Film News (20/06/09)

Actually quite an interesting week for news, with a couple of really big projects getting a mention, and a couple of smaller ones thought to have disappeared being resurrected.



Indiana Jones 5

You have to wonder whether I've crapped on enough of my youth by going to see 3 Star Wars prequels and the 4th Indiana Jones movie, but apparently I'm still gagging for more. So hearing Shia LaBeouf chatting away at pre-Transformers interviews about the next Indy script in the works I have been a little excited. I'm not an apologist for the last film, it was a dreadful misstep. But then again so was The Temple of Doom, and it wasn't the CGI gophers and Shia loving monkeys that made me dislike it. It was more the bizarre UFO, 5th dimension, Lucas/Spielberg mindfuck that I objected to.

In the next film I'd like to see a return to Nazi and Judeo-Christian mythology. Maybe Joseph Mengele and a group of exiled Nazis mount an expedition to find the Garden of Eden and the Tree of Knowledge. It might be a rip off (say The Boys from Brazil meets The Fountain) but that won't stop it being entertaining.


Black Swan

Talking about The Fountain Darren Aronofsky is returning to one of his side-lined projects following the runaway success of The Wrestler. Black Swan tells of the rivalry between two prima ballerinas, one of whom is Natalie Portman, the other is either imaginery or from beyond the grave!!! It'll be good to see Portman strecting herself again, as well.

City of Angels

I've always thought the 1989 Tony award winning Musical has always seemed like it was destined for film. Well apparently Mssrs. Shaye and Lynne of Unique films have thought the same. In a press annoucement this week covering over 10 projects in the works there's a mention of turning the part Hollywood satire, part hard-boiled detective thriller into a movie.


Love and Other Drugs

I don't know how I missed this a couple of weeks ago but Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway are teaming up for this adaptation of Jamie Reidy comic tome about life inside the pharmaceutical sales environment. It will be nice to see them play a couple who actually in to each other, unlike their Brokeback Mountain collaboration. And the serio-comic style of the book might be right up their street.

Sam Mendes (Butcher's Crossing and Middlemarch

Focus Features have made a first look deal with Sam Mendes and his producing partners, according to Variety.com. Now, I'm not completely sure I fully understand this story. I expect a first look deal, means that Focu Features get to choose whether they distribute a film first - should have chosen not to distribute Away We Go, from what I hear. They've also bought out 2 productions that are currently being prepped, either one of whcih could be done by Mendes. These are George Eliot novel Middlemarch, which has been rumoured for some time (and is a great novel); and the adaptation of John Williams' revisionist western Butcher's Crossing, about a harvard graduate who goes buffalo hunting (I'm sure it's more complex than that). Curiously the article makes no mention of Preacher, which I though was Mendes' next challenge. Looks like that particular graphic novel may have even longer to wait.

Mixed Blood

Anyone want any Samuel L. Jackson action? After all he was only been in 7 films in 2008 and a mere 16 projects at some point of the development and production process. At least he's signed on to star in Mixed Blood based on the Roger Smith novel. From the precis it sounds like a version of The Fugitive where Richard Kimble beats up kidnappers rather than saving boys with heart defects with Jackson in the Tommy Lee Jones role.



Unbreakable 2

In related Samuel L. Jackson news, M. Night Shyamalan has been talking up the idea of returning to the Unbreakable story he kicked off in 2000. Personally I quite like this idea, Shyamalan movies has got steadily worse since then and the central conceit of a master criminal who needs a hero to feel a purpose and a hero who doesn't think of himself as a hero is quite fascinating in a low-key way. Of course whether Bruce and Samuel will sign back on may be a tricky one, but if M. Night pulls it off it may just be the trigger for getting the public back on his side.