TUESDAY JUNE 16, 2009 « Film News Briefs

June 16, 2009

TUESDAY JUNE 16, 2009

PROJECTS ANNOUNCED

Paramount has put its chips down on an untitled pitch about the world of online casinos based in Costa Rica. Leonardo DiCaprio is attached to star and produce through his Appian Way shingle. The untitled project hails from scribes Brian Koppelman and David Levien (“Rounders,” “The Girlfriend Experience,” “Ocean’s Thirteen”). Appian Way’s Jennifer Davisson Killoran will produce. Koppelman and Levien are working with DiCaprio and Appian on the thriller “Beat the Reaper.” It’s based on the novel by Josh Bazell and is in development at New Regency.

Paramount Pictures has preemptively bought action-comedy pitch “Honey Pot” from scribe Liz Meriweather for the Montecito Co. to produce. Details of the storyline are being kept under wraps. Pic will feature two female leads and be set in the world of international espionage. Meriweather described the project as what happens “when a bunch of hot, funny women get their ‘Bourne’ on.” Montecito principals Ivan Reitman, Tom Pollock and Jeffrey Clifford will produce.

Stuart Beattie is keeping things local. The Australian “Australia” co-writer is readying his directorial debut, an adaptation of the young-adult novel “Tomorrow, When the War Began” for an Aussie-centric production this year. Beattie also wrote the screenplay. “Tomorrow” is the first novel in a popular series of seven written by Australian John Marsden and published from 1994-99. The Tomorrow Series, as it is known, details the insurgency efforts of a band of Aussie teenagers fighting off an enemy invasion and occupation of their homeland.

PROJECT UPDATES

Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan” could soon be taking flight. After being set up in early 2007 at Universal, the project — a supernatural thriller set in the world of New York City ballet — has been reconstituted after being put into turnaround by the studio. It has been making the rounds to studios and specialty divisions, several of which are keenly interested. Among the elements giving it a boost: Natalie Portman is attached to play the lead. Mark Heyman, a development exec at Aronofsky’s Protozoa Pictures, has done a rewrite of John McLaughlin’s original script for the pic, which Mike Medavoy’s Phoenix Pictures and Protozoa are producing. “Swan” centers on a veteran ballerina (Portman) who finds herself locked in a competitive situation with a rival dancer, with the stakes and twists increasing as the dancers approach a big performance. But it’s unclear whether the rival is a supernatural apparition or if the protagonist is simply having delusions.

The Disney comedy “You Again” has taken on some female power. Jamie Lee Curtis, Kristin Chenoweth, Odette Yustman and Betty White have joined the cast, as has Victor Garber. They join Kristen Bell and Sigourney Weaver in the film, to be directed by Andy Fickman. The story line centers on a woman (Bell) who finds out that her brother is planning to marry the girl who made her high school years a living hell and tries to convince him that his fiancee is not the nice girl she pretends to be. Curtis and Garber will play Bell’s parents, and White will play her grandmother. (Weaver is her rich Aunt Ramona.) Chenoweth plays “a wedding extraordinator.” Yustman plays Bell’s nemesis. Moe Jelline wrote the screenplay.

Exec-turned-screenwriter Marc Haimes has come on to work on the adventure script “Family History,” in development at Fox. The story, described as “National Treasure” meets “Back to the Future,” has been shepherded by producers Cormac & Marianne Wibberley, who co-wrote the two Disney “National Treasure” films. Michael Punke originally drafted the project.

BUSINESS NEWS

The Gen Art organization is in danger of having to close its doors as early as this summer. The Gotham-based fashion and arts group, which has hosted the Gen Art film festival for the past 15 years, will hold a fundraiser June 24 in an effort to encourage individual donors to replace some of the wealth gone from its coffers after last year’s stock market crash. “As a company, we were very reliant on corporate dollars — they were about 80% of our revenue last year,” said founder/CEO Ian Gerard. “We were probably not as diverse in that as we could have been; a lot of our partners were financial sectors and auto companies that were supposed to be blue-chip.” Gen Art finds itself in a growing club of charitable orgs foundering due to a widespread donation drought, and like many others, it isn’t used to having to scrape for funds. “We haven’t had to have a benefit in 10 years,” Gerard said. When money from the company’s corporate accounts flowed, it was plentiful, but now Gerard and his staff are looking to one of the other principal sources of revenue for nonprofits: private wealth.

For the first time in years, Fox will launch a fall lineup in mid- to late September alongside most of its rivals. Though few Fox programs will debut during the official start-of-season “premiere week” beginning Sept. 21, most of the network’s primetime programs will begin within a few days of the traditional launch period. This is a change in strategy from recent years. Fox kicked off its season on Sept. 1 last year. In 2007, Fox debuted one premiere on Aug. 30 and other shows in early September. In 2006, Fox’s lineup started rolling out Aug. 21. Whereas this fall, Fox’s weeknight programming begins Sept. 16 with “So You Think You Can Dance” and “Glee.” Several factors go into deciding a premiere schedule, but one reason for the switch is that Fox expects fewer baseball pre-emptions next season in October. The network has typically debuted shows in late August or early September to give programs a longer running head start before Major League Baseball coverage interrupted its lineup.

INDUSTRY MOVES

Warner Bros. is ramping up its internal marketing ranks as it prepares to release more videogames. The studio has tapped Russell Arons, a former marketing maven at Electronic Arts, as senior VP of worldwide marketing for Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. In the new post, Arons will oversee brand and product marketing, as well as publicity and consumer research for all of WBIE’s videogames and franchises.

Paramount Digital Entertainment has enlisted former Live Planet executive Keith Quinn to mobilize production of original content. Quinn will serve as senior VP of creative development and production at the Par arm that creates videogames and entertainment properties primarily for the Internet, cell phones and other Web-enabled handheld devices. He reports to Thomas Lesinski, prexy of PDE.

TECHNOLOGY/MULTI-PLATFORM CONTENT

Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg’s Katalyst shingle is looking to bridge the gap between digital and TV. At the CW, the producers are developing the pilot “I Pledge,” which began life as an online property Katalyst launched on the eve of Barack Obama’s election as president. Originally uploaded as “The Presidential Pledge,” Katalyst teamed up with MySpace to feature celebrities pledging to volunteer their service to charitable causes in 2009. As a TV show, “I Pledge” will follow those stars as they highlight causes they believe in, and help solve a problem in the process. “I Pledge” comes on the heels of “Blah Girls,” another Katalyst digital property that syndicated entertainment mag “The Insider” recently began airing, and is also being developed as a half-hour TV series.

WEBSITE TO WATCH

http://pbskids.org/go/

Online video is all about engagement and rapid advances are being made to offer snazzy interactive features to advertisers. But there’s no reason why program producers can’t take advantage of the same technology. PBS announced a new integration with ad insertion platform Panache last month into PBS’s video management system, allowing PBS producers to place interactive casual game elements directly into the video streams. At certain points during the episodes of shows such as Arthur, Cyberchase and Wordgirl the website’s video content pauses to present viewers with the option to play educational minigames. PBS says viewership numbers tripled month-to-month after the feature went live and that engagement increased exponentially. Panache’s reporting capabilities allow this portal to track how effective the interactive elements are at guiding users through a lesson and gage how well kids performed actions within the games. Word has gotten out about just how effective the games have been, says Panache President Steve Robinson — spurring inquiries from a variety of programmers. Such interactivity and the data resulting from it should prove invaluable to producers in their quest to create programming that takes advantage of the medium. Also, if these kinds of integrations don’t motivate cable operators to get serious about interactivity, we’re not sure what will …