HOLLYWOOD - Top Story: Dunst, Kutcher Join Crowe's Elizabethtown
Spider-Man star Kirsten Dunst and prankster Ashton Kutcher are set to star in Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown, which DreamWorks Pictures and Paramount Pictures are in final talks to co-finance. To star in the film, Dunst reportedly dropped out of her role in M. Night Shyamalan's The Woods, which also stars Kutcher (who did not drop out) and Joaquin Phoenix. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Crowe wrote the script and will produce the pic under his Vinyl Films and Tom Cruise's C/W Prods. Elizabethtown is described as a story of an unexpected romance that develops against the backdrop of a Southern patriarch's hilariously elaborate memorial. The project is slated to begin production in October before resuming in the New Year in Oregon and Kentucky.
Osbournes Sign for Third Season
The Osbourne clan is returning to MTV for a third season. According to Reuters, the family has signed on for 20 more episodes set to begin airing early next year with the Emmy-winning reality show's production set to resume in the fall. The Osbournes, now in its second season, follows the daily exploits of heavy metal legend Ozzy Osbourne in his offstage role as an aging father fiddling around his Beverly Hills mansion. His wife, Sharon Osbourne, said in a statement, "How lucky am I to have MTV with us for another year filming home movies of my family--and pay us for it?"
Scorsese To Produce Sci Fi Miniseries
Filmmaker Martin Scorsese has signed on to executive produce the Sci Fi Channel miniseries The Twelve targeted to premiere in 2005. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the series chronicles an FBI agent's confrontation with a bizarre series of events he suspects to be signs of an impending apocalypse timed for the Twelfth Day of Christmas. The Twelve will run at least six hours, but the exact scheduling has not yet been determined.
Concert Attendance Up in 2003
Acts such as the Dixie Chicks, Cher, Elton John, Billy Joel, Fleetwood Mac, Kenny Chessney, Tim McGraw and the Rolling Stones helped reverse a two-year slide in concert ticket sales as concert attendance jumped 24 percent in the first half of 2003, The Associated Press reports. According to the industry trade magazine Pollstar, fans bought 13.1 million concert tickets to the top 50 concert tours from January to June, compared to 10.6 million sold during the same period last year. Celine Dion's Las Vegas stage show also made the Top 10 highest grossing tour list without ever going on tour. The singer has grossed $33.2 million since her show opened in March.
Role Call: Keira Knightley in "Tulip Fever," Latifah and Pinkett Smith Reunite
Keira Knightley, who stars in the swashbuckling tale Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, is in talks to join Jude Law in Tulip Fever for director John Madden. Set in the mid-1600s in Amsterdam, the DreamWorks and Miramax project centers on a young woman who weds a wealthy merchant to escape poverty. Shooting is set to begin in April ... Queen Latifah and Jada Pinkett Smith, who starred together in the 1996 urban heist pic Set It Off, will reunite to play police detectives in an untitled action-comedy for Paramount Pictures. Pinkett Smith's husband, Will Smith, will produce the pic through his Overbrook Entertainment banner.