Movie Make-out

Stardust and Layer Cake director is moving ahead with his independently-financed $30 million adaptation of Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.’s Kick-Ass, casting Chloe Moretz for the film and potentially Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Superbad, Role Models), as well.

Moretz’s character… is a ferocious, potty-mouthed 11-year-old who chops down crime thugs with a ninja sword. Mintz-Plasse will play the Red Mist, the angry teen son of a mobster who tries to uncover Kick-Ass’ identity.

The lead role is not yet cast. (Source: The Hollywood Reporter)

HR also brings us an casting update on Mel Gibson’s return to acting, in Casino Royale director Martin Campbell’s Edge of Darkness. William Monahan (The Departed) and Andrew Bovell’s script “centers on a veteran cop (Gibson) whose only grown-up child (Bojana Novakovic) is murdered on the steps of his home. The cop unearths his daughter’s secret life and discovers a world of corporate cover-ups and government collusion.” The Proposition’s Danny Huston will play a shady businessman while Shawn Roberts has signed on as the daughter’s distraught boyfriend and Robert De Niro has a presumably minor role as a CIA cleaner.

And, finally(?) for today, HR also breaks the news that the always-amazing Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote) may be taking a turn behind the camera for Little Miss Sunshine producers Big Beach Films, with Jack Goes Boating. A seasoned theater director, Hoffman is developing the project, which is based on Bob Glaudini’s off-Broadway play, in which the title character is “a stoner limo driver who embarks on such quixotic missions as cooking and swimming lessons, and his unlikely relationship with another lovable loser.”

Update (8/17): Ah, I had missed the news of DeNiro’s joining Edge of Darkness. (Variety reported he was in “near a deal” earlier this month.)

Related Posts: Trailer Watch: Role Models; Mel Gibson returns with Edge of Darkness

Oh sure… of the four buzz-worthy actors who are in talks to star in Quentin Tarantino’s WWII film Inglorious Bastards, the one that gets signed next is none of them, but instead Canadian comedic actor Mike Myers, according to Variety.

Listen, I used to like Mike Myers films. Laughed my butt off during the first Austin Powers movie, and for some strange reason, my sister and I watched and re-watched the first Wayne’s World movie. Now that I think about it, I think the main reason why I watched the it so often was because of Tia Carrere’s performance as a sexy, no-nonsense, punk-rock star. It’s hard to find female role models on the big screen when you’re ethnically Filipino, you know? But after having seen the second Austin Powers movie three times and becoming bored of his schtick, the bloom faded quickly from the rose, I was no longer a fan and therefore, I don’t buy this casting.

My problem with Mike Myers is that I can’t see him playing anything straight. See, Jim Carrey’s a great comedic actor, but he does know when to stop and he does have the chops to do more serious roles (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, anyone?). I can believe someone like him in a serious role because he’s proven that he can do it. However, I can’t see Myers being able to rein anything in without a Scottish accent (because he is remarkably restrained in the Shrek movies), and even worse, I don’t want to imagine Tarantino doing a WWII movie with a silly British general because it’s going to make me think of either Peter Sellers or Graham Chapman too much and then I’ll get sad.

Steve Carrell, Tina Fey Going Out on a Date
I’ve recently become a fan of “30 Rock” thanks to Hulu.com and my very weird work schedule, so I couldn’t help but grin a little when I read in Variety that Tina Fey and Steve Carrell will be in a comedy called Date Night from 20th Century Fox. The movie’s about a couple who starts out on an average date but it quickly turns into something that will probably be described by critics as “zany” and “wild.” The movie will be directed by Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum) who told reporters that he wanted this movie to be his next assignment from the studio.

Former Subway Worker, College Student Makes Good in Creating Brooklyn’s Finest
Admittedly, I’m going to be a little biased about stories in the New York Times because it’s my local newspaper of choice and it’s the standard to which I hold a lot of journalists (though that’s changing due to the weirdness that is newspaper conglomerations). Reading this story about first-time screenwriter Michael C. Martin, an almost-degreed film student from Brooklyn who got second prize in a screenwriting competition while he was recovering from an accident that totaled his car, and then parlayed that into a movie deal for Brooklyn’s Finest (starring Richard Gere, Don Cheadle, and Ethan Hawke, and directed by Antoine Fuqua [Training Day]) makes me feel a little better about the world and my place in it as a freelance writer.

It’s worth it to note that the difference between this piece and the Hollywood Reporter piece on another first-time screenwriter is how Martin’s path seems to be more accessible by the average person, whereas the HR piece pushes you away by mentioning its subject’s maneuvering within the system. Anyone can enter a contest, and anyone can go to film school to get the training and basics down for writing a screenplay. In contrast, no one’s exactly sure what one needs to do to be assigned as an assistant to a major screenwriter, and that kind of job is something you achieve after lots of networking and being exactly in the right place at the right time.

Valkyrie isn’t the only movie shifting release dates this week. As the Bryan Singer/Tom Cruise WW2 pic moves into the Christmas holiday, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has been delayed almost eight months, until July 17, 2009, from its previous date of November 21. The new date places it opposite Universal Pictures’ Land of the Lost starring Will Ferrell.

According to Coming Soon, Warner Bros. explained that the move was due to “repercussions of the writers’ strike, which impacted the readiness of scripts for other films — changing the competitive landscape for 2009 and offering new windows of opportunity that we wanted to take advantage of. We agreed the best strategy was to move Half-Blood Prince to July, where it perfectly fills the gap for a major tent pole release for mid-summer.” I call bullshit; I blame Voldemort.

Disney has quickly capitalized on the new Potter date by shifting its CG animated flick Bolt up five days to November 21.

Update (8/16/08): Screening Log reports that the Twilight adaptation has jumped back from December 12 to November 21 to help fill the Potter void, as well. Bolt undoubtedly skews a little younger than Twilight (and probably Potter, too), but chance are the two films will split the weekend.

Related Posts: Disney and Pixar’s upcoming animated films

Liam Neeson and Orlando Bloom are set to star in an as-yet-untitled big-screen adaptation of Greg Carter’s Bosnian War memoir, Fools Rush In. Javier Bardem is in talks for a supporting role, as well. (Why not keep the title? It’s Matthew Perry’s fault.)

Andrucha Waddington is set to direct, and while Bloom says the script has a “very human story and the very core of this film spoke to me very clearly,” the Variety article didn’t mention who wrote it. It describes the book thusly:

Carter wrote the book about the period of time when he lived and worked as an aid worker in Sarajevo during the bitter Balkans war siege that lasted 43 months.

The production is aiming to film on location in Sarajevo at the end of the year.

As a huge fan of Joe Sacco’s reporting on the Bosnian war, I’m interested in seeing a well-done film on the subject; I haven’t seen too many, but the only one I was even mildly impressed by was Michael Winterbottom’s Welcome to Sarajevo.

While his business partner Paula Wagner made waves on Wednesday when she left United Artists and stepped down as its CEO (but still retaining an ownership interest), remaining partner Tom Cruise is going to be feeling the weight of the entire studio’s future when it was also announced that Valkyrie will be moving back into the 2008 movie release schedule, this time slated for a December 26 release.

The first of the two Variety stories is the more interesting one because it details the fact that UA/MGM has two revolving credit lines worth about $450 million, but it’s trying to raise more money because that’s not going to be enough to develop the slate of movies it has on tap, including the aforementioned WWII drama about a German plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, a Guillermo del Toro-directed adaptation of a British TV series called “Champions,” and a Bruce Willis movie about the My Lai massacre in Vietnam called Pinkville. It also mentions that Cruise hasn’t been doing much movie brokering, choosing instead to focus on his acting career — with a little bit of child-rearing and Scientology shilling on the side, I might add.

DreamWorks Animation to Dip Back Into the Funny Animal Well with Sequels to Madagascar (Again), Kung Fu Panda
During a preview for Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, Hollywood Reporter quoted DWA CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg as saying that there would be a third movie in the Madagascar franchise that hopefully would finally see the animals return to New York and the Central Park Zoo…thus spoiling the fact that no, they still aren’t back on Manhattan Island by the end of the second movie which comes out on November 7.

At the same preview, but speaking this time to an unnamed Reuters reporter, Katzenberg also said that the studio was in talks with the creative team behind this summer’s “other” blockbuster CG film Kung Fu Panda to create a sequel: “We’ve started conversations about it, and I think in the next 30 or 60 days, we’ll be able to talk completely about that,” the CEO said.

Which is CEO-speak for, “I can neither confirm nor deny any previous reports.”

Related Posts: Kung Fu Panda… 2! (jumped the gun did we, Gordon?)

A two-minute featurette on Henry Selick’s 3-D stop-motion adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s children’s novel Coraline is online courtesy IGN Movies. The video quality is not terribly good and as the disclaimer in front of the clip says, some of the footage is unfinished, but it will give you an idea of how excited to get for this flick — which is “very.”

Selick’s made some duds (Monkeybone, arguably James and the Giant Peach), but inthose instances, he’s been hamstrung by a skimpy budget. With this, it looks like he’s finally been given a proper budget again to work his wonders. Coraline is slated for a February 6, 2009, release.

(You can also see the previously-released teaser and clip over at YouTube, as well.)

Elle Fanning stars in the Sundance Film Festival hit, Phoebe in Wonderland, about a troubled girl whose teacher, Miss Dogdger (Patricia Clarkson), enlists her into the starring roll in their school’s production of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

As Phoebe’s stress mounts, her behavior grows worse, creating intense pressure on her parents, Hillary and Peter (Felicity Huffman and Bill Pullman). Hillary, who already feels a failure in both her personal and professional life, desperately tries to understand and help her daughter. But this connection proves elusive as Phoebe begins retreating to an imaginary fantasy world peopled by characters from Alice in Wonderland, a world which grows increasingly disturbing and treacherous. As Alice observes to the Caterpillar, “It is very confusing being so many different sizes in a day,” and in the end both Hillary and Phoebe (under Miss Dodger’s tutelage) must try to navigate the strange, painful, exhilarating transformation from chrysalis to butterfly.

It might be strange to gush this much about a child actor, much less one as young as Elle Fanning was in The Door in the Floor, an otherwise unexceptional indie drama in which the Dakota Fanning’s younger sister blew me away with her un-self-conscious mannerisms. But the younger Miss Fanning looks like a remarkable talent, and Phoebe, written and directed by first-time feature director Daniel Barnz, looks like a terrific showcase for her talent.

Phoebe in Wonderland will see a limited domestic release beginning September 12.