval Siena to the present day in a story about a woman who discovers she may be descended from the people who inspired one of the most popular and tragic love stories of all time.
Title: Jonah Hex
Director: Jimmy Hayward
Screenwriter: Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor
Cast: Josh Brolin
Storyline: The character of Hex, known for having the right side of his face disfigured and wearing a Confederate army uniform, was a rough-and-tumble gunslinger and part-time bounty hunter whose adventures always ended in blood. One incarnation of his comic book series saw the Western genre combined with supernatural elements.
Title: Bye Bye Birdie
Director: Adam Shankman
Screenwriter: None announced
Cast: None announced
Storyline: A stage favorite for the past half-century, “Birdie” centers on Conrad Birdie, a popular singer whose character is based loosely on Elvis Presley. He’s about to be shipped off to the army, but as part of a publicity stunt, he agrees to one last encounter with a fan before he goes to war.
Title: Law Abiding Citizen
Director: F. Gary Gray
Screenwriters: Sheldon Turner, Kurt Wimmer, David Ayer and Frank Darabont
Cast: Gerard Butler, Jamie Foxx, Michael Gambon, Leslie Bibb, Colm Meaney, Theresa Randle
Storyline: Follows a successful assistant D.A. (Butler) who finds himself at the center of a vigilante plot hatched by a traumatized victim of the legal system (Foxx). Foxx’s character is devastated to learn that, because of a plea bargain, one of his wife and daughter’s murderers will be set free. So he unleashes revenge on the killers and those who made the deal.
Title: Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame
Director: Tsui Hark
Screenwriter: Chen Kuofu
Cast: Andy Lau
Storyline: When the mysterious deaths of a series of loyal subjects threaten to delay the 690 A.D. inauguration of Empress Wu, China’s only female leader, she calls the infamous Detective Dee (Lau) back from an exile into which she cast him eight years earlier.
Title: The Beautiful and the Damned
Director: John Curran
Screenwriter: Hanna Weg
Cast: Keira Knightley
Storyline: Concerns the turbulent marriage of alcoholic writer F. Scott Fitzgerald and his mercurial wife Zelda Sayre (Knightley), who was schizophrenic. The tempestuous relationship, which unfolded in the high society of the Roaring ’20s, inspired some of the novelist’s works.
