They say only about 10 percent of working actors become movie stars, and the studio execs coming up with the major movies roles don’t have a creative bone among them. When you combine these two facts, you get my weekly Role Call. Here’s the skinny on who’s doing what–in all its good, bad and very ugly glory.
Lopez and Anthony: Life imitating art
Real-life marrieds Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony will play a married couple on screen in Who Killed Hector Lavoe?, according to World Entertainment News Network. Aw, isn’t that sweet. Anthony will take the lead role of Hector Lavoe–the man who brought salsa music to the US in 1975. The biopic centers on Lavoe, one of the biggest Spanish-language singers in the 1970s but whose personal tragedy and a heroin addiction left him penniless and dying from complications from AIDS. Lopez will play his onscreen wife. The actress, who is also producing the movie, had previously ruled herself out of starring in the movie when she bought the rights last year. But I guess she’s changed her mind. I just hope she remembers Gigli.
Carrrell jokes around
Could the 40 Year-Old Virgin himself, Steve Carrell, be vying for the coveted role of The Joker in the next Batman movie? Carrell joked to WENN, “I started that rumor, or at least my mom did! I don’t think there’s any validity in it but I would love to play the role. If it’s either Sean Penn or me in line, then I want a showdown to prove which one of us is the better actor. We’d just have to oil up and wrestle for it.” Seriously, folks, there are a couple of actors in the running to play the green-faced laffer, including Lachy Hulme (The Matrix Revolutions) and Paul Bettany (Wimbledon). Sources behind the sequel have confirmed to fansite Batman-on-film.com that the Aussie actor and Brit Bettany are the only ones in contention for the role that Jack Nicholson immortalized in the original Batman. In an online poll on the same site earlier this year, Hulme became the fan’s favorite with 21 percent of the votes, while Johnny Depp beat Bettany and another remote candidate, Crispin Glover. Yeah, like Johnny Depp would do something THAT wacky.
More on Carrell…
Now this sounds a bit more like it. Steve Carrell is definitely set to play a widower in the romantic comedy Dan in Real Life. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the film centers on the father of three daughters, ages 10-17, who writes a parenting column for a local paper. While on a family reunion on the Jersey shore, he meets a woman he takes a liking to, but upon returning home, he finds out the woman is his brother’s girlfriend. He then tries desperately not to fall in love with her while not breaking rules he has set up for himself and his daughters. The film will be directed by Pieces of April‘s Peter Hedges. “It’s about how hard it is to do the right thing but how you have to try anyway,” producer Jon Shestack told the Reporter. “We’re very lucky to have Steve in it. We went to him two months ago, and since then his world has changed. Luckily, Peter and he formed a strong bond. Steve is a wonderful actor and a funny man.” It might be a little tough to accept the usually outlandish Carrell in something that sounds semi-serious. But hey, if Jim Carrey can do it, then maybe Carrell can too.
Schreiber and Stiles see Omens
Liev Schreiber and Julia Stiles have signed up as husband and wife in the upcoming remake of horror classic The Omen, tackling the roles Gregory Peck and Lee Remick played in the 1976 original. You know, as the parents of the anti-Christ. Schreiber tells Moviehole.net, “It was important to us to bring it (the story) forward and to make it contemporary. John Moore, the director, felt that there were a lot of interesting parallels now between all of the natural disasters and catastrophes that are happening in the world these days and the kind of sequence of events that signified the coming of the anti-Christ and I think he might have a point.” But, although he thinks the film will be a big hit, he fears Omen purists will hate the new version: “I am sure I am going to be up on the dartboard. I am going to get attacked but I am used to that.” Oh, I don’t know about that. I am one of those purists, but the more I think about an Omen redo, the more it grows on me. I think Schreiber is a competent actor who can pull it off. I’m just wondering if Stiles is going to tangle with some angry baboons.
Madagascar gets a sequel
Natch. It makes sense DreamWorks Animation would want to do a sequel to its hit computer-animated film Madagascar featuring the voices of Ben Stiller, as a spoiled lion, and Chris Rock, as his more adventurous zebra friend. In the original, Stiller‘s Alex the Lion and Rock‘s Marty the Zebra escape from the New York City zoo and go on a wild adventure to the island of Madagascar. The movie opened in late May and generated North American ticket sales of about $192 million. In a statement to the Hollywood Reporter, DreamWorks Chief Executive Jeffrey Katzenberg lauded the film’s box office success and said it will become the company’s second franchise film after Shrek. The studio did not disclose any story details of the Madagascar sequel, which is expected in theaters in 2008. DreamWorks also said it will produce a direct-to-video release starring the animated, scene-stealing penguins from Madagascar for retailers in 2009. Now, that’ll be one to own for sure!
Going on the hunt
Devon Sawa (Final Destination), Matthew Lawrence (The Hot Chick) and Sanoe Lake (Blue Crush) have signed on to star in the horror/sci-fi indie Hunter’s Moon. The story centers on a man (Sawa) who dreams that he and friends will die at the hands of a brutal, otherworldly creature. Wait, didn’t Sawa already do that in Final Destination, in which he has a premonition he and his friends would blow up on a plane and he gets them all off right before it does indeed blow up thus cheating Death who then goes after the survivors and kills them anyway? Hmmm. Guess Sawa has a thing for those kind of movies.
Until next week…
