Kit Bowen's Weekly Role Call, July 2
By Kit Bowen, Hollywood.com Staff
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Friday, July 02, 2004
Reese Witherspoon |
Witherspoon, Ruffalo remain True
Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo are in talks to star in If Only It Were True for DreamWorks about a man who falls in love with the spirit of a woman whose apartment he comes to inhabit. Sounds a little like a reversal of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, in which a widow falls in love with the ghost of a sea captain when she moves into his seaside house. Witherspoon is also going to play June Carter Cash alongside Joaquin Phoenix in Columbia's Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line (no, that's not a joke), while Ruffalo is starting the Warner Bros. film based on The Graduate this summer, with Jennifer Aniston.
Bale, Malick enter New World
New Line Cinema has signed Christian Bale (the guy playing the new Batman) and David Thewlis (the guy who played Harry Potter's teacher in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban to co-star in director Terrence Malick's upcoming epic The New World. It's about, what else?, America--an epic adventure set amid the encounter of European and Native American cultures following the founding of the Jamestown settlement in 1607. Inspired by the legend of John Smith and Pocahontas, acclaimed but rather eccentric filmmaker Malick transforms this classic story into a sweeping exploration of love, loss and discovery that celebrates the birth pangs of America. Bale will play English tobacco planter John Rolfe in the film, while Thewlis takes on the role of Smith's rival Captain Wingfield. Q'orianka Kilcher will make her feature starring debut in the role of Pocahontas. If it's anything like Malick's interminable nearly three hour war opus The Thin Red Line, we suggest bringing blankets and pillows to the theater--you may be there awhile.
Eclectic cast gathers in Never Was
Ian McKellen, Aaron Eckhart, Brittany Murphy and Nick Nolte are in negotiations to star in the indie drama Never Was. Eckhart plays a Yale graduate who gets a job at the mental institution where his novelist father (Nolte) spent the last years of his life. Once there, he meets a schizophrenic man (McKellen) who proves a mysterious link to his father's material. Murphy plays a reporter. An odd collection of actors, to say the least, but sounds intriguing. Crazy people make good cinema.
The cutthroat world of…real estate agents?
Apparently, real estate agents can be a nasty, backstabbing bunch. Actor Stephen Dorff (Cold Creek Manor) is in cahoots with HBO to develop a half-hour series about young-Turk real estate brokers in Los Angeles. Project will revolve around four thirtysomething agents who compete in the competitive world of L.A. real estate, a cross between Glengarry Glen Ross and Swingers. Dorff, who will exec produce the untitled project, told Variety he'll likely star as one of the main characters. "Real estate identifies with change in one's life: success, failure, marriage, death," Dorff said. Well, he has a point.
Speedman, Gaye join XXX fever
Scott Speedman (Underworld) and Nona Gaye (The Matrix Revolutions) are getting in on XXX: State of the Union action, joining Ice Cube, Samuel L. Jackson and Willem Dafoe. The second installment of Sony's thriller franchise, whose 2002 original starred Vin Diesel, is largely set in Washington, where Ice Cube plays a former criminal recruited by the National Security Agency to become a XXX agent. Speedman is set to play agent Kyle Steele, with Gaye playing a potential romantic interest to Ice Cube's character. Oh yeah, baby, sign me up!
Giant ants on the way
Jonathan Hensleigh (The Punisher) is set to write and direct a remake of The Naked Jungle, a 1954 film that starred Charlton Heston as a South American plantation owner who battles a colony of oversized marching ants. Would I lie to you about something like that? "When you watch (The Naked Jungle) now it feels dated," Hensleigh told Variety (well, duh). "But the ability to use CGI effects to show the ferocity of this super colony of ants gives a new dimension to the project." The film is based on the Carl Stephenson short story Leiningen Versus the Ants, which was turned into a radio play before being made into the film. The original was set in 1901, when a mail-order bride shows up to wed the plantation owner just as the ant swarm mobilizes. Bummer. Hensleigh said he'll update the story to be set in a South American rain forest, and creating a jungle romance between the plantation owner and a woman who is an emissary for a corporation looking to buy the plantation. I just wanna see the giant ants.
Until next week...
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