Posts Tagged ‘Director’

No stranger to either cloying pseudo-comedy or redoing things already huge in France, Patch Adams and Nutty Professor director Tom Shayac is reportedly coming out of retirement to direct an English-language remake of 2011′s The Intouchables.

Shadyac has been out of the Hollywood film scene since directing both Evan Almighty and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry in 2007. That experience somehow left him unfazed and fine with continuing down that path, but that same year, he did end up concussed by what would be a life-changing bicycle accident. The crash left him with months of headaches and light sensitivity, and he gave away most of his money and possessions–a journey that he chronicled in the 2011 documentary I Am. The Weinstein Company’s remake would bring him back into the narrative fold, just as it’s already brought him back into wanting to have a bunch of money again, as Shadyac’s negotiations are reportedly running long due to his wanting the kind of Liar Liar-sized paycheck he was used to.

The French original Intouchables was directed by Olivier Nakache
Éric Toledano, and starred François Cluzet and Omar Sy as, respectively, a quadriplegic and his reluctant new personal assistant. Forced to spend full days together, rich old whitey and servile black guy get completely Driving Miss Daisy‘d with mawkish, race-and-class-bridging friendship. The audience smiles sweetly.

Though he’s not signed, Colin Firth is reportedly circling the quadriplegic role, but Deadline notes there are still other actors chasing the part. Don’t yet rule out Eddie Murphy pushing around… Eddie Murphy???

Borrowing from the impractical concepts of their upcoming Pacific Rim, Warner Bros. has decided to place all their hopes for the future into the metal, unwieldy hands of giant, human-piloted robots.

While they’ve already got that film coming out this summer, and its sequel prematurely in development, they’re now looking at developing the anime Robotech into a feature film filled with even more giant mechas fighting off alien whatevers. The studio originally teamed with Tobey Maguire’s Maguire Entertainment to pick up the rights back in 2007, and had planned to make Maguire the lead pilot after he showed such promise piloting a horse. Various writers worked on the project over the years, but eventually it just got too messy and Warner seemed to abandon it, like so many a Robotech model kit you thought would be easier to glue together.

But now it looks like the film is back on, with THR reporting that director Nic Mathieu has been hired on. He’s largely a commercial director, and as you can see in the Zentih spot below, he’s already experienced in the language of CGI spaceships, aliens, and kabooms necessary for a Robotech adaptation. While Mathieu has yet to make his feature debut, Warner already has him attached to direct another sci-fi project, The Wind; that will likely shoot first, as it already has a completed script from David Koepp, while Robotech is currently at the stage of a poster for Brothers with a robot drawn over Natalie Portman.

Though a fan-made alternate ending already brought Yogi Bear all the beautiful closure it needed, Warner Bros. has decided to disregard that and give the franchise their usual brand of finality, ending it only when it stops making them $ 100 million per CGI bear. So, work has begun on Yogi Bear 2, and the studio has hired on a direct.

Deadline reports that the task of making a Yogi Bear sequel has been given to Jay Chandrasekhar of the Broken Lizard comedy troupe. Chandrasekhar notably directed all of his troupe’s uneven output (Super Troopers being the most popular, The Babymakers being the most recent and not at all popular) and the not-very-good 2005 Dukes of Hazard movie, but he also did episodes of likable sitcoms like Community, Arrested Development, and Up All Night. None of that is really going to matter that much for this project, though, because we are still talking about a Yogi Bear sequel. It doesn’t really matter who makes this. All that matters is that Justin Timberlake does the Boo Boo voice for some reason.

That Baywatch movie we last heard about a year ago still seems to be slowly but surely bounding and heaving forward, and now there’s a director attached to keep the languishing adaption afloat, like one of those plastic orange things on a rope.

last September explained that he is completely uninformed on the familial drama between David Hasselhoff and son Hobie, and that his draft is apparently only a Baywatch film in the loosest possible terms, saying:

“It’s not based on the show in any way, though there are a couple of winks at the show. I don’t know anything about the show. I didn’t watch it in preparation for writing this.”

It’s not yet known if Tolan’s take will be tossed out or re-shaped by Garant–who also recently published a book on getting rich through trite screenwriting, and therefore would probably like to make some money on a re-write. It’s also not yet known if watching Baywatch will be as fun when it’s not an excuse to watch a young Pamela Anderson bounce around until your parents get home from work. Time to find out!

After decades of fighting through the World of Film, Roger Ebert reaches the final boss: the movie of HIMSELF.

As tweeted by the critic himself, Ebert’s new-to-paperback memoir Life Itself has been optioned by Hoop Dreams director Steve James, screenwriter Steven Zaillian (Gangs of New York), and executive producer Martin Scorsese for adaptation into a documentary. Reached for comment by Indiewire, Ebert responded:

“This dropped out of the blue. They say they have a good idea for an approach. I believe Steve James’ ‘Hoop Dreams’ is one of the greatest documentaries ever made, and my hopes for this are so high. I never thought of my book as a doc. I’m keeping hands off any involvement, such as with the screenplay, because I don’t want to be a third wheel. Whatever they do I will be fascinated.”

Hopefully the documentary will remember to ask him what’s good right now.

Making for a tragic start to the week in the entertainment world, director Tony Scott reportedly took his own life in Long Beach, California on Sunday (August 19).

The 68-year-old, who’s best known for helming the hit Tom Cruise film “Top Gun,” is said to have committed suicide by jumping off of the Vincent Thomas bridge.

Reports add that Mr Scott’s body was recovered from the water four hours later by emergency crews, at which time he was immediately pronounced as deceased.

The brother of fellow director Ridley Scott is also behind big films including “Beverly Hills Cop II,” “Days of Thunder,” “Crimson Tide” and “Enemy of the State” while having recently announced that a “Top Gun” sequel was in the works.

It’s shaping up to be a good week for those still clinging to the high-concept sci-fi-comedy glory of the late ’80s. Following news that an ALF movie is happening, now comes word that the long-promised, belated second sequel to Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure is still somehow a real thing, and now has a director attached.

Alex Winter (Bill) assured us in March, original writers Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson have a script already completed, and Keanu Reeves remains more enthusiastic about the project than solemn photos of him eating a sandwich would imply. There is still bogus news, however: MGM, the studio that owns the rights to the characters, has yet to give the film the go-ahead. The package is now being shopped around to other studios in the hopes that they might strike up a co-financing deal with MGM that may finally secure a greenlight. In the meantime, keep thinking of outdated surfer slang that might be paired with a term for an escapade. Bill & Ted’s Tubular Shenanigans? Bill & Ted’s Heinous Hijinks?

Mel Stuart–the director whose adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory remains the definitive film version of the tale, no matter what Johnny Depp will tell you–has reportedly died at the age of 83.

Outside the world of orangish dwarves, Stuart largely kept himself to documentary work, earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary for the John F. Kennedy assassination film Four Days in November in 1965. The year before that, Stuart won an Emmy for his televised documentary The Making of the President 1960; he would go on to be nominated for another four, the last in 1997 for American Masters. His last film was The Hobart Shakespeareans, on which he worked with Sir Ian McKellen to tell the story of an inspiring teacher working in a rough Los Angeles neighborhood.

He’s survived by wife, Roberta, and his three children, who would ask that, in the interest of good taste, that we not all post “you lose; good day, sir” clips as a response.

Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn is looking to return to the world of a really awesome dude fucking up a bunch of jerks.

Refn is reportedly in talks with DreamWorks to direct an adaptation of the 2000AD comic Button Man: Killing Game. Created by Arthur Ranson and John Wagner (the latter of Judge Dredd fame), the story is said to focus on Harry Exton, a hired gun enlisted to fight some other hired guns in a fight to death, all for the entertainment of rich guys who can probably only get off that way. When Exton decides he doesn’t want to be part of the competition, “his only exit strategy might be to off the millionaires funding the competition.” Which actually sounds like a way easier exit strategy than going after the other guys with guns, but there’s probably a twist or something.

Before any of that, though, the next Refn film we’ll see is Only God Forgives, which re-teams the director with Ryan Gosling to once again mess some jerks up–now with kickboxing, and in Thailand–so it wouldn’t surprise anyone to see Gosling take the lead in Button Man. Well, it would surprise Jason Statham a little. He got through half the summary and already started putting a suit on.

As the Weinsteins were reminded of back in February, Scary Movie sequels do not just spontaneously manifest as soon as enough horror catchphrases reach the ears of a grinning Ghostface mask.

The studio found this out when, despite having Scary Movie 5 scheduled for release this month, they were sad to discover that no such hilarious collection of references yet existed. A history of checks cashed by Anna Faris confirmed their suspicions of why this was: people have to be paid to make Scary Movies. So, now the Weinsteins are giving that a try, hiring Roll Bounce director Malcolm Lee to write and direct a new chapter of the franchise. To meet the film’s preemptively-discouraging January 11th release date, production will begin promptly this summer; once-talented Airplane! director David Zucker, who enthusiastically took over the last two Scary Movies once the Wayans brothers matured beyond the franchise, will return to co-write and produce. Considering both Scary Movie 3 and Lee’s Undercover Brother included Eddie Griffin and Denise Richards, their participation should be as foregone a conclusion as the presence of an extended Paranormal Activity parody in which the security cameras catch a ghost masturbating.