Posts Tagged ‘Adaptation’
Dustin Hoffman may be ready to make his directorial debut. He’s in talks to helm Quartet, which is being written by Ronald Harwood based on his play by the same name. The story is about an aging, retired intelligence agent who has to fend off violent attacks by younger, better armed operatives. Oops. Wait. That’s the story for Red, the movie with Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman and many more. This one is about elderly opera singers. Close enough? The cast is great, and the names are after the break.
Maggie Smith, Tom Courtenay and Albert Finney are the current leads set for the BBC films production, according to Screen Daily. The plan is to shoot this fall in the UK. Will Quartet end up as a televised BBC film, or a theatrical release? We don’t know, but with Hoffman’s name on the director card it seems like a good candidate for art houses.
The logline for Quartet goes like this: “Cecily, Reggie and Wilfred are in a home for retired opera singers. This year’s plans to celebrate Verdi’s birthday with a concert are not going to plan.” Part of the problem with the plan is a fourth character, Jean. Not sure whether Maggie Smith is in mind for Cecily or Jean, but unless things are being drastically changed the final casting to round out the title quartet will be a woman, meaning only that Hoffman won’t be in one of the major roles in addition to his directing duties.
Harwood won Best Adapted Screenplay for The Pianist, and was nominated as screenwriter of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. He was just hired by Dreamworks to craft the script for that long in development biopic of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. As I said when we reported on that deal, Harwood has a love for stories that deal with performers and the stage, so you can see where Quartet comes from.
I know it isn’t the most attention-getting story, but I like this set of actors, and am really curious about Hoffman as a director. Richard Loncraine was previously set to direct this one, and I wonder, too, if the actors, who have been cast for a while, will stick around should Hoffman come aboard.
A new version of Heavy Metal, the 1981 animated anthology film with stories based on the comics magazine Heavy Metal (originally Metal Hurlant in France), has been batted around for the last couple years. At various points a whole laundry list of directors have been ‘confirmed’ to helm segments: David Fincher, James Cameron, Guillermo del Toro, Zack Snyder, Rob Zombie, Gore Verbinski, Mark Osborne and probably more that we’ve forgotten.
The film was dropped by Paramount in 2008, but is reportedly still kicking. David Fincher has stayed on as producer and a possible segment director, and Blur Studios, the outfit also reportedly animating the Fincher-produced The Goon, may still be involved.
Now there’s new word that the core team of Fincher, Cameron and Snyder is moving forward with the film, which will be entirely animated in 3D.
Deadline talks about the project, though in truth they don’t have many details beyond what we’ve already known. It’s in Fincher’s hands now, and he’s looking for independent financing and distribution commitments. Mike Fleming says that the film will feature eight or nine animated segments, which echoes what we’ve heard over the past couple years. He also says “all of them [will be] infused with the spirit of the erotic and violent storylines that defined the magazine,” which means, yeah, it’s Heavy Metal. (The 1981 film had seven segments, or eight if you count the opening credits sequence ‘Soft Landing’ as being separate from the framing story.)
Deadline labels this a ‘passion project’ for Fincher, but it seems more like a playground, especially with Cameron involved. All the pulp sci-fi inspirations that have always played in his work are right there in Heavy Metal, and doing a segment for the film would be a way for Cameron to make something a little lighter than his usual features. (Hopefully his playing won’t look anything like that dismal music video for Bill Paxton’s band.) Cameron’s involvement may be the one thing that can get this movie financed at this point. Maybe they can get Jason Reitman in there, too. His father produced the original film.
I only hope that a new version can echo the original’s blend of idiosyncratic animation styles. Whatever you think of the ‘81 Heavy Metal (yeah, it’s an indulgent cheese-fest that often makes no sense at all) it has some unique animation. Hopefully a 3D version won’t just gloss everything over with the same style. At least it’s likely to be better than Heavy Metal 2000, which was truly garbage.
Joaquin Phoenix famously ‘retired’ from acting a year ago (after finishing Two Lovers) to start some sort of career as a rap MC which may or may not be fodder for a documentary or other film product of sorts involving Casey Affleck. It’s all a bit murky, really, but I don’t think anyone has ever been convinced that Phoenix is really retired. If this report is correct, he isn’t, and will in fact be playing Edgar Allan Poe in an adaptation of Daniel Stashower’s book The Beautiful Cigar Girl.
The news comes from the Mumbai Mirror, by way of The Playlist and their magical Google alerts. The messenger is Resul Pookutty, a sound man who won an Oscar for his work on Slumdog Millionaire. Pookutty says:
I couldn’t be happier because I am doing a period film. It is a very special challenge because I have to recreate the sound textures of New York in 1854. It’s an adaptation of The Beautiful Cigar Girl by Daniel Stashower and based on an eerie real-life experience of author Edgar Allen Poe which happened just months before his death. Joaquin plays Edgar Allen Poe.
The central concern of the book is the death, perhaps murder, of tobacco clerk Mary Rogers, who while alive somehow became a minor celebrity in 1841 Manhattan. Her beaten body was found along the Hudson shore in Hoboken in July 1841. No one was ever convicted of her murder, and a year later an innkeeper claimed that Rogers was the victim of a botched abortion that took place at her inn.
The case was prominent on it’s own, but a year later Edgar Allan Poe made it the subject of ‘The Mystery of Marie Rogêt,’ which featured his Parisian detective Dupin and his attempt to solve the murder. The story is said to be the first detective tale based on the events of a real crime, and while that claim may be suspect, it is certainly the first published while the inspirational crime was fresh in the public mind.
Stashower’s book recounts the grand spectrum of the story, from the death of Rogers to the involvement of Poe and the public audience that took it all in. Sounds a bit like the 19th century The Black Dalia.
There aren’t many more details available on the film — no director or writer, no other stars. Hard to say where this one is, in terms of development.
Then there’s the other Poe film going; that’s The Raven, directed by James McTeigue and starring Jeremy Renner. Totally different movie, though it also contains a portrayal of Poe.
A.J. Bowen, Amy Seimetz, and Joe Swanberg have been cast in Adam Wingard’s thriller A Horrible Way to Die. Written by Simon Barrett (Dead Birds), the story follows an escaped murderer (Bowen) in pursuit of his ex-girlfriend (Seimetz), who has fled to start a new life in a small town. Swanberg plays the ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend. The photo above is from the movie, which is currently shooting in Columbia, Missouri.
Barry Pepper (Saving Private Ryan, The Green Mile, 25th Hour) joins Matt Damon, Jeff Bridges, Josh Brolin and Hailee Steinfeld in the Coen brothers’ adaptation of True Grit. Pepper will play “Lucky” Ned Pepper, the notorious outlaw played by Robert Duvall in the 1969 film adaptation. [Variety]
Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman will star in Wedding Crashers helmer David Dobkin’s body-switching comedy The Change-Up, written by The Hangover scribes Jon Lucas and Scott Moore. Bateman plays a responsible family man who switches bodies with his lazy man-child best friend (Reynolds). [variety]
A.J. Bowen, Amy Seimetz, and Joe Swanberg have been cast in Adam Wingard’s thriller A Horrible Way to Die. Written by Simon Barrett (Dead Birds), the story follows an escaped murderer (Bowen) in pursuit of his ex-girlfriend (Seimetz), who has fled to start a new life in a small town. Swanberg plays the ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend. The photo above is from the movie, which is currently shooting in Columbia, Missouri.
Barry Pepper (Saving Private Ryan, The Green Mile, 25th Hour) joins Matt Damon, Jeff Bridges, Josh Brolin and Hailee Steinfeld in the Coen brothers’ adaptation of True Grit. Pepper will play “Lucky” Ned Pepper, the notorious outlaw played by Robert Duvall in the 1969 film adaptation. [Variety]
Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman will star in Wedding Crashers helmer David Dobkin’s body-switching comedy The Change-Up, written by The Hangover scribes Jon Lucas and Scott Moore. Bateman plays a responsible family man who switches bodies with his lazy man-child best friend (Reynolds). [variety]
MovieScore Magazine has confirmed that Academy Award winner Michael Giacchino will be writing the score for Andrew Stanton’s adaptation of John Carter of Mars. This shouldn’t be a huge surprise considering Giacchino’s relationship with Pixar: Giacchino has been working with Pixar for some time, providing the score for The Incredibles, Ratatoille, Up, and short films Lifted, Partly Cloudy, and Teddy Newton’s upcoming short Night And Day.
Official One Pager Release:
Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Andrew Stanton brings this captivating hero to the big screen in a stunning adventure epic set on the wounded planet of Mars, a world inhabited by warrior tribes and exotic desert beings. Based on the first of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “Barsoom Series,” the film chronicles the journey of Civil-War veteran John Carter, who finds himself battling a new and mysterious war amidst a host of strange Martian inhabitants.
Produced for Walt Disney Pictures by Jim Morris (“WALL•E,” “Ratatouille”) and Colin Wilson (“Avatar,” “War of the Worlds”), the live action/animation film marks Academy Award®-winning director/writer Andrew Stanton’s (“Finding Nemo,” “WALL•E”) first foray into live action. Stanton directed and co-wrote the screenplay for Disney•Pixar’s “WALL•E,” which earned the Academy Award and Golden Globe® for Best Animated Feature (2008); Stanton was nominated for an Oscar® for the screenplay. He made his directorial debut with Disney•Pixar’s “Finding Nemo,” garnering an Academy Award-nomination for Best Original Screenplay and winning the Oscar for Best Animated Feature (2003). He has worked as a screenwriter and/or executive producer on Disney•Pixar’s “Toy Story,” “A Bug’s Life” (which he also co-directed), “Toy Story 2,” “Monsters, Inc.,” “Ratatouille” and “Up.”
“I have been waiting my whole life to see the characters and worlds of ‘John Carter of Mars’ realized on the big screen,” says Stanton. “It is just a wonderful bonus that I have anything to do with it.”
The stellar ensemble cast is led by Taylor Kitsch (NBC’S “Friday Night Lights”, “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”) in the title role, Lynn Collins (“50 First Dates,” “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”) as the warrior princess Dejah Thoris and Oscar® nominee Willem Dafoe (“Spider-Man 3,” “Shadow of a Vampire”) as Martian inhabitant Tars Tarkas. The cast also includes Thomas Haden Church (“Sideways,” Spider-Man 3), Polly Walker (upcoming “Clash of the Titans,” “Patriot Games”), Samantha Morton (“Elizabeth: The Golden Age,” “In America”), Mark Strong (“Sherlock Holmes,” “Body of Lies”), Ciaran Hinds (“Munich,” “There Will Be Blood”), British actor Dominic West (“300,” “Chicago”), James Purefoy (“Vanity Fair,” “Resident Evil”) and Bryan Cranston (“Breaking Bad”). Daryl Sabara (“Disney’s A Christmas Carol,” “Spy Kids”) takes the role of John Carter’s teenaged nephew, Edgar Rice Burroughs.
The creative team includes Oscar®-nominated production designer Nathan Crowley (“Public Enemies,” “The Dark Knight,” “Batman Begins”), costume designer Mayes Rubeo (“Avatar,” “Apocalypto”), cinematographer Daniel Mindel (“Star Trek,” “Mission Impossible III,” “Spygame”) and video effects supervisor Peter Chiang (“The Reader,” “The Bourne Ultimatum”).
Martin Scorsese is still promoting Shutter Island in various markets, which has led to a handful of big interviews that dive into the subject of various possible projects for the director. We know he’s working on The Invention of Hugo Cabret now, and intends to make the Jesuit drama Silence (delayed some time ago in favor of Shutter Island) afterward. But what of his biopic of Frank Sinatra?
An interview with Shortlist covers a wide range of subjects, but kicks off with a brief conversation about Sinatra, Scorsese’s proposed biopic about the musical icon. The interviewer asks Scorsese which of his previous films Sinatra might compare to, but unfortunately leads with two options, Goodfellas and The Aviator, which the filmmaker jumps on as an easy out.
I was hoping it would be a combination of the two. Yeah, because in structure I’d like it to be more like GoodFellas. But like The Aviator, it only deals with certain times in his life. We can’t go through the greatest hits of Sinatra’s life. We tried this already. Just can’t do it. So the other way to go is to have three or four different Sinatras. Younger. Older. Middle-aged. Very old. You cut back and forth in time – and you do it through the music. See what I’m saying? So that’s what we’re trying for. It’s very tricky [laughs].
More interesting is that Scorsese says he’s “dying to do” two projects that could be described as “low-budget, down-and-dirty street movies.” From the sound of it, the 30-day shoot for Boardwalk Empire’s pilot is helping push him back to the realm of his roots.
I shot an HBO pilot, Boardwalk Empire…I did that, shot it in 30 days. For me, it’s like a new lease on life. I’m trying to get myself to a point where I can work faster and cheaper.
That working ‘faster and cheaper’ could be a direct response to the pressures of filmmaking today. Elsewhere in the interview Scorsese talks about the fact that he is never free from the constraints of budgets and time. “You’re always on the line,” he says. “Fighting, fighting, fighting to get the film made that you want made. And if you go cheaper, you might have more of a stand. And that’s what I’m hoping to do.”
Finally, there’s the 3D question. Scorsese has been enthusiastic about the possibility of 3D in recent interviews (very enthusiastic, at times) and a Variety article not long ago suggested that The Invention of Hugo Cabret would be his first foray into the format. (Makes sense, as it could be more of a family film than his other work.) But while he evidently remains optimistic about 3D, comments to Shortlist don’t seem to indicate that he’s working with 3D now.
“I would like to [make a 3D film],” Scorsese says. “I’m very excited by 3D…But if the camera move is going to be a 3D effect, it has to be for dramatic purposes – not just throwing spears at the audience. And that, maybe I can’t do that. Maybe my daughter’s generation – she’s 10 now – can think that way.”
On the blah blah rounds to promote her latest picture The Diary of a Wimpy Kid, producer Nina Jacobson has let slip the main talent attached to upcoming project One Day. She revealed that as well as director Lone Scherfig, BAFTA nominated for An Education, there’s also potential stars Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess in orbit too. The contracts aren’t signed yet, said Jacobson, but “their deals are being negotiated right now.”
One Day is to be adapted from David Nicholls‘ novel of the same name. The book’s big idea is that the narrative is set on St. Swithin’s day only, but on that day every year over a 20 year period from 1988 to 2008. Expect to see Hathaway and Sturgess subjected to a whole roster of fancy haircuts and fashions, then.
The lead characters start as students at Edinburgh University who share a one night stand that isn’t expected the have long lasting effects. Each annual chapter that follows traces their progress over two decades of life apart or, more often, crossing paths. I saw the book’s style and tone compared to that of a Nick Hornby novel by reviewers, a fact which seems more illuminating than it really is when you first connect the dots between Hornby and Scherfig.
I like the idea of Sturgess and Hathaway being cast because I rather enjoy both of them, particularly Sturgess.
St. Swithin’s Day, in case you don’t know, is probably the closest British tradition to Groundhog Day and occurs on July 15th, just as the UK weather could be turning from spring time showers to summer sun. There’s a famous rhyme:
St. Swithin’s day if thou dost rain
For forty days it will remain
St. Swithin’s day if thou be fair
For forty days ’twill rain nae mair.
Which basically says, whatever the weather on that day, the next 40 days will be the same. Never stopped to check, myself, but I doubt very much that any British weather has been the same for two consecutive days let alone for over a month.
Via Coming Soon
Just as the teaser hits for the new Twilight movie, here’s word on a film that could be the polar opposite of Eclipse. Directed by Matt Reeves, Let Me In is the remake (or re imagining, as some have said) of the Swedish film Let the Right One In. It stars Chloë Moretz, who is also in Kick-Ass. As she starts to promote that film, she’s talking a bit about Let Me In, and describing a take on vampires that is quite different from that of Twilight.
Speaking to Movieline, Moretz described her Let Me In character, the young (or young-looking) vampire Abby:
Usually a lot of movies glamorize being a vampire. It’s pretty, it’s cool, you look awesome! The way we did it was that it;s not cool to be a vampire. It’s a burden that she has to carry with her, not this fun, cool, interesting thing. It’s scary, deep, and dark, this devil inside of her. The vampire is different than Abby. It’s like her alternate personality, and when it takes her over, she has no control.
Cinematical talked to the film’s producer, Simon Oakes, who says the film will likely be R-rated and “stay true to the imagery and mystique and the mythology of the original.” In keeping with that, he makes the horror elements sound rather low-key:
At the end of the day, you could make this movie and never use the word “vampire.” You could say this is a love story between two kids. I think an understanding of genre helps, because there are obviously some big set piece-genre moments in it.
But then there’s this:
It’s not a re-imagining; the same beats [are there]. Maybe the scares are a little bit more scary. We haven’t been able to ramp that up quite a lot, obviously, for budgetary reasons.
The only thing that bugs me here is that quote about scares and budget, which suggests that creating scares on film is linked directly to effects. Nothing could be further from the truth. You can make a scary film with no money, as long as you have a camera, actors and an imagination. Other statements in the Cinematical interview suggest that ‘more scary’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘more gory,’ and in general it sounds like Let Me In isn’t being pushed in a direction that will make it feel untrue to the story.
Yesterday we posted ten seconds of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, the third film in the Twilight series. Now we’ve got the full trailer for the David Slade-directed chapter, which, based on this trailer, brings the love triangle between Bella (Kristen Stweart), Edward (Robert Pattinson) and Jacob (Taylor Lautner) much closer together.
One of the classic rules of storytelling is ’show don’t tell,’ but Eclipse is like the Hulk. Eclipse does not care about your puny rules. So, here we’ve got it all laid out, easy to understand. Bella wants the vampire Edward, but he doesn’t want her to lose her humanity. Jacob wants Bella, and will fight for her. Add in a couple of antagonists and we’re done. Subtlety what?
Then again, this teaser takes a different tactic from most. It doesn’t hint at setpieces, choosing instead to remind a potential audience that we’re just here to see these characters romantically butt heads. As such, the whole of the movie’s conflict seems to be set in forests and meadows. Which is fine — it is the Pacific Northwest, after all — but that makes the film look cheap and limited in scope.
This trailer also introduces Bryce Dallas Howard, who replaces Rachelle Lefevre as Victoria. (Looking at the IMDB, I’m also pointed to the fact that Jodelle Ferland, the young actress from Silent Hill and Tideland, is in Eclipse, which I hadn’t realized previously.) I really hope that Howard and Taylor Lautner come off looking a lot better in the full film than they do here. All those efforts to build tentpole films around Lautner might end up looking pretty silly in a couple months.
But I get it. These movies are not for me. This one in particular is not for me. If these movies are for you, Yahoo has the teaser in HD, should you want to see every pine needle that figuratively decorates Bella’s cold heart.
