Once again I bring you the best round-up of all the movie updates announced in this past week’s trade reports. Why read a TON of articles when you can read just one?
This week we get new cast members added to films such as Law Abiding Citizen and Carmel. An unlikely trio may team up for a DreamWorks Animated feature. John Carpenter returns to the director’s chair with Amber Heard who will also join Johnny Depp in Rum Diary. Jennifer Lopez may be in another movie and that Judy Garland biopic may be quite good. Oh, and Jennifer Aniston and Jason Bateman are teaming for a new film and check out the casting on Mary, Mother of Christ, that could potentially be a decent little flick.
Check out the full list and links are available if the film is in the database already. Enjoy!
Title: Law Abiding Citizen
Studio: Overture Films
Director: F. Gary Gray (The Italian Job)
Screenwriter: Kurt Wimmer, Frank Darabont, Sheldon Turner, David Ayer
Cast: Gerard Butler, Jamie Foxx, Viola Davis, Bruce McGill, Leslie Bibb, Colm Meaney, Regina Hall
Storyline: Focuses on a man (Butler) who, 10 years after his wife and daughter are brutally murdered, returns to exact justice from the assistant district attorney (Foxx) who prosecuted the case against their killers. His vengeance threatens not only the man who allowed mercy to supersede justice, but also the system and the city that made it so.
Title: Hyperion Cantos
Studio: Warner Bros.
Director: Scott Derrickson (The Day the Earth Stood Still)
Screenwriter: Trevor Sands
Cast: Not Available
Storyline: Based on Dan Simmons’ novels, the story is set in the distant future, as a space war threatens Hyperion, a planet known for the Time Tombs — large artifacts that can move through time and are guarded by a gruesome monster called the Shrike.
Title: Broken Horses
Studio: Not Available
Director: Vidhu Vinod Chopra
Screenwriters: Abhijat Joshi, Jason Richman
Cast: Mickey Rourke
Storyline: A gangster caper based on an original story by Chopra.
Title: Carmel
Studio: Not Available
Director: Lawrence Roeck
Screenwriter: Carlos de los Rios
Cast: Lauren Bacall, Alfred Molina, Dina Eastwood, Hayden Panettiere, Josh Hutcherson
Storyline: Focuses on a troubled 16-year-old boy, who wanders into Carmel, falls into the wrong crowd and becomes involved in art forgery. He’s befriended by a retired local artist who traces her career back to the early days of Carmel artists, writers and other creative types, all with skeletons in their closets.
Title: Miral
Studio: Not Available
Director: Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)
Screenwriter: Not Available
Cast: Hiam Abbass
Storyline: An adaptation of Italo-Palestinian Rula Jebreal’s book about the real-life Palestinian woman Hind Husseini, who started the Dar Al-Tifl orphanage in Jerusalem in the wake of the 1948 partition of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. Pic will span the years 1948-94.
Title: Plan B
Studio: CBS Films
Director: Alan Poul (“Six Feet Under”)
Screenwriter: Not Available
Cast: Jennifer Lopez
Storyline: Described as a “fertility comedy.”
Title: The Ward
Studio: Echo Lake
Director: John Carpenter (The Thing)
Screenwriter: Not Available
Cast: Amber Heard
Storyline: Centers on a haunted woman (Heard) in a mental institution.
Title: King Lear
Studio: Not Available
Director: Michael Radford (Merchant of Venice)
Screenwriter: Michael Radford
Cast: Al Pacino
Storyline: Centers on King Lear, the aging monarch who selects his successor by parsing his kingdom in three parts, ruled by his trio of daughters. Two of them are scheming connivers who flatter their father, while the one loving daughter, Cordelia, refuses to play that game and is exiled. The king ultimately loses everything.
Title: Get Happy: the Life of Judy Garland
Studio: Weinstein Co.
Director: Not Available
Screenwriter: Not Available
Cast: Not Available
Storyline: A biopic to be adapted from Gerald Clarke’s “Get Happy: the Life of Judy Garland” which details how the actress and singer was plagued by personal problems and mistreated by employers, family and lovers.
Title: Valentine’s Day
Studio: New Line Cinema
Director: Garry Marshall (Pretty Woman)
Screenwriter: Katherine Fugate, Abby Kohn, Marc Silverstein.
Cast: Not Available
Storyline: A comedy about 10 people in Los Angeles whose lives intersect on the romantic holiday.
Title: Babi Yar
Studio: Not Available
Director: Barry Levinson (Wag the Dog)
Screenwriter: Not Available
Cast: Not Available
Storyline: Adapted from Anatoly Kuznetsov’s WWII classic “Babi Yar” which tells the author’s harrowing account of witnessing mass executions of Jews, gypsies, Poles and prisoners of war during the German occupation of Kiev. The title refers to a ravine called Babi Yar where the atrocities took place.
Title: Untitled Moon Feature
Studio: Paramount Pictures
Director: Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity)
Screenwriter: Doug Liman, John Hamburg, Mark Bowden, Dan Mazeau, Simon Kinberg, Ken Nolan
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal
Storyline: An action film about lunar colonization.
Title: We Want Sex
Studio: Not Available
Director: Simon Curtis
Screenwriter: Billy Ivory
Cast: Sally Hawkins, Imelda Staunton
Storyline: Project is about the 1968 strike at the Ford Dagenham car plant when 850 female workers walked out in protest against sexual discrimination in their job performance evaluations. Their actions gave a huge boost to the women’s rights movement in the country and helped bring about equal pay for women in the workplace. During the protest, the strike committee was invited to tea by Barbara Castle (Imelda Staunton), employment secretary in then-prime minister Harold Wilson’s Labour government. It was during that meeting that the strikers raised the issue of equal pay for the first time.
Title: The Cross
Studio: Not Available
Director: Andrew Niccol (Lord of War)
Screenwriter: Not Available
Cast: Orlando Bloom, Vincent Cassel, Olga Kurylenko
Storyline: Set in a border town the film is set in the near future. Bloom plays a man seeking to cross a mysterious border, something no one else has achieved; Cassel will play the sentry who wants to stop him.
Title: Green Lantern
Studio: Warner Bros.
Director: Martin Campbell (Casino Royale)
Screenwriter: Greg Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim, Michael Green.
Cast: Not Available
Storyline: “Green Lantern” began at DC in 1940, telling the story of Hal Jordan, a second-generation test pilot. Jordan is an ordinary man who has been charged with defending a sector of the universe.
Title: Rum Diary
Studio: Not Available
Director: Bruce Robinson
Screenwriter: Bruce Robinson
Cast: Johnny Depp, Amber Heard
Storyline: The adaptation of the Hunter S. Thompson novel designed around a love triangle in the tale of a washed-up, hard-drinking journalist named Paul Kemp (Depp) in 1950s Puerto Rico.
Title: The Book of Eli
Studio: Warner Bros.
Director: Albert Hughes, Allen Hughes (From Hell)
Screenwriter: Gary Whitta, Anthony Peckham
Cast: Denzel Washington, Mila Kunis, Gary Oldman, Ray Stevenson, Jennifer Beals, Michael Gambon
Storyline: Centers on a lone hero named Eli (Washington) who must fight his way across the wasteland of a near-future America to protect a sacred book that might hold the key to saving the future of humanity.
Title: Master Mind
Studio: DreamWorks Animation
Director: Gary Trousdale
Screenwriter: Alan J. Schoolcraft, Brent Simons
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Tina Fey, Ben Stiller
Storyline: Animated feature concerns a brilliant superhero villain who loses his life’s purpose when he accidentally kills his good-guy nemesis. DWA plans a Nov. 5, 2010 release (though the title might change).
Title: Revenge of the Green Dragons
Studio: Not Available
Director: Andrew Lau (Infernal Affairs)
Screenwriter: Not Available
Cast: Not Available
Storyline: A fact-based drama about street gangs in New York’s Chinatown based on an investigative article written for the New Yorker by Fredric Dannen. Film chronicles the rise and fall of a notorious Chinese gang, and intersects with the story of immigrants chasing the American dream.
Title: The Baster
Studio: Mandate Pictures
Director: Will Speck, Josh Gordon (Blades of Glory)
Screenwriter: Allan Loeb
Cast: Jennifer Aniston, Jason Bateman
Storyline: Centers on a neurotic and insecure man (Bateman) who finds out his best friend (Aniston) wants to have a child through artificial insemination. He surreptitiously replaces her donor’s semen with his own and is then forced to live with the secret that he is the child’s real father.
Title: Schweigeminute (A Minute of Silence)
Studio: Constantin Film
Director: Uli Edel (The Baader Meinhof Complex)
Screenwriter: Bernd Eichinger
Cast: Not Available
Storyline: The adaptation of Siefried Lenz’s bestselling novel, set during the 1950s on Germany’s scenic Baltic coast, will tell the bittersweet story of a summer love affair between a high school English teacher and one of her students.
Title: Mary, Mother of Christ
Studio: MGM
Director: Alejandro Agresti (The Lake House)
Screenwriter: Not Available
Cast: Camilla Belle, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Peter O’Toole, Al Pacino, Jessica Lange
Storyline: A New Testament ensemble piece with Belle starring as the title character and will be joined by Jonathan Rhys Meyers in the dual roles of Gabriel and Lucifer and Peter O’Toole as Symeon. Al Pacino and Jessica Lange are in talks to play Herod and Anna the Prophetess.
Title: Beezus and Ramona
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Director: Elizabeth Allen (Aquamarine)
Screenwriter: Laurie Craig, Nick Pustay
Cast: Selena Gomez, Joey King
Storyline: Based on bestselling Ramona books by Beverly Cleary, Gomez will play Beezus, the brilliant yet insecure older sister to King’s Ramona, who has a vivid imagination. Fox will release the film March 19, 2010.
Title: The Electric Slide
Studio: Myriad Pictures
Director: Tristan Patterson
Screenwriter: Tristan Patterson
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Carey Mulligan
Storyline: Based on the article “The Yankee Bandit: The Life and Times of Eddie Dodson, World’s Great Bank Robber,” written by Timothy Ford for Gear magazine the film is set in the 1980s when Dodson (McGregor) robbed more than 72 banks in the Los Angeles area before the FBI nailed him.
Title: Samba
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Director: Hicham Ayouch
Screenwriter: Not Available
Cast: Not Available
Storyline: Project is about a Moroccan man, obsessed with a Brazilian telenovela star, who teaches a samba class to a host of doting young femmes all eager to win his heart. His life takes a turn for the worse when his mother hires a local conservative imam to cure her son’s obsession.
Thanks to Variety and The Hollywood Reporter for contributing to this report.
