Demi Is Back!
Stepping out since her villainous turn in Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, Demi Moore is in final negotiations to star alongside Kevin Costner and William Hurt in the psychological thriller Mr. Brooks. The story follows a man (Costner) with a murderous alter ego (Hurt). Hmmm, Costner as a bad guy. Why not? Moore will play a tough detective whose devotion to her craft catches the attention and respect of the serial killer she is hunting, which leads to a symbiotic relationship. Well, of course it does. Sounds like Demi is picking and choosing her projects more carefully these days. Meanwhile, making it a family affair, Costner is also set to star in The Guardian about the U.S. Coast Guard with Ashton Kutcher, Moore’s cutie hubby. Set in Kodiak, Alaska, Costner plays a guy who teaches Coast Guard rescue swimmers, including Kutcher, who plays a cocky swim champion training to become a rescue swimmers. Off-duty Coast Guard members used as extras at the station, helicopters and C-130 airplanes were being used to add realism. By god, if those helicopters aren’t real, I’m going to really pitch a fit!
Del Toro Howls at the Moon
Universal Pictures is set to rip things up with a redo of the horror classic The Wolf Man, with Benicio Del Toro playing the title role. Seven scribe Andrew Kevin Walker has begun writing the script. Oh, I’m liking the sounds of this one. Like the 1941 original that starred Lon Chaney Jr., the new film will be set in Victorian England, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Del Toro will play a man who returns from America to his ancestral homeland, gets bitten by a werewolf and begins a hairy moonlight existence. The deal came out of a series of meetings with the producers, Walker and Del Toro, who collects Wolf Man memorabilia. Now, why doesn’t that surprise me? Walker spent several months working on some frightening new twists to a familiar tale, adding several characters and plot points that take advantage of cutting-edge visual effects technology. Of course, this shouldn’t in any way be confused with Wolf, a mess of a film with a similar theme, starring Jack Nicholson and Michelle Pfeiffer.
Faris Takes to the Pot
Anna Faris, who appeared in the Scary Movie franchise, is starring in Smiley Face, a stoner comedy being directed by Gregg Araki. Faris plays a young actress and hopeless slacker who, after she inadvertently ingests her roommate’s pot-laced brownies, attempts to manage her day as it goes awry through a series of misadventures. Like totally bitchin’, dude! Also cast are John Krasinski (soooo cute in TV’s The Office), John Cho (Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle–another stoner movie) and Jane Lynch (pee-in-your-pants funny in The 40 Year-Old Virgin). And speaking of pot, Into The Blue director John Stockwell has signed to helm gritty new movie Kid Cannabis, in a bid to subvert social stereotypes. He wants to shock audiences with his movie adaptation of a real-life story, which sees middle-class Idaho teenagers mastermind a seedy underground drug empire. He tells British movie website EmpireOnline.com, “I had been looking to do something in this realm that didn’t involve minorities or urban drug dealers. These were all white, suburban kids with no criminal records. They managed to transform themselves from minimum-wage workers to drug lords.” Beats doing trigonometry homework, I suppose.
From Whale Rider to Virgin Mary
Keisha Castle-Hughes, so heartbreakingly good in her Oscar-nominated performance in Whale Rider, has been cast as Mary in Nativity, which looks at the life of the Virgin Mary before the birth of Christ. Catherine Hardwicke (thirteen). The story, to be told with a strong female perspective, will follow Mary and Joseph’s life before the birth of Christ as their love, faith and beliefs are tested. The script incorporates their departure from Nazareth and travel to Bethlehem and includes such biblical figures as King Herod, John the Baptist and the three kings from the Orient, among others. No pressure or anything, Keisha. It’s only Jesus’ mother. Just be yourself.
More on Terrorism
I reported last week that Crash’s Paul Haggis is looking to adapt Richard A. Clarke’s best-selling memoir chronicling the Bush administration’s handling of terrorist threats. Now, Ridley Scott is getting in on the action, so to speak. The veteran director is set to direct a new film adapted from David Ignatius’ espionage thriller Penetration about a CIA operative posted in Amman who is helped in his pursuit of a high-ranking terrorist by the head of Jordan’s intelligence agency. Scott also follows the lead of Paul Greengrass, whose controversial Flight 93 centers on the hijacked 9/11 plane which missed its target, and Oliver Stone‘s graphic depiction of the infamous day, currently shooting under the working title of World Trade Center. All you have to do is wait a little while after something really bad happens, like the Vietnam War, 9/11 etc., and the movies about those events start rolling in.
Perry’s Little Girl
Hotter than hot after his number one comedy Madea’s Family Reunion, writer-director-actor Tyler Perry has signed on to make Daddy’s Little Girl for Lionsgate, his trusted distributor. The new project is described as a reverse Cinderella tale about a young, beautiful, successful female attorney who falls in love with a janitor and single father of three daughters. Despite strong objections from the attorney’s father, love triumphs in the end. Reunion stayed on the top of the North American box office list for two weeks straight and has earned more than $56 million to date, while Perry’s Diary of a Mad Black Woman was a hit last year. Guess it makes sense to stick with this guy.
Until next week…
