Category Archives: Casting About

On the Wall Street Sequel

Casting About, Musings

From the irony-is-blind-in-Hollywood files, the New York Times is reporting that producer Edward Pressman and writer Stephen Schiff are developing a sequel to 1987’s Wall Street for 20th Century Fox, a movie called Money Never Sleeps, in which Michael Douglas would reprise his suspender-sporting, amoral business shark Gordon Gekko. (Director Oliver Stone would not be back, having declined repeated entreaties from the aforementioned trio.) There’s not much word yet regarding plot, on what Gekko will be
doing, other than still making bank and being a glorious a-hole about
it. In theory, though, he will have gotten a smaller cell phone than the giant, face-sized sat-phone he uses from the beach at movie’s end.

Wall Street grossed (only) $43 million domestically upon its release, but connected with the upper crust and became
a zeitgeist hit, inspiring inane, self-touting repetitions of Gekko’s
catchphrases, including the famous, “Greed is good.” Still, while I understand that there would be some enthusiasm for this project in the film world, Wall Street doesn’t really hold up as completely as one might think, and expectations on such a project would do well to be dialed down to the character-update range.

It’s also all ironic because Gekko, styled in part after the insider trading king Ivan Boesky and junk bond czar Michael Milken, from the mid-’80s, was the consummate financial feeder of his time (“I create nothing, I own” he proudly bragged), a role now chiefly occupied by the owners of giant media conglomerates like Fox’s own Rupert Murdoch, who swallows up companies and plugs them into his synergistic machine, which marches inexorably forward. One doubts Schiff’s script will take too keen and uninterrupted of a gaze at that…

Sigourney Weaver to Join Baby Mama

Casting About, Musings

I wrote recently about Sigourney Weaver’s success in negotiating the perils of aging in Hollywood, and her success in balancing projects of wildly dissimilar tone. And The Hollywood Reporter now indicates that Weaver is in negotiations to join Tina Fey and Amy Poehler in the comedy Baby Mama, the directorial debut of former Saturday Night Live, Thunderbirds and Undercover Brother writer Michael McCuller.

The film, for Universal, is about a single professional woman (Fey) whose desire to have a child and simultaneously maintain her career track leads her to hire a surrogate (Poehler); Weaver will play the owner and operator of the surrogate agency that Fey’s character uses.

Coming on the heels of her recently released work in Jake Kasdan’s The TV Set and Marc Evans’ Snow Cake, opposite Alan Rickman, Weaver’s turn in Baby Mama will follow appearances in the presidential assassination thriller Vantage Point, with William Hurt, Forest Whitaker and Dennis Quaid, and her co-starring role in James Cameron’s highly anticipated Avatar. Fleet of foot and multi-talented, Weaver is definitely following through on her advice of mixing it all up with parts big, small, funny and sad, and in the process remaining one of the more flatly enjoyable screen presences out there; when you see her, you know you’re going to get something interesting, whatever the context surrounding it.

Crowe and Scott Team Again

Casting About, Musings

It seems that Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe aren’t done with one another just yet. Variety is reporting that their respective man-crushes will continue for a fourth picture, with Scott set to direct the no-nonsense actor in the Universal Pictures action drama Nottingham, sold last year as a spec script by Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris, creators
of the Showtime series Sleeper Cell, as well as writers of Bulletproof Monk.

Crowe will star as the titular sheriff in a revisionist take on the
Robin Hood tale, with Nottingham cast as a noble lawman who labors
under the rule of a corrupt king, and as caught up in a love triangle with Maid Marion and
Robin Hood. The movie comes on the heels of Scott and Crowe’s last collaboration, American Gangster, and will shoot after the filmmaker finishes directing Leonardo DiCaprio in Body of Lies. Brian Grazer will produce the film for Imagine Entertainment.

Casting will say a lot about this movie, which is easy to see in multiplexes, if not exactly thrilling, on the surface of things. It’ll be interesting to see how high the producers and bankrollers stretch for Robin Hood, who by default is here playing second fiddle. As for Maid Marion (assuming she’s halfway decently sketched), paging Rachel McAdams… If she can’t be coaxed into a commitment, however, one could see Rachel Weisz in the part, I suppose, depending on how high the spitfire quotient is.

Ridley Scott Likes Morocco

Casting About

Has Ridley Scott left Morocco in the past few years? Actually, that’s not fair. Of course he has — he’s done A Good Year and American Gangster recently. Still, 2005’s Kingdom of Heaven and 2000’s Gladiator both shot there, as well as portions of 2001’s Black Hawk Down, if I’m not mistaken.

Now comes word from Daily Variety that Scott has already started scouting venues in, yes, Morocco for an adaptation of Washington Post columnist David Ignatius’ globe-trotting novel Body of Lies, to be written for the screen by The Departed screenwriter William Monahan. The book is about a journalist turned CIA agent who starts tracking down an Al Qaeda leader who may be planning a new attack on the United States. Also reportedly on board? Leonardo DiCaprio.

The actor’s final deal has to be negotiated, but DiCaprio has already worked the
picture, to be produced by Warner Bros. and tentatively slated for release in four-quarter 2008, into his busy schedule — slotting it for this fall, after first
reteaming with Titanic co-star Kate Winslet on Revolutionary Road,
Sam Mendes’ now-shooting, very chamber drama-sounding film about a 1950s suburban Connecticut couple coping with personal problems.

Maybe it’s a tax shelter thing, or maybe Scott just has some sort of time-share in Morocco…

John Cusack, Sean Hayes Join Igor

Casting About

Exodus Productions executive producer Max Howard announced today
that John Cusack and Emmy award winner Sean Hayes have joined the voice cast of
its CG-animated feature comedy Igor, directed
by animation veteran Tony Leondis (The
Prince of Egypt, Lilo & Stitch 2)
from a script by Chris McKenna (TV’s American
Dad).

Cusack will voice the title character, a potentially gifted
and brilliant scientist, while Hayes will play one of Igor’s inventions/sidekicks.
“John and Sean are both terrific actors and ideally cast in their roles, said Leondis.
“We couldn’t be more excited to have them join an already fantastic voice cast.”

Igor is an irreverent
comedy that brings a new twist to the classic monster genre. It tells the story
of a hunchbacked lab assistant who is forced to serve a cruel taskmaster named
Dr. Glickenstein (voiced by John Cleese), but harbors big dreams of becoming a
scientist himself and winning the annual “Evil Science Fair.” Cusack’s good buddy, Jeremy Piven, voices Dr. Schadenfreude,
Igor’s nemesis. Other inked voice talent, alongside the aforementioned Cleese,
includes Jennifer Coolidge, Molly Shannon, Steve Buscemi and Jay Leno.

The CG-animated film is being produced at Sparx Animation
Studios, SAS, a Paris-based leader in key-frame CG-animation. Set for
an October 24, 2008
release, Igor will be distributed by The Weinstein Company (TWC), which has an
all-encompassing theatrical and DVD distribution deal including North
America as well as representing international rights. TWC secured
film distribution for most foreign territories at last year’s Cannes Film Festival and American Film Market, as well as the
recent European Film Market in Berlin.

Reese Witherspoon Goes Missing

Casting About

Joe Carnahan can’t catch a break. The erstwhile Narc director, after laboring for over a year on the third installment of the Mission: Impossible franchise before departing over creative differences with star-producer Tom Cruise, finally got back into theaters this Janurary with Smokin’ Aces, which was promptly annihilated by critics.

Now Reese Witherspoon, the star-producer of the remake of the 1965 Otto Preminger film Bunny Lake Is Missing, which Carnahan was set to direct, has pulled out of the production just weeks before the movie was set to start filming, according to a piece in today’s Los Angeles Times, by John Horn and Sheigh Crabtree. The film is about an American woman whose daughter goes missing from a new nursery school while in England. She is then confronted with discrepancies in her story by police, who eventually suggest that her daughter never existed. The bulk of the production was to be in Los Angeles.

Scripts have gone out to Charlize Theron and Kate Winslet in an attempt to recast the project on the fly, but Carnahan has a limited window of availability, since he starts shooting the 1950s-set crime thriller White Jazz in late July. Well, until star-producer George Clooney pulls out of that project, that is…

Scorsese Hooks Up with Jagger

Casting About

Academy Award-winning director Martin Scorsese will team up
with rock ’n’ roll icon Mick Jagger to direct and produce The Long Play for Paramount Pictures, it
was announced today. Re-teaming Scorsese with The Departed scripter Bill Monahan, the film will be set in the
world of the music business, and span over three decades.

The movie — which Jagger and Victoria Pearman will produce,
along with Scorsese — is based on an original idea of Jagger’s, though he
is not expected to appear in a starring role, much to the consternation of fans
of Freejack and 1997’s Bent.

Scorsese recently entered into a four-year, first-look deal
with Paramount Pictures to direct and produce entertainment across all
platforms, including feature films, made-for-DVD works, digital content and
television for both Paramount and its indie arm, Paramount Vantage. Jagger and
Scorsese recently collaborated on a feature-length, yet-to-be-titled Rolling
Stones concert documentary shot at The Beacon Theater in New
York, and set to be released later this autumn.

Kate Beckinsale Sniffs Whiteout

Casting About


Whiteout, the first film under Joel Silver’s new Dark
Castle Entertainment deal, now has its lead actress. Per yesterday’s Daily
Variety, Kate Beckinsale will star in the movie, which is
based on a 1999 graphic novel about the first murder in Antarctica.
Silver’s new funding structure with Dark
Castle gives the mega-producer the
ability to greenlight and finance certain films on his own authority, and Whiteout
is the first project under said deal.

The storyline focuses on Beckinsale’s character, a U.S.
Marshal investigating the first ever murder on Antarctica.
The character has three short days to solve the case before the continent’s
long dark winter begins, at which time she will be isolated for the season
with the killer. And he will turn into a werewolf. No, no, just kidding about
that last part. (I think.)

Warner Bros. will distribute the film domestically, with a
first-quarter 2008 release expected. Shooting will begin this March in Montreal,
with Dominic Sena directing, proving that there is life after all after Gone in Sixty Seconds and Swordfish. I guess he’ll have to shelve a lot of those orange filters, though…

Ewan McGregor as Kurt Cobain?

Casting About, Musings

including Virgin.net, are reporting that Ewan McGregor — who memorably launched into song in Moulin Rouge — will likely be tapped to headline an eventual biopic about late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, who committed suicide in 1994 at the age of 27. Cobain’s ex-wife, embattled rocker/actress/rehab-and-courtroom mainstay Courtney Love, has optioned the rights to Charles Cross’ biography, Heavier than Heaven, and is reportedly a big fan of the actor.

Usually I’m various shades of indifferent to casting news, but this strikes me as spot-on. McGregor has just the right deep baby blues and, when harnessed, stare of wounded, moody estrangement. Wipe that smile off his face (above) and slap Cobain’s dyed-blonde ‘do on him, and the mere surface resemblance already seems uncanny, without a word out of his mouth. His casting would actually get me jazzed about a Cobain biopic. The other crucial choice: the right director, one who wouldn’t pander to more prosaic instincts to overly indulge the grunge scene and deify Cobain as a sensitive, misunderstood artist corrupted by events and circumstances beyond his power. Well, that and the script, of course…

Tara Reid… Honestly?

Casting About, Irritations, Musings

I don’t know where to begin with this item from The Hollywood Reporter, about Tara Reid being attached to star in and executive produce the indie romantic comedy Honestly. I mean, anyone who’s seen Alone in the Dark can attest to the fact that Reid can deliver laughs, and she did fit in OK on the small screen in Scrubs back when that show was still putting Zach Braff through the comedic ringer, before it had devolved into a gooey send-off.

No, Tara Reid starring in a comedy about a hard-boiled private eye who works as a temptress to out philandering husbands is fine, even though you and I already know she will not get naked in the movie, and her hard-boiledness will be conveyed by… what, a cute scene where she finds a missing dog? What really caught my eye, though, is that Reid’s brother Tommy is set to direct the film. This shouldn’t irritate me, but it does. Especially when interesting filmmakers with idiosyncratic voices like Lisa Cholodenko have trouble getting movies off the ground, not to mention solid for-hire comedy directors like Tamra Davis and Betty Thomas.

Also of note — that thick-necked Guy Ritchie pal Vinnie Jones and former NFL running back Eddie George have been inked to co-star in the film. (Honestly, what kind of movie is this? Zing!) Oh, and that Tara Reid… has a production company.

Eddie Murphy Eyes Return to Beverly Hills

Casting About, Musings

So Eddie Murphy is going to parlay his Dreamgirls capital into… Beverly Hills Cop IV? That’s what various outlets are reporting. While that’s surely good news for Judge Reinhold and possibly even John Ashton, is the public really clamoring for a return to a character that last fizzled in 1994, in a bloated vehicle under the direction of John Landis?

Well, maybe, maybe not. Having already seen Sylvester Stallone’s quite solid Rocky Balboa, I have to go on record as saying that there is the potential for redemption in autumnal years sequels, and sometimes plugging back into a role that helped make their career can recharge an actor’s batteries batteries and reconnect them with what they love(d) about acting, and us about their performance. But the Beverly Hills Cop movies were never as roundly about audience identification as something like the Rocky flicks; they were amusement park rides, and if there’s not some iota or glimpse of growth for Murphy’s Axel Foley, it could be a tired and quite bad idea.

That said, Paramount is hoping that bringing in veteran producer Lorenzo de Bonaventura will breathe some life into the franchise. A fall 2007 shoot looks likely, with a release the following summer being most likely — 24 years after the original.

Benicio Del Toro Gets Revolutionary

Casting About

If there was a part Benicio Del Toro seems born to play (hey, other than Fenster), it’s Latin American revolutionary Che Guevara, and the long-gestating biopic is finally getting off the ground, with Steven Soderbergh directing. And actually, it’s going to be two movies, largely in Spanish. It sounds pretty sweet, especially since rather than Stephen Gaghan, Peter Buchman (Jurassic Park III, the forthcoming Eragon) is thankfully assuming writer’s duties on both films. For more, from Michael Fleming’s piece from Variety, click here.