Director John Woo has left Sony and signed a three-year movie and TV deal with MGM, according to Entertainment Weekly Online.
Woo didn’t end up making any films with his resident studio, planning two other projects instead with MGM. The projects include “Wind Talkers,” starring Nicolas Cage. For now, Woo‘s got another action flick on his plate: “Mission: Impossible 2,” starring Tom Cruise, opens this summer.
SECRET AGENT MAN: John Dahl, who directed the noirish Matt Damon poker pic “Rounders,” is in talks with Mandalay Pictures to direct “End Game,” a spy flick starring Sean Connery, reports Daily Variety. Written by Adi Hassock and Stuart Kelban, Connery will play an old-fashioned CIA agent who goes on a special undercover assignment to expose illegal arms dealing. In the process, he discovers that he’s been set up to take the fall in a conspiracy. Connery then teams up with a young counterpart to prove his innocence.
LET’S HOPE IT’S TEMPORARY: “Cruel Intentions” director Roger Kumble is in final talks to helm Columbia Pictures’ romantic comedy “Screenplay Without a Title Yet.” The story follows a club-hopping hipster who believes she’s finally met her soulmate. The next morning at a wedding party, she is horrified to find that he’s the groom. According to Variety, “Screenplay” was purchased for $1.5 million from “South Park” staff writer Nancy Pimental.
WHAT, NO FOUL-MOUTHED ANGELS?: As if he’s just asking for “Dogma“-like religious controversy, “King of the Hill” creator Mike Judge will direct “Messiah Complex,” a comedy about a pious college student who starts to believe he was cloned from the Shroud of Turin. No word on whether Beavis and Butthead will co-star.
SPELLING BEE: Catherine Zeta-Jones, who’s been a busy bride-to-be lately, is in talks to star in “Traffic,” a film that looks at the high-revenue industry of drug trafficking. According to EW Online, the film is based on the acclaimed British miniseries “Traffik,” but American studios had to change the title. But we’re still afraid moviegoers will think it’s a film about the Los Angelesfreeways.
REAL TRAFFIC: Jamie Foxx, fresh from his success in “Any Given Sunday,” will star in “National Security,” a buddy-cop comedy. Foxx will play a man beaten by a white cop, who then teams up with the officer wrongly accused of the beating.
ADDITIONS: Liev Schreiber, a recent Golden Globe nominee for the cable film “RKO 281,” will join the cast of “Pay it Forward,” starring Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt and Haley Joel Osment… Tim Guinee (“Blade”) has been added to Dimension Films’ “Impostor,” whichstars Gary Sinise and Madeleine Stowe … Lisa Thornhill (“Ally McBeal”) has been tapped to co-star with Nicolas Cage in “Family Man,” to be directed by Brett Ratner (“Rush Hour”) … Alexandra Paul (“Baywatch”) will co-star with Ron Silver in the independent film “Exposure,” to be film in NewZealand.
