This morning’s batch of links brings news of the Gosling and Refn love affair, a new film for Rob Cohen, the Annie remake from Big Willie and J-Hova and a WarGames remake. What fun…
Ryan Gosling has become director Nicolas Winding Refn’s new crush as the two first collaborated on Drive (my review), which will hit theaters this September, they are working on a Logan’s Run remake, a potential rom-com and now Gosling has replaced Luke Evans in Refn’s Only God Forgives after Evans sauntered off to work on The Hobbit.
Gosling will play Julian who is on the run from the British police. He runs a Thai Boxing club in Bangkok which is a front for a drugs smuggling operation. He is well respected within the criminal underworld, but deep in his heart he feels that his life is lacking something. He meets a retired cop, The Angel of Vengeance, and finds out that he has to confront his mother. Kristin Scott Thomas co-stars as what I am assuming would be the mother. Pic will start shooting in November and will be delivered during the second half of 2012. [Variety]
Seth Gordon (The King of Kong, Horrible Bosses) has been given the keys to develop and direct a remake of the 1983 Matthew Broderick starrer WarGames for MGM. The original centered on a young man who unwittingly taps into the Defense Department’s war computer and while he believes he is merely playing a game, he is in fact on the verge of starting World War III. Gordon will be given a wide berth to create a new take on the tale. And considering the original film dealt with the Russians I have to assume this new film will involve the Middle East, North Korea or aliens. [Deadline]
Will Smith and Jay-Z are in negotiations with Oscar-winning screenwriter and actress Emma Thompson (Sense and Sensibility) to pen the screenplay for a remake of the 1982 musical Annie with Smith’s daughter, Willow, set to star in the title role. Thompson is currently co-starring with Smith as Agent O in Men in Black III. [Vulture]
Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious) is set to direct Bullet Run, an Andrew Hilton-scripted action film revolving around the story of the head of an elite private protection team and his former CIA agent wife who infiltrate the closed borders of Iran to abduct a man who killed their daughter. The extraction goes awry and they are forced to rely on their world-class driving skills and a fleet of high-performance street cars to travel 200 miles through a hail of bullets to keep alive the man they really want dead. The film is expected to be Cohen’s follow-up to his current project I, Alex Cross based on the James Patterson novel and starring Tyler Perry and Matthew Fox. [Deadline]
Christopher Misch posted the following note on Twitter, which comes from the Avon Theatre in Stamford, Connecticut where they must be receiving several requests for refunds from patrons that walked into Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life not knowing what they were getting themselves into. The last time I remember such a situation was the Greenberg incident. [Twitter]
