Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Movie Minesweeper - The Smaller Mouthfulls Please Barry Edition

- Alia Shawkat, Steven Kaplan, William H. Macy and Cheryl Hines are set to star in Bart Got a Room, a prom night comedy in which the titular Bart (Kaplan) tries to come of age as all movie teens do despite the crumbling marriage of his parnets (Macy and Hines).

- Peter Morgan's third Tony Blair drama is to focus on the hand-over of power between Bill Clinton and George Bush Jr. Is it safe to assume Stephen Frears will be back for thirds?

- She who will be Lyra Bellacqua, Dakota Blue Richards has now been cast in Gabor Csupo's The Secret of Moonacre, a movie version of Elisabeth Goudge's The Little White Horse. The previously attached Colin Firth no longer seems to be on the cast list, which now includes Ioann Gruffud, Tim Curry, Natasha McElhone and Juliet Stevenson.

- Stephen Moffat is scripting
the three Dreamworks Tintin films. That will give us the first Jackson film with an 'outsider' script and, very possibly, the best written Spielberg film in quite some time. Moffat's had some crazy keen fans since he first arrived with Press Gang and his Dr. Who episodes are widely regarded to be the best.

- New Regency Productions are set to adapt Brandon Mull's The Candy Shop War, yet another post-Potter kid-fic franchise starter.

- Off... on... off... it looks like Stopping Power has been killed once and for all.

- Melanie Laurent has been handed the dream role of Cinderella in Cendrillon (that's her French name, don't you know), Marc Esposito's upcoming version of the classic tale. Jean Reno, Sophie Marceau and Catherine Jacob have also been cast, as the king, fairy godmother and wicked stepmother respectively. If an English version were to be cooked up - Mossycoat was her original name here, I believe - I think my Winehouse would make a good step-sister.

- The Icelandic Oscar hopeful is to be Baltasar Kormakur's Jar City, the highest grossing film in icelandic box office history.

- Alexander Sokurov's Alexandra is to be distributed in the US by The Cinema Guild.

- Tristram Shapeero is to direct his first feature film, Jane Austen Handheld. It's a mockumentary version of Pride and Prejudice and will star Stephen Fry and Lily Allen, at least one of whom I hoped would know better. Fry is also working on two promising TV shows - one in which he drives around the US in his black cab, and an 'adaptation' of Douglas Adams' Last Chance to See.

- Lenny Henry has been taking cameraphone pictures at an Anansi Boys radio-play readthrough. This needs to be a film. Come on Working Title - pull your finger out.

2 comments:

Kevin-Lee said...

Amen to the Anansi Boys movie! Let me start by saying I'm no Lenny Henry fan, I find the man to generally be annoying and about as funny as a death in the family, but his audiobook reading of Gaiman's book is an absolute joy. I can forgive him all his awful TV Shows for that one reading alone. And if a movie is made I may even manage to find it within myself to actually like the guy. Somewhat.

I just fear the lukewarm reception of Stardust, as well as previous "flops", may have killed off any NG books-to-film adaptations. I hope Coraline goes someway to proving that it can be done, and done well.

Anonymous said...

Hey Brendon, just out of curiosity--you seem to dislike Spielberg rather much, at least lately, but what did you think of Munich?