WEDNESDAY JULY 1, 2009 « Film News Briefs

July 1, 2009

WEDNESDAY JULY 1, 2009

PROJECTS ANNOUNCED

Olympia Dukakis and Brenda Fricker will star in road-trip comedy “Cloudburst” for Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, with Thom Fitzgerald directing from his own script. SKE is financing “Cloudburst”; Fitzgerald is producing with Doug Pettigrew while William Jarblum exec produces. Production starts this month in Nova Scotia. Story centers on two women who have lived as lovers for 30 years and decide to break out of the nursing facility where one of them has been committed.

CBS Films has picked up the comedy spec “Get a Job,” by Kyle Pennekamp and Scott Turpel. Project is set up with Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher at their Double Feature Films shingle. Story centers on a college graduate and his friends who are compelled to lower life expectations when they leave campus for the real world. Project is the second Sher and Shamberg have set up at CBS Films. They’re in production on true-life medical drama “Crowley,” directed by Tom Vaughan and starring Brendan Fraser, Harrison Ford and Keri Russell.

Sci Fi is developing a new take on “Alien Nation,” the 1988 feature that previously spawned a spinoff series on Fox. “Angel” alum Tim Minear — no stranger to sci-fi tales, having worked on “The X-Files,” “Firefly” and “Strange World” — is penning the fresh take on the franchise. Fox 21, the alternative production arm of 20th Century Fox TV, will produce. “Alien Nation” centers on the partnership between a veteran cop and his alien detective partner, set against the larger tale of alien “newcomers” who move to Earth and attempt to assimilate into society. Fox 21 topper Chris Carlisle said he believed “Alien Nation” could rep the next franchise revival for Sci Fi, which found huge success in dusting off “Battlestar Galactica” and reworking it for today’s auds. Carlisle said “Alien Nation” works both as a sci-fi piece and a procedural drama.

“The Duchess” director Saul Dibb is entering the court of 19th century Australia. The helmer is in negotiations to direct “Spider Dance,” a period story about an American woman’s colorful exploits Down Under. Peter Sumner wrote the screenplay for the indie drama, which U.K.-based Leo Media Group is producing. Producers are out to cast, with veteran British actor John Rhys-Davies already on board. The project centers on a young American who arrives in a repressed part of Sydney with an extensive entourage of actors and other celebrities in tow and proceeds to shock the locals with her uninhibited ways. The film also traces the arc of the woman’s addictions and romantic pursuits.

Relativity Media has optioned an original romantic-comedy screenplay from rookie scribe Jonathan Abrams titled “The Wedding Doctor.” Robert Kravis and Tyler Mitchell of Dark & Stormy Entertainment are producing with John Rogers, a writer on the USA Network series “Royal Pains.” “Doctor” follows an anxiety-wracked bride-to-be who gets cold feet three days before her wedding. She secretly hires a relationship analyst known as “The Wedding Doctor” to ensure she’s marrying the right man. Self-interest takes over, though, when the wedding doctor determines that he, in fact, is her ideal man.

PROJECT UPDATES

Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Josh Hutcherson and Mia Wasikowska are set to star in “The Kids Are All Right.” Director Lisa Cholodenko (”High Art”) began shooting yesterday from the script she co-wrote with Stuart Blumberg. Pic revolves around a brother and sister (Hutcherson, Wasikowska) who set out to find their same-sex parents’ sperm donor, who totally upsets their family dynamic once he enters their lives. Bening and Moore play the parents, and Ruffalo plays the donor.

George Gallo is making a run to “Columbus Circle.” The veteran writer behind such action comedies as “Bad Boys” and “Midnight Run” will direct the indie thriller from a script he co-wrote with Kevin Pollak, who has a role in the pic as well. Selma Blair, Amy Smart, Jason Lee and Giovanni Ribisi also star in “Circle.” Oxymoron Entertainment’s Christopher Mallick and Blue Star Entertainment’s William Sherak and Jason Shuman, who exec produced Universal’s comedy breakout “Role Models,” will produce. “Circle” centers on a reclusive heiress (Blair) in an upscale Manhattan apartment building who is brought face-to-face with her fears when a detective (Ribisi) shows up to investigate a homicide next door and a new couple (Smart and Lee) moves in to that apartment. Pollak plays the building’s concierge and one of the heiress’ few friends. Jason Antoon has also been cast in the pic.

Charlie Day, one of the stars and creators of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” and Christina Applegate have joined Drew Barrymore and Justin Long in New Line’s romantic comedy “Going the Distance.” Adam Shankman and Jennifer Gibgot are producing via their Offspring Entertainment banner, and Nanette Burstein is directing. The story by first-time scribe Geoff LaTulippe follows a couple (Barrymore and Long) trying to maintain a long-distance relationship. Day is playing Long’s best friend while Applegate is Barrymore’s sister.

BUSINESS NEWS

Carl Icahn has remained on the hunt for Lionsgate, boosting his stake this week to 17.7% from 17.2%, according to a regulatory filing. Icahn has said in the past that he doesn’t plan to launch a takeover battle for the mini-major, but he’s questioned whether Lionsgate has the liquidity to meet obligations that could be triggered if any shareholder owns 20% of the stock. Icahn disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Tuesday that he had acquired 608,239 shares at prices between $5.26 and $5.43 a share in two purchases. In recent months, Icahn’s gradually increased his stake toward the 20% level. He currently holds 20.72 million shares, nearly double the 10.8 million held at the start of the year, and has become the second-largest shareholder after Mark Rachesky, a former Icahn associate who supports management and owns just short of 20%.

The network has picked up Fox TV Studios’ 13-episode adventure drama starring Ron Livingston. The internationally produced series, also set to air on Canada’s CTV, Germany’s ProSieben and the BBC, hails from familiar ABC auspices: creator/executive producer James Parriott, who served as an exec producer on ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Ugly Betty,” and exec producer Michael Edelstein, former exec producer of the network’s “Desperate Housewives.” “Gravity,” whose cast includes Laura Harris, Christina Cox, Malik Yoba and Florentine Lahme, is set in the near future and revolves around eight astronauts from five countries who undertake a mysterious six-year mission through the solar system. The FtvS-produced series, slated to air on ABC this summer, is a co-venture with Vancouver-based Omni Film Prods., whose Brian Hamilton and Michael Chechik also exec produce.

INDUSTRY MOVES

George Clooney has parted ways with Warner Bros., moving the Smokehouse Pictures shingle he runs with Grant Heslov to Sony. The pair landed the two-year first-look pact at a time when studios are cutting back on production deals, no matter how big the producer may be. Clooney and Heslov had been based on the WB lot as producers for the past nine years, initially working together at Section Eight, co-founded by Steven Soderbergh, before launching Smokehouse in 2006. Clooney has been closely associated with the studio since he became a breakout star on the WB-produced “ER” in 1994.

The shakeup at the top of Paramount Pictures continued Tuesday with the layoffs of 31 production staffers, including a number of division heads. Among the execs departing the Melrose lot are Guy Stodel, head of the Paramount Vantage unit, and Georgia Kacandes, head of physical production. Dan Levine, exec veep of production, and Ben Cosgrove, senior veep of production, were let go, along with casting chief Gail Levin, vfx senior veep Kim Locasio and Aimee Shieh, head of Par’s New York literary office. The pinkslips came on the heels of last month’s exits of John Lesher and Brad Weston from the posts of film group prexy and production prexy, respectively. Adam Goodman, newly appointed prexy of Par’s film group, broke the news to the staff in a memo that cited the need for “streamlining the leadership of the production organization.”

TECHNOLOGY/MULTI-PLATFORM CONTENT

As networks brainstorm dizzying high-tech ways to promote shows online and via social networks, ABC is adopting a decidedly retro medium to excite viewers for the upcoming second season of “Castle”: a book. Because the show’s protagonist, Richard Castle, is a best-selling author of mysteries, what more appropriate tie-in than to publish an actual mystery novel written by the character? Starting Aug. 10, the first chapter of a novel titled “Heat Wave,” credited to Richard Castle, will debut on ABC.com as a round of on-air repeats lead up to the Season 2 premiere in late September. The network will post the first half of the book, a chapter a week, for 10 weeks. The full novel will be published Sept. 29 by Disney sister company Hyperion. The story apparently is a stand-alone mystery with cross-over elements to the on-screen story.

NEW GRAPHIC NOVELS

GREEK STREET #1 (DC): You’re a boy from the hood. You’re brought up rough in a children’s home, trying to stay out of trouble but usually failing. Then at 18 you decide to track down your mother. Within hours of finding her, she’s lying naked and dead at your feet. So you run to Greek Street. And that’s when your troubles really begin. Boasting a cast of sexy strippers, murderous gangsters, body-snatching mad women and a disturbed young girl who can see the future, Greek Street is a re-imagining of those brutal and visceral tragedies that graced the Theater of Dionysus in Ancient Greece – bloody tales about incest, homicide, beautiful oracles, all-knowing choruses, kings, monsters and gods – played out on the mean streets of modern-day Red-Light London.

WEBSITE TO WATCH

http://trueslant.com/

This new news site launched in beta last month with $3 million in funding from Forbes Media and Fuse Capital. Led by veteran journalist/web guru Lewis Dvorkin, True/Slant is providing a platform for more than 100 “Entrepreneurial Journalists” who want to use the web to reach readers directly in exchange for a small stipend, a share of the ad revenue the site generates or, in some cases, an equity stake in the company. Contributors include former reporters for the NYTimes, Boston Globe, BBC and Newsweek. The site is more of a blogging/social networking platform than a news site; contributors get their own page to post their work on and attract followers to, complete with commenting tools and the ability to link to other outlets. (A blog roll of sorts ranks them by popularity and activeness in the right hand corner of the homepage.) Contributors will take an active role in moderating the discussion on their pages. True/Slant’s advertising approach is interesting: advertisers themselves will maintain their own (clearly identified) pages that will vie for followers. Marketers can post original content, capture headlines and link or post videos to generate community buzz.