Who you gonna call…for the third time?
Harold Ramis wants you to call Ben Stiller the new and improved Ghostbuster. The director is thinking about bringing Ghostbusters back for a third run–and wants Stiller to be in it. Ramis revealed to InFocus magazine that Dan Aykroyd has written a new script, called Ghostbusters in Hell, about the ghostbusters heading into a parallel dimension via a portal in a New York warehouse. This is how Ramis explained it, “What Danny had originally conceived was sending us to a special-effects hell–a netherworld full of phenomenal visual environments and boiling pits. But what works so well about the first two (films) is the mundane-ness of it all. So my notion was that hell exists in the same place as our consensus reality, but it’s like a film shutter. It’s the darkness between the 24 frames. So we create a device to do it, and it’s in a warehouse in Brooklyn. When we step out of the chamber, it looks just like New York, but it’s hell. Everything’s gridlocked; no cars are moving and all the drivers are swearing at each other in different foreign languages. No two people speak the same language. It’s all the worst things about modern urban life, just magnified.” Well, what fun. I’m sure it’ll make oodles of money, whether Stiller is on board or not. You just can never get enough of ghostbustin’.
Speaking of Ben Stiller…
The funnyman is in negotiations to star in A Night at the Museum, a comedy for 20th Century Fox. The film centers on a goodhearted but bumbling security guard, who works at a museum of natural history and accidentally brings down an ancient curse that causes the animals and insects on display to come to life. Oh boy. The actor is also going to be in the comedy The Mirror, playing himself. Apparently, Stiller awakens one day to find his mirror image passing itself off as the real Ben Stiller. Huh? If you had to choose between two insipid concepts like these, I’m thinking the animals and insects coming to life makes more sense than having a mirror image of yourself running around.
Foxx eyes Mike Tyson biopic
Oscar winner Jamie Foxx is itching to play the ear-chomping boxer Mike Tyson, the actor’s long time friend. He told Web site Moviehole.net, “I think the Mike Tyson story is the most interesting thing. Nobody knows the stuff that I know, the stuff that I found out. It would blow your mind. Mike Tyson gives you phrases that, if you listen to it, it’ll blow your mind. They (media) said ‘Mike, how do you feel?’ and he said, ‘I’m happy. I’m more happy now I don’t have any money,’ and they said, ‘Why, Michael?’ ‘I don’t have to worry about anything. I’m just here.’ And I said, ‘That’s where you go. Do the story about that and about how he feels now–after he looks back on what all happened.”Foxx is also interested in doing a biopic on the tragic soul great Marvin Gaye, who was shot and killed by his father in 1984. Hmmm, Foxx is more suited to play Gaye, but then again, why would he want to do another biopic on another R&B singer? Playing Tyson would certainly be more challenging.
Lohan’s on an assassination kick
Proving my statement a few weeks ago, Lindsay Lohan is indeed looking to move away from her Disney, teeny-bopper roots–and seems to have found a fascination with assassination movies. Not only is she starring in Bobby, which is set around the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, the actress has also set her sights on Chapter 27, an indie about John Lennon’s assassination, also starring Jared Leto. The film explores the mind of the Lennon’s killer, Mark David Chapman (Leto), who in 1980, shot Lennon to death outside the New York’s Dakota apartment building, hours after getting the former Beatle to autograph a copy of his newly released comeback album Double Fantasy. Lohan will play a fictional Lennon fan who befriends Chapman during the weekend he kills the musician. Producer John Flock, whose Toronto-based company is financing the picture, told Reuters the title refers to the 26 chapters in the J.D. Salinger coming-of-age novel The Catcher in the Rye, which Chapman, who is currently serving a prison sentence of 20 years to life, cited as his inspiration for the murder. Chapman has said he identified with the book’s hero, who hated phonies, and gunned Lennon down because he thought him a hypocrite. And to add more juicy gossip, Leto, 33, and Lohan, 19, are rumored to be dating, but her publicist told Reuters only that the two have spent time in recent months “doing research for the movie together.” Right.
Reese’s day of Reckoning; Hopkins and Gosling are Fractured
Reese Witherspoon is developing the dramatic thriller The Reckoning through her Type A Films shingle as a possible starring vehicle. Based on a book by Jeff Long, the story centers on a photojournalist who arrives in Cambodia to cover the U.S. military search for the remains of an American pilot shot down during the Vietnam War. The perky Reese, known for her romantic comedies, obviously wants a shot at an Oscar. Meanwhile, Anthony Hopkins and Ryan Gosling are teaming up in Fracture, a thriller about an assistant DA (Gosling) playing a cat-and-mouse game with a man (Hopkins) who seemingly gets away with the perfect murder after murdering his wife. Did he eat her liver with a nice bottle of Chianti? Interestingly, Gosling played the flipside in Murder By Numbers, as a genius teenager who plans the perfect murder. He gets caught, though.
Kline, Jovovich don’t feel Welcomed
Kevin Kline and Milla Jovovich are poised to star in Welcome to America, a sex trafficking drama based on a New York Times Magazine cover story. Kline will play a Texas cop who finds out that he may have had a daughter who was sold as a sex slave some years ago. In the course of his investigation, he meets a young boy (Mexican actor Cesar Ramos) from Mexico City whose 13-year-old sister (Mexican actress Paulina Gayton) has been kidnapped. They go on a quest to save the Mexican girl, who is befriended by Jovovich, a young Russian woman who thinks she is coming to the U.S. to become a nanny, but is instead enslaved in Mexico. Good lord–sounds intense.
Scott blocks Grace; Kilmer is a homless Zero
Seann William Scott and Topher Grace are attached to star in the comedy, Cockblocker, a MPAA-challenged title if there ever was one. The story follows a guy (Grace) who meets the girl of his dreams, only to find out that her best friend happens to be her ex-boyfriend (Scott). I love the title. Let’s hope it sticks. Meanwhile, Val Kilmer will appear in the psychological thriller Moscow Zero with Alicia Silverstone and Vincent Gallo (who just recently offered to sell his sperm to any willing taker). According to the Hollywood Reporter, Kilmer, who can be seen in the current dark comedy Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, will play the leader of a band of homeless people who dwell in the catacombs beneath Moscow and has a former relationship with a fellow denizen (Silverstone). Gallo‘s character goes to Kilmer‘s chieftain for help in finding his friend, a fellow archaeologist. Another head-scratcher, if you ask me.
Until next week…
